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What occurred in the moment between when you mistakenly flicked on the light switch and the moment when, perceiving your mistake, you flicked on the garbage disposal beside it, which had been your original intention?

The short answer might be that the light came on but this occurred blisteringly fast. By the time I realized that that moment had even existed to be noticed, it was too far behind me to be examined.

Are you sure?

I couldn’t even tell you, for sure, suddenly, if I flicked off the light before or after I flicked on the disposal. I couldn’t even tell you that much. I couldn’t probably tell you with which finger I flicked it. Though I’m reasonably sure (but only through plausibly reconstructing the events and not through actually remembering them) of the hand.

But are you sure? are there any more details?

I would bet that if I had flicked on the light switch by actually grasping it with the tips of the index and thumb of my left hand I would have continued to hold it as I realized it was the wrong one, while if I had flicked it with the side of the index of my left, or of my right, reaching across my body, I probably went directly to the switch for the disposal. I assume I used my left hand but maybe I was holding some soap or dish soap or something in that hand…. And this happened only just seconds ago!

Why do you consider this important? What made you think “I need to write this down”?

I just knew that it occurred. I had seen that something had happened. If you see something…. It is one of those things that happen every day that you never take note of — hitting the light switch instead of the garbage disposal switch right beside it — and now there is one less of those things in the world, or in my world. I had actually seen and made a note about it. I have made the note.

harl: “To surface a building using a slurry of pebbles or stone chips which is then cured using a lime render.” (x)

delope: To fire a gun into the air in order to end a duel.

(Came up in a Steve Pinker tweet. From French déloper, to throw away.)

The Breaking Point, the other movie based on Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not.

— a tell all autobiography tells you the inside story of a person. A tell nothing biography does not even, probably, know of or admit to the existence of a story.

— a tell nothing autobiography contains none of the information that a biographer of the same person would include, though it may allude to such information.

— in fact, almost by definition, a tell nothing contains information an actual biography, or autobiography, would be compelled to omit.

— it is autobiography as told exclusively from the present; it doesn’t feel it can look forward or back. It can’t say, over time, what is meaningful.

— Although it strives to be strictly factual, it is a work of fiction rather than non, which has to do with the nature of the facts it discloses.

— Namely, that they’re exceedingly mundane, minute, irrelevant, largely impersonal facts; and the reason for reporting such details, nevertheless, is that our lives are mainly composed of such meaningless moments as these. (The non mundane, non minute and relevant is a sort of matter that is dense and satisfying but rare in our lives).

— The relationship of a modern author to his literary avatar is an interesting question. The Walt Whitman of Leaves of Grass is not Walt Whitman the author, and Proust is not The Narrator, but perhaps like the DF Wallace of The Pale King, the author of the tell nothing is absolutely himself. (Meanwhile, unlike the author of a tell all autobiography, the author of the tell nothing knows he’s not Liza Minelli, knows there’s no inherent interest in his life. In fact he styles himself an Every Man or aspires to that status.)

— It is as if a composer, instead of setting down the music he heard in his head, went around recording the sounds of ordinary life. That doesn’t make it sound very desirable, at least not if the composer had any good ideas, but it does illustrate that this is a different sort of pursuit: primarily interested in seeking out reality, not in seeking out beauty, though ostensibly these intersect.

— It is a novel without invention, it is a diary without personal significance … 

— A writer, a real writer, a novelist, would say “it’s not about me, the writer, but about the writing, my creation. No one cares about me, the writer, and I don’t care for them to know.” The tell nothing shares this view but is also tired of protagonists who are clear proxies for their authors and their circle. “Let us admit, even if it’s untrue, that our books are about us, let’s bleed the novel form into the essay form,” says the tell nothing.

Centroid: “The term centroid is an approximate synonym of centre of gravity and centre of mass, applied in mathematically abstract situations where the concepts of mass and gravity are not invoked.”

(Was looking for a word that means “midpoint between more than two points.” This doesn’t quite fit the bill.)

Occurs to me that I didn’t know Bessent was gay until this past week, and that that felt about right to me.

Thinking that Aristotle’s Politics is much more influenced by The Laws than The Republic (but I don’t believe Aristotle mentions The Laws.)

The Roughest Berry on the Rudest Hedge

Came across this today from the early 2000s, which I have put in the sidebar, and which was my first effort at what I now think of as a kind of “tell nothing” autobiography. Entirely true to life factually but leaving out everything a person might want to know.

“His virtuosity has made a ‘popular novelist’ of one who is above the heads of the multitudes,” Max Perkins said of Fitzgerald, after Gatsby.

Looks like this phrase, which is not an official motto of the U.S. Postal Service, comes from Herodotus, describing the Ancient Persian Postal Service. Wikipedia:

“The building prominently bears the inscription: Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds, which is frequently mistaken as the official motto of the United States Postal Service. It was actually supplied by William Mitchell Kendall of the firm of McKim, Mead & White […] The sentence is taken from Herodotus’ Histories (Book 8, Ch. 98) and describes the faithful service of the Persian system of mounted postal messengers under Xerxes I of Persia. The U.S.P.S. does not actually have an official motto or creed, but nonetheless the inscription on the building is often cited as such.”

Buson (translation Saw and Shiffert):

Coolness —
the sound of the bell
as it leaves the bell

I like thinking of “the sound of the bell as it leaves the bell.” It’s a sound that’s not yet heard, isn’t it? A sound that’s only begun its passage to the hearer? And yet that “coolness” suggests the poet’s characterizing a sound he’s heard. And yet again, the poet didn’t apply “coolness” to the sound of the bell, he applied it to its sound as it left it. So maybe, maybe, he means something more like the sound of the bell on first being stricken, rather than the sound of its subsequent resonances?

Very important, actually urgent, from Ezra Klein: This Is What I Fear Most About A.I.

“Perhaps the trouble with literature in our time,” [Maxwell Perkins] wrote [Malcom] Cowley, “is that there aren’t as many rascals as there used to be.” [Max Perkins, Editor of Genius. Berg.]

This was the 1940’s. Makes me wish I’d held onto The Brooklyn Follies a bit longer to read Auster’s encomium on rascals again… The original meaning of rascal is “rabble.” A rascal to me, I suppose, is a person who gets into scrapes. Feel like Auster thought of a rascal similarly — a scrapper.

Really? Galoot comes from Goliath?

Former architect said “if it’s hardware it must have a name,” but couldn’t recall the name of the locks you put at the top and bottom of one side of a double door. Answer seems to be a flush bolt.

Looked up the spelling of “cliquish,” which looks to me like it’s pronounced clickwish. 

Looks like encroach is related to crochet, both having as their root “croc” meaning “hook.” Approach is totally unrelated to encroach.