FROM MAY

"We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one's total orientation to life. Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern. One's religious attitude is to be found at that point where he has a conviction that there are values in human existence worth living and dying for.

[several passages later, May is quoting from Erich Fromm] '...There is much less difference between a mystic's faith in god (by which he means the indigenous convictions of the religious person rather than other-worldly creeds) and an atheist's rational faith in mankind than between the former and that of a calvinist whose faith in god is rooted in the conviction of his own powerlessness and in his fear of god's power.'"

- Rollo May, Man's Search For Himself

MORE SIMIC

"Seeing is determined not by the eye but by the clarity of my consciousness. Most of the time the eyes see nothing."

- Charles Simic, The Unemployed Fortune-Teller

THE NEW PORNOGRAPHY

"In the 19th century, everybody knew about death. In the 20th century, nobody knows about death. People die in hospitals now. In the 19th century, nobody knew about sex. In the 20th century, everybody knows about sex. Death has become the new pornography. We don't talk about it."

- Helen Sclair, from Studs Terkel's Will The Circle Be Unbroken?

PLAY

Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing- it didn't have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. When I was in high school, I'd see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn't have to do it; it wasn't important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn't make any difference: I used to invent things and play with things for my own entertainment.

So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything, I've got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.

Within a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling.

I had nothing to do, so I started to figure out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate- two to one. It came out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, "Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it's two to one?"

I don't remember how I did it, but I ultimately worked out what the motion of the mass of particles is, and how all the accelerations balance to make it come out two to one.

I still remember going to Hans Bethe and saying, "Hey, Hans! I noticed something interesting. Here the plate goes around so, and the reason it's two to one is..." and I showed him the accelerations.

He says, "Feynman, that's pretty interesting, but what's the importance of it? Why are you doing it?"

"Ha!" I say. "There's no importance whatsoever. I'm just doing it for the fun of it." His reaction didn't discourage me; I had made up my mind I was going to enjoy physics and do whatever I liked.

I went on to work out equations of wobbles. Then I thought about how electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there's the Dirac Equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics, QED. And before I knew it (it was a very short time) I was "playing"--working, really-- with the same old problems that I loved so much. that I had stopped working on when I went to Los Alamos: my thesis-type problems, all those old-fashioned, wonderful things.

It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was: the diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.

- Richard Feynman, "The Dignified Professor", Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!

EATING BANANAS IN SILENT ANGER

"She sounded like when my mom eats bananas in silent anger."

- David Cross, I Drink For A Reason

THE LARGE THING

A large thing comes in.
Go out, Large Thing, says someone.
The Large Thing goes out, and comes in again.
Go out, Large Thing, and stay out, says someone.
The Large Thing goes out, and stays out.
Then that same someone who has been ordering the Large Thing out begins to be lonely, and says, come in, Large Thing.
But when the Large Thing is in, that same someone decides it would be better if the Large Thing would go out.
Go out, Large Thing, says this same someone.
The Large Thing goes out.
Oh, why did I say that? says the someone, who begins to be lonely again.
But meanwhile the Large Thing has come back in anyway.
Good, I was just about to call you back, says the same someone to the Large Thing.

- Russell Edson, The Tunnel

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

"There is no love other than one which manifests itself in a person's being in love. There is no genius other than one which is expressed in works of art. Proust is the sum of Proust's works; the genius of Racine is his series of tragedies. Outside of that, there is nothing. Why say that Racine could have written another tragedy, when he didn't write it? A man is involved in life, leaves his impress on it, and outside of that there is nothing. To be sure, this may seem a harsh thought to someone whose life hasn't been a success. But, on the other hand, it prompts people to understand that reality alone is what counts, that dreams, expectations, and hopes warrant no more than to define a man as a disappointed dream, as miscarried hopes, as vain expectations. In other words, to define him negatively and not positively. However, when we say, "You are nothing else than your life," that does not imply that the artist will be judged solely on the basis of his works of art; a thousand other things will contribute toward summing him up. What we mean is that a man is nothing else than a series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organization, the ensemble of the relationships which make up these undertakings."

- Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions

ON THE UNEMPLOYED

"His existence has become provisional and in a certain sense he cannot live for the future or aim at a goal. Research work has shown that they suffer from a peculiar sort of deformed time-- inner time --which is the result of their unemployed state."

- Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

WORKING

When you ask most people who they are, they define themselves by their jobs. "I'm a doctor." "I'm a radio announcer." "I'm a carpenter." If somebody asks me, I say, "I'm Nora Watson." At certain points in time I do things for a living. Right now I'm working for the institution. But not for long. I'd be lying to you if I told you I wasn't scared.

I have a few options. Given the market, I'm going to take the best job I can find. I really tried to play the game by the rules, and I think it's a hundred percent unadulterated bullshit. So I'm not likely to go back downtown and say, "Here I am. I'm very good, hire me."

You recognize yourself as a marginal person. As a person who can give only minimal assent to anything that is going on in this society: "I'm glad the electricity works." That's about it. What you have to find is your own niche that will allow you to keep feeding and clothing and sheltering yourself without getting downtown. (Laughs.) Because that's death. That's really where death is.

- Nora Watson, editor (age 28), from Studs Terkel's Working

HOPELESS MESSY MIXTURE

"Suppose you don't believe in either Hobbes' notion that man is evil and society is good, or Rousseau's that man is good and society is evil. Suppose you believe in the hopeless and messy mixture of everything."

- Charles Simic, The Monster Loves His Labyrinth

KAFKA, 1910

"Sunday 19 July - slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life."

-from Diaries 1910-1923