for him the explosion was like “the reverse of something happening” the extraordinary explosion being an extraordinary instance of something not actually occurring… interior lips of his mind in the dark

« Il est un agent puissant, obéissant, rapide, facile, qui se plie à tous les usages et qui règne en maître à mon bord. Tout se fait par lui. Il m’éclaire, il m’échauffe, il est l’âme de mes appareils mécaniques. Cet agent, c’est l’électricité.» *

……………….A……………….………………

L……………….……………….N………………

velocity of money…………………….

A……………….……………….D………………

E……………….……………….,

Learned this today: “invests” (which are weather disturbances that may turn into tropical cyclones) is short for “investigative areas” and are numbered 90-99 –don’t know why they start counting at 90– followed by a letter which gives the location. (L is the one I normally see, meaning North Atlantic.)

The question, why would a person read Aristotle today?

Would it be a reason to read Aristotle today if today’s Republicans were essentially Aristotalians? If today’s Democrats were essentially Platonists? If the ideas of the political left and right, supposedly dating from the French Revolution, actually had these more ancient, more philosophic, roots?

It has been some while since I’ve read A Wizard of Earth Sea but I now find myself drawn to the idea that knowing the real names of things would be an extremely great gift and power to have. I think this on learning what talus is (with respect to land formations) and Bias (with respect to textiles). What if our study of vocabulary included many more concrete nouns than it now does? What if the aim of our study of vocabulary was not to understand the words that are used in our reading materials but to be able to identify properly the things we use and are surrounded by? What if at, say the middle school level, we were made to know the name of every type of clothing and every common flower and every type of architectural joint, not as a matter of fashion or of botany or engineering, but simply to have a sort of handle (or a handle of any sort) on the things that we exist among, — to have that magic power?

Customer had picture of location in Axum as his “wall paper” and the astronomy “picture of the day” as his homepage….. Various

Combien me le semblait-elle davantage, maintenant qu’elle me semblait pouvoir être éclaircie, elle qu’on vit dans les ténèbres ; ramenée au vrai de ce qu’elle était, elle qu’on fausse sans cesse, en somme réalisée dans un livre. Que celui qui pourrait écrire un tel livre serait heureux, pensais-je ; quel labeur devant lui ! [le Temps Retrouvé, wikisource.fr]

***

Andreas Mayor: “How much more worth living did it seem to me now, now that I seemed to see that this life that we live in half-darkness can be illumined, this life that at every moment we distort can be restored to its true pristine shape, that a life, in short, can be realised within the confines of a book! How happy would he be, I thought, the man who had the power to write such a book! What a task awaited him!” [Time Regained, pp. 451]

ar mad os armados The Se e’rThe See’rThe See’rT he See’rThe See’r
…a””; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”;pC B
.d””; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”;bse
..e””; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”;eNol
l””; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”;rie
..a””; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”;Gslm
..n””; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”;eieie
..t””; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”;usnt
.o””; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”; E i
de””; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”;da
……………………….la””; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”;um>tombolo (x);
>s””; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”; “”;C
enfrentamientos armados —

The idea that another way of looking at the Fraudulence Paradox is that it’s a condition of exceptional virtue which is, however, periodically subject to extreme collapses.* In the story Good Old Neon, this collapse takes the form of suicide, but perhaps that is just the most dramatic example of the shut down of one’s desire to impress, and that binge eating (or drinking or shopping) is a more everyday version of the same principle. A shut down of the desire to impress: “In the same measure that I have had to pretend I am something special I’m now going to demonstrate, and with a ridiculous emphasis, that I’m not.)

(The Fraudulence Paradox –scroll to bottom– is an idea of David Foster Wallace in his story Good Old Neon. It describes a vicious cycle in which a person, feeling emotionally empty, earns the admiration of others through his impressive behavior, yet knowing his impressive behavior is just a put on, their admiration makes him feel only more empty. They’ve been fooled into admiring the person; they aren’t appreciating the person himself… You can find it defined in his own words at the link.)

* Perhaps this is how the fraudulence paradox would be viewed from the vantage of one seeing it in another person, rather than seeing it in oneself.

13. eng.
ὑπὸ λυγμοῦ ἐχομένῳ πταρμοὶ ἐπιγενόμενοι λύουσι τὸν λυγμόν.

(πταρμοὶ — sneezes, λυγμόν — hiccup)