.i“ * ^ / . . . . . ` `~

Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs…

“There was also a malicious satisfaction he had in the blamelessly Christian stamp his activities bore — it was so clear that on no ground whatever, either the military or the humanistic and pedagogic, were they open to any serious reproach.” (Magic Mountain, Chapter 5, “The Dance with Death.”)

“Could not be a fire”¹“That there could not be a fire becomes a proof there could be one”² “That I don’t hear a fire engine does not mean I haven’t started one”³ “whether or not you hear a fire engine has not to do with what you may have done”⁴ “You could have started a fire” ⁵ “Prepare in advance for the sound of the engine” ⁶ “Believe it’s unrelated to what you may have done.”⁷

_{¹ There is no evidence to support the idea that you have started a fire. The concern that you have done this is groundless.
² “Nothing in life is certain so the uncertain is likely”; “I strongly believe I haven’t started a fire; therefore, I probably have started one.” “Bad things most often occur unexpectedly; I have no reason to expect a bad thing; therefore a bad thing is more likely to occur.”
³ Were I to hear a fire engine it wouldn’t mean that I had started a fire and were I not to hear one wouldn’t mean that I hadn’t. This is Obvious.
⁴ The principle on which the previous thought is based. I can’t deduce that my house is on fire (or that I have caused my house to be on fire) merely from the fact that I have or have not seen a fire engine: the fire engine merely puts in mind what I may have done.
⁵ Nothing is certain: even if there is no reason to think I have started a fire, or even many reasons to think that I haven’t, I may yet have started a fire.
⁶ Knowing that the sight of a fire engine will put it in mind that you’ve started a fire, you can take precautionary measures and mentally prepare yourself against feeling anxiety on this account. “I may or may not have started a fire” you might tell yourself for example, “but it won’t be because I have seen a fire engine.”
⁷ Same as the previous thought.}

Stone, soil, root, leaf litter, leaves, approaching indistinguishability in this woody spot.

Funny how, in having a partner (though I don’t even have one, I’m just imagining having one) all my lamenesses seem concretized.

A theory about why when talking to myself, I will say such senseless phrases as the one I just now said “no refunds or credit”: that these are the random words that happen to be passing through my brain at the same time as I have an uncomfortable thought.

So if, for example, I happen to think that phrase “no refunds or credit” at the moment I recollect there’s an important test I have to take tomorrow, I will repeat that phrase aloud as if it were a weighty utterance, which somewhat staves off the uncomfortable thought. “No refunds… no credit.”

Reading something about London/ Londinium it occurred to me I didn’t know where that name comes from. Turns out it’s not really known.

Tweet (Hanania): “It’s funny when members of a mob say people don’t have courage for not giving in to it.”

My arms enter the wide cotton hole at the bottom then separately exit each smaller cotton hole toward the top, with the crown of my head in hot pursuit through a hole of medium size in the center

(this is probably a bit cute but of course the holes are not *of* cotton but defined by, circumscribed by cotton)

So now I find that my chest has been covered. My chest is now thoroughly sheathed and prepared, is the finding. (I have no thought at all for the Back or its sheathing, though I’m certain it, too, has been covered and prepared.)

Now I’m smoothing the shirt out and recalling the Greek word for Back actually means “behind the chest.” (Thersites was struck “behind the chest” by Odysseus, was why I knew that Old Greek word — which caused a tear to well in the eye of Thersites and a bloody welt to arise from his back.

I do not yet today have any such welt on my back, I reflect. MAGA is something like Thersites, I next consider — ugly, thumbing its nose at authority.)

Now I’m still smoothing the whole thing out, quite sheathed, front and back, and prepared:

I am a person in his shirt, feeling sheathed; I am a person observing his prepared abdomen and chest; I am a person assessing that, as of this moment, his shirt has been sufficiently smoothed.

κύβος: cube, cubical die

43 times they threw off their coats
And they were put on the bed of the bedroom
And they, the wearers, circulated among the guests,
And they, the worn, lay with others in the dark room

I’ve always thought it was cool that the two moons of the planet Mars (itself named after a war god) were named Phobos (fear) and Deimos (terror), but am surprised to encounter it right here in the Theogony 934 — Phobos and Deimos are in fact Ares’ (ie Mars’) sons:

αὐτὰρ Ἄρηι /ῥινοτόρῳ Κυθέρεια Φόβον καὶ Δεῖμον ἔτικτε δεινούς

“But to shield piercing Ares Aphrodite bore Phobos and Deimos, terrible ones…”

— Another man died on my floor today. Mo. 70. Diabetes.
— I’m sorry to hear that. Hard knowing a lot of old people. Sitting down with my dad for lunch today he said the words I most dread in the English language: I have to go to the bathroom.
— Ha!!! Oh papa
— It really is something you don’t want to hear — and for a while you don’t — and then you do. Do you have anything to say about your neighbor?
— Can I call you?

— Heh Ray
— Heh Sharon. So how’s it goin?
— His name was Mo and he was a pervert and a Somalian. He was actually related to another family down the hall, the one with the really smart eight year old I told you about.
— He was a pervert? What do you mean?
— When we were in the elevator together he’d say things like “I want to touch your body.”
— Really?
— I didn’t know him, we never really spoke, but he’s been on this floor for twenty years.
— Were you there when it happened?
— [INAUDIBLE] and they came in with the lights. (You know where my apartment is) and the girls went crazy of course
— Of course…
— We were saying we hoped it was Juanita, whom we love, but she’s started fires in her apartment five times now, five times. She’s my father’s age, but without the support, two sons that HATE her
— makes you sort of wanna move in….
— And what about that beautiful boy you’ve got? I loved the video you sent. So well behaved, such a gwood boy.
— Yeah, he’s so good, aren’t you, buddy?
— You could get laid a lot with a dog like that
— I, uh, I sometimes. That comes up. I mean I do sort of meet people. People will come up and say “wow, that’s a beautiful dog.”
— Yeah
— I imagine the gals don’t help in that respect
— Noooo, I come off as a cat lady. (What is our Vice President’s name again? Vance.)
— You probably couldn’t deal with a dog as well behaved as this, although he has his moments. I know you’ve told me you got the girls when you realized you weren’t going to have children, but what exactly is the mechanism there? How are they a replacement?
— To get me out of of the house basically, though honestly I’d have probably been doing that anyway. Before I got them I did a lot of running. Eight miles a day, running half marathons or training for them.
— What kind of mile do you run?
— Nine.
— What kind of shoes?
— Hoka.
— And all this running was about Klemm?
— Yes this was my psycho ex-husband and his cult
— I’ll say that for a long time I resisted running simply because it had been so important to Klemm. But when I quit smoking it began to make sense. And so why do you think you never remarried… I was just following a train of thought there and actually do know the answer to that, I think: there was the guy who got away and the guy who let you down.
— That about sums it up
— I’ve gotta say it’s a little hard to see how it would work with you and another person, you’re so independent, you’re so involved in that neighborhood. It’s a little hard to see how another person… You’re never leaving that apartment.
— He would have to live nearby.
— On the other hand your existence is fairly grim. I mean you’ve talked to me a few times now about how the neighborhood’s been letting you down. The man spitting in your eyes
— that was a little outside my neighborhood
— the student who assaulted you
— again, that’s Bayridge, but I know what you’re saying. I’m the caregiver in this situation.
— You doing anything tonight? You must be pretty exhausted
— Nope
— Of course, you could never live in the suburbs, but have you ever thought about moving to California? I can see it
— I have actually! My brother and his wife keep asking me to move out where they are in San Diego. They feel sorry for me.
— They feel actually sorry for you?
— Well, they feel sorry for me and they envy me, because I’m alone.
— Uh huh. Well listen Sharon, I could talk all night but I’ve got three emails I need to write. Now don’t sound so surprised: one of them is for you and I think we’ve already given each other something to think about. So give my love to the girls
— Goodnight, Ray
— Goodnight

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Hadn’t come across this sense of “ablative” before: “Sacrificial, wearing away or being destroyed in order to protect the underlying material, as in ablative paints used for antifouling, or ablative heat shields used to protect spacecraft during reentry.”

Tweeted earlier by Noah Smith: “The Tech Right is ablative armor for the Hard Right. The Hard Right put on the Tech Right like an armored suit in order to win the 2024 election without just looking like the same old 2017-era tiki torch bullshit. Then the Tech Right absorbed all of the post-election backlash.”

commensality: the act of eating together