Cabbages are particularly aromatic as I recall! Ah! the smell of boiled cabbage -- a whiff of the underworld! If you recall, I started the year under the spell of the sagacious wisdom of Marie 'Konmari' Kondo. There is something she said with regards to reading that struck a chord -- the time to read a book is when you first come across it. If it is put away for 'someday', you must reevaluate your interest in the book. While I don't implement her advice with fanatical fervor, I have found it very useful in clearing the herbaceous clutter from my physical and virtual bookshelves.
Clouds part, ray of sunshine peaks through, horns sound, cavalry charges, battlefield trembles, orcs recede, the Rohirrim ride ...am I missing any imagery? This happens to be my favourite part of IL ...always ...as usual ...forever ....when you step in. And my favourite scene in the Princess Bride book ... “The last thing I remember was dying, so why am I on this wall? Are we enemies? Have you got names? I’m the Dread Pirate Roberts, but you can call me ‘Westley.’” “Fezzik.” “Inigo Montoya of Spain. Let me tell you what’s been going on—” He stopped and shook his head. “No,” he said. “There’s too much, it would take too long, let me distill it for you: the wedding is at six, which leaves us probably now something over half an hour to get in, steal the girl, and get out; but not before I kill Count Rugen.” “What are our liabilities?” “There is but one working castle gate and it is guarded by perhaps a hundred men.” “Hmmm,” Westley said, not as unhappy as he might have been ordinarily, because just then he began to be able to wiggle his toes. “And our assets?” “Your brains, Fezzik’s strength, my steel.” Westley stopped wiggling his toes. “That’s all? That’s it? Everything? The grand total?” Inigo tried to explain. “We’ve been operating under a terrible time pressure from the very beginning. Just yesterday morning, for example, I was a hopeless drunk and Fezzik toiled for the Brute Squad.” “It’s impossible,” Westley cried. “I am Inigo Montoya and I do not accept defeat—you will think of something; I have complete confidence in you.” That's such a delicious trivia! Similar to Inigo Montaya, I have complete confidence that you would fill in the missing gaps of this romcom tale. So I except no less than such quaint bits from you.
How about cabbages with caterpillars and slugs? I wasn't able to find the text online, so pasting the images from George's Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl in my private library, and you know I love illustrations (esp. grandmas with pale brown teeth)
I came across this article and found the writer very interesting. Sor Juana’s twenty enigmas all begin with the interrogative “¿Cuál” or “What”: in Villarreal’s translations, “What will be that spoken dart,” “What can be the delight,” and “What is that atrocious mermaid.” ¿Cuál es aquella homicida que piadosamente ingrata siempre en cuanto vive mata y muere cuando da vida? What is that slayer–strife that piously naughty when living slaughters and dies upon granting life? Then I started reading about her. Biography highlights from wikipedia: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was known in her lifetime as "The Tenth Muse", "The Phoenix of America", or the "Mexican Phoenix". She learned how to read and write Latin at the age of three. By age five, she reportedly could do accounts. In 1664, at the age of 12, Juana was sent to live in Mexico City. She asked her mother's permission to disguise herself as a male student so that she could enter the university there. The viceroy wishing to test the learning and intelligence of this 17-year-old, invited several theologians, jurists, philosophers, and poets to a meeting, during which she had to answer many questions unprepared and explain several difficult points on various scientific and literary subjects. In 1667, she entered the Monastery of St. Joseph, a community of the Discalced Carmelite nuns, as a postulant. She chose not to enter that order, which had strict rules. Later, in 1669, she entered the monastery of the Hieronymite nuns, which had more relaxed rules. She chose to become a nun so that she could study as she wished, saying she wanted "to have no fixed occupation which might curtail my freedom to study." By 1693, Sor Juana seemingly ceased writing rather than risk official censure. Her name is affixed to such a document in 1694, one is signed "Yo, la peor de todas" ("I, the worst of all women") She is said to have sold all her books, then an extensive library of over 4,000 volumes, and her musical and scientific instruments as well. Other sources report that her defiance toward the church led to all of her books and instruments being confiscated. What a hardship even these gifted women had to go through just to read and write! Can't help but contrast it with the privilege a modern woman has today to study, work, date, marry, career, do what she wants to in a progressive and liberal society that does not condemn her self-discovery. Thought I will bring her to your notice. She is our newest mascot: she persisted in her cloistered nunnery while we tap away from our tablets.
I love reading gossip, all kinds of gossip, past, present or inflight time travellers Here's an account of HG Wells' affairs: The secret loves of H.G. Wells unmasked It is not the content but the wording which struck me. According to further passages removed from Wells's original draft of his Postscript, his affair with Budberg was still in full fettle when he began his affair with Constance Coolidge and, less than a year later, with the 26-year-old Martha Gellhorn, 'relationships which have been totally unknown except to a few members of the family'. fettle = condition, health, shape, form. Fettle has been added to my vocabulary now.
Now that our philosophical odyssey is in full fettle, I decided to start by giving St Thomas Aquinas more than a cursory glance. I downloaded a copy of the Summa Theologica. Needless to say, my good intentions proved to be rather short lived! The 6958 page-count was an insurmountable deterrent. I have decided to make do with Bertrand Russel's 10 page summary of Aquinas' work. Though I wonder whether I would be doing justice to his ideas without first familiarizing myself with Aristotle's Metaphysics. Sigh! Feels like going down Alice's rabbit hole. Back to the point. In the midst of all this hemming and hawing about what to read and what not to read, I came across The Five Arguments of St Thomas of Aquinas for the existence of God in his Summa Theologica. I think it would be a fun exercise in critical thinking to try and prove/disprove the arguments. We can pick them up one at a time and work our way through them. Nothing too complicated. Just the obvious contradictions and fallacious reasoning. Disproving these arguments has been somewhat of a hobby amongst philosophers, the likes of which include Descartes and Pascal, but we will leave those for later. Let's try doing this by ourselves first. What say?
I am always in. For now I came across anybody can think like a philosopher in Aeon. Then I stopped at, A good heuristic for creative writing is to juxtapose familiar words and phrases in unfamiliar ways. One might use the ‘cut-up technique’, popularised by William S Burroughs and by David Bowie, in which written text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. Switched to reading about cut-up and fold-in techniques in Openculture magazine. In 1920, Dadaist extraordinaire Tristian Tzara described in his manifesto how to write a poem, Dada-style. In 1959, William S. Burroughs had just published his notorious non-linear masterpiece Naked Lunch (heard him read it here) when he came across the “cut-up” methods of British artist Brion Gysin, which were influenced by Tzara. The Dadaist writer Tristan Tzara wrote “To Make a Dadaist Poem,” and it gave these instructions: Take a newspaper. Take some scissors. Choose from this paper an article of the length you want to make your poem. Cut out the article. Next carefully cut out each of the words that makes up this article and put them all in a bag. Shake gently. Next take out each cutting one after the other. Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag. The poem will resemble you. And there you are – an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd. Since Burroughs and Gysin’s literary redeployment of the method in 1959, it has proved useful not only for poets and novelists, but for songwriters like David Bowie and Kurt Cobain. Original article: With the use of heuristics, anybody can think like a philosopher | Aeon Essays Distraction : How David Bowie, Kurt Cobain & Thom Yorke Write Songs With William Burroughs' Cut-Up Technique | Open Culture More: How to Jumpstart Your Creative Process with William S. Burroughs’ Cut-Up Technique | Open Culture Some more: William S. Burroughs Tells the Story of How He Started Writing with the Cut-Up Technique | Open Culture
I shall get back on these arguments later, for now, I am at awe at this video created by American Museum of Natural History
