American Fez

I Think Therefore I Roll My Eyes

I once held opinions about things, but these opinions changed all the time. They were like treacherous, shape-shifting beasts prowling around my brain with no sense of direction. It was a zoo of ideas in there: mostly monkey and reptile houses with a small section reserved for wildebeest and rhinocerous. There were numerous elephant stampedes in cerebellum safari park. 

Nowadays all those howling and screeching opinions have been sent back to the wilderness where they belong. Only rusted empty cages and ersatz, sun-bleached savanah remain. I am currently building a Zen garden of tranquility on the ruins. It is called La Apathy. If you ask me about climate change or abortion I will merely toss a small pebble into my ornamental pond, observe the ripples, nod and smile inscrutably.

In the Shade

It seems no great philosopher offers profound counsel about beating the heat: the Stoics, for example, are absolutely worthless; Rene Descartes remains silent on the subject; the only advice Wittgenstein can give is abstract at the best of times; and Albert Camus, unhelpfully, can only suggest shooting someone.

So in desperation I turn to doctors of physic and the wisdom of the leechers: stay in the shade, refrain from rigorous activity and drink lots of water. It's not the sort of controversial thinking you can annotate or discuss in city coffee shops, but I suppose it'll have to do for now.

Echoes of Canaletto

With their dingy echoes of Canaletto, how I love the paintings of Algernon Cecil Newton. There is also an element of "landscape as self-portrait" Edward Hopperishness about his work. Alas, he seems to have been an unsuccessful and unhappy artist.

The picture above, called Regents Canal, Maida Vale, is owned by Nottingham City Museums and Galleries. I hope they pardon my misappropriation of their image for this brief promotion of under-appreciated talent, since Newton's echoes of Canaletto did not resound very far during his lifetime, nor have they caused much stir after his death.