An excerpt today from a long and apparently polarizing (love it or hate it) book I’m enjoying. Don’t worry, this is as long as clippings get!

WORK

’A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.

Because—isn’t it drilled into us constantly, from childhood on, an unquestioned platitude in the culture—? From William Blake to Lady Gaga, from Rousseau to Rumi to Tosca to Mister Rogers, it’s a curiously uniform message, accepted from high to low: when in doubt, what to do? How do we know what’s right for us? Every shrink, every career counselor, every Disney princess knows the answer: “Be yourself.” “Follow your heart.”

Only here’s what I really, really want someone to explain to me. What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can’t be trusted—? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight towards a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster?

Is Kitsey right? If your deepest self is singing and coaxing you straight toward the bonfire, is it better to turn away? Stop your ears with wax? Ignore all the perverse glory your heart is screaming at you? Set yourself on the course that will lead you dutifully towards the norm, reasonable hours and regular medical check-ups, stable relationships and steady career advancement, the New York Times and brunch on Sunday, all with the promise of being somehow a better person? Or—like Boris—is it better to throw yourself head first and laughing into the holy rage calling your name?’

—Donna Tartt (from The Goldfinch)

WORD

Fringilline / Fringillaceous. Adjective. Finch-like; of or pertaining to finches.

“When the goldfinch goes—and we know that he is going rapidly—other coarser fringilline birds, without the melody, brightness, and charm of the goldfinch—sparrow and bunting—come in…” (William Henry Hudson)

WEB

• Continuing a theme, my acquaintance Jon Beasley-Murray just shared a few interesting articles about modern ruins and (some of) our fascination with them.

• Did you know that T. S. Eliot and Groucho Marx corresponded for years? And that things (surprise!?) could be tense between them?

• Inspired by Christian Marclay’s strangely compelling film The Clock, The Literary Clock is a project to document every minute of the day with an example from literature. I can’t stop peeking at it. And they need some help filling in the gaps.

• One year ago today, NASA launched IRIS (Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph) to observe our sun. Watch the humbling video of the first observed “coronal mass ejection”.

ANSWER

B of New Orleans notes that locals define lagniappe (yesterday’s word) as simply “a little something extra.” Now, about that cush-cush…

As always, I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you: clippings@katexic.com