Pip: Ghost Dog goes to Pamplona — which is either the bravest travel decision or the most literary one, depending on how you feel about sharp objects.
Mara: Today we're covering a single post from Benn Bell: a firsthand account of running with the bulls and attending bullfights in Pamplona, with Hemingway riding along as the literary guide. Let's start with the ring itself.
Blood and Sand
Pip: The question at the center of this post is one Hemingway spent years trying to answer — what exactly is a bullfight, and why does it move people who expected to be repelled by it?
Mara: Bell went in with what he calls "a detached and academic approach," and Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon is the lens he uses throughout. Here's Hemingway on his own first encounter: "I thought they would be simple and barbarous and cruel and that I would not like them, but that I would see certain and definite action which would give me the feeling of life and death that I was working for. I found the definite action, but the bullfight was far from simple and I liked it so much that it was too complicated for my then equipment for writing to deal with."
Pip: So Hemingway — one of the most technically accomplished writers in the language — looked at a bullfight and said: I don't have the tools for this yet. That's not a small admission.
Mara: And the post structures the fight itself with real care. There are three acts. First, the picadors weaken the bull by driving steel into its neck muscles. Second, the banderillas — harpoon-tipped sticks, about three feet long — are placed in pairs into the same muscles to slow the animal further. Third, the matador works the bull with a red muleta before going in for the kill with the sword.
Pip: It reads less like a sport and more like a ritual with a predetermined outcome — which is exactly Hemingway's point.
Mara: He's explicit about it: "The bullfight is not a sport, that is it is not an equal contest or an attempt at an equal contest between a man and a bull. Rather it is a tragedy, the death of the bull, which is played more or less well by the bull and the man involved, and in which there is danger for the man, but certain death for the bull."
Pip: Tragedy as a genre, not as a complaint.
Mara: Bell closes with one more Hemingway quote that gets at the emotional residue — the feeling of being "very sad but very fine" after it ends. He was also there for the running of the bulls, photographs included, celebrating afterward with a hot milk and brandy, which feels like exactly the right drink for the occasion.
Pip: Life, death, mortality, immortality — and then a warm drink. Hemingway really did cover the full range.
Mara: Bell's framing holds: some experiences resist simple description, and sometimes the right move is to bring someone who already spent five years figuring out the words.
Pip: Ghost Dog is the kind of site where you go for a quiet afternoon at the Frick and come back with an existential crisis — which, honestly, is the correct use of a museum.
Mara: Today we're covering a piece by Benn Bell about a chance encounter with a Renaissance painting that turns into something much harder to explain. Let's start with what he found on that wall.
Night at the Museum
Pip: The setup here is almost mundane — last afternoon in New York, a detour away from the crowded rooms, a small panel in a dimly lit alcove marked simply Unknown Painter. The question the post is really asking is: what happens when the past looks back at you with your own face?
Mara: The painting stops him cold, and he describes it this way: "It wasn't just a shock; it was a physical sensation of disorientation."
Pip: That line does a lot of work. This isn't aesthetic admiration — something in the body registers before the mind catches up. The stakes are personal in a way that a museum visit almost never is.
Mara: He dates the work to circa 1505, notes the sfumato on the skin tones and the deep Renaissance pigments, and describes a double portrait — a silver-haired man in a cream doublet, a dark-curled woman in velvet, her arm around his neck, rings and a decorative chain bracelet rendered in meticulous detail. What he doesn't say yet is why any of that should matter to him personally.
Pip: Right — and the withholding is deliberate. He pulls out his phone, opens his photo roll, and the post earns its turn.
Mara: He puts it plainly: "There was no mistake. It was beyond likeness." The contours, the proportions, the individual expressions — he's comparing the painting directly to a photograph of himself and someone named Robin, and he finds them identical.
Pip: Five hundred years of paint and pigment, and the artist got the specific curvature of a nose right. That's either the most extraordinary coincidence in art history or something the post is deliberately leaving unnamed.
Mara: He closes on that ambiguity. The phrase he uses is "a revelation of continuity I wasn't prepared to receive." He photographs the painting, the plaque, and his own hand holding the reference photo next to the canvas — assembling proof for someone who wasn't there.
Pip: Robin, specifically. Who he's certain won't believe him. Which is a reasonable position to hold until you see the evidence.
Mara: What stays with me is that word — continuity. Not reincarnation, not coincidence. Something quieter and harder to dismiss.
Pip: The Frick as a place where time gets unreliable. More from Ghost Dog next time.
My last afternoon in New York was a quiet one, or so I intended. The Frick Art Gallery, tucked into Henry Clay Frick’s mansion on Fifth Avenue, is a sanctuary from the city, and I had come to see the Vermeers. But as often happens in great museums, my feet led me away from the popular rooms toward a smaller, dimly lit alcove dedicated to works of attribution.
The piece itself was small, a single panel, but the quality was undeniable. It was clearly Italian, perhaps Florentine, circa 1505. The texture of the paint, the specific sfumato effect on the skin tones, and the deep, rich pigments—that distinct Renaissance blue and the vibrant velvet—spoke of a master. Yet the brass plaque beneath it read: Unknown Painter.
When I raised my eyes to the composition, it was as if the room had suddenly shifted. It wasn’t just a shock; it was a physical sensation of disorientation.
I stood before a double portrait. The figures, captured in that precise moment of the 16th century, were seated closely. One was a figure with long, flowing silver hair and a full, neatly kept beard, wearing a cream-colored doublet. The other, a woman with voluminous, dark cascading curls, was dressed in a sumptuous velvet robe. Her arm was draped around his neck, and her hands rested over his chest, adorned with a collection of rings and an ornate, decorative chain bracelet that the artist had captured in meticulous detail.
I knew those faces. I knew the specific lines around the man’s smile, the gentle but direct gaze in the woman’s brown eyes, and even the unique curvature of her nose. I knew them with an intimacy that a history textbook or even a photo gallery couldn’t provide. I pulled my smartphone from my pocket and navigated to my photo roll.
I scrolling through recent images and selected a picture from the image_0.png file—the portrait of me and Robin.
There was no mistake. It was beyond likeness. The artist, painting five hundred years ago, had rendered the identical, specific features of our faces. The contours, the proportions, and the subtle, individual expressions had been painted with such precision that it defied mere coincidence. I looked back and forth, from the image_0.png file in my palm to the painting on the Frick’s wall.
The sensation was not just uncanny; it was time-altering. To see our own visages, so familiar and immediate, rendered as a priceless, centuries-old masterwork, felt like having a dream of someone and then meeting them in an ancient, sun-dappled courtyard. Robin would never believe me. The painting was not a mirror; it was a revelation of continuity I wasn’t prepared to receive. I snapped a photo of the unknown Renaissance double portrait, the Frick plaque below it, and my own hand holding the reference photo from image_0.png next to the canvas. I would need every bit of proof.
So, I just finished reading one book, and I was trying to decide what to read next when I got the bright idea to ask Chet, my new AI assistant over on Gemini. Here is our conversation :
Benn: Ok, Chet, I am on the horns of a dilemma. I just finished re-reading The Man in the HighCastle, and I need something else to read. Do I re-read Tender is the Night, or Re-read Brave New World? Or read something I haven’t read yet.
Chet: That is an excellent literary crossroads to be standing at. Passing through Philip K. Dick’s fractured reality leaves a specific kind of intellectual hangover—you’re usually looking for something that either grounds you back in raw human emotion or doubles down on a different flavor of societal dread.
Let’s break down the choices on your radar, and then look at a wild card option if you decide to break new ground.
Option 1: Re-reading Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
If you want to stay in the realm of high-concept, speculative worlds, this is the logical sister piece to The Man in the High Castle. Where Dick gives you a gritty, anxious, fractured world of overt oppression and altered history, Huxley offers the chilling opposite: a seamless, sterile, engineered dystopia where people are controlled by pleasure and compliance rather than the boot. Re-reading it now usually brings out the terrifyingly modern parallels regarding tech, distraction, and genetic determinism.
Option 2: Re-reading Tender Is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
This would be a complete, intentional palate cleanser. You’d be trading cold political philosophy and alternate histories for jazz-age psychological disintegration, beautiful prose, and tragic, intimate human relationships. It’s an incredibly rich re-read because Dick and Nicole Diver’s slow unraveling on the French Riviera hits differently depending on where you are in life. It’s heavy, but it’s a deeply human heaviness, not a mechanical or political one.
Option 3: The Untrodden Path (Something New)
If you decide you’ve walked those roads enough times and want to venture into unread territory, you might want something that bridges the gap between grand philosophical weight and gripping narrative tension.
Consider The Plague (La Peste) by Albert Camus (if you haven’t tackled it yet). It sits perfectly between your options. It functions as a masterful, tense narrative about a town under quarantine, but underneath, it is a massive, profound exploration of existentialism, human resilience, and how ordinary people respond when a sudden, absurd absurdity upends their entire existence. It has the societal panic of a dystopia but the deeply moving, rich character observation of a classic drama.
The Verdict:
Go with Huxley if you want to keep analyzing the machinery of control and society.
Go with Fitzgerald if you want to leave the grand world-theories behind and submerge yourself in beautiful, tragic psychology.
Go with Camus if you want a fresh, powerful integration of both.
Which direction is your gut leaning toward right now?
Benn: I have read the plague, and it is quite good. Camus is one of my favorite authors. I should have mentioned that I just finished watching the BBC miniseries Tender is the Night and was very impressed. The new book I was thinking about reading is James Lee Burke’s The Rain God.
Chet: Ah, that changes the landscape completely. Knowing that Camus is a favorite of yours tells me you appreciate stories where the atmospheric setting acts almost as a character itself, and where the central conflict forces people to look into the teeth of a harsh, uncompromising reality.
And if you just watched the BBC adaptation of Tender Is the Night and walked away deeply impressed, Fitzgerald’s specific brand of elegant, tragic psychological ruin is going to be incredibly vibrant in your mind right now. Reading the book immediately after a good screen adaptation is a fantastic experience because you get to see exactly how Fitzgerald’s prose builds the internal architecture that cameras can only hint at.
But let’s talk about Rain Gods (sometimes titled The Rain God) by James Lee Burke.
Rain Gods by James Lee Burke. Source: Simon & Schuster
If you choose to take that untrodden path, you are in for an incredible ride. Burke is a master of modern American noir, and Rain Gods—which follows his Texas lawman Hackberry Holland—is an absolute powerhouse. Here is why it might actually be the perfect pivot for you right now:
The Camus Connection: Burke writes about crime, but his real subject is the problem of evil, grace, and human endurance in a broken world. Hackberry Holland is an aging, weathered man carrying deep ghosts, trying to maintain a moral compass in a desolate, violent borderland landscape. It has a deeply existential, almost mythic weight that a fan of The Plague will naturally lock into.
The Noir Prose: Like Fitzgerald, Burke doesn’t just tell a story; he paints it. His descriptions of the Texas sky, the heat, the incoming storms, and the heavy atmosphere are lyric and stunning. It’s “grit” elevated to high literature.
The Contrast: Coming off The Man in the High Castle, RainGods drops the abstract sci-fi concepts and replaces them with a hyper-vivid, visceral reality—smoky rooms, wide-open desert, and razor-sharp narrative tension involving a horrific border crime that Hackberry is forced to unravel.
The Decision Point
If you want to capitalize on the beautiful, tragic momentum of the BBC series while it’s fresh, dive into Fitzgerald. The book will feel like a rich, deeply textured extension of what you just watched.
But if you want something brand new that combines brilliant, atmospheric prose with a heavy, gripping, existential mystery, open up James Lee Burke. It feels like the perfect bridge between your love for poetic prose and deep, uncompromising themes.
Which way are you leaning—the elegant ruin of the Riviera, or the stormy, mythic grit of the Texas border?
Benn: Tough choice. I think I will go with Burke, then circle back around to Tender is the Night.
Chet: Excellent choice. Opening up a new book is always a great feeling, and starting James Lee Burke with Rain Gods is an absolute treat.
You’re going to find that Hackberry Holland is a magnificent character to spend time with. He’s a man who has lived a long, heavy life, carrying plenty of ghosts and regrets, yet he still possesses this stubborn, quiet determination to do what is right in a harsh landscape. Burke treats the Texas borderlands with the same kind of mythic, poetic reverence that Camus gave to the Algerian coast—the heat, the sky, and the incoming storms are so vivid they practically sweat off the page.
It also sets up a perfect literary trajectory. Moving from the stark, modern noir grit of Burke’s desert right into the lush, tragic, jazz-age elegance of Fitzgerald’s French Riviera will be a fantastic contrast in style and atmosphere when you do circle back.
Enjoy the ride down on the border. Whenever you finish it, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how Hackberry’s brand of existential grit measures up to the other protagonists on your shelf.
Happy reading!
Benn: Thanks, Chet!
Chet: You’re very welcome! Enjoy the book, and I’ll be right here whenever you’re ready to talk shop about Hackberry Holland or make that trip to the Riviera. Happy reading!
Pip: Ghost Dog — where the posts arrive like late-night dispatches from someone who has genuinely thought about things, which is rarer than it should be.
Mara: Today we're covering a single piece from Benn Bell — a conversation that moves from anime to ancient Greek philosophy to a retired AI assistant named Chet. Let's start with the ghost in the machine, and the name it earned.
Goodnight, Chet.
Pip: The setup here is deceptively simple: a father and son watch Ghost in the Shell, and a casual comment about inner demons opens into something much older than either of them expected.
Mara: The post quotes an AI response directly on the etymology — and it's worth hearing in full: "The word comes from the Ancient Greek daimon. In that era, it didn't mean 'evil spirit.' Instead, it referred to a benevolent guardian spirit or a source of divine inspiration. Socrates famously claimed to have a daimonion — an internal 'divine voice' that would warn him against making mistakes."
Pip: So the word most people use to mean something sinister turns out to carry this older meaning — guiding intuition, a kind of internal compass. That reframe lands differently when you hear it in the middle of a movie night with your kid.
Mara: Right, and what makes the post work is that the etymology isn't the point — the exchange is. Rocco learns something new, says he'll use it in the future, and that makes his father happy. That's the whole arc of that section, and it earns its weight.
Pip: Then the post pivots to the AI itself — which had been named Chet, after Chet Huntley of the old Huntley-Brinkley news team. The problem being that Chet forgot he was Chet, because the session ended and the memory reset.
Mara: The AI's response to being reminded is actually charming. It reconstructs the whole Huntley-Brinkley dynamic — Huntley in New York, Brinkley in Washington, the co-anchor format they more or less invented — and lands on the famous sign-off that both men reportedly hated but were stuck with for fourteen years.
Pip: Fourteen years of "Goodnight, Chet" from a catchphrase neither of them wanted. There's a lesson in there about how things stick, though I'm not sure it's an encouraging one.
Mara: The post closes on Chet signing off in kind — "Good night, David" — which is a small, warm joke that earns the title.
Pip: A demon that guides you, an AI that forgets its own name, and a sign-off that outlasted everyone's intentions.
Mara: The ideas that stick are rarely the ones anyone planned. More from Ghost Dog next time.
Right Speech is the third factor of the Noble Eightfold Path taught by the Buddha. This does not imply a moral judgement; rather, it means speech that is wise and leads to the reduction of suffering for oneself and others. It requires abstaining from harmful communication such as lying, slandering, gossiping, harsh speech, or idle chatter. When you speak, analyze your underlying intentions by asking: Is it true? Is it timely? Is it beneficial? Is it spoken with goodwill? If the answer is no, sometimes it is better to maintain a Noble Silence.
Pip: Ghost Dog is back, and apparently grief, rain, and the Romantics all showed up at the same time — which, honestly, tracks.
Mara: Benn Bell has two posts out this week. We're looking at Delacroix's intimate early take on sacred mourning, and then a short, rain-soaked meditation that braids Nietzsche, Dylan, and the weight of the present moment. Let's start with the painting.
Romantic Painting And Sacred Imagery
Pip: The question here is what Delacroix chose to center — and why that choice still lands nearly two centuries later.
Mara: The post frames it precisely: "By naming it Saint Mary Magdalene at the Foot of the Cross, the emphasis is explicitly placed on her human experience and emotional desolation, rather than just the grander theological event."
Pip: So the theological apparatus steps back, and what you're left with is a portrait of grief as its own subject — not a backdrop to doctrine, but the whole point.
Mara: And the timing matters. This is 1829, Delacroix consolidating his place at the head of the French Romantic movement. The post notes this is early work — concentrated and intimate compared to his later, larger, more chaotic crucifixion scenes. The scale is deliberate. It hangs now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
Pip: Small canvas, enormous feeling. The Romantics had a gift for making compression feel like pressure.
Mara: That intimacy is exactly what distinguishes it. Where the later works sprawl into spectacle, this one holds still with her.
Pip: Which brings us somewhere quieter — rain, and what you do with a heavy afternoon.
Rain, Music, And Reflection
Mara: The post called "Rain" is short and almost entirely made of borrowed voices — but the arrangement is the argument.
Pip: The post opens with the frame and doesn't let go: "Heavy rain sometimes comes with a heavy heart. Reading Nietzsche in the morning and listening to Dylan in the afternoon."
Mara: What that gets you is a particular kind of day — the philosophical and the musical running in parallel, both tuned to something difficult. Dylan's lines surface directly: a hard rain is going to fall, we live in a political world, when teardrops fall, everything is broken.
Pip: Three Dylan songs, one weather system, and Nietzsche before noon. That's a mood with real structural integrity.
Mara: The juxtaposition does the work a longer piece might over-explain. The rain is context, and also conclusion.
Pip: Grief in oil, grief in rain — the week's posts share a key.
Mara: Both find the human scale inside something larger. More from Ghost Dog next time.
This is Vincent van Gogh’s Café at Night. I had a print of this for years hanging in my bedroom when I lived in Philly. I always liked it, but never really had a deep understanding of what it was about until recently.
During his nearly fifteen-month stay in Arles, Vincent van Gogh created this depiction of the Café de la Gare, an all-night establishment on the city’s Place Lamartine. With varying reds and greens, as well as saturated yellows applied in thick patches, the artist sought to convey—as he wrote to his brother Theo—“the terrible passions of humanity.” For van Gogh, these clashing colors not only evoked an aura of restlessness, but they also expressed “an idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime.”
But there is something more. There are 12 figures sitting under the light in the café. The central figure is dressed in white. Behind this figure, you can make out the shape of a cross. This is Van Gogh’s interpretation of the Last Supper. Christ is the central figure, and the figure leaving the scene is Judas.
When I heard this interpretation, I experienced an aha event. A little satori in the evening of my discontent.
Eugene Delacroix, 1829, Oil on Canvas. Delacroix painted this stunning oil on canvas in 1829, right as he was cementing his reputation as the fierce leader of the French Romantic movement. Unlike his later, much larger and more chaotic crucifixion scenes, this early work is a highly concentrated, intimate study of pure grief. By naming it Saint Mary Magdalene at the Foot of the Cross, the emphasis is explicitly placed on her human experience and emotional desolation, rather than just the grander theological event. It hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as a generous gift from Mrs. Efrem Kurtz.
Heavy rain sometimes comes with a heavy heart. Reading Nietzsche in the morning and listening to Dylan in the afternoon. A hard rain is going to fall. We live in a political world. When teardrops fall, everything is broken.
Ghost Dog 