Hard to discern among the birch trees, (BLANK), and lily pads. (Birch trees or fir trees and their similar sounds.) Hard to discern among birch trees BLANK, lily pads. (Feel the reason I can’t recall it, the word that is represented by the blank, involved that you would not find this plant among lily pads necessarily).

Avalanche lilies are the next line: “avalanche lilies (or lily), Indian paintbrushes/ bear’s ears and kittentails.” (Bear’s ears and kittentails, not bears’ ears and kitten’s tails.) Indian paint brushes. (Spell check does not accept ‘lilly’ as there there is just one ‘l’ in it.)

Moss is further down but it, the word sought, is something very like moss: “birch tree, moss and lily pads.” Even having not heard the poem you’d expect moss not to be correct. But the word sought is monosyllabic or at least very short like moss. Hard to discern, hard to discern, what is hard to discern –the ponies are “hard to discern” — among the birch trees, among the thing I don’t know — and the lily pads. Chlorophylles fungi (occurs a bit farther down). (Spell check doesn’t accept Chlorophylles. Wikitionary only includes it as the French plural of chlorophylle.)

Felt I almost have it and feel I almost do have it — it’s there– here — in my face more than in my brain or mind — yet won’t fully emerge as knowledge, as memory, as a thing known, as a thing one might say. It’s one syllable (or two) — it’s a plant. — It’s not moss. I have to look it up. No / It is not going to come. Fir trees’/ shadows are mentioned twice in the poem.

And also, besides this, you forgot that whole stanza after “antelope”: the stanza, as it were, where it goes, “acclimated to grottoes, which issue penetrating draughts.” “Draughts” occurring also in the line with spotted ponies: “brought up on frosted grass and flowers and the(?) (the?) rapid draughts of ice water.” (Might have that wrong.)

Might or should make, maybe, concordance when I’ve done: spotted ponies have “glass eyes” and the glacier is made of “glass that bends.” Spots toward the end, opening is dots – “dots of cyclamen reds and maroons.” Another portion I didn’t even realize I’d forgot: “its ghostly pallor changing…” Fir trees and birch trees (to the “green metallic tinge.”) The fir trees are the ‘austere specimens’ and have their shadows ‘obliterated’; the larches are of ‘polite needles’ conformed to an edge’; and the birch trees the spotted ponies are hard to discern among.

Relative to this struggle of recall, the relief of the computer is thought of/ deplored — would someone look it up. (Computer’s existence seems to imply there’s no point at all to memorization, to memory. Twain: you don’t need to remember if you always tell the truth.) But with the computer I can say even quite roughly what I’m looking for and it will appear. Later, however, when I do check the internet, I’m surprised the search for “hard to discern among birch trees, water lilies” comes up with only nature sites. I have to add “Marianne Moore octopus” to the search bar to get the poem to come up. (Maybe memory, from the standpoint of computers, involves going beyond the first few search results, or the first few pages or hundreds of pages of search results, which represent short term memory or even perception, with memory of the kind implied by Marianne Moore or The Octopus requiring more a “refined search.” Maybe also the search of ones own memory can be “refined.”)

The word was ferns: “hard to discern among birch trees, ferns, lily pads, avalanche lilies, Indian paint brushes…” the e in fern with the i of birch, the n maybe echoed in the avalanche and indian paint brushes. Indiam paint brushes (why do I say that). Am I more or less likely to recall ‘ferns’ in this spot having made this struggle to recall it? [no.] Is ‘fern’ for whatever reason to be one of these words I just can’t recall. [no.] Is it ever to be moss to me. Always moss, which doesn’t sound at all right– Nets, seines, guns, traps, Hired vehicles and gambling.

hm. the ‘d’ in advance was a mistake and should be a ‘b’: abvance. ‘Ahead‘ is originally nautical and stood in contrast with astern.

Il faut de plus grandes vertus pour soutenir la bonne fortune que la mauvaise.

We need greater virtues in good times than in bad.

[25]

“To listen to someone is to put oneself in his place while he is speaking.”–Simone Weil (via –Interesting points made among the tweets)… I interpret this as saying that listening involves an act of imagination akin to role-playing or acting, actually pretending you’re the person forming these words you’re listening to. It seems like this sort of technique might be most useful when you already know what someone is saying but don’t know why they are saying it or telling you this. Not useful at all when you don’t know what they’re saying.

Episode: Summs has discovered a position which is almost guaranteed to put a person to sleep. (A person tries it, scoffs at its inefficacy, then rolls over on her back and sleeps for two days, an instant Summs convert.)

Episode: A friend of Summs comes to him with a spiritual problem bordering on the supernatural. He’s got a “little devil.” Can Summs do anything about a “little devil”?

(The friend thinks he’s so close to being “a good person” but he’s got this troublesome spirit in between him and really being good, a demon which seems not only to mock the whole thing and be very bad but also, at times, to be his true self — what did Summs think?)

“The takeaway is that when accessibility to birth control declines, the number of unplanned pregnancies increases,” said Mark Anderson, chairman of the Iowa Council on Human Services…. Number of Iowa abortions climb after plummeting for decades.

MILES DAVIS – Time After Time

…Mate
o………………..Hanshan
O…………………..whip-round
|…………………..Pensacola Mountains
\inner german borderSuperblockGSA
Cryovolcanoboonie ….hatcondonation
Cryovolcanoboonie ….hatcondonation
\iinner german borderSuperblockGSA
|…………………..Pensacola Mountains
…The last doge was Ludovico Manin,
…who abdicated in 1797, when
…Venice passed under
…the power of
…Napoleon’s
| France |
|__ __ _|
L……………[
d…………………3
)…….…………..……+
l…………………..…………k
g…..………………………………..G
G….……………………….…………G
e………………………….………….z
~………………………….…………!
1………..………………………..0
1………….…………….………..0
1………………..…..………….0
1……………………………0
…………………..d L A……………………….a ……………………I.
……a………..O.,,…....v v ………iR

Stick out your arm and extend your index middle and ring fingers ( ||| not \ | / ). If the average individual cloud element is bigger than all three fingers, it’s stratocumulus, if it’s smaller than all three but bigger than one finger, it’s altocumulus, and if it’s smaller than one finger it’s cirrocumulus.… *

It appears I woke up, took off one of my socks, and fell asleep before letting go of it. Had I removed the other one, the other sock? (No, I had only removed the one sock) Had I removed my pants? (No, I hadn’t removed my pants yet, I was still wearing pants in bed.) Well, what was your posture like? How to describe my posture — well my posture was just as if you had frozen a man solid while was he was standing upright while holding a paper to his side (because I had thought at first that it was not a sock, that it was a paper) — either frozen a man solid or just made a statue of a figure like that, then had laid that standing man or figure down on his back. That was approximately how I was situated, only not holding a paper, holding a sock — and with a blanket thrown over the “frozen man.” Just as the painters of certain periods, I further elaborate, (I couldn’t recall which painters at the time that I first made this comparison) would portray children as “little adults”, so was my prone sleeping posture merely a form of “horizontal standing”, was how I put it to myself at the time. (I then started making even less sense than this and I called my lying down “old standing” — unable, though, to decide whether it was really old or young standing, or really really young standing, as in infantile.)

I hadn’t yet removed my pants. I had yet to remove my right sock. Had I fallen asleep having removed the sock? Did the sock really feel like a sheet of paper? (– it didn’t, not any longer.) The blanket over the hand that held the sock but not over the foot from which the sock had not been removed — over the foot that still had its sock…. Legs, still in trousers under blankets getting hot…. Words from different languages occurring to me…. Voices saying, get a drink, use the bathroom, get up! Voices saying: need to remove pants. Need to let go of sock. Let go of sock! Need to let go of sock! in different languages, probably not real languages. Thinking ideas not generally put into languages, such as “I am standing: but my feet are my body and I am my ankle” before drifting off again, letting go of sock.

The odd thing I noticed was that the first time I’d had a vision of the black toy wagon, my feet were positioned roughly as they are now — when I have just had the second “vision” of it.

When I had my first vision

I was stepping back and forth on the plush carpet, left foot forward, right foot forward, left foot back, right foot back, like this repeatedly. In a meditative mindset, I was conscious of the give of the mesh of the carpet fiber beneath my feet, which I felt was greater than the yield or give that my knee was giving to my thigh (that is, the carpet gave way before my feet far more nicely and gently than my knee gave way before my thigh) — and greater, too, than the yield or give that my foot gave to my ankle (my foot did not yield to my ankle nearly as gently as the carpet did before my foot). The ankle was like an equals sign, I distinctly remember having thought then, whose equation was all the weight of the body above it, added each to each, a kidney weighing this, a blood cell weighing this, the partially digested meal I had eaten and the song in my head also to be counted, weighed, divided by two; whose answer was the foot, or whose answer was on the foot; something like this– the foot was X and the solution for X was what was on the foot, and the ankle was like the equals sign. (And I, clenching my fists near my chest, raising my head as if screaming to the ceiling, was “the sum” — and that silent scream too was added to the x.)

Comparing, in other words, the give between myself and the floor (by which I mean the give between my feet and the floor but which for some reason denotes for me personally the “give” between my foot and head, my body indeed being defined as that very feeling of “give” that exists between the feet and head) and between various parts of myself and various other parts of myself, one revelation was (having suddenly realized that my head, my seemingly weightless head, was itself a physical presence that must weigh something and must rest on something, namely, the leg to which all the rest of my body was merely an ankle, so to speak; the head was not merely some sort of floating thought); one revelation of making these comparisons was that the “neck” wasn’t really its own separate anatomical part, but only looked like something separate, only looked as if it were its own part, and was actually just the upper end of the spine, a joint was what it was really, an elbow, an ankle… having revelations of this kind as I stepped back and forth on the carpet, making, by the way, very small steps (as you might step onto a scale to weigh yourself, for example, without, however, there being any elevation — stepping on and off this scale that was perfectly level with the floor, was how I moved), when I was suddenly overcome with the powerful flooding sense that while there was or could be “nothing I could understand of the world beyond what I could understand of myself” yet the “Myself” that was stretched around me, both “fleshily as the flesh” and mentally as the “static field of the flesh” (was the parlance I used) was fake and uninteresting; was trying and failing to be real and to get my attention; and I stepped forward into it and stepped backward into it, this falseness, a false feeling of life, and did this again and again, because, as they say, you have to do something with your life (and that was the general character of the mood I was in, that you have to do something with your life) and because maybe what I was doing was a little like something and because maybe with one of these steps I would step into my real self, the self that really felt like myself, that I would step into a life that was real; for these reasons or something very much like them, then, this is what I was doing when there first appeared to me the vision of the black toy wagon.

Now, however, on the second occasion of me having this vision, though I am, as in the first instance, looking down to my feet, there are several key differences: my feet are, first of all, stationary; they are, secondly, matched up evenly, toe to toe and heel to heel; and they are thirdly (and I wish also to say most importantly) lying flat upon the grass of a nearby grassy lot and not upon the plush fibers of my own dwelling’s carpet. Situated thus, I have had that “vision” again which hardly seems so important now, but for this, that it is now two times that I have had this same vision: a vision of a toy wagon painted entirely black and in appearance wholly sinister, which I doubted very much could be the toy of any human child. Small like a child’s toy but sinister like the toy of no person. If I were to ever have a third vision of it I would start to get seriously concerned, was how sinister it seemed to me — but I never did.

Submission? What do you mean ‘submission”? Submit my materials? my work? these reports? You want me to throw down my arms, throw up these other arms, and “submit”?

Alright, very well, I submit. I submit to you that I shall never submit! I submit that I shall never give in, never give up, never hand out, never send forth! That I shall unrelentingly beat whatever would have me submit until it submits, is what I submit!

I am indeed surprised by you all, who at the sound of the first shot, so to speak, will surrender and throw up your arms. Okay, okay, you’ve got me, they say.

No, no, my dear friends, I shall remain quite comfortable here, I assure you. Molwn labe, molwn labe! is my cry. That’s what I’ll tell you, folding these arms.

οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τ᾽ ἐπιτηδεῦσαι τὰ τῆς ἀρετῆς ζῶντα βίον βάναυσον ἢ θητικόν. [1278α20. Aristotle, Politics.] (for it is not possible to pursue living a life of virtue as an artisan or serf.) “Serf” is thetes, wikipedia:

The thetes (Greek: θῆτες, thêtes, sing. θής, thēs, “serf”) were the lowest social class of citizens. The thetes were those who were workers for wages, or had less than 200 medimnoi (or their equivalent) as yearly income.

“Knock knock. War’s where! Which war? The Twwinns. Knock knock. Woos without! Without what? An apple. Knock knock.”

Trying to unpack this knock knock joke, which is actually two knock knock jokes… A knock knock joke should go: knock knock. Who’s there? (Answer). (Answer-who). Punch line.

These knock knock jokes go: knock knock. (Answer — from the one who should be asking the question.) (Answer who?– from the one who should be giving the answer and punchline). (Punchline.) Both jokes follow this form.

Another way you could look at it. The form goes, Knock, knock. (Who’s there, but transformed and punctuated as a statement or exclamation rather than as a question) (Answer, but stated as a question) (answer-who, elided) Punchline!

Notable: the answer and answer-who in each joke begin with ‘w’, maybe echoing the reduplicated ‘n’ and ‘k’ sounds of knock. Punchline one is “Twwinns.” The twins are of course warring characters in the book, Cain & Able types, the duplicate ‘w’s and ‘n’s further emphasizing twins and the jokes own ‘n’ and ‘w’ sounds. We can tease out the words ‘inns’ and ‘wins’ from ‘twwinns’ too, though I don’t know to what effect. The punchline to the second joke, ‘apple’, suggests Eve — who’s without an apple? Eve is. (I was thinking in terms of the fruit of the tree of good and evil; this page alerts me that an adam’s apple is meant.)

Knock-knock further suggests knocked up, which has meant to impregnate since no later than the early 19th century.  I think ‘woo’ is to be thought of as romantic wooing. Thus, the violence and hitting of war and of sex reflected in these two jokes.

Finally, rhetorically, there is a lot of chiasmus going on in these sentences, maybe two of them surrounded by a third?

Grouping of the passages from La Reserche I looked into —

On Art, Writing

Pouvoir être éclaircie, elle qu’on vit dans les ténèbres
Une Patrie Inconnue
Si l’art n’est que cela, il n’est pas plus réel que la vie
Ce milieu que nous ne voyons pas
Le gisement lui-même
(Knowledge and Art)
dans un ridicule l’artiste voit une belle généralité

On Behavior / General

les autruches humaines
Le ton dubitatif pour les résolutions irrévocables
Une vie plus inanimée que celle de la méduse
Water Lily passage (stupidity multiplier)
,,,parce que nous mourons nous-mêmes
Ces hécatombes de régiments anéantis
(The well-being of not suffering)
le défilé d’une armée compacte
Une sanglante barrière
La pesée des âmes
Larivière
Fanés

Not able to understand what I’m hearing because I’m concentrating: just as I ask the customer whether he’d like medium or dark roast, I’m trying to understand if I’m holding $17.36 or $18.36 in my hand, and though I have heard the sounds he has made I can’t tell if those sounds mean “medium” or “dark”.

Customer insisted low or no-growth “steady state” economies were the only way forward, because standard GDP-based benchmarks for growth didn’t include true costs of ecological damage.

Customer ordered cinnamon bagel with cream cheese and small dark roast in mug for here.

(Chance Sweepings)

Finnegans Wake (330): “Knock knock. War’s where! Which war? The Twwinns. Knock knock. Woos without! Without what? An apple. Knock knock.”

yim’achay, (loosely) “take care”, al-e-kah “boss”, al-e-kah-yay “my boss”

ρ θ᾽258 259, (0) ……………….
ὕδ ((1))166(1);t ……………..
ατι 1545462it’s……………
λια (0)awhere Fsi………….
ρῷ 1we are but ………..
ῥέειnow, R but………
, ἀand whe A\ t…….
μw e ha ve b.……
6 φὶbeen fo Zr.
δὲ κfive ye .Aa
swin…ang…ines
……………….ρ θ᾽258 259, (0)
……………..ατι 1545462it’s
…………… ὕδ ((1))166(1);t
………..λια (0)awhere Fsi
…………. ρῷ 1we are but
………ῥέειnow, R but
……., ἀand whe A\ t
……μw e ha ve b.
.6 φὶbeen fo Zr
aδὲ κfive ye .A
swin…ang…ines

Not sure I knew anything about this: order of adjectives in English. (via.)