“Entre les pauvretés de la richesse et la richesses de la pauvretés, l’artiste a-t-il jamais balancé?” Balzac, The Shagreen Skin (64).
Ellen Marriage translation: “Hasn’t the artist always kept the balance true between the poverty of riches and the riches of poverty?”
Google Translate translation: “Between the poverty of wealth and the wealth of poverty, has the artist ever swayed?”
Calculated Risk suggesting a “sudden economic stop”:
I just spoke with a tile sub-contractor who mostly does remodels. He was completely booked for the next several months, and all of his jobs have cancelled for the next 8 weeks.
He has a great reputation – and a good network – and he has been busy for years. These cancellations caught him by surprise. He will have to layoff his workers until he finds work.
This story is happening all across the country. This is a sudden stop for the US economy like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Nearing the end of what has been a year long project to memorize Mariane Moore’s An Octopus, I’ve become interested in its several lists, and make note of them in this post. I’ve divided the lists into long and short, although, in terms of items listed, they are about equally as long; the lists I am calling “long” do not have more items, but occur over more lines, being more descriptive of the items.
Short:
— “indigo, pea-green, blue-green, and turquoise”
— “bears, elks, deer, wolves, goats, and ducks”
— “calcium gems (…) alabaster pillars, topaz, tourmaline crystals (…) amethyst quartz”
— “marble (…) jasper (…) agate”
— “black feet, eyes, nose and horns”
— stone from the moraine (…), another marmot, (…) spotted ponies ”
— “birch-trees, ferns, and lily-pads, avalanche lilies, Indian paint-brushes, bear’s ears and kittentails, and (…) chlorophylless fungi”
— “to eagle-traps and snow-shoes, to alpenstocks and other toys…”
— “Bows, arrows, oars, and paddles, for which trees provide the wood,”
— “guns, nets, seines, traps, and explosives, hired vehicles, gambling and intoxicants”
— “rice, prunes, dates, raisins, hardtack, and tomatoes”
Long:
— An octopus […], the fir-trees […], The Rock[…], the larches [….], The Goat’s Mirror *
–The porcupine, The Rat […], Thoughtful Beavers […] Bears [….] The Goat
–Those who have lived in hotels […] The Mountain Guide […] The nine-striped chipmunk […] The Water ouzel […] The white-tailed Ptarmigan […] The Eleven Eagles of the West
(* I find this “list-like”, maybe not quite a list.)
a sharp knife, a bottle cap, a cork, a wrapper for some cheese, a box of crackers, a bottle of soda, a cylindrical plastic carton of hummus, a mug
celebrating 33rd wedding anniversary, reading about Carbon, visiting a liberty ship, thinking of wearing “triple socks” after the failure of “double socks”, attempting to put to use his new non-inflatable basketball. Age of the earth wondered about
Find disagreeable the word butt or buttocks, which latter sounds like cassocks or mattocks –these are “the cowl of the anatomical person” is thought. (Thought is “cowl.”) “Our true person is not in the mind but in our center of balance” is thought also on this date.
The thruster of NASA; those are the balls of my feet! NASA, Hephaistos and Newton are all in adjoining chambers of my feet, my metatarsuses, metatarsi, the “footbutkids”, the bighorned rams, with other friends
The pencil is now almost one inch above the paper. The pencil is now no distance at all from the flat surface of the paper. The pencil is now three inches from the left side of the paper. The pencil is now six inches from the top edge of the paper. The point of the pencil is now a very slight height from the surface of the paper as it moves from word end to sentence end, to punctuation start and end, to word and sentence start. The pencil is now at a great height above the paper. The pencil is now on the table the paper is on (on top of the paper, on top of the table) then suddenly it is on top of the table yet somewhat to the side of the surface of the paper. (It “rolls” from the table to its edge; from the table’s edge to the air; then from that point in the air to a point in the air further down in it, “falling.”)
Now the pencil is three feet from the floor. Now the pencil is ten inches from the floor. Now the start, the point, of the pencil, is two inches from the surface of the floor, while the end, rear, back, of the pencil (eraser of the pencil) is three to four inches from a nearby point on the floor. Now the pencil point is on the floor and the pencil end is nearly on the floor; and now it, too, the pencil end, is there, on the floor, and skips or hops upon impact.
The pencil, composed of points from end to end, in perfect alignment with itself, “rolls” at that time. Then at one point upon the floor, one point along the pencil stops, while all the other pencil points continue rolling, then these too come to a stop. The pencil itself is a line of points, which will drop out through its chief point or “tip”, is a thought conceived at that time. The tip, the “chief point”, allows the other points to escape from its end, from its “mouth”, it’s further conceived, though a little bit later than that. The time of the occurrence of the first conception being a point in time “somewhat to the right” of the time of the occurrence of the second conception, it is thought. (The conception seems to fall “further down” into some not really understood medium of thought, just as the pencil, moment’s before, had fallen “further down” through some basically understood medium of Space, the medium of air, it’s thought at still a third moment in time, a moment occurring “still more to the right” than those of the occurrence of the other two conceptions. It’s thought that just as the conception and pencil could be compared as types of falling objects, so could the paper and the flooring be compared as types of things that objects will fall upon).
The interesting curtailment of speech to be heard, an audible hyphen, when someone forgets your name mid speech.
Thank you, —
One hears the comma, indicating something is to follow, perhaps a name, then one hears the hyphen, though not anything after it, indicating a sudden change of plan for the speaker.
*
This happened twice yesterday. In the first instance, the agent was someone who knew my name very well but was occasionally prone to lapses of recall (“Thank you, –” she had said.) In the second instance, it was someone I’d known for a decade at least, but would rarely see more frequently than once or twice a month. “Thank you, –” she had said, — and it was then that it struck me how very different from “thank you.” “thank you, –” would sound.
(Maybe catalexis would be appropriate to compare here.)
“The sophistry that undid me is common to the
majority of men, who deplore their lack of strength
when it is already too late to make use of it. Virtue
is only difficult through our own fault. If we chose
always to be wise we should rarely need to be
virtuous. But inclinations which we could easily
overcome irresistibly attract us. We give in
to slight temptations and minimize the danger.
We fall insensibly into dangerous situations,
from which we could easily have safe-guarded
ourselves, but from which we cannot withdraw
without heroic efforts which appall us. So
finally, as we tumble into the abyss, we
ask God why he has made us so feeble.
But, in spite of ourselves, He replies
through our consciences: ‘I have made
you too feeble to climb out of the
pit, because I made you strong
enough not to fall in.'”
Rousseau, Confessions,
Book II.
Answer is yes according to CDC:
You should restrict contact with pets and other animals while you are sick with COVID-19, just like you would around other people. Although there have not been reports of pets or other animals becoming sick with COVID-19, it is still recommended that people sick with COVID-19 limit contact with animals until more information is known about the virus.
However, they also say:
There is no reason to think that any animals including pets in the United States might be a source of infection with this new coronavirus. To date, CDC has not received any reports of pets or other animals becoming sick with COVID-19. At this time, there is no evidence that companion animals including pets can spread COVID-19. However, since animals can spread other diseases to people, it’s always a good idea to wash your hands after being around animals.
Part II, Chapter 20
(Don Quixote, Ormsby translation)
“He preaches well who lives well,” said Sancho, “and I know no more theology than that.”
“Nor need you,” said Don Quixote, “but I cannot conceive or make out how it is that, since the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, you who are more afraid of a lizard than of God, know so much.”
PARTE II, Capítulos 20
—Bien predica quien bien vive —respondió Sancho—, y yo no sé otras tologías.
—Ni las has menester —dijo don Quijote—. Pero yo no acabo de entender ni alcanzar cómo siendo el principio de la sabiduría el temor de Dios, tú, que temes más a un lagarto que a Él, sabes tanto.
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The crane crunketh... crunk
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χάρματα δ᾽ ἀντιδιδοῖεν
κοινοφιλεῖ διανοίᾳ,
καὶ στυγεῖν μιᾷ φρενί:
πολλῶν γὰρ τόδ᾽ ἐν βροτοῖς ἄκος.
Le soleil ni la mort ne se peuvent regarder fixement.
Niether sun nor death may be looked fixedly at. [*]
Dvořák’s transcription of the song of the scarlet tanager (top) and the appearance of the song in the third movement of the quartet.
Period. The pencil as it formed a word, then broke it off, departing upward, traced a familiar pattern. The pencil, having formed a word, rises up
*
Period. The pencil, having legibly formed the familiar pattern of a well-known word, rose from the paper, then fell upon it, then repeated the process; forming another familiar shape in a pattern roughly similar to, though not the same as, the familiar shape preceding it; then this pencil briefly doubling back to “dot” something (to dot, that is, “to draw very tight circles to form a mark in the shape of a dot”, to dot as in the phrase, “to dot an i“);
rose from the paper and completed that whole process (complete with the doubling back to “dot” one letter more and to “cross” some such other character); then repeated many times this similarly (though in each case the unit of varying length and of varying contour across bottom and across top and with or without requiring this “doubling back” to “dot” or to “cross” some figure that needed this action for the completion or perfection of its form)
repeated many times this similarly until having formed the familiar pattern called by some “a complete complex sentence”, which others will call still more simply, “a sentence,” whereupon it, this activity, was entirely stopped, and there was a “period”, a “dot” like that of the character of the i, yet placed around the very root, as it were, or base, of the concluding word; as if to start still another familiar pattern or word but having gotten so far only as the first mark or dot, broken off at almost the exact moment of inception.
*
Thinking of the two forms of the plural of cannon –cannon and cannons– I used ngrams to see what was more popular. Pretty decisively “cannon” is the winner, but the margin narrows as the word itself becomes disused:
100 cannon, 100 cannons
several cannon,several cannons
battery of cannon,battery of cannons
Other words with plural forms that are the same as their singular — related to which, I’m reminded of Marianne Moore’s somewhat striking use of the plural of “deer” in this line of The Octopus (at least, to me this plural s-less “deer” rings out):
What spot could hold merits of greater importance
for bears, elks, deer, wolves, goats and ducks?
Word cannon apparently arises from Greek κάννα — reed.
Balzac “Another Study of Womankind” (trans. Jordan Stump): “…In the winter she wears a boa over a fur cape, in the summer, a shawl and scarf; the bourgeoise has a remarkable talent for vestimentary redundancy.”
Vestimentary redundancy is a rendering of “les pléonasmes de toilette.” Autre étude de femme: ” en hiver, elle a un boa par-dessus une pèlerine en fourrure, un châle et une écharpe en été : la bourgeoise entend admirablement les pléonasmes de toilette.”
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f………………,,,….. hl..CANSa i
a………………,,,…..taWESHOULD B A R I
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One thinks of people as being a common source of frustration, but I don’t believe I have in recent memory encountered any person, or anything at all in fact, so frustrating as the situation I encountered this morning when I tried to put on sweat pants while wearing tennis shoes — the most ridiculously painful and unpleasant thing looking at my foot stuck where the knee should be and being unable to move it either forward or back and leaving me almost exploding with rage. This after the first foot had gone through relatively easily.
Boning up on my “state nicknames” I was moved to inquire why Virginia was the Old Dominion State. Wikipedia gives this explanation. A more thorough account here says the wikipedia version is without proof, yet possible. The name gained popularity during the civil war but it’s not known for sure where it came from.
Meanwhile South Carolina, now the palmetto state, was once the iodine state: “In the late 1920s, the South Carolina Natural Resources Commission began a public relations campaign to advertise the high iodine levels found in fruits and vegetables grown in the state.”
.i`` * ^ / . . . . . ` `~ 
