Now we’re talking open.spotify.com/album/74sjx2...

“The Bible has no rivals when it comes to the art of omission…Only by reading the Bible through can one weigh the omissions against the repetitions, which are equally glaring. And only by summing omissions and repetitions can one grasp that unique phenomenon…which is the Bible.” -Roberto Calasso

She was used to men answering her with one part of their mind on religion. That was one of the reasons why Edward had become so unsatisfactory after he had ceased to be a curate and become an actor” -Muriel Spark, The Only Problem

Good morning open.spotify.com/track/2I88WC...

“These were exceedingly precarious footholds, though it’s true that for anyone writing in German, Goethe is their Homer” -Roberto Calasso, commenting on the antecedents (which included a passage by Goethe) for Freud’s “Moses and Monotheism”

Wild Pink @ MilkBoy Philadelphia

“For a long time people found it hard to accept that nothing should be known of Abraham, the patriarch, until, in his old age, Yahweh spoke to him…But what makes Genesis special, powerful and unique was precisely this empty space” -Roberto Calasso, The Book of All Books

Snow weekend plans

“Fatal meetings tend to happen near wells. As with Rebecca, or Rachel, or with Demeter in Eleusis.” -Roberto Calasso, The Book of All Books

Love Robert Alter on the arc of Jacob’s life: “The powerful young man who made his way across the Jordan to Mesopotamia with only his walking staff…is now an old man tottering on the brink of the grave, bearing the deep wounds of his long life”

Robert Alter 🤝 Henri de Lubac: footnotes that take up 2/3rds of the page

In 2026, we’re Genesis-maxxing

Cracking up (from Calvino’s “Cosmicomics”)

Seems timely to reup this one peterblair.substack.com/p/moralism-r...

Remains an elite soundtrack open.spotify.com/album/43MjCt...

Bringing back all of my favorite deceased writers about 20th/ early 21st century American politics for one last job: to write about the NY-12 Dem primary

Good afternoon www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZLh...

"And since in all confidence you follow Christ, who today appeared in the world as a light shining in darkness, may God make you, too, a light for your brothers and sisters." (From the solemn blessing for the Epiphany)

La Chimera is an Epiphany movie

A post in the commonplace book style about new year's resolutions to kick off 2026 open.substack.com/pub/peterbla...

This is what I read in 2025. Thoughts on some of these books here open.substack.com/pub/peterbla...

Joan Didion, “Inside Baseball” (1988)

This was great

Every Éric Rohmer movie (just watched My Night at Maud’s)

Try and try and try/ And try and try and try/ To be simple again

Gift excellence

“The whole universe was created by God, God was born of Mary. God created all things, and Mary gave birth to God…Without God's Son, nothing could exist; without Mary's Son, nothing could be redeemed.” -St. Anselm Merry Christmas!

Jane Kenyon

Oh, good luck with your Fourierism

“Love is sufficient in itself, gives pleasure through itself and because of itself. It is its own merit, its own reward. Love looks for no cause outside itself, no effect beyond itself…I love because I love, I love so that I may love” St Bernard quoted in DBH, Experience of God

"The Conqueror's victory would have profited us nothing if the battle had been fought outside our human condition. But through this wonderful blending the mystery of new birth shone upon us" - Pope Leo I on the Incarnation

Good afternoon open.spotify.com/track/4wOuyj...

"Ayer also said that Wittgenstein often made friends not because of their intellectual gifts but because of their moral qualities" -Ved Mehta, Fly and the Fly Bottle

“Then [Murdoch] said that she had some things in common, as a moral philosopher, with Miss Anscombe and Mrs Foot..they were interested in ‘the reality that surrounds man—transcendent or whatever.’” -Ved Mehta, Fly and the Fly-Bottle

“Lord [Bertrand] Russell explained that he had two models for his own style—Milton’s prose and Baedeker’s guidebooks” -Ved Mehta, “Fly and the Fly-Bottle”

Happy Friday open.spotify.com/track/2IVxSQ...

At the office holiday party saying “Must be nice.” to everything anyone says

Now is a great time to read this great little book (as I have just myself discovered)

“It would be hard to count the number of times the death of the novel has been announced, in tragic tones. But despite its execution new novels continue to appear, some of them quite good ones” -Leszek Kołakowski

I went to the sale today of his books and it was an absolutely insane experience.

Ecce quam bonum

happy bandcamp friday! i haven't completed a lot of projects lately, but i am very proud of SWEETHEART OF THE PLANETARIUM, an album of lo-fi instrumental dream pop / ambient i released this summer. it's pay-what-you-want and i'd be honored if you'd listen dragonwarrior.bandcamp.com/album/sweeth...

“We simply like knowing things, quite apart from any practical benefits to be derived from knowledge; we like truth for no better reason than that it is truth. Without the joy of truth we would no longer be rational creatures” -Leszek Kołakowski

“Wake Up Dead Man” using “Come On Up to the House” as the credits song was an unnecessary act of pandering (I had already enjoyed the film) but one I can only support

For those getting started today open.spotify.com/playlist/5kY...

“I'd howl like a dog, I'd sound like a real one/I'd burn like a candle and grin in your face”

Happy Thanksgiving www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9rq...

"She struck up acquaintances at the Palais du Café with ersatz students wearing jackets that were too tight at the waist and tortoiseshell glasses" (From Patrick Modiano's "Flowers of Ruin")