I have an op-ed piece running in today’s International Herald Tribune, which is online here: Speed up or get out of the way.

I recently met someone from the country.
This person had always lived in the country. Real country. Cows, vegetable gardens, tree chopping, no running water.
We began talking about country life versus city life, as you do. He had not been in the city for more than a few days and already he missed the country. We […]

In his Travels in England Nikos Kazantzakis talks about “rhythm.”
“Τι είναι λοιπόν ρυθμός; Μια κεντρική κίνηση όλο αρμονία, που κυβερνάει το στοχασμό και την πράξη μας.”
“What is rhythm, then? A single central movement, all harmony, that governs our goals and actions.”
My first response to this is that Kazantzakis’s “rhythm” is equivalent to will. To a […]

Love - romantic, passionate, erotic love - is often portrayed, understood, or lived as a type of madness. Scientists reveal chemical imbalances, psychologists classify it with various disorders, but while reading an old interview with Martha Nussbaum called “The Ethics of Literature” (sorry, no reference, it just exists as a dog-eared photocopied text found in […]

Fame achieved after death has often/always been associated with a sort of divine genius. An artist/poet/writer recognised after death is one who was ahead of his/her time, who produced work of extreme and timeless importance, who could only be understood and appreciated by future, more enlightened generations.
But I always felt this a consolation prize. The […]

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
I would like to creep back into the blogosphere once again - after a five-month period of utter silence - and announce that my silence was philosophical. I would like to say that words, that language - well, my words, my language - could not show […]

Julian Barnes writes in The Guardian about going back to read Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, because the play was about to open at the National Theatre. He finds that 150 years after it was written, the novel — about two lovers who kill a husband and by killing the husband kill their own desire and […]

for filmmaking is a metaphor for life.
Emotional article in Slate by Dana Stevens reminds us of what Altman said during his acceptance speech for his lifetime achievement award (78th Academy Awards earlier this year):
 
I’ve always said that making a film is like making a sand castle at the beach. You invite your friends and you […]

Public schools in Sratford (Connecticut) have discarded their old “cutesy, feel good” motto of “Children First - Whatever It Takes” and adopted words straight out of the Stoic philosopher’s mouth, reports Fred Musante via the Stratford Star. The new motto Tantum eruditi sunt liberi or Only the educated are free is what public school children […]

All summer I’ve been drinking frappe, the instant cold coffee that modern Greeks love to mix and drink, though truth be told they are more likely to drink freddo (made from espresso, not instant Nescafe) than frappe these days. The other day, to mark the official end of summer, I made a Greek coffee. [Turkish, […]