https://vegasharmon.com/tags/belles-lettres/ Recent content in Belles-Lettres on Vegas Harmon Hugo en Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/aesthetic-tyranny-why-i-d-rather-you-sweat-than-see-an-ac-unit/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/aesthetic-tyranny-why-i-d-rather-you-sweat-than-see-an-ac-unit/ European resistance to air conditioning is often framed as a story of puritanical self-flagellation, as an insistence on managing energy crises by a regime of perpetual austerity rather than building out clean, abundant energy sources. But I think this is an over-generous framing driven by pundits who have never had a frivolous bone in their effectively altruistic bodies. Some of us just really hate looking at ugly things, and we’re willing to make you suffer so that we don’t have to. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/magic-and-machine-tolkien-s-two-kinds-of-power/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/magic-and-machine-tolkien-s-two-kinds-of-power/ To ask this question is to answer it—at least for any attentive reader of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy classic The Lord of the Rings. Although set in a pre-technological mythical world of wizards and dragons, Tolkien’s trilogy is, more than anything else, a profound meditation upon technology. Nor should this surprise us; for as C.S. Lewis has argued, the modern enterprise of “technology” and the medieval pursuit of “magic” are two versions of the same quest: to manipulate the world through the discovery of hidden knowledge, the perfection of arcane techniques. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/notes-turned-inward-pavese-s-art-of-tragic-living/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/notes-turned-inward-pavese-s-art-of-tragic-living/ The Craft of Living is mostly a set of literary notes, like Leopardi’s Zibaldone, with almost no mention of the history going on all around him. (Pavese’s lively letters, by contrast, are full of talk, gossip, and the quotidian; he comes across as a magisterial man of letters, an efficient manager, and a generous friend.) The diary is, instead, a document of a writer’s intellectual and emotional life, which you can see him process into material. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/powerful-tools-wield-their-users-in-return/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/powerful-tools-wield-their-users-in-return/ Second, Tolkien understood that the more powerful the tool, the less likely that an ordinary user could use it effectively, rather than being shaped or controlled by it. Thus, when Pippin looks into the palantir of Orthanc, he is almost immediately captivated by it and wholly under the domination of Sauron’s will operating through it. Only Aragorn, the rightful possessor of the stone and a man hardened by battle and seasoned with wisdom, is able to “wrench the stone to his own will,” and that only through “a bitter struggle. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/when-everything-touched-was-mortal/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/when-everything-touched-was-mortal/ In “The Gods,” the book’s coda, Pavese converses with himself about “how grueling it must have been for people living in a time when everything they touched was mortal,” when the world was filled with the presences of unseen beings. “Do you believe in monsters, believe in animal people, in living stones, divine smiles, and in words that annihilate?” The poet, Pavese implies, is a creature of Chaos—that anarchic state in which good is mixed with bad and monsters mingle with men and gods. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/on-mallarm%C3%A9-s-perfectionism/ Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/on-mallarm%C3%A9-s-perfectionism/ Throughout much of Mallarmé’s adult life, he yearned quixotically to create a magnum opus that could encompass the entire world and render it into words. He wanted to collapse the gap between representation and what is represented. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-destiny-of-nations/ Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-destiny-of-nations/ Auspicious Reverence! Hush all meaner song, Ere we the deep preluding strain have poured To the Great Father, only Rightful King, Eternal Father! King Omnipotent! To the Will Absolute, the One, the Good! The I AM, the Word, the Life, the Living God! Such symphony requires best instrument. Seize, then, my soul! from Freedom’s trophied dome The Harp which hangeth high between the Shields Of Brutus and Leonidas! With that https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/want-of-wonder/ Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/want-of-wonder/ The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/taste-as-shared-response/ Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/taste-as-shared-response/ The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn’t seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn’t seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-computer-longs-to-be-human/ Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-computer-longs-to-be-human/ Homay King argues in Virtual Memory: Time-Based Art and the Dream of Digitality that the epistle’s “tangled mash-up of sentimentality bespeaks a twinge of longing…Like the wooden puppet in search of the Blue Fairy, the computer longs to be human; like Snow White fleeing into the forest, it longs to be admitted into the company of those who are capable of care and affection.” https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-robotic-hand-s-undetectable-autograph/ Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-robotic-hand-s-undetectable-autograph/ Beleaguered professors, who are largely poorly paid adjunct instructors at this point, will now have to not just contend with essay mills and good old-fashioned cut-and-paste plagiarism, but also the undetectable autograph of the robotic hand. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/art-no-longer-forms-subcultures/ Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/art-no-longer-forms-subcultures/ In literate society, engagement with novels, poetry and criticism has always helped people form groups and differentiate themselves along lines of class and politics. With the newfound dominance of the internet, this is no longer the case: our extreme interconnectedness seems to preclude the need for rich subcultures grounded in the shared appreciation of art and writing— these have been replaced almost universally by shareable soundbites that require no labor other than attention. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/young-elites-and-the-crisis-of-form/ Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/young-elites-and-the-crisis-of-form/ They’re all witty, intelligent critics who have become adept at diagnosing the cultural ills of contemporary society over the course of fairly brief tenures in the public eye, but they also all belong to the demographic perhaps most afflicted by the modern crisis of form: young elites who have been exposed since their teenage years to the full brunt of the internet content deluge, untethered from though perhaps yearning for a self-contained and tradition-rich literary scene in which to make their way. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-face-blazing-like-christmas-coals/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-face-blazing-like-christmas-coals/ In the morning, one might say, his face was of a fine florid hue, but after twelve o’clock, meridian—his dinner hour—it blazed like a grate full of Christmas coals; and continued blazing—but, as it were, with a gradual wane—till 6 o’clock, P.M. or thereabouts, after which I saw no more of the proprietor of the face, which gaining its meridian with the sun, seemed to set with it, to rise, culminate, and decline the following day, with the like regularity and undiminished glory. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-grumbler-or-only-a-grumble/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-grumbler-or-only-a-grumble/ The question is whether she is a grumbler, or only a grumble. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-name-that-rings-like-bullion/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-name-that-rings-like-bullion/ I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-right-but-not-a-reason-to-be-proud/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-right-but-not-a-reason-to-be-proud/ What went unsaid, but clearly implied, was that they had a right but not a reason to be proud of me. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-scream-wanting-to-get-out/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-scream-wanting-to-get-out/ “Millions of people can draw. Art is whether or not there is a scream in him [Asher] wanting to get out in a special way.” “Or a laugh,” she said. “Picasso laughs, too.” “Or a laugh,” he said. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-stronger-angel-a-fiercer-devil/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-stronger-angel-a-fiercer-devil/ It is a stronger angel, and therefore, when it falls, a fiercer devil. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-truth-beyond-words/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-truth-beyond-words/ [I painted for] a truth I did not know how to put into words. For a truth I could only bring to life by means of color and line and texture and form. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/all-dry-all-withered-all-spent/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/all-dry-all-withered-all-spent/ It was all dry: all withered: all spent. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/all-hell-is-smaller-than-a-pebble/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/all-hell-is-smaller-than-a-pebble/ ‘Yes. All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World.’ https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/an-eye-drawing/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/an-eye-drawing/ That is an eye drawing, Anna. Hands alone do not draw this way. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/and-giovanni-fell/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/and-giovanni-fell/ And Giovanni fell—back into the room, the streets, the world, into the presence and the shadow of death. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/and-we-became-friends/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/and-we-became-friends/ He made the emperor laugh and the horse couldn’t better him, so he stayed. And I stayed. And we became friends. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/at-the-third-summons/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/at-the-third-summons/ Like a very ghost, agreeably to the laws of magical invocation, at the third summons, he appeared at the entrance of his hermitage. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/bad-as-this-article-was/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/bad-as-this-article-was/ Bad as this article was, and time has proved it to be utter nonsense, the second article he wrote was probably even worse, and why I printed it I don’t recall. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/beasts-from-a-private-mythology/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/beasts-from-a-private-mythology/ …beasts from a private mythology. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/brass-is-mistaken-for-gold/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/brass-is-mistaken-for-gold/ There’s something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there’s also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/byron-would-not-sit-with-bartleby/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/byron-would-not-sit-with-bartleby/ It is a very dull, wearisome, and lethargic affair. I can readily imagine that to some sanguine temperaments it would be altogether intolerable. For example, I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet Byron would have contentedly sat down with Bartleby to examine a law document of, say five hundred pages, closely written in a crimpy hand. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/caring-for-proofs-of-god-more-than-god/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/caring-for-proofs-of-god-more-than-god/ There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself… as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/color-play-is-not-a-finished-work/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/color-play-is-not-a-finished-work/ There’s nothing wrong with [being excited about the interesting contrast of colors]… But that’s the kind of thing you enjoy when playing around with colors on your palette! It is not a finished work of art. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/cruel-because-he-is-pathetic/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/cruel-because-he-is-pathetic/ I hate how sad Poo is. I can’t stand how poor and pathetic he is, and because of that I am cruel to him. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/cynghanedd-in-english/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/cynghanedd-in-english/ Billet spied, Bolt sped. Across field Crows fled, Aloft, wounded, Left one dead. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/darkness-cannot-infect-our-light/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/darkness-cannot-infect-our-light/ Did you think joy was created to live always under that threat? Always defenseless against those who would rather be miserable than have their self-will crossed? For it was real misery. I know that now. You made yourself really wretched. That you can still do. But you can no longer communicate your wretchedness. Everything becomes more and more itself. Here is joy that cannot be shaken. Our light can swallow up your darkness: but your darkness cannot now infect our light. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/desire-then-kindred-spirits/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/desire-then-kindred-spirits/ If you want to know how to do a thing you must first have a complete desire to do that thing. Then go to kindred spirits—others who have wanted to do that thing—and study their ways and means, learn from their successes and failures, and add to your quota. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/eternal-reality-must-be-lived/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/eternal-reality-must-be-lived/ Ye can not know eternal reality by a definition. Time itself, and all acts and events that fill Time, are the definition, and it must be lived. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/eyes-puffed-and-swimming/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/eyes-puffed-and-swimming/ His glasses are thick, magnifying, and his eyes, puffed and swimming, seem not to miss a thing. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/faces-full-of-impossibilities/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/faces-full-of-impossibilities/ They were all fixed faces, full not of possibilities but impossibilities… https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/happiness-courts-the-light/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/happiness-courts-the-light/ Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/heaven-is-reality-itself/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/heaven-is-reality-itself/ Hell is a state of mind—ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its mind—is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/heaven-works-backwards/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/heaven-works-backwards/ They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/hell-as-endless-quarrelling/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/hell-as-endless-quarrelling/ ‘Not at all,’ said my neighbor. ‘The trouble is that they’re so quarrelsome. As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he’s been there twenty-four hours he quarrels with his neighbour. Before the week is over he’s quarrelled so badly that he decides to move. Very likely he finds the next street empty because all the people there have quarrelled with their neighbors—and moved. If so he settles in. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/hell-cannot-veto-heaven/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/hell-cannot-veto-heaven/ ‘The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.’ https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/hell-or-purgatory-if-you-leave-it/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/hell-or-purgatory-if-you-leave-it/ You have been in Hell: though if you don’t go back you may call it Purgatory. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/i-might-easily-have-failed/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/i-might-easily-have-failed/ I feel—and the anxiety is still vivid to me—that I might easily have failed before I began. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/into-this-grey-lake-plopped-the-thought/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/into-this-grey-lake-plopped-the-thought/ Into this grey lake plopped the thought, I know that man, don’t I? https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/life-as-a-ceaseless-contest/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/life-as-a-ceaseless-contest/ Life he saw as a ceaseless and courageous contest. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/light-through-the-stained-glass/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/light-through-the-stained-glass/ Light fell through the colors of the stained glass beyond the altar. Through the windows ajar on the side aisle came the sweetness of blossom, of bruised grass, of river mud. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/like-a-plaster-bust-of-cicero/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/like-a-plaster-bust-of-cicero/ I looked at him steadfastly. His face was leanly composed; his gray eye dimly calm. Not a wrinkle of agitation rippled him. Had there been the least uneasiness, anger, impatience or impertinence in his manner; in other words, had there been any thing ordinarily human about him, doubtless I should have violently dismissed him from the premises. But as it was, I should have as soon thought of turning my pale plaster-of-paris bust of Cicero out of doors. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/love-as-the-craving-to-be-loved/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/love-as-the-craving-to-be-loved/ But what we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/measured-for-the-sake-of-heaven/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/measured-for-the-sake-of-heaven/ A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/miami-beach-was-born/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/miami-beach-was-born/ They snipped the ribbon in 1915, they popped the cork, Miami Beach was born. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/my-body-was-like-a-harp/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/my-body-was-like-a-harp/ But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/natural-affection-unconverted/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/natural-affection-unconverted/ ‘What you have seen in the Guthries is what natural affection turns to in the end if it will not be converted.’ https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/natural-love-must-be-buried-to-rise/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/natural-love-must-be-buried-to-rise/ Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country: but none will rise again until it has been buried. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/no-need-for-one-another/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/no-need-for-one-another/ We shall have no need for one another now: we can begin to love truly. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/no-needs-no-community/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/no-needs-no-community/ What’s the trouble about this place? Not that people are quarrelsome—that’s only human nature and was always the same even on Earth. The trouble is that they have no Needs. You get everything you want (not very good quality, of course) by just imagining it. That’s why it never costs any trouble to move to another street or build another house. In other words, there’s no proper economic basis for any community life. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/not-incapable-of-being-amused/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/not-incapable-of-being-amused/ In his youth, however, though too imbecile for study or for business, he was not incapable of being amused. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/not-wise-to-grow-too-old/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/not-wise-to-grow-too-old/ Sometimes I think it is not wise to grow too old,.. […] But I am not aware that we are given a choice in this matter. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/nothing-can-be-yours-by-nature/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/nothing-can-be-yours-by-nature/ ‘He will be, Pam. Everything will be yours. God Himself will be yours. But not that way. Nothing can be yours by nature.’ https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/only-the-greatest-can-descend-into-hell/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/only-the-greatest-can-descend-into-hell/ ‘Only the Greatest of all can make Himself small enough to enter Hell. For the higher a thing is, the lower it can descend—a man can sympathise with a horse but a horse cannot sympathize with a rat. Only One has descended into Hell.’ https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/painting-is-not-storytelling/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/painting-is-not-storytelling/ I am going to teach you that painting is not storytelling. If you want to tell stories, become either an illustrator or a writer. If you want to be a painter, you will learn to use line and color and shape and texture to create paintings, not stories. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/pity-into-repulsion/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/pity-into-repulsion/ My first emotions had been those of pure melancholy and sincerest pity; but just in proportion as the forlornness of Bartleby grew and grew to my imagination, did that same melancholy merge into fear, that pity into repulsion. So true it is, and so terrible too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/prefer-not-to-be-a-little-reasonable/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/prefer-not-to-be-a-little-reasonable/ “At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,” was his mildly cadaverous reply. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/reality-is-harsh-to-the-feet-of-shadows/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/reality-is-harsh-to-the-feet-of-shadows/ Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you come? https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/ridicule-of-the-great-applause-of-the-learned/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/ridicule-of-the-great-applause-of-the-learned/ Garish in her dress, eccentric in her habits, chaste in her conduct, coarse in her speech, she succeeded in her lifetime in drawing upon herself the ridicule of the great and the applause of the learned. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/seeking-recognition-and-appreciation/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/seeking-recognition-and-appreciation/ He felt quite certain that he was going where, at last, his finely critical spirit would no longer be outraged by an uncongenial environment—where he would find ‘Recognition’ and ‘Appreciation.’ https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/some-rise-by-sin/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/some-rise-by-sin/ Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/streets-shuttled-past/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/streets-shuttled-past/ They were in town now. Streets, houses, buildings shuttled past. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/tasting-the-golden-sun/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/tasting-the-golden-sun/ I walked the streets and tasted the golden sun that lay across the city. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-critic-left-with-only-self-conceit/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-critic-left-with-only-self-conceit/ But he was at least intelligent: one could get some criticism worth hearing from him, even if he was a failure on the creative side. But now he seems to have nothing left but his self-conceit. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-final-state-cannot-be-answered/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-final-state-cannot-be-answered/ But if you are trying to leap on into eternity, if ye are trying to see the final state of all things as it will be (for so ye must speak) when there are no more possibilities left but only the Real, then ye ask what cannot be answered to mortal ears. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-five-foot-2-inch-dynamo/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-five-foot-2-inch-dynamo/ The five-foot 2-inch dynamo has piloted her career with dazzling audacity. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-frolic-architecture-of-the-snow/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-frolic-architecture-of-the-snow/ And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work, The frolic architecture of the snow. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-gardener-s-deal-with-nature/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-gardener-s-deal-with-nature/ When we choose to be the gardener, we make a deal with nature: we will abide by certain rules in growing plants, and the plants will accede to our shaping them somewhat to our needs and pleasures. We will supply water, loamy soil, a modicum of nutrients, and moderate temperature, and the impatiens will bloom brightly from May to October. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-grumble-going-on-like-a-machine/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-grumble-going-on-like-a-machine/ Then there will be no you left to criticise the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-inner-door-beside-the-stone/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-inner-door-beside-the-stone/ The inner door, which led to the passage, which in turn led to the storm door, was beside the stone. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-last-screw-came-out/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-last-screw-came-out/ The last screw came out, the whole lock case slid down, freeing the bolt. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-overture-to-carmen/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-overture-to-carmen/ I still count the little preamble that begins as the houselights go down and the footlights glow and goes on to accompany the slow rise of the curtain on the opening scene of Carmen as the most cunningly contrived passage of descriptive music I have ever heard. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-rarity-of-actual-wanting/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-rarity-of-actual-wanting/ You can do anything you want to do. What is rare is this actual wanting to do a specific thing: wanting it so much that you are practically blind to all other things, that nothing else will satisfy you. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-valley-of-the-shadow-of-life/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-valley-of-the-shadow-of-life/ ‘It depends on the way ye’re using the words. If they leave that grey town behind it will not have been Hell. To any that leaves it, it is Purgatory. And perhaps ye had better not call this country Heaven. Not Deep Heaven, ye understand.’ (Here he smiled at me.) ‘Ye can call it the Valley of the Shadow of Life. And yet to those who stay here it will have been Heaven from the first. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-world-will-indulge-you-just-so-long/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-world-will-indulge-you-just-so-long/ You will have to grow accustomed to it. The world will indulge you just so long, Asher Lev. Then it will stop. You will simply have to grow accustomed to that truth. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/thin-and-clear-air/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/thin-and-clear-air/ The air was thin and clear, stringent with wood smoke and the tang of fallen apples, sharp with the hint of early frost. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/thirst-was-made-for-water/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/thirst-was-made-for-water/ ‘You have gone far wrong. Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage.’ https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/thy-will-be-done/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/thy-will-be-done/ There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/time-as-an-inverted-telescope/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/time-as-an-inverted-telescope/ Time is the very lens through which ye see—small and clear, as men see through the wrong end of a telescope—something that would be otherwise too big for ye to see at all. That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby ye most resemble your Maker and are yourselves parts of eternal reality. But ye can see it only through the lens of Time, in a little clear picture, through the inverted telescope. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/time-weighs-most-on-those-who-have-it-least/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/time-weighs-most-on-those-who-have-it-least/ Strange thing, time. It weighs most on those who have it least. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/too-far-off-to-come-to-the-bus-stop/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/too-far-off-to-come-to-the-bus-stop/ They’re so far off by now that they could never think of coming to the bus stop at all. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/trunks-cased-in-crystal/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/trunks-cased-in-crystal/ ———(…) Look! the massy trunks Are cased in the pure crystal; each light spray, Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven, Is studded with its trembling water-drop, That glimmers with an amethystine light. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/virginia-s-pain-at-criticism/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/virginia-s-pain-at-criticism/ And just as the mother feels acutely the slightest criticism of her child, so any criticism of her book even by the most negligible nitwit gave Virginia acute pains. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/we-have-never-lived-anywhere-except-in-heaven/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/we-have-never-lived-anywhere-except-in-heaven/ And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say “We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,” and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/who-dotes-yet-doubts/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/who-dotes-yet-doubts/ But O, what damned minutes tells he o’er Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/who-were-they-all/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/who-were-they-all/ The room was very full and who were they all? https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/shadows-of-the-coming-race/ Tue, 08 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/shadows-of-the-coming-race/ My friend Trost, who is no optimist as to the state of the universe hitherto, but is confident that at some future period within the duration of the solar system, ours will be the best of all possible worlds—a hope which I always honour as a sign of beneficent qualities—my friend Trost always tries to keep up my spirits under the sight of the extremely unpleasant and disfiguring work by which many of our fellow-creatures have to get their bread, with the assurance that “all this will soon be done by machinery.