Virtual Flaneurism

“So I want to tell you about this sweet moment I had here in South Africa, this tiny little moment that I will probably remember longer than I remember anything that happens at the World Cup. But I’m just not sure I can convey it. Isn’t it just like that for the sweet little moments in our lives? Why is it that I so clearly remember sitting next to my father at Cleveland Municipal Stadium and watching him drink a beer out of a waxed paper cup (my father almost never drank beer — it seemed so exotic then) when I can’t remember the name of my sixth grade teacher? Why is it I can remember stumbling out into the white-hot sunlight after the movie ended, holding my mother’s hand as we stumbled through the parking lot looking for the car when I can’t remember what movie we saw? Why is it I can remember shakily walking back and forth in a dark nursery, whispering into my baby daughter’s ear to go to sleep already when I can’t remember my hotel room number? Why do these little memories that would seem so ordinary to anyone else — so ordinary to me even — animate the mind?”

- Joe Posnanski, Don’t Need No Starbucks

"You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all, just as intelligence without the possibility of expression is not really an intelligence. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it we are nothing.”

– Luis Bunuel

Dixie Carter passed away this morning. If you don't know who she is - and in all likelihood you do not - this video should get you up to speed:

I got a call this afternoon that my grandfather had died in his sleep last night. This song always reminded me of him.