Orts #838

      The Real Work              by Wendell Berry

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.


  Anita Loos (1889-1981) published some sketches about a fictional blonde, Lorelei Lee, in Harper's Bazaar in 1925. The stories were based on Loos's observations of the flirting behaviour, on a train, of her good friend H. L. Mencken. The sketches were so popular that she expanded them into a novella, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, published in 1926. It inspired two movies, a play, and a musical, and it was translated into 14 languages. The philosopher George Santayana called it "the best philosophical work by an American."
         -- paraphrased from The Writer’s Almanac, April 26, 2017


Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

                             — both, Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

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