two arcs and three tangents

 two arcs and three tangents 

figure a: two arcs and two tangents*

 

figure b: another tangent

11.14.19

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 * with thanks to https://etc.usf.edu/.

Another farable

Jesop

 A farable of Jesop  

“a bean, a donkey, and the moon”

A bean, a donkey, and the moon undertook a journey together. They decided to travel by night because the bean and the moon feared being boiled and eaten by day. The bean feared men; the moon was afraid of the sun. The donkey liked the empty night road as long as the others were with him for company.

     After six days they arrived in Athens. They spent two nights there, gazing into windows, watching the philosophers sleep. The third night they returned home, happy to believe they had become none the wiser.

  11.12.19 

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An online reproduction of the 1887 edition Jesop's Farables, translated from the Latin and edited by G. F. Murray - and with my brief afterward - is available here!

What I am reading

 What I am reading 

Yesterday or the day before I went to see Dr. Feight. I went by myself; Uncle Albert didn’t come with me because he and Nils Sundstrøm were going to Seeville to a lecture on the uses of ground glass or something like that. Uncle Albert had rented a big car, and Nils was driving them.

     I say “yesterday or the day before” because I have momentarily lost track. Momentarily! I was seeing Dr. Feight on Mondays and Thursdays; then, at some point without my being aware of it, it became Tuesdays and Fridays. Or, maybe it was the other way around. (Check here.*)

     Today is Wednesday/Saturday. I know because I checked. But the time has changed. That happened several days ago. We “fell back,” so there is sun this morning, but it will be pitch dark by supper time.

I told Dr. Feight that I understood why people committed suicide: Nothing-at-all was better than nothing-making-sense. He asked me what I had been reading; at least, I think that’s what he asked. I said I wasn’t thinking about suicide for myself because I didn’t expect things to make sense; I was pretty sure they didn’t, only unimaginative people thought they could - fundamentalists, atheists, Fox and CNN “news” anchors, some teachers, some scientists.

     Then I said, “The Bell Jar.”

     “Why, for God’s sake?” Dr. Tait said. He paused. “Why not something cheery like Wise Blood?”

11.09.19

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 * There, too, you’ll find links to other posts featuring the good doctor.

Out of season

 Out of season 

It’s neither June nor January, both of which are invoked in Thomas Carew’s poem “The Spring.” (It’s not June in January.) It’s not long’d-for May, which is when Carew’s poem seems to begin.

     You can read the poem here. Or you may both read it and hear it read by clicking the YouTube icon below. As I say in my introduction to the reading, they don’t write poems like this anymore. “They” would mean, in this case, men. None of us woos his woman by telling her how beautiful she is now, but it’s not going to last. None of us has a woman he may call his for one thing. For another, who woos?

     The poem is long, long out of date, then. It remains, however, a delight for some right reasons – the frost that “candies” the grass, the arch joy of the language, the sound of the thing with all its headless lines. So, I like it this November day. I like Carew any day of the year. Shoot me!

11.07.19

Bible Tuesday

 Bible Tuesday*: checking back 

Sometimes I look back over what I’ve written, mostly to see what I’ve been doing. Otherwise, I forget. Or I’ve already forgotten, so I look back to remember.

     Last night, when I couldn’t sleep, I read the prophet Amos again. Then, this morning, when Roz came down to breakfast, just as she was sitting down, I said in my best race-track announcer’s voice, “Prepare to meet thy God!”

     We were having our usual toast and coffee. We should eat more and better, but we don’t.

     “Where did that come from?” Roz said.

Lions and bears

     “I don’t know.”

     “Amos,” Roz said.

     “Oh. Right.”

     “Do you know how I know that?”

     “No.”

     “You told me.”

     “ . . . . ”

     “I saw that sign down near Marion.”

     “Oh?”

     “Remember. It was a month and a half ago, maybe a little more. You said you were going to write about it.”

     “Oh,” I said again.

And after breakfast and Roz was gone and I had policed the kitchen, I looked it up. And I had written about it; and I read what I had written, and I remembered.

     And I thought:

From the point of view of Jeroboam, king of Israel, and Amaziah, high priest at Bethel, there isn’t much to say for Amos, the self-proclaimed prophet (a tree-trimmer cum shepherd by trade), a nuisance, a meddler, who showed up suddenly from a place where there was plenty enough for him to piss on about, he didn’t have to come to your place - especially, he didn’t need to come uninvited to your place - to carp at you, make threats, scare people; he could have stayed home and played the outraged Puritan there.

     We don’t do this often enough, I don’t think: We don’t imagine the Bible from another point of view. The book is Amos, we decide; the words are Amos’s that God has shown him. And we take him at his word, or his words, as if there could be no other way to take him or them. We don’t think about how important Amaziah’s job is to him though we know he has a wife and children. We don’t think about how little the king of Israel wants to hear from a prophet from Judah. We don’t think. We forget there could be other points of view.

     But there have to be, right? We’re as dull-witted as Amos’ sheep if we don’t look around to see other points of view. Or we’re as blindly pious as his tree-saws but not as sharp: “Piety thrives on lack of imagination.” Who said that?

11.05.19

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 * This week Bible Friday comes on a Tuesday. It can come any day. A Thursday. A Monday. There were no reasons for these aberrations. Roz believes I don’t know what day of the week it is because when she asks me, I say, “I don’t know.” But I can always look it up.

     I do look it up before I go anywhere. Or, I try to. I don’t want to drop by Axel Sundstrøm’s office on a Sunday morning, for example, or go to the dentist on a Tuesday if my appointment is for Thursday. True, there’s no reason to know the day if you aren’t going out - or if you’re only going for a walk or a drive or to the 24-hour drug store for a Coke or some Gingko.

     (I wrote “Gingko” just for the sound of it. I don’t ingest. I don’t even know what it does - or is, for that matter. I doubt Amos knew either; he doesn’t mention it. But God could have given it to him in a vision he didn’t write down. “The priests of Bethel are like the gingko tree, its leaves torn off and chewed to heal the mind, yet they do no healing.”)

     Forgive the rambling. I’ve put it both below the line and small - below the line, for who reads below the line? - and small, so you could easily skip it.

Please Stand By

 

10.30.19

Saturday night

 Saturday night 

Roz said again at supper that she was worried about her narrow man. (See here.) We were talking about her friend Maggie, who was thinking she might have to have carpal tunnel surgery. Roz said something about wishing she could call the narrow man to ask if he was okay. I wouldn’t want a woman I didn’t know calling me, I said, asking how I was, whatever note of compassion she could put in her voice.

     Roz asked me how I knew that if it had never happened to me.

We were eating spaghetti I had made with store-bought marinara sauce but doctored with basil and fennel and thyme, thickened with diced and sautéed onions, apples, peppers, and celery, and with ground Italian sausage. The noodles I boil just beyond al dente. Sometimes I make a salad as well. This time, though, I just threw two cups of frozen spinach in with the noodles.

     Afterward, Roz bussed the table and washed the dishes. I put on a second sweater, wrapped my legs in a blanket, and sat down in the den to watch the sad fourth game of the Series.

10.27.19