you can seek the advice of others, surround yourself with trusted advisers.but in the end, the decision is always yours. and yours alone. And when it's time to act and you are all alone, with your back to the wall, the only voice that matters is the one in your head. the one that telling you what you probably already knew. the one that is almost always right.
Grey's Anatomy
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Thursday, June 28, 2012
The Innocent
In “Innocent,” he’s exploring the many ways in which, time after time, we fail to understand ourselves, in which we miss or misinterpret the evidence that could tell us who we are. “If we are always a mystery to ourselves,” Anna asks at the end of Sabich’s latest ordeal, “then what is the chance of fully understanding anybody else?” That’s a novelist’s question as much as it is a lawyer’s.
NY Times book review on "The Innocent"
Nat reflects on “the screwy epistemology of the courtroom, where the million daily details of a life suddenly get elevated to evidence of murder,” and in this he may be speaking for Turow himself: a practicing attorney who appears to have become more preoccupied with the ambiguities of the law (which are many) than its certainties (which are few). The effect of spending a lifetime in the halls of justice, his novels suggest, is — or should be — a growing sense of the law’s incapacity to explain anything important about human folly. Justice may not be entirely blind, but it appears to have cataracts. It turns everything fuzzy and dim. Worst of all, it doesn’t know how to tell a story.
And that, in the end, may be the reason Turow continues to write novels, to have his bit on the side while apparently remaining faithful to his long-term relationship with the law. It’s clear in “Innocent” how different young lawyers like Anna and Nat are from older ones, who still have their ambitions but have been relieved of most of their illusions. Legal lifers like Sabich and Molto have seen too much and say, at times, too little. They’ve become cautious, reluctant to speak or act for fear of muddying the truth again. They play everything so close to the vest, keep their own counsel so rigorously, that they’ve become, in a way, strangers to themselves. It’s terribly sad when, at the end of “Innocent,” Sabich begins to speak for himself once more and what he has to say is: “Accepting the truth is often the hardest task human beings face.” (He’s also an epistemologist, of sorts.) By some odd process, Sabich’s repetition compulsion has led him to a kind of rueful clarity about himself, a belated sense of who he is and who, all along, he has been.
NY Times book review on "The Innocent"
Nat reflects on “the screwy epistemology of the courtroom, where the million daily details of a life suddenly get elevated to evidence of murder,” and in this he may be speaking for Turow himself: a practicing attorney who appears to have become more preoccupied with the ambiguities of the law (which are many) than its certainties (which are few). The effect of spending a lifetime in the halls of justice, his novels suggest, is — or should be — a growing sense of the law’s incapacity to explain anything important about human folly. Justice may not be entirely blind, but it appears to have cataracts. It turns everything fuzzy and dim. Worst of all, it doesn’t know how to tell a story.
And that, in the end, may be the reason Turow continues to write novels, to have his bit on the side while apparently remaining faithful to his long-term relationship with the law. It’s clear in “Innocent” how different young lawyers like Anna and Nat are from older ones, who still have their ambitions but have been relieved of most of their illusions. Legal lifers like Sabich and Molto have seen too much and say, at times, too little. They’ve become cautious, reluctant to speak or act for fear of muddying the truth again. They play everything so close to the vest, keep their own counsel so rigorously, that they’ve become, in a way, strangers to themselves. It’s terribly sad when, at the end of “Innocent,” Sabich begins to speak for himself once more and what he has to say is: “Accepting the truth is often the hardest task human beings face.” (He’s also an epistemologist, of sorts.) By some odd process, Sabich’s repetition compulsion has led him to a kind of rueful clarity about himself, a belated sense of who he is and who, all along, he has been.
日日捨
好友發起日日捨活動，清理家裡。我覺得很有趣，加以響應。
不過第三日，我就說了一句名言: 沒東西可丟。
過去21年來，我搬了15.次家。其中三次美國到台灣，二次台灣到美國。另十次則在美國大陸累積哩程。目前，除了日用衣物，廚房浴室裡用品之外，只餘丟了會動搖"人"本的：二箱日記(小學三年級起的作文，週記，及長大後日記)，二箱相本及信件，一箱各類有紀念性小物的雜物箱。
真的，沒太多"留著以後可能會用到，還蠻好的"物件。
想來，我捨物的本事，修得差不多。但盼捨情的功夫，能早日長進。
不過第三日，我就說了一句名言: 沒東西可丟。
過去21年來，我搬了15.次家。其中三次美國到台灣，二次台灣到美國。另十次則在美國大陸累積哩程。目前，除了日用衣物，廚房浴室裡用品之外，只餘丟了會動搖"人"本的：二箱日記(小學三年級起的作文，週記，及長大後日記)，二箱相本及信件，一箱各類有紀念性小物的雜物箱。
真的，沒太多"留著以後可能會用到，還蠻好的"物件。
想來，我捨物的本事，修得差不多。但盼捨情的功夫，能早日長進。
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