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Showing posts from March, 2020

Present Readings and Old Memories

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The View from Here. By Aymara Lorente On page 269 of  the novel Rules of Civility, (PENGUIN BOOKS), by American author Amor Towles, I found and marked a passage with these inspiring and comforting words:    At the times, the buildings along Fifth Avenue still looked like they had sprung from the ground overnight—disappearing into the clouds like beanstalks.    In 1936, the great Swiss architect Le Corbusier published a little book called When the Cathedrals Were White detailing his first trip to New York. In it, he describes the thrill of seeing the city for the first time. Like Walt Whitman he sings of humanity and tempo, but he also sings of skyscrapers and elevators and air-conditioning, of  polished steel and reflective glass. New York has such courage and enthusiasm, he writes, that everything can be begun again, sent back to the building yard and made into something still greater. . . .    In the fragile circumstances we find ourselves today, something like th

The View from Here

The world changed. By Aymara Lorente  When you look outside, if you only pay attention to the buildings, the trees, and the singing of the birds everything seems the same, untouched. But the whole world recently changed, from one minute to the next, when we heard, when we finally faced the truth of the Coronavirus. One morning we woke up to the new reality, to this nightmare. What caused it? I exactly don't know for sure; however, I am certain of what allowed its spread: the secrecy and totalitarian control of the communist government of China. They propagated this deadly virus. Before, most humans were invested only on the quest for happiness and content, which is different for everyone, or concentrated on our family, daily dreams, our work. I thought everything was under control, my health, and my plans for the immediate future. But now the ugly side of reality suddenly appeared, equalizing all of us. We have to act as everybody else, look for the same basic material thing