Customer’s expressed view: masks were about people liking to control and manipulate others. Attendant’s unexpressed view: customer thought rules were for dumb normal people, not him.

Person appeared and sat outside to work at computer without purchasing anything. Attendant thought “– unless a customer needs the seat.” 45 minutes later, a customer needed the seat, so attendant went out and said something to the person. The person responded that he had been there and purchased something in the morning and felt he still had a right to the seat. “I have no problem with that at all,” he’d boldly asserted to the attendant. Attendant agreed, explained he couldn’t have known he’d been a customer earlier, and went back in.

(Non-altercations with customers galore at Chance Sweepings.)

Idea that Aristotle’s four causes might be a good organizing principle for a contemporary cook book: that dishes should be thought of as having material, efficient, formal and final causes — ingredients, recipe, presentation, satisfaction of appetite. (Or maybe: ingredients, utensils, recipe, satisfaction.)

Idea that there’s this analogy between the way ancient scientists thought and the way everyday people in Democracies think; the former are geniuses and the latter are not, but both their ideas are confined to intuitive thinking in a certain sense. Heavier objects fall faster than light ones.

(Could you look at ancient Athens as a kind of pinnacle of western intuitive thought?… I suppose, though, part of why Plato caused a stir was that his morality is counter-intuitive — Justice is not the will of the stronger, etc.)

*……………………*……………………* …………..*
*……………………….*……………………….* ………..*
*………….. Archibald Lampman…. cark …………..*
*…………….. stupe…///.………………………g ……………..*
*………………….Owens Valley ………………. e………………….*
*………………….. …..///.Omertà ……………….o …………………..*
*…………………….oriel…///…all over painting …………………….*
……………………… hatikvah…///.cantatrice . -_.. -‘-…………….|
*…………………….La ……………………………….. n …………………….*
*…………………..Llorona….syncope……….n …………………..*
*………………….inedia……….Porlock………. e………………….*
*……………..DalekINTP Merrill Gilfillan……………..*
*……………………….*……………………….* ………..*
*……………………*……………………* ………..*

. . . .
. . ………………… ………
The shop itself put into the grill
now to be removed from it. Less hot
will it be –as the tomatoes burst out,
(Lettuce like flames from the windows.)
Less hot will it be— (Onions visible
Less hot within the opened mouth.)
It was thus that Customer Saturn did eat and does eat still:
Less hot eyes glazed above the dilated nose,
Less hot forward lunge of the pinched opened face,
Less hot huge hands that hold the hot bread fast,
Less hot crumbs and grease on the rosy wide plate.

. . . .
. . ………………… ……… *
(Possible conclusory poem to Chance Sweepings, or maybe part of epigraph, anyway fit companion to preceding.)
. . . .

. . . .
. . . .
Making a sandwich of stone and steel;
if only the mouth’s groin vault could comprehend
the packages I wheel into it,

the unparalleled girders of flavor I impart,
this sandwich’s barrier would never be entered into
and would endure forever the saliva of time.
. . . .
. . ………………… ……… *
(Possible epigraph for Chance Sweepings.)
. . . .

.I.. y
/ B /…
F e T….
lacia……
r a a………
o i w…………
d o e……………
y t g……………….
y t.v v iR………..
..e a ……..,,,,,.v a v
e hl……………,,,,,a i
..ta…………..,,,. A R I
..e. c ………….,,,,,.v a
.m h ……….,,,,,.i r
.o. i v airvair
.….. A. a I

………..ἣ μὲ 0 63 23 90 (0); 100 54(1)
…………..ν γά 37 1) ;; 99 (090 **0
………………ρ θ᾽ 258 259, (0)267
………………… ὕδ ((1))166(1);
…………………..ατι 1545462
…………………….. λια (0)a
………………………..ρῷ 1
………………………….ῥέει
……………………………, ἀ
……………………………..μ
……………………………….φὶ
………………………………….δὲ κ
……………………………………απν
……………………………………………ὸς

They have been called into relief through the grammatical relation known as Chiasmus The Chiasmus of Time in which Powerlines toepaths walking bike paths are trainlines, rail tracks. ..

Chasm: Chasissimus. Chasmarion: nom or acc singular or plural of noun Chasm. Chiarscuro is genetic “particouple” of an entirely different word. Chiasmus is vocative of Chasm, as if one were to call out — CHASM! not as a warning but as an invitation or a call. (The valley the rail path runs up is, incidentally, such a chasm.)

People particle packets telegraph telephone power train poles: telephone is nominative singular of telegraph, but what is the root. It is a verb maybe.

People on bikes and people with dogs on what was formerly the rail-line. Joggers and walkers, in the chiasmus of time: people on trains: high voltage fonts types zeros ones .fast the links between the guy the.hitch ..,baby dog strollers wires. History doesn’t rhyme but suggests chiasmus, and perhaps other rhetorically considered Space & Time blocks (Or Space & SPACE blocks with TIME & time blocks) a line I myself am now crossing at right angles.

*

[A version of this to maybe appear in “Study of Sounds”, it concerns the point in my walk, which I think of as the midpoint, where I cross the WO&D, a bike path that was formerly a rail line. It envisions the bike path, now strung with power lines,  as a sort of “chiasmus of time”, the railway still there in some sense. A little silly, I like the sudden appearance of radically paratactic syntax in places, notably third paragraph.]

Burg had been thinking as he walked of how Jakakason walked (which became how his left foot stepped) and then of how Afamtee, who was deceased, had walked, (which became how his right foot stepped) and this had worked out alright for a while as those two had had rather complimentary gaits: Jakakason having had almost a severe duck walk (according to Adam) and Afametee also with the foot angled out more than the norm but most notably with a sort of pronounced planting of the heel, like the planting of an ice ax or alpenstock, almost as if he were traversing a vertical surface, digging the right heel in and drawing himself forward and upward with it, then digging in the left one to claw himself up.

The problem for Burg was that after having walked for a bit with Jakakason serving as the model for his left step and Afamtee serving as the model for his right, he had the idea of switching the two (so as to even out the wear on his shoes soles) which turned out not to be, as he had initially supposed, a simple matter of doing with the right foot what he had been doing with the left, and vice versa, but required an actual transition or transfer of the idea of the left over to the right and of the idea of the right over to the left (which was something akin, if you can envision it, to a situation in which the actual Jakakason and Afamtee had been asked to switch positions in the back seat of a moving car, clambering over each other in a tight spot, only with the “car”, in this instance, being Burg’s mind); during which transference, the ideas became mixed up, which in turn lead Burg not to trip or to stumble exactly, as he had initially claimed when recounting this, but he did come near enough to losing his balance that he did briefly consider, as a precaution, coming to a complete stop, though in fact he only slowed.

[From a novel never to published or finished, tentatively known as The Beings, in which people walk around within a large gym-like structure, somewhat in each other’s company.]

Came across this the other day, Sura 34 (“Sheba”), verses 15-17, pp. 273 in my translation, M.A.S. Abdel Haleem.

There was a sign for the people of Sheba, too, in their dwelling place: two gardens, one on the right, one on the left: ‘Eat from what you Lord has provided for you and give Him thanks, for your land is good, and your Lord most forgiving.’ But they paid no heed, so We let loose on them a flood from the dam and replaced their gardens with others that yielded bitter fruit, tamarisk bushes and a few lote trees. In this way We punished them for their ingratitude — would We punish anyone but the ungrateful?

The second of the things I knew was that I was in ancient Greece. That is, I was in what I took to be ancient Greece. It certainly wasn’t modern Greece. And yet it may have been some other country, or it may have been no country at all, that is, not a recognized or organized one. It may have been a no-man’s land or disputed zone.

And I don’t know what caused me to say this was Ancient Greece necessarily because there were none of the usual hallmarks (what is a “hallmark” by the way, that word?) or attributes I associate with that place and time: there were, for example, no fluted marble columns, there were no marble structures at all, no crepidoma, if that’s the word (why would I have a word in my head like that one, like crepidoma?); there were no orchards of olive trees, there were no olive-skinned archaic types; there were no white flowing togas or tunics; there were no upstart Phoenicians, there was no one named Alcibiades, there were no phallanxes or horse-hair helmets, no orators, arches, aqueducts, forums, gates, walls…

(And now I must freely admit that quite a few things I associate with Ancient Greece, and by which I might identify Ancient Greece, had never been a part of that culture, so far as any of us know. I have quite a few peculiar ideas about Ancient Greece, it may turn out.)

Ancient Greece, in short, had come to mean so much to me that, under the right conditions, I could be fooled into thinking that almost anywhere I was was Ancient Greece, which I imagine must have been the case presently.

And I very much enjoyed this new place where I was, with its mild climate, I must say.

I never saw another person, I never saw another building, I never heard, for example, a plane overhead, nor ever saw any technology, ancient or modern, beyond a few crude eating utensils and garden implements. There was a shovel, in fact there was a whole rack of shovels — whoever’s dwelling this is, I thought to myself at the time, they must be a merchant in this trade, as there must be upwards of fifty shovels in that rack. And this was another thing that put in mind that this might not be Ancient Greece, for while I did not doubt the Greeks of this period used shovels, nevertheless, whenever you see things in that kind of quantity, be they shovels or anything else, your mind immediately turns to modernity (although one can easily imagine Greek warriors having had cumulatively thousands of swords, and so why couldn’t one imagine Greek workers having had cumulatively thousands of shovels?)

(How did I get here, I’m suddenly thinking, which is first of all a place with no roads and second of all a place that I’m very much inclined to imagine is, of all places, Ancient Greece?)

But on the whole, the absence of all but the most basic and mechanical forms of technology doubly confirmed me in the supposition that I was no longer in the present (that is, of course, if I was ever in the present). Or if, in the unlikely event I was still in the present, if at any moment I was about to hear the oven-timer for my croissant to go off, and rise to fetch it, it was in a geographic location of the present that was very much like that of an earlier and more rustic or glorious time, of which I had no doubt there were some few places left in our own historical period, places untouched not by people per se but untouched by people en masse per se, though they were becoming more and more remote from each other.

For the record I have no, or very little, knowledge of Greece, Rome, history, the history of technology, crepidoma, the Isthmus of Corinth… I suspect it is only that I’ve just read a shrewdly written philosophical tract which has momentarily disoriented me, turned me around, left me with a vacant stare, for which I must apologize. I suspect that soon I will look down to my lap, start reading the next sentence, and find myself securely where I was, in my actual present location, which is, most likely, very much like your present location, with a chair, for example, and some kind of light source. Or else I’ll wake to find I’m opening a tin of cat food and spooning it out. Or else I’ll hear the oven-timer go off, and rise to get my croissant.

τῶν φυσίων αἱ μὲν πρὸς θέρος, αἱ δὲ πρὸς χειμῶνα εὖ ἢ κακῶς πεφύκασιν.

Hippocrates: some people (natures) are more inclined toward Summer, others toward Winter. (x)