Before I leave you for a weekend of higher learning, I’ll offer this link to a compelling tribute to the lost genius of the novelist David Foster Wallace. It’s in this week’s New Yorker magazine.
“I believe I want adult sanity, which seems to me the only unalloyed form of heroism available today.”
The article traces Wallace’s unfulfilled “preoccupation with mindfulness.”
“They’re rare, but they’re among us. People able to achieve and sustain a certain steady state of concentration, attention, despite what they’re doing.”
Give yourself the time to read it, all, along with this excerpt from his unfinished work. I know you have the time, and I pray you have the attention.
I’ve read some of his work — so much of it is so good and true.
I noticed in his famous commencement speech that he talked often of a sense of mindfulness, of calm abiding…
I am off to read the links.
Thank you.
Comment by Stacy (mama-om) — March 6, 2009 @ 9:01 pm
The New Yorker article is amazing. Thanks for the links, Karen.
Comment by Mama Zen — March 7, 2009 @ 3:11 am
if i did think, well, i would think you are right, but i don’t think, and i don’t think you do either 🙂
Comment by LarryG — March 7, 2009 @ 4:17 am
thank you for these links…i usually don’t get to our copy of the new yorker until the middle of the next week (my husband reads it first), and i deeply appreciate reading this piece this evening.
(though about halfway through i stopped for thin mints and milk)
have a beautiful weekend!
Comment by liz elayne lamoreux — March 7, 2009 @ 5:04 am