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alexin: A protective substance that exists in the serum or other bodily fluid and is capable of killing microorganisms; complement.

Only sound at 6am in the world it seems today: my house keys dropping onto the metal base of the lampstand. Another unexpected tone just now: my nose sounding like a text message notification.

Looked up “tabid” (emaciated, wasting away), looked up John Prine, Adam Buxton, and Vincent Dinofrio (whom a friend had run into during a dog walk around 5am — film shoot) while “Cependant la révolution avait donné lieu à tant de supercheries,” meant “however, the revolution had given rise to so many deceptions” according to Google. (Baron de Marbot)

Food pantry. What was it again that Southerners would eat on New Year’s Day? “Black eyed peas.” What did the attendant put on his sweet potatoes? “Soy sauce and ketchup.” Question. Did religion progress in the same way technology did, or was there something essentially static about it? (Question should have been: did science *progress* while religion was static or merely grew? It seemed that Christianity, at least, had refined its message over the millennia. And Christianity arose out of Judaism of course but in what sense could that be called progress? Not like Galileo and Kepler surely? There were Jews but not Ptolemaists in the modern world.)

Clarifying for myself for what must be the millionth time the difference between trilobites and ammonites: (the former elliptical and roach-like; the latter, curling sea spirals.) Question, which was the funnier formulation, Arthur King of Lambelot, or a simple Sir Lambalot? (Response: your ambivalence indicates there might be a better third option, among which is forgetting this.)

Okay, but can we have at last get an ETA of when you’re likely to finally finish Tristram Shandy? (Has it really been so long? I’m thinking this week or the next. Taking it with me now to the dentist.)

An old post in which I seek to describe what were at the time my minor but mysterious and sometimes threatening seeming pains…

“Indeed, after witnessing the bold new kind of editorial work Perkins was undertaking with Wolfe, Mrs. Boyd worked up the courage to ask Max a question that had long intrigued her. ‘Why don’t you write yourself?’ she inquired in a letter. ‘I have a feeling you could write so much better than most of the people who do write.’ Perkins delivered his response when they next met. She recalled, ‘Max just stared at me for a long time and said, ‘Because I’m an editor.’” (Max Perkins, Editor of Genius. Berg.)

seashores of old mexico merle haggard

Hippocrates 39. English. “Σσπασμοὶ γίνονται, ἢ ὑπὸ πληρώσιος, ἢ κενώσιος: οὕτω δὲ καὶ λυγμός.”

λυγμός is “hiccups,” I will forget. Spasms arise either through fullness or emptiness; so too with hiccups. Something like that. “Through repletion or depletion” says the authorized translation, which also has “convulsions” for “spasms.”

Speaking of Σσπασμοὶ — not sure what that extra sigma is doing there; I cut and pasted from Perseus — I was diagnosed with trismus today; in this case, a partial and probably temporary lockjaw that was the unintended consequence of a dental procedure. Hurts to eat and brush.

I guess a rascal is someone who does mischief, as opposed to one who does actual crimes, or otherwise behaves maliciously. Wiktionary says that mischief is: “Conduct that playfully causes petty annoyance.”

Updating my “writers’ habits of spending” (which I wonder, too, why I didn’t call it “Writers’ Spending Habits”)… Fitzgerald looks to be another of these writers driven to spend well beyond their means, though he could pullback sometimes and was also a good earner, often at the expense of his art. Hemingway (so much more financially successful than Fitzgerald or Faulkner — For Whom The Bell Tolls was a very big seller) was a lot more prudent, complained about his taxes and had support from his wives too. (Hadley received money from a trust fund and the Pfeiffers were rich.)

Question: why do I care about this? I guess it’s because I think of having money as being like having a moat between writing and everything that would keep you from it. Anyone with a lot of money can just pull up the drawbridge and write. But the great writers don’t appear to have seen it that way, is my perception. Like Dostoyevsky playing roulette, there is a real do or die mentality at work.

“… the party was like a big fire laid out on the hill, generating heat and light in the falling darkness, growing molten and indistinct at its core.” (Rachel Cusk, In the Fold.)

NYT: “Detecting magnetic fields on alien worlds is hard, but one trick is to look for radio emissions from the planets. A magnetic field will funnel electrons to a planet’s poles, producing auroras like the ones we see on the worlds of our solar system. When those electrons hit the poles, they can bounce back, releasing radio waves.”

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.)