Hills, Sheep, Horizons:

O great vault through which I enter the store
Through which customers, countless as air,
have passed like the notes of a flute,
and sat like the lacing of a corset,
Today I also offer my salute:”

I read this passage of the Federalist Papers over and over again without being able to make any sense of it, until I realized I had no idea –or rather, had an incorrect idea– of what ‘venial’ meant (Federalist 37):

It is but just to remark in favor of the latter descriptions, that as our situation is universally admitted to be peculiarly critical, and to require indispensably that something should be done for our relief, the predetermined patron of what has been actually done may have taken his bias from the weight of these considerations, as well as from considerations of a sinister nature. The predetermined adversary, on the other hand, can have been governed by no venial motive whatever. The intentions of the first may be upright, as they may on the contrary be culpable, The views of the last cannot be upright, and must be culpable.

It means excusable, forgivable, (I had confused it with venal.)

Crito, 49 δ]

σκόπει δὴ οὖν καὶ σὺ εὖ μάλα πότερον κοινωνεῖς καὶ συνδοκεῖ σοι καὶ ἀρχώμεθα ἐντεῦθεν βουλευόμενοι, ὡς οὐδέποτε ὀρθῶς ἔχοντος οὔτε τοῦ ἀδικεῖν οὔτε τοῦ ἀνταδικεῖν οὔτε κακῶς πάσχοντα ἀμύνεσθαι ἀντιδρῶντα κακῶς, ἢ ἀφίστασαι καὶ οὐ κοινωνεῖς τῆς ἀρχῆς;

*

(English, Harold North Fowler) Do you therefore consider very carefully whether you agree and share in this opinion, and let us take as the starting point of our discussion the assumption that it is never right to do wrong or to requite wrong with wrong, or when we suffer evil to defend ourselves by doing evil in return. Or do you disagree and refuse your assent?

Form and perform. Perhaps they do.

Crito 51c– 52δ. [English]. Socrates, in the person of the laws of Athens, argues it is unjust to break them.

51c Σωκράτης: ‘σκόπει τοίνυν, ὦ Σώκρατες,’ φαῖεν ἂν ἴσως οἱ νόμοι, ‘εἰ ἡμεῖς ταῦτα ἀληθῆ λέγομεν, ὅτι οὐ δίκαια ἡμᾶς ἐπιχειρεῖς δρᾶν ἃ νῦν ἐπιχειρεῖς. ἡμεῖς γάρ σε γεννήσαντες, ἐκθρέψαντες, παιδεύσαντες, μεταδόντες ἁπάντων ὧν οἷοί τ᾽ ’‘

[51δ] ἦμεν καλῶν σοὶ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις πᾶσιν πολίταις, ὅμως προαγορεύομεν τῷ ἐξουσίαν πεποιηκέναι Ἀθηναίων τῷ βουλομένῳ, ἐπειδὰν δοκιμασθῇ καὶ ἴδῃ τὰ ἐν τῇ πόλει πράγματα καὶ ἡμᾶς τοὺς νόμους, ᾧ ἂν μὴ ἀρέσκωμεν ἡμεῖς, ἐξεῖναι λαβόντα τὰ αὑτοῦ ἀπιέναι ὅποι ἂν βούληται. καὶ οὐδεὶς ἡμῶν τῶν νόμων ἐμποδών ἐστιν οὐδ᾽ ἀπαγορεύει, ἐάντε τις βούληται ὑμῶν εἰς ἀποικίαν ἰέναι, εἰ μὴ ἀρέσκοιμεν ἡμεῖς τε καὶ ἡ πόλις, ἐάντε μετοικεῖν ἄλλοσέ ποι ἐλθών, ἰέναι ἐκεῖσε ὅποι ’‘

[51ε] ἂν βούληται, ἔχοντα τὰ αὑτοῦ. ὃς δ᾽ ἂν ὑμῶν παραμείνῃ, ὁρῶν ὃν τρόπον ἡμεῖς τάς τε δίκας δικάζομεν καὶ τἆλλα τὴν πόλιν διοικοῦμεν, ἤδη φαμὲν τοῦτον ὡμολογηκέναι ἔργῳ ἡμῖν ἃ ἂν ἡμεῖς κελεύωμεν ποιήσειν ταῦτα, καὶ τὸν μὴ πειθόμενον τριχῇ φαμεν ἀδικεῖν, ὅτι τε γεννηταῖς οὖσιν ἡμῖν οὐ πείθεται, καὶ ὅτι τροφεῦσι, καὶ ὅτι ὁμολογήσας ἡμῖν πείσεσθαι οὔτε πείθεται οὔτε πείθει ἡμᾶς, εἰ μὴ καλῶς τι ποιοῦμεν, προτιθέντων ἡμῶν καὶ οὐκ ἀγρίως ἐπιταττόντων ποιεῖν ἃ ἂν κελεύωμεν, ἀλλὰ ἐφιέντων δυοῖν θάτερα, ἢ πείθειν ἡμᾶς ἢ ποιεῖν, τούτων οὐδέτερα ποιεῖ.

ταύταις δή φαμεν καὶ σέ, ὦ Σώκρατες, ταῖς αἰτίαις ἐνέξεσθαι, εἴπερ ποιήσεις ἃ ἐπινοεῖς, καὶ οὐχ ἥκιστα Ἀθηναίων σέ, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα.’ εἰ οὖν ἐγὼ εἴποιμι: ‘διὰ τί δή;’ ἴσως ἄν μου δικαίως καθάπτοιντο λέγοντες ὅτι ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα Ἀθηναίων ἐγὼ αὐτοῖς ὡμολογηκὼς τυγχάνω ταύτην τὴν ὁμολογίαν. φαῖεν γὰρ ἂν ὅτι ’‘ὦ Σώκρατες, μεγάλα ἡμῖν τούτων τεκμήριά ἐστιν, ὅτι σοι καὶ ἡμεῖς ἠρέσκομεν καὶ ἡ πόλις: οὐ γὰρ ἄν ποτε τῶν ἄλλων Ἀθηναίων ἁπάντων διαφερόντως ἐν αὐτῇ ἐπεδήμεις εἰ μή σοι διαφερόντως ἤρεσκεν, καὶ οὔτ᾽ ἐπὶ θεωρίαν πώποτ᾽ ἐκ τῆς πόλεως ἐξῆλθες, ὅτι μὴ ἅπαξ εἰς Ἰσθμόν, οὔτε ἄλλοσε οὐδαμόσε, εἰ μή ποι στρατευσόμενος, οὔτε ἄλλην ἀποδημίαν ἐποιήσω πώποτε ὥσπερ οἱ ἄλλοι ἄνθρωποι, οὐδ᾽ ἐπιθυμία σε ἄλλης πόλεως οὐδὲ ἄλλων νόμων ἔλαβεν εἰδέναι, ἀλλὰ ἡμεῖς ’‘

[52ξ] σοι ἱκανοὶ ἦμεν καὶ ἡ ἡμετέρα πόλις: οὕτω σφόδρα ἡμᾶς ᾑροῦ καὶ ὡμολόγεις καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς πολιτεύσεσθαι, τά τε ἄλλα καὶ παῖδας ἐν αὐτῇ ἐποιήσω, ὡς ἀρεσκούσης σοι τῆς πόλεως. ἔτι τοίνυν ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ δίκῃ ἐξῆν σοι φυγῆς τιμήσασθαι εἰ ἐβούλου, καὶ ὅπερ νῦν ἀκούσης τῆς πόλεως ἐπιχειρεῖς, τότε ἑκούσης ποιῆσαι. σὺ δὲ τότε μὲν ἐκαλλωπίζου ὡς οὐκ ἀγανακτῶν εἰ δέοι τεθνάναι σε, ἀλλὰ ᾑροῦ, ὡς ἔφησθα, πρὸ τῆς φυγῆς θάνατον: νῦν δὲ οὔτ᾽ ἐκείνους τοὺς λόγους αἰσχύνῃ, οὔτε ἡμῶν τῶν νόμων ἐντρέπῃ, ἐπιχειρῶν διαφθεῖραι, πράττεις ’

‘ [52δ] τε ἅπερ ἂν δοῦλος ὁ φαυλότατος πράξειεν, ἀποδιδράσκειν ἐπιχειρῶν παρὰ τὰς συνθήκας τε καὶ τὰς ὁμολογίας καθ᾽ ἃς ἡμῖν συνέθου πολιτεύεσθαι. πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ἡμῖν τοῦτ᾽ αὐτὸ ἀπόκριναι, εἰ ἀληθῆ λέγομεν φάσκοντές σε ὡμολογηκέναι πολιτεύσεσθαι καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς ἔργῳ ἀλλ᾽ οὐ λόγῳ, ἢ οὐκ ἀληθῆ.’ τί φῶμεν πρὸς ταῦτα, ὦ Κρίτων; ἄλλο τι ἢ ὁμολογῶμεν;

ambassador bug I:

I launched the hand fully and forcefully from the area of my immediate body to that of the knob of the door with neither a flinch nor a blench.

…

I am now still attempting to slide my thumb down the ridges of pages (if I slide too far I get to the T’s; if I get to the T’s I might have to involve my second hand to get back to the S’s, if I have to involve my second hand in order to get to the S’s I might lose my place in the front part of the book where the phrase is that I’m now looking up) (the fingers of my second or left hand are in three places: on the outside of the cover; on the page where the exercise is with the phrase I’m now looking up; and on the left of the pages I’ve now opened the book to) but I’m not achieving anything, the page of the R’s has not yet budged.

This is not because the page has stuck but because I haven’t yet applied enough force or dug my thumb down the line of the ridge: intellectually I have yet to accept the risk of finding myself in the T’s, or worse than the T’s, even farther from the R’s. I’m staring intently at my thumb on the right side of the book and much feels like it’s happening although nothing is moving.

This isn’t exactly how this happened, but it doesn’t matter, because none of this matters, and eventually the page turns in a desirable manner.

Kanyakumari
Puranas Ganesha
Memphis Group squidge
cohete Toi invasion violac
Archibald Lampman…. cark
stupe…///.………………………g
Owens Valley ………………. e
…..///.Omertà ……………….o
oriel…///…all over painting
hatikvah…///.cantatrice .a
La ……………………………….. g
La ……………………………….. n
Llorona….syncope………. n
inedia………Porlock …….. e
DalekINTP Merrill Gilfillan
The See’rThe SeThe See’r
b……………\….n………pC B
r…………..\….e …….bse
ot…………\…...t…..eNol
her………\….….la…rie
‘s…..\….……...Gslm
P……………..eieie
o….………..usnt
em.……….. E i
\\\……… da
umtlo(x;

It was cold out, which became part of what I thought; but I wore shorts in spite of what I thought to be “cold” and “out”, which became a part of what I thought. Now I had Shorts, Cold, and Out, in what I thought.

My hat, and its type; my coat, and it’s thinness (but not in its type); my sockes, how many (somewhat of their thinness and thickness, not much of their type, mainly “how many”); (and the answer to how many was four — though “four”, while known, was never quite part of what I thought — “two” somewhat more than “four” was a part –I would think “Two” –that I had two socks on: “two on each” — I did not have Four socks on: did not have “four socks total”); and all pertaining to my clothing became “part of what I thought” as did part of what I thought (here something kaleidoscopic is envisioned). (I thought that I was wearing them or thought often they were there as well.)

*&*&*

(When I saw someone who wore their hat and their coat and their purse and wore a backpack, perhaps it was theirs, perhaps it was a backpack they borrowed; when I saw they wore what was theirs without seeming to think of it, without it seeming to matter to them, whether or not it was in my thought, or whether or not it was what I or another might have preferred to have had in their thought) —

And I thought that what I thought was contained by what I didn’t want to be described. (What was that? Did I know what I meant?) (I clearly didn’t know what I meant) On the one hand, was what I thought; on the other hand, was that I “did not want to be described”; “I was the describer; the descriptor (the describer) the Describe (as distinct from the Scribe),” I at one point put to myself. (Did I know what I meant?) (That consciousness was an act of description, was perhaps what I had meant, and so there was much I was aware of, which I was yet not conscious of, because it had yet to be described; these were like words one knew to write but had not yet physically written.)

Just as I couldn’t help but think, I told myself, I wanted not to be thought of. I sternly told myself: maybe if you didn’t think maybe you wouldn’t be thought of. (This was a version of ‘Judge not that be be not judged’ I said to myself). You would certainly not think you were thought of. I told myself: the fact that you think is proof that you want to be thought of. (“I think therefore I want to be thought of,” I later jotted down.)

One person I saw in front of me walking could not have cared less. That person had “snapped out of it” whereas I had not snapped out of it yet, I confessed: though I needn’t have confessed (as it was quite obviously a part of what I thought.)

I happened to have found myself walking behind a woman in the afternoon, and when I stepped on a fallen leaf loudly (this was the Fall) I wondered, would she hear it and would it cause her dismay to know a person was walking just behind her? A person whose “mighty step cavernously crushed so loudly these leaves?” as I later had it.

But she gave no such sign — she wore a scarlet coat. And when I passed I saw she was holding a baby to her chest: some sort of harness that held the baby there. That was where all her attention was. None of her attention was on the sound of a leaf that had been crushed by someone walking behind her in a quiet neighborhood. That had seemed to me quite strange: that she had failed to attend to the sound of my step. Even had I been someone completely different, stepping on a leaf, I do believe she would have taken no notice.

Customer:

Customer, seated, untwisted candy wrapper slowly, arthritic hands.

Customer suddenly received call to pick up wife: the blue line had broken down.

What was good about this yoga place, a customer said, was its completely unpretentious, totally laid back, atmosphere.

[According to Google] it takes 10,000 Google searches to equal the CO2 emissions of a five-mile trip in a typical car. While that sounds like a lot, the scale of the Internet is mind-bogglingly massive. A 2010 study calculated that the 62 trillion — that’s right, trillion — spam emails sent each year generate the CO2 emissions equivalent to 1.6 million cars driving around the globe. [mother nature network NOV 2012] [kilojoule]

The internet releases around 300 million tonnes of CO2 per year, equivalent to every person in the UK flying to America and back twice over.[Guardian, AUG 2010]

Which uses more electricity: the iPhone in your pocket, or the refrigerator humming in your kitchen? Hard as it might be to believe, the answer is probably the iPhone. [TIME, 2013]

………..I o mi io n y
………..n……………. e
………..d…………… l
………..e………….. l
………..f…………. e
………..e……….. h
………..n……… s
………..s…….. t
………..e…… e
………..o…. i
………..f… r
………..h.r
………..a
………..a
……q……g
.au………..ra
lia…..b……vel
swin…ang…ines
ging..siron.. sand
Maryof Egypthami
dabashitru
nnel

coy standback, thadback hold on, tsegai grace — belai (?) tittekuh: be carefeul, don’t mess with me — GOBUZ: good job, nice going. tati (monkey).

Ventral zipper:

— he had invested the vest with his sense of the surge of the heat and his feeling of it, that had been continuously built up, was that it was red–

— There is only one hard calendar date given in A Strange Commonplace, which is New Year’s Eve 1949. This is in chapter 14 of the first book.

–(Corollary. Because the male character in this chapter is the same age as Sorrentino would have been in that year, an autobiographical dimension to the book as a whole seems implied.)

— The historical time of A Strange Commonplace ranges from the 1930’s to the 1990’s. There’s nothing to suggest either the Jazz Age or the Post 9/11 world (or anything before the former, or after the latter period). Though the book was published in 2005, the most advanced technology it mentions is the color television set — and when people are watching the television, they are most often watching movies from the thirties.

–(Corollary. The cultural figures mentioned are heavily weighted toward the beginning and end of these epochs. There is Robert Benchley and John Cusack, Gail Patrick and Meryl Streep, but no Rolling Stones, Jack Benny, Elvis — no 50’s, 60’s, 70’s cultural figures… Why?)

—A Strange Commonplace is intergenerational. One generation is the ‘Ross Columbo’ generation: what I will think of as Sorrentino’s parents’ age. The other is Sorrentino’s generation — “the Charlie Parker generation.” These latter are the ones we see the most of: as children, as parents, as seniors.

–To be noted: that Sorrentino makes no use of world history, its “big events”, in relaying information about time. We see no evidence of WWII, of the Korean War, of the Great Depression, of any of that. No mention of Eisenhower or the Beatles. It is rather through cultural and social markers, often fairly obscure ones, and local and personal history, that as readers we might distinguish (if it is in fact at all important that we do so) the events of the thirties, say, from those of the eighties.

–To be noted: nostalgia and its opposite (feeling bitter about the past) are fairly dominant themes here. (I think for instance this is the “curious sadness” of the man in the second Saturday Afternoon.) Whatever might be of importance, good or bad, happened a while ago while the present is merely unreality, indiscretion, alcohol — “another story.”

This was an attempt to assign each chapter of A Strange Commonplace to a definite era. My reasons for assigning them as I did, which often involved significant guess work, can be found by clicking on the link to each chapter. Some general remarks about time in this book are here.

1930’s/ ’40s

(1.1); (1.9); (1.20); (1.23); (1.24); (1.25) // (2.6); (2.9); (2.12);

1950’s / 60’s

(1.10) (1.14) (1.18) // (2.1); (2.3); (2.5); (2.7); (2.10); (2.13); (2.14) ; (2.16); (2.17); (2.18); (2.19); (2.20);

1970’s / 80’s

(1.3); (1.4); (1.5); (1.6); (1.7); (1.8); (1.13); (1.15); (1.16); (1.19); (1.21); (1.22); // (2.11); (2.15); (2.21); (2.22); (2.23); (2.24); (2.25);

1980’s / 90’s

(1.2) ; (1.11); (1.12); (1.17); (1.26) // (2.2); (2.4) (2.8) (2.26).

.

knees and hands: are the gates

— these knees, I say, which were actually popping or creaking these days — tumblers of safes I listen to with the utmost attention — when will they be cracked? when they are cracked with what will I be rich?

This is the French text of the water lily paragraph of Swann’s Way (pp. 184 of my edition) with links to vocabulary I didn’t know and followed by Scott-Moncrieff’s translation. Somewhat intimidated by passages of this length and difficulty, I’ve also broken it up into four parts — here: (1); (2); (3); (4).

“Bientôt le cours de la Vivonne s’obstrue de plantes d’eau. Il y en a d’abord d’isolées comme tel nénufar à qui le courant au travers duquel il était placé d’une façon malheureuse laissait si peu de repos que, comme un bac actionné mécaniquement, il n’abordait une rive que pour retourner à celle d’où il était venu, refaisant éternellement la double traversée. Poussé vers la rive, son pédoncule se dépliait, s’allongeait, filait, atteignait l’extrême limite de sa tension jusqu’au bord où le courant le reprenait, le vert cordage se repliait sur lui-même et ramenait la pauvre plante à ce qu’on peut d’autant mieux appeler son point de départ qu’elle n’y restait pas une seconde sans en repartir par une répétition de la même manœuvre. Je la retrouvais de promenade en promenade, toujours dans la même situation, faisant penser à certains neurasthéniques au nombre desquels mon grand-père comptait ma tante Léonie, qui nous offrent sans changement au cours des années le spectacle des habitudes bizarres qu’ils se croient chaque fois à la veille de secouer et qu’ils gardent toujours ; pris dans l’engrenage de leurs malaises et de leurs manies, les efforts dans lesquels ils se débattent inutilement pour en sortir ne font qu’assurer le fonctionnement et faire jouer le déclic de leur diététique étrange, inéluctable et funeste. Tel était ce nénufar, pareil aussi à quelqu’un de ces malheureux dont le tourment singulier, qui se répète indéfiniment durant l’éternité, excitait la curiosité de Dante, et dont il se serait fait raconter plus longuement les particularités et la cause par le supplicié lui-même, si Virgile, s’éloignant à grands pas, ne l’avait forcé à le rattraper au plus vite, comme moi mes parents.”

The IEA estimated in 2007 that standby power produced 1% of the world’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. To put the figure into context, total air travel contributes less than 3% of global CO2 emissions… One Watt Initiative

Laurent Laffite‘s joke at Cannes about Woodie Allen, which I do not quite get: « Cela fait plaisir que vous soyez en France, parce que ces dernières années, vous avez beaucoup tourné en Europe, alors que vous n’êtes même pas condamné pour viol aux Etats-Unis. »

(It makes a bit more sense if you consider there being, as Le Monde goes on to say, a Roman Polanski reference; i.e., why would an American director travel Europe so extensively unless he’d been “condamné pour viol”?)