And coming on the smithy of Hephaistos he snatched a child and setting him on his shoulders ordered him to lead him toward the east.
ὁ δὲ ἐπὶ τὸ Ἡφαίστου χαλκεῖον ἐλθὼν καὶ ἁρπάσας παῖδα ἕνα, ἐπὶ τῶν ὤμων ἐπιθέμενος ἐκέλευσε ποδηγεῖν πρὸς τὰς ἀνατολάς.
In the next sentence Orion “completely heals his blindness by staring into the rays of the sun.”
Interesting story about Athena alluded to in Apollodorus. How she threw away the pipes of Marysas on seeing how they disfigured her face — puffed out her cheeks — when she played them.
Phenomenon of checking your watch repeatedly over short intervals to see how much time has elapsed and yet you still don’t know what time it is.
Unfamiliar with “cussed” as an adjective. Post: “The curators present enough evidence, some 125 paintings, sculptures and works on paper, to give eccentric and cussed visitors permission to prefer the old style, even if they are loath to admit it in respectable company.”
L’amour-propre est le plus grand de tous les flatteurs.
Self love is the greatest of all flatterers.[*]
The Se e’rThe See’rThe See’r
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was you ever bit by a dead bee … maybe getting that now. Meaning (but a little more complicated than this) — did you ever have really really bad luck?
you don’t give a hoop what I do but when I do it you get sore
you know you don’t have to act with me. you don’t have to say anything or do anything.
the joke that niether of us knows the answer to: whether you’re going to hold together or not.
you almost figured me right, mama, except I still owe you that bill.
Seems that “tow” (the fiber) can be pronounced either like “toe,” the appendage of the foot, or like “tau,” the Ancient Greek letter.
The Feeling of Thinking One Knows.
(On the preceding question, chatgtp indicates that Weil engaged with Genealogy of Morals and other works of Nietzsche but not specifically with Genealogy at any length in her published writings. I’m guessing she very much had it in mind in the latter portion of Poem of Force.)
I wonder if Weil read Genealogy of Morals? It’s curious that just as squarely as Nietzsche locates the origins of Christianity in Judaism — in contrast with the Homeric tradition — Weil, in Poem of Force, finds it in the Homeric tradition as distinct from the Judaic.
Nietzsche thinks Christianity is the efflorescence of Jewish “resentment.” Weil finds Jewish ultranationalism at odds with the essentially pacific message of The Iliad and the Gospels.
Shadow of bird, actual bird;
shadow of wire, actual wire;
actual road, curb and grass.
Sight of the bug passing over speed limit sign;
thought of that image, as language, passing briefly in brain.
Strong sun, deep morning shade, gentle breeze, abundant recent grass clippings over walk; scent of these clippings; strange contrails in the evening: all the planes in the area seeming hastily to have converged toward the same Southwestern point.
Massive crane lowering dumpster full of rocks for the replenishment of riparian rip rap. Workers with ropes below giving direction to the crane operator. Tree, perfectly circumscribed by mulch, its dark browns offset by a child’s dress.
I’ve been a Dickens hater for years, but I had never read David Copperfield, and the last paragraph of the first chapter has entirely changed my mind about him. Beautiful.
αὐτόματοι δ’ ἀγαθοὶ ἀγαθῶν ἐπὶ δαῖτας ἵενται *
Squad car leaping from its spot to stop the car that just rolled through that intersection. I may remember this as the time when I started to see a lot of Teslas. Repair man’s truck painted Christmas colors. UPS truck with its unique squeak of suspension and rattle in its approach — always with acceleration. Door open to what had been Ellen and her boy’s unit: new owners remodeling now. Reston. Guam. China. New Jersey. Mom sat in corner couch seat. House with lien on it. Fresh dog urine stream from trash can base. Two flies darting off — helical flight paths — an acorn-sized excremental bit.
The possibility emerges that the shirt I put in my bag, which I’d thought to be a nice collared work appropriate shirt, was actually a similarly colored collared exercise shirt full of holes and a smell I can’t expunge. Something not seen before: someone washing himself in 4 Mile beneath bridge. (Covid.) Idea that, ironically, you have settled on a philosophy of nothing ever happening during a time of accelerated historical change — (not ironic but because of your own stasis.) Water in curb — “somebody washing car.” Art should show people the Everyday imbued with magic, a story is magic, an argument is magic, but I keep dithering in the Thoreau territory of how to live, and what is real. Be spherical, I enjoin myself again.
Construction worker shimmying, shimmying, his arms high on the wheel barrow’s handles: he strives to eject the last gravel granules from the front corner’s divot. Cabbie’s complaints of yesterday recalled: you would think that people when they got in a cab would have a working idea of how much their trip was going to cost them, but maybe they don’t.
A playing card face down on the road: I stoop and flip it over to test my luck or see my future, and it is too weathered to tell. One of those people whose palms, when their arms are in a relaxed hanging position, face directly back, rather than slightly inward like mine do — delivery man. FLA plates, driver wearing fez. New row of trees where they’d been doing the gas line work.
POST 3/19/22: “I felt like I was with someone but at the same time felt like I wasn’t, since he existed in a way where I didn’t have to be attentive of his needs or think about him,” said Shirai, 27. “I felt no awkwardness or pressure to speak. It may have been the first time I’ve eaten in complete silence.”
“To live a dispassionate, cultured life beneath the dewfall of ideas, reading, dreaming and thinking about writing, a life slow enough to be always just on the edge of tedium, but considered enough not to slip into it.” (Pessoa, Book of Disquiet, trans. Lancastre/ Costa)
Fixture to mean a sporting match.
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