Ray Bradbury: August 22, 1920,

Spoiler Warning: I will discuss significant plot elements and events.

Here are three short tales by Ray Bradbury, whose birthday we celebrate today. I had read only one of them before, “The Crowd,” and possibly I might even have seen a TV dramatization of it. When I think of the story, an image comes to mind. The camera, if that’s what it is, is on the ground facing up and one can see faces all around, just as if one were lying on the ground with a crowd gathered about. The other two stories are new to me, but also enjoyable, if one can take a touch of horror along with some greed.

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“The Coffin”

Charles Braling was old. His brother Richard was younger. Charles was rich, and almost everything he did made him richer. Richard was poor, except for what Charles gave him. Everything Richard did had been a failure. Charles was dying; he had perhaps only several weeks to live. That was why he was in such a hurry to complete his latest invention—“The Braling Economy Casket.” Richard wasn’t dying, which meant there were two reasons for him to be happy: one was that he wasn’t dying and the other was that Charles was. In spite of their many differences, the two brothers did share something—a mutual hatred.

Richard, along with greed, possessed one more characteristic: curiosity. Curiosity may not always be fatal, but it’s certainly much deadlier when paired off with greed. That was why, when Charles died, he ignored Charles’ last wish, to be buried in his special casket, which he had finished minutes before he died. Richard wanted to find out just what this coffin could do. Perhaps it might be marketable. It was his brother’s idea after all, and those had been remarkably profitable. So, he called the funeral parlor, and gave his orders: “Ordinary casket . . . No funeral service. Put him in a pine coffin. He would have preferred it that way—simple. Good-by.”

Now, Richard thought, to find out about the coffin. It was approximately twelve feet long, with a central open section about six feet in length. It had two covered sections, one at the head and one at the foot, each about three feet in length. The casket lid was transparent at the head position. The casket was also extraordinarily wide, perhaps three feet wide on each side of the central chamber for the body. Richard could see no openings or hatches or buttons or any way of getting inside those compartments, at least from the outside. So, he decided to get in the casket and test it. There were ventilating holes around the sides, and just to be safe, he told the gardener to come upstairs in about fifteen minutes to make sure all was well.

So, he crawled inside and looked around. He could see nothing that would give him access to the compartments. Suddenly the lid slammed shut and locked. He panicked at first, but then relaxed. There was enough air in the casket, along with the ventilating holes, and the gardener would soon be along. He might as well relax.

Then . . .

“The music began to play.

It seemed to come from somewhere inside the head of the coffin. It was green music. Organ music, very slow and melancholy, typical of Gothic arches and long black tapers. It smelled of earth and whispers. It echoed high between stone walls. It was so sad that one almost cried listening to it. It was music of potted plants and crimson and blue stained-glass windows. It was late sun at twilight and a cold wind blowing. It was a dawn with only fog and a faraway fog horn moaning.

. . . . .

The sermon began.

The organ music subsided and a gentle voice said:

‘We are gathered together, those who loved and those who knew the deceased, to give him our homage and our due—‘

‘Charlie, bless you, that’s your voice!’ Richard was delighted. ‘A mechanical funeral, by God. Organ music and lecture. And Charlie giving his own oration for himself!’

The voice continued:

“We who knew and loved him are grieved at the passing of Richard Braling.”

Richard thought he had misheard the voice. That should have been Charles Braling.

And then Richard found out just how complete the funerary arrangements were that Charles had built into the Braling Economy Casket.

I felt a bit sorry for Richard, for after all, he hadn’t really done anything that wrong. But, if he had followed Charles’s wishes, and if he hadn't been so greedy and curious, none of this would have happened.

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“The Crowd”

I had read this story long ago and, as I mentioned earlier, may even have seen a dramatized version of it. It’s a quiet little story based on observable facts, something we have all seen, but, as far as I know, only Ray Bradbury wondered about it and gave us this little gem. We’ve all seen this: an accident happens and a crowd forms. Where did all these people come from? Who were they? The sidewalks and entrances may have been empty before, but let an accident happen and a crowd forms.

Mr. Spallner had been in an accident—lots of noise, tumbling motions, and then silence.

‘The crowd came running. Faintly, where he lay, he heard them running. He could tell their ages and their sizes by the sound of their numerous feet over the summer grass and on the lined pavement, and over the asphalt street; and picking through cluttered bricks to where his car hung half into the night sky, still spinning its wheels with a senseless centrifuge.

. . . .

Where the crowd came from he didn’t know. He struggled to remain aware and then the crowd faces hemmed in upon him, hung over like the large glowing leaves of down bent trees. There were a ring of shifting, compressing changing faces over him, looking down, looking down, reading the time of his life or death by his face, making his face into a moon-dial, where the moon cast a shadow from his nose out upon his cheek to tell the time of breathing or not breathing any more ever.”

Several weeks later, Spallner was released from the hospital and eventually returns to his office. While talking with a colleague, he hears the sound of a crash from the street below.

“Spallner walked to the window. He was very cold and as he stood there, he looked at his watch, at the small minute hand. One two three four five seconds – people running—eight nine ten eleven twelve – from all over, people came running –fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen seconds – more people, more cars, more horns blowing. Curiously distant, Spallner looked upon the scene as an explosion in reverse, the fragments of the detonation sucked back to the point of implosion. Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one seconds and the crowd was there, Spallner made a gesture down at them, wordless.

The crowd had gathered so fast.”

Spallner becomes obsessed with the crowd. He searches old newspaper for pictures of accidents and begins to see that some of the faces in the photographs of the crowds went back decades, seemingly without aging. He detects patterns of appearances of faces in the crowds. Some faces appeared in only one photograph, but others showed again and again. And some of the accident victims died because somebody in the crowd had moved them before an ambulance arrived on the scene. Was that deliberate, Spallner wondered?

Spallner gathers his evidence and decides to take it to the police. Perhaps they might make something of it. But, he never makes to the police station.

“He was rather shocked, but not surprised, somehow, when the truck came rolling out of an alley straight at him. He was just congratulating himself on his keen sense of observation and talking out what he would say to the police in his mind, when the truck smashed into his car.

. . . . .

The crowd was there. . .

He hadn’t felt much at the impact, his spine was hurt. He didn’t dare move. . .

Someone said, ‘Give me a hand. We’ll roll him over and lift him into a more comfortable position. . .”

Lucky Spallner. Thanks to his curiosity and his keen sense of observation, he is now going to get the answers to all his questions about The Crowd.

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The Scythe

This is a horror story, about a man who has just hit bottom, and thinks that it can’t get worse. He should have talked to my grandmother, a cheerful soul; one of her favorite sayings was “Things are never so bad they can’t get worse.” I guess that was meant to cheer us up, but somehow it never quite succeeded.

Drew Erickson was out of work, out of money, and out of gas. That he was also lost didn’t make much difference since he couldn’t go anywhere even if he did know where to go. With him were his wife Molly and their two children.

Off in the distance he could see a golden wheat field, ripe enough for the scythe. And, beyond that, a small farmhouse. Hoping for help, trading work for food and perhaps shelter, he went to the farmhouse. He got no answer when he knocked and called, so he went in. He found the occupant upstairs in the bedroom.

“The paper lay open on the pillow beside the old man’s head. It was meant to be read. Maybe a request for burial, or to call a relative. Drew scowled over the words, moving his pale, dry lips.

To him who stands beside me at my death bed:

Being of sound mind, and alone in the world as it has been decreed, I, John Buhr, do give and bequeath this farm, with all pertaining to it, to the man who is to come. Whatever his name or origin shall be, it will not matter. The farm is his, and the wheat; the scythe, and the task ordained thereto. Let him take them freely, and without question – and remember that I, John Buhr, am only the giver, not the ordainer. To which I set my hand and seal this third day of April, 1938.

[Signed] John Buhr, Kyrie eleison!

A scythe leaned on the wall beside the bed. “Words were scratched on the blade: Who wields me – wields the world!”

Their luck had changed: food in the refrigerator, shelter, a bull and several cows, and a farm that was theirs.

Several days later, Drew decides to go to work. The wheat needs cutting. He went out with the scythe. At the end of the day, he was puzzled. The golden wheat he cut down began immediately to rot and disintegrate as he watched it. Secondly, it was a huge field but only a small portion was ripe for cutting, a portion that he could do in one day. On the second day, he could see green shoots already springing up where he had cut down the ripe stalks, and another portion of wheat that had been green yesterday was now ripe for cutting.

Eventually Drew tries to stop cutting the wheat for it rotted away too quickly to be harvested. Cutting the wheat, therefore, was a waste of time. But, when he tried to stop, he felt some force working on him, forcing him eventually to go out there.

While cutting a ripe section of wheat one day, he swore he could hear his mother’s voice cry out as he cut a stalk. He became convinced that he had killed his mother. And the rest of the wheat? Were they also people. He sent off a telegram and got word several days later that his mother had died, approximately at the same time he had cut that stalk.

Drew now understood the meaning of the words on the scythe; he was Death. The true horror of what he was doing struck home when he encountered stalks that he knew were his wife Molly and his two children.

Spoiler Warning: I reveal the ending of the story at this point.

“And then, sobbing wildly, he rose above the grain again and again and hewed to the left and right and to left and to right and to left and to right. Over and over and over! Slicing out huge scars in green wheat and ripe wheat, with no selection and no care, cursing, over and over, swearing, laughing, the blade swinging up in the sun and falling in the sun with a singing whistle! Down!

Bombs shattered London, Moscow, Tokyo.

The blade swung insanely.

And the kilns of Belsen and Buchenwald took fire.

The blade sang, crimson wet.

And mushrooms vomited out blind suns at White Sands, Hiroshima, Bikini, and up through, and in continental Siberian skies.

The grain wept in a green rain, falling.

Korea, Indo-China, Egypt, India trembled; Asia stirred, Africa woke in the night…

And the blade went on rising, crashing, severing, with the fury and the rage of a man who has lost and lost so much that he can no longer cares what he does to the world.

. . . . .

“Once in awhile during the long years a jalopy gets off the main highway, pulls up steaming in front of the charred ruin of a little white house at the end of the dirt road, to ask instructions from the farmer they see just beyond, the one who works insanely, wildly, without ever stopping, night and day, in the endless fields of wheat.

But they got no help and no answer. The farmer in the field is too busy, even after all these year; too busy slashing and chopping the green wheat instead of the ripe.

And Drew Erickson moves on with his scythe, with the light of a blind suns and a look of white fire in his never-sleeping eyes, on and on and on . . . ”

I wonder: is it more comforting, after reading the daily headlines and studying the history of the human race, to think that what we do is caused by madmen, rather than by sane, ordinary people.

A thought just occurred to me. Could Drew be symbolic of weapons makers and inventors or creators of weapons--possibly nuclear weapons?

Kim Stanley Robinson: The Gold Coast

Kim Stanley Robinson's The Gold Coast (TGC) is one of the three novels in what was first called "The Orange County" trilogy, but is now being marketed as "The Three Californias." However, I still prefer my title, "The California Troika." The three novels are set in Orange County, California, at approximately the middle of the 21st century. However, they do not overlap because Robinson has postulated three widely differing futures for Orange County. It is, therefore, an alternate universe series, of a very unique kind.

I have already posted on another of the three novels--The Wild Shore (TWS), .which was a "What if" novel--one that answers the question what if there was a nuclear attack on the US? What would life be like for the survivors in Orange County some half century later?

The Gold Coast belongs to the “If this goes on” category, for it postulates the continuation of the Cold War along with massive urban population growth for Orange County, which is now a center for the military-industrial complex. Much of the industry in Orange County now consists of defense contractors, corporations whose existence depends upon gaining contracts for military weapons. The novel is an extrapolation of Orange County in the 80s when it was written.

The third novel, Pacific Edge, is a “What if” novel and is, in comparison to these two, pure fantasy. I will go into that in more detail in a later post.

While the two novels occupy widely varying universes, Robinson appears to have created a very broad pattern, at least for these two novels. The main character is a young male, Jim McPherson. In TGC he is about a decade older than the main character (Hank Fletcher) is in TWS. Physically McPherson is older; however, he still is a teenager for he hasn’t grown up yet. McPherson is still “finding himself.” He has two part-time jobs, one as a data entry clerk and the other a part-time instructor at a night school.

A second commonality is the importance of the relationship between the young man and his father, though the relationships are quite different. Jim McPherson’s father, Dennis, is an engineer who works for a defense contractor. A significant part of the story concerns the father’s problems at work, both with the work itself and his immediate supervisor, whose goal is getting the task done, regardless of whatever harm this might do to his subordinates.

The father has a dream: the weapons system (reminds me a bit of Pres. Reagan’s Star Wars System) he is now working on could eliminate the need for nuclear weapons. It might not completely eliminate war, but at least it will remove a possible nuclear holocaust that both threatens and sustains the volatile political world situation. As it is, the US is now involved in “Open wars in Indonesia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Thailand” and “Covert wars in Pakistan, Turkey, South Korea, and Belgium.”

Dennis McPherson’s job and employer are two of the reasons for the estrangement between Jim and his father. Jim is vaguely opposed to the war and therefore opposed to his father’s work. Dennis is unhappy with his son whom he feels hasn’t grown up yet, even though he was graduated from high school a decade ago. He also feels he’s being used by Jim as Jim only comes around when he wants a free meal and he needs his father to work on his car.

Both novels begin with digging into the past. In TWS, Hank and his friends, one night, go to a graveyard, hoping to dig up some coffins and find something valuable that they could use for bargaining at the local swap meet. In TGC, Jim and his friends dig up a parking lot, which covered the foundation of a school, hoping to find some relics of the past. In both cases, they are discovered and are forced to leave without finding anything valuable.

In both novels, there is an old man named Tom. Tom is an important character in TWS as he is one of the few sources of information about the world before the nuclear holocaust. In TGC, Tom is Jim’s uncle who plays a very minor role in the novel. However, he too is a source of information (occasionally) of what Orange County was like half a century ago.

One of the strongest parts of the novel is Robinson’s creation of a culture that is recognizable today, with some major differences, of course. If one were to describe Jim’s life, one couldn’t go too far wrong by bringing back the old cliché: “Sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll.” One of Jim’s friends is Sandy, who is an independent drug designer. What I find interesting is that his drugs are taken with an eyedropper and deposited directly on the eye. I guess this makes for a quicker absorption as it goes directly into the brain and also more efficient as less of the drug is lost along the way. Another friend is Tashi, who lives in a tent on a roof and tends his own rooftop garden. He fixes computers and other electronic devices.

The controlling technology in this world is TV. Nobody in the late 80s could have foreseen the development of the mobile phone and its impact on society. TV in TGC has supplanted reality. Jim, at a party, having accidentally hit himself on his head and under the influence of Sandy’s latest creation, has gotten himself involved in a ping-pong game with the local champion and is playing way over his head, making spectacular volleys and saves. The game gains the interest of the other partygoers who eventually leave the room the game is being played in for the adjoining room where they can watch it on CCTV. All of Jim’s friends, including Jim, have their places wired for CCTV so they can see what’s going on in any room from any room in the place. They would much rather watch the game on a TV screen than watch it directly.

Another incident demonstrating the superiority of life on a monitor over a flesh-and-blood presence occurs shortly after the ping-pong game. Jim hooks up with Virginia, and they leave the party for her place for sex. They arrive at her place:

Virginia flips on the lights, turns on the video system. Eight little cameras mounted high on the walls track them with IR sensors, and two big sets of screens on the side walls show Virginia undressing, from both front and back. Jim finds the images arousing indeed . . . They maneuver into positions where they can both see a wall of screens.

. . . . .

her face is in exquisite profile . . . and her breasts . . . well it’s almost enough to distract him from the screens. . .

The screens flicker and go blank. Glassy gray-green nothingness.

Virginia jumps off Jim . . . Angrily she punches the buttons of the control panel over by the light switches.

She can’t get the system to work. Sex is no longer interesting in itself, but only as performance.

Fortunately Jim comes to the rescue. He moves a large mirror into the room so that now they can see their reflections. They resume, finding the mirrors a bit kinky as the two couples stare back at each other.

The Plot: Jim becomes increasingly dissatisfied with his life and decides to become actively involved with a group that opposes the military-industrial complex. He begins with slapping posters around the mall and eventually gets involved with sabotaging the defense contractors. Eventually the group decides to attack Laguna Space Research (LSR), the company that Jim’s father works for.

Then it gets complicated and several plot lines converge. The next target is LSR. Since the group attacks installations only at night and only where there are no guards, many companies are putting guards in places they never were before. Surprisingly, LSR suddenly removes the guards from the site where Dennis McPherson is developing his super-weapon. The attack on LSR is set up. Sandy, who also occasionally deals as well as develops drugs, had to dump overboard a shipment of drugs along the coast where LSR is situated. He is told by those who ordered and paid for the drugs that he’s got to go back this night because the police and DEA will be distracted by an attack on LSR.

OVERALL COMMENTS: a complex tale with multiple themes—fathers and sons, the generation gap, the military-industrial complex, the effects of technology on those embedded in it, knowingly or otherwise. Recommended for those looking for a complex tale set in the near future that has some disturbing similarities to our own. Again, it makes no difference which of the three--The Wild Shore, The Gold Coast, or Pacific Edge--you read first.

Joseph Wood Krutch: more from Baja California

Once again Joseph Wood Krutch opposes the more traditional attitude and, I must admit, makes some interesting points while doing so.

Too long a view in either time or space makes people miss a great deal that is close at hand, and it is my experience that those who are quickly bored in the country are usually those who lack "the microscopic eye," those to whom "nature" means only "scenery," and "scenery" means only "views." Charles Lamb once declared that he would not much care if he never saw another mountain, and, while I would not by any means go so far, I think I know what he meant. To know nature only that way is like knowing a city only by its skyline. To feel the life of either city or country, one must be actually in it, aware of the excitement and variety of individual lives. People are often blamed because they cannot see the wood for the trees, but that does not seem to me so bad as not seeing trees for the wood.

Several Eastern philosophies talk about mindfulness, which, roughly speaking, means living in the present. Too many people, according to Buddhists and Taoists, spend too much time going over the past and worrying about the future. Instead, we should focus on the present, we should live now, and we should be aware of what we are now doing and where we are now.


"When eating a peach, eat the peach."
Anon

Something to think about:

1.3

Like students of art who walk around a great statue, seeing parts and aspects of it from each position, but never the whole work, we must walk mentally around time, using a variety of approaches, a pandemonium of metaphor. No insight or association, however outlandish or contradictory, should be forbidden us; the only thing forbidden should be to stand still and say, "This is it."

-- Charles Grudin --
from Time and the Art of Living


Sometimes I understand Grudin and sometimes I don't. This is one of those "don't" times.

I know what a statue is, and I know what the students are walking around, but what do students of time "walk mentally around"?

The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XLV

Quatrain XLV is one of those rare quatrains that disappear after the first edition. So far, I think only one other quatrain was dropped completely and never returned.


First Edition: Quatrain XLV

"But leave the Wise to wrangle, and with me
The Quarrel of the Universe let be:
And, in some corner of the Hubbub coucht,
Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee."


The first two lines of this quatrain echoes two earlier quatrains, IX and XXVI, in which the poet/narrator invites the reader to leave all this behind:


Quatrain IX:
"But come with old Khayyam, and leave the Lot
Of Kaikobad and Kaikhosru forgot:"


Quatrain XXVI:
"Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise
To Talk; . . ."


I don't remember whether this pattern shows up in later quatrains, but I wouldn't be surprised. It has been used by other poets for one can find it among English Renaissance poetry and contemporary poetry as well. T. S. Eliot begins "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" with Let us go then, you and I. It's meant to draw the reader into the poem and to the way of the narrator's thinking.

The narrator wants the reader to leave this unpleasant place where the Wise wrangle and to let be the quarrel of the Universe, and although he refers to the quarrel of the universe, I suspect he really means the wrangling of the Wise and their quarrel about the nature of the universe.


The last two lines are rather strange, and I wonder if these lines are the cause of this quatrain's disappearance in later editions.

And, in some corner of the Hubbub coucht,
Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee."


"Hubbub" refers back to "wrangle" and "quarrel." "Coucht" is an archaic term, one of whose meanings is "to lie in ambush or concealment: lurk," and this seems to fit the idea of hiding away from the fuss in a corner, unnoticed, one could hope.

The last line, however, suggests something more than a simple attempting to avoid notice or to escape the wrangling--"Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee." To me, this implies striking back in some way at those who are making a game of thee--playing with thee for amusement or entertainment-- or perhaps making light of what happens or being amused by it. We should not take what happens to us too seriously--it is all a game. Perhaps Shakespeare is saying the same thing here:

"All the world's a stage

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts."

This monologue, from As You Like It--Act II, scene 7, ends with "Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." And, we see this echoed in the last line of Quatrain XXIII, "Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and--sans End!"

We are actors playing many roles--with many entrances and many exits--and even though we may die, there will be more plays and more roles and more games.

The question is, of course, is just who is making a Game of thee. Is it God? And, if so, the last line certainly doesn't encourage us to take God's plan seriously, if it makes a Game of thee, a work of entertainment.

Another meaning of game is an activity with specified rules and regulations and a way of determining a winner. Are we involved in this sort of Game?

Or should we simply take another cup of wine and leave all this wrangling behind us.

Something to think about:

The mass of people believe their judgements to be their own. They get very offended when it is suggested that they have actually received them ready-made from others and have simply been puppets of popular opinion all their lives. They speak in the current jargon and dress in the latest fashion--not from any personal sense of style but just to fit in. And these servile imitators actually believe they are self-determining. How ridiculous! This is an incurable sickness because people are convinced that they are not suffering from it. It is a universal madness, because everyone is infected. It is, therefore, a complete waste of time for me to try to return people to their own intrinsic instincts. Oh Well!

-- Chuang Tzu --
from Taoist Wisdom
Timothy Freke, editor and trans.


Chuang Tzu seems to believe that this is a universal trait, that all people are this way. I think there are many who simply follow the crowd, but it's hard to distinguish between those who are just trying to fit in and those who have reached the same conclusions on their own. How does one know which is which?

Otomo no Yakamochi (718?--785 AD): a lament

I think I've said this before, but just in case I haven't, I'm always surprised as I read poems and stories from various cultures and times at the universality of certain themes. It's almost as if these were part of our DNA. In how many stories and poems that you have read have the themes of the following poem appeared? The shortness of life? The transitoriness of all around us? Nature as an exemplar?


A lament on the ephemerality of life

The life a man leads
is but a transient affair:
so it has been said
through all the generations
since the ancient time
when heaven and earth began.
Observed from afar
on the broad plain of heaven,
the radiant moon
sometimes waxes, sometimes wanes;
so, too, with treetops
in the foot-wearying hills:
when springtime arrives
they glow with blossom's beauty,
and in the autumn
their leaves of many colors
are touched by dew and frost
and scatter before the wind.
The life of a man
seems to be no different.
The pink flush of youth
fades from the complexion,
the raven tresses,
black as leopard-flower seeds,
take on a new hue;
the morning smile dies at dusk.
I am powerless
to hold back the tears that fall
like a flooding rain
when I think of man's transience,
of how he declines
with changes invisible
as a blowing wind,
with changes unremitting
as the flow of a river.


Envoys

It is precisely
because all is transient
that even mute trees
put forth blossoms in springtime
and in autumn shed brown leaves.


When I contemplate
the brevity of man's life,
I am indifferent
to worldly things: how many
are the days I spend in thought!

-- Otomo no Yakamochi --


from Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology
Steven D. Carter, trans.


This poem was written some twelve hundred years ago in a different culture, but I don't think one needs a degree in literature to understand it completely.

Loren Eiseley: from The Immense Journey

One of Loren Eiseley's recurring themes is that evolution has not stopped with us. Some evolutionists appear to resemble creationists in this: they have replaced the dictum that God has created us as the pinnacle of Its creation with Evolution has brought us forward as Its supreme achievement. The following is a quotation from the essay "The Snout" in The Immense Journey. The Snout is Eiseley's nickname for the creature who lived in water but was also able to travel for a short distance on land to reach another pond.

We teach the past, we see farther backward into time than any race before us, but we stop at the present, or, at best, we project far into the future idealized versions of ourselves. All that long way behind us we see, perhaps inevitably, through human eyes alone. We see ourselves as the culmination and the end, and if we do indeed consider our passing, we think that sunlight will go with us and the earth be dark. We are the end. For us continents rose and fell, for us the waters and the air were mastered, for us the great living web has pulsated an grown more intricate.

To deny this, a man once told me, is to deny God. This puzzled me. I went back along the pathway to the marsh. I went, not in the past, not by the bones of dead things, not down the lost roadway of the Snout. I went instead in daylight, in the Now, to see if the door was still there, and to see what things passed through.

I found that the same experiments were brewing, that up out of that ancient well, fins were still scrambling toward the sunlight. They were small things, and which of them presaged the future I could not say. I saw only the they were many and that they had solved the oxygen death in many marvelous ways, not always ours.

I found that there were modern fishes who breathed air, not through a lung but through their stomachs or through strange chambers where their gills should be, or breathing as the Snout once breathed. I found that some crawled in the fields at nightfall pursuing insects, or slept on the grass by pond sides and who drowned, if kept under water, as men themselves might drown.

. . . . . . .

Perpetually, now, we search and bicker and disagree. The eternal form eludes us -- the shape we conceive as ours. Perhaps the old road through the marsh should tell us. We are one of many appearances of the thing called Life; we are not its perfect image, for it has no image except Life, and life is multitudinous and emergent in the stream of time.

I remember reading once a commentary on Eiseley in which he was characterized as morose, depressing, pessimistic, etc. I have read much in Eiseley and disagree. The above quotation suggests, instead, an optimistic view of life.

Combination Plate 19: An Announcement

To those, if any, who have been patiently awaiting me to finish Combination Plate 19, my apologies. I hadn't realized that it has been a month since I posted the first commentaries.

It's done.

I have just added a brief commentary on Fred Saberhagen's Changeling Earth, an SF novel, and a nonreview of Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines.

The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XLIV

While it may not look like it, Quatrain XLIV is the sixth and final quatrain in a series that refers to the grape or to wine. This may not have been clear in the first edition, but FitzGerald made a change to the previous quatrain in the second edition, that also appears in the fifth edition, which makes it much clearer.



First Edition: Quatrain XLIV

The mighty Mahmud, the victorious Lord,
That all the misbelieving and black Horde
Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul
Scatters and slays with his enchanted Sword.




Second Edition: Quatrain LXII

The mighty Mahmud, Allah-breathing Lord,
That all the misbelieving and black Horde
Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul
Scatters before him with his whirlwind Sword.




Fifth Edition: Quatrain LX

The mighty Mahmud, Allah-breathing Lord,
That all the misbelieving and black Horde
Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul
Scatters before him with his whirlwind Sword.


FitzGerald has introduced some interesting changes in the Second Edition, all of which are carried through to the Fifth Edition. As far as I can tell, the Second and Fifth Editions are identical, so whatever differences there may be were inserted in the Second Edition.

In the First Edition, the first line ends with "the victorious Lord," which has been changed to "Allah-breathing Lord." The change, of course, introduces Allah. Mahmud is the "Allah-breathing Lord." In Greek, for example, the word for breath and spirit is the same. In
English, we have several words that have "spir' as a core: "respiration" and "inspiration." "Respiration," of course, refers to breathing, while a theological definition of "inspiration" is "a special influence of a divinity on the minds of human beings."

I see the change as follows: in the first quatrain, the poet gives credit to Mahmud alone--"the victorious Lord"--he is victorious, with no reference to any other person or agency. In subsequent quatrains, Mahmud is inspired by Allah and not only inspired, but so filled with Allah that his breath is infused with Allah.

I think this also influenced FitzGerald's decision to change "his enchanted sword" to "his whirlwind sword" in the Second Edition. "Enchanted" suggests magic, a fantasy, or a fairy tale, while "whirlwind" evokes a more physical or real world, and, also, the relationship of wind and breath. In addition, "whirlwind" also evokes God, for God and "whirlwind" appear together in the Bible in several places, one being in "The Book of Job," where God speaks to Job out of a whirlwind.

Finally, "Scatters and slays" in the First Edition becomes simply "Scatters" in the Second and also the Fifth Edition. I think this reflects FitzGerald's decision to remove it from the realm of fantasy, for one can never really slay the " black Horde/Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul." At best, one can scatter or drive them away, but they always return.

While there are numerous Mahmuds in history, one note I came across said this Mahmud (971-1030 AD) is the one who conquered and ruled what is now Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and North-West India.


What has all this to do with grapes and wine? Well, Mahmud scatters "all the misbelieving and black Horde/Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul." This doesn't sound like the foes of a physical conqueror; instead these are the foes of the spiritual self, the soul.

If we think back to the previous quatrain, Quatrain XLIII, we read that the grape can transmute "Life's leaden Metal into Gold." In other words, the grape can change our lives from dull lead to Gold--the grape can improve our lives. The problem is that the last line of Quatrain XLIII , the First Edition,

"The subtle Alchemist that in a Trice
Life's leaden Metal into Gold transmute."

ends with a period, which suggests the end of the thought. It breaks the theme off at this point, leaving Quatrain XLIV hanging by itself. In the Second Edition of the previous quatrain, FitzGerald, possibly having recognized the problem, ends the quatrain with a colon, which tells the reader that what follows is in some way related to what precedes the colon.

"The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice
Life's leaden metal into Gold transmute:"



The colon in the Second and Fifth Editions, therefore, ties the two quatrains together, so that the two are clearly linked.

The Grape that can with Logic absolute
The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:
The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice
Life's leaden metal into Gold transmute:

The mighty Mahmud, Allah-breathing Lord,
That all the misbelieving and black Horde
Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul
Scatters before him with his whirlwind Sword.


Now we see that the Grape that confutes the jarring Sects, that transmutes life's dullness into gold, is also a conqueror of the "Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul." This colon also relates back to the first colon in the quatrain, so that the Grape is now described in three ways: its logic that confutes the jarring sects, its alchemical ability to transmute life's dullness into Gold, and its spiritual power to scatter the soul's fears and sorrows.

This quatrain is one that those who argue for an interpretation of grape and wine into the more theologically acceptable forms of grace or Allah's aid can point to. I can see it either way, although I must still argue that seeing the grape and wine simply as grape and wine is far more consistent with the previous quatrains.

Serendipity: Nietzsche

Quotations taken from Human, All-Too-Human



83
The sleep of virtue. When virtue has slept, she will get up more refreshed.

I guess a little sinnin' is good for you, at least according to Nietzsche. But, I wonder--are people really more virtuous after engaging in an sinful escapade, or two, or three, or . . .?




184
Untranslatable. It is neither the best nor the worst in a book that is untranslatable.


I included this because I don't understand why he thinks this should be so.



189
Thoughts in a poem. The poet presents his thoughts festively, on the carriage of rhythm: usually because they could not walk.

I've often thought the same about many contemporary music groups: those with the spectacular light shows, colored smoke, strange costumes and hairstyles, and bizarre behavior usually are trying to hide that they are, at best, mediocre performers and/or singers. I guess they hope the audience won't notice how truly bad they really are.


All quotations from Human, All-Too-Human are taken from The Portable Nietzsche, translations by Walter Kaufmann.

Kenko: Essays in Idleness

Kenko (approx. 1283-1350) is a Japanese Buddhist priest. Kenko was a low-ranking member of the imperial court, but for some unknown reason he left the court.

Essays in Idleness seems to have been written between 1330-1332, after he left the court. The oldest surviving text dates back to 1431, about a century after Kenko composed the 243 short essays that comprise the work. It seems as though it was never published during his lifetime.


It is desirable that a man's face and figure be of excelling beauty. I could sit forever with a man, provided that what he said did not grate on my ears, that he had charm, and that he did not talk very much. What an unpleasant experience it is when someone you have supposed to be quite distinguished reveals his true, inferior nature. A man's social position and looks are likely to be determined at birth, but why should not a man's mind go from wisdom to greater wisdom if it is so disposed? What a shame it is when men of excellent appearance and character prove helplessly inept in social encounters with their inferiors in both position and appearance, solely because they are badly educated.

A familiarity with orthodox scholarship,* the ability to compose poetry and prose in Chinese, a knowledge of Japanese poetry and music are all desirable, and if a man can serve as a model to others in matters of precedent and court ceremony, he is truly impressive. The mark of an excellent man is that he writes easily in an acceptable hand, sings agreeably and in tune, and, though appearing reluctant to accept when wine is pressed on him, is not a teetotaler. (emphasis mine)

-- Kenko --
from Chapter 1
Essays in Idleness

* A note by the translator, Donald Keene
"Scholarship in the Confucian sense -- learning useful in governing a country or of intrinsic moral value."'

An interesting description of "the excellent man" from 14th century Japan. It reminds me somewhat of the European ideal courtier or the Renaissance man.

While he begins with the physical, he then moves quickly to the inner resources of the individual and later suggests that one can't do too much about one's social position or physical appearance, but a good education is something the person can do something about.

I enjoyed his initial comments about a person with physical charm, who didn't say things that grated (content or sound?) on one's ears and who "did not talk very much."

My favorite part is the last sentence--"The mark of an excellent man is that he writes easily in an acceptable hand, sings agreeably and in tune, and, though appearing reluctant to accept when wine is pressed on him, is not a teetotaler.

Would you like to see someone like this in the hallowed halls of Congress or state legislatures or various governors' mansions or the White House?

Serendipity: John Fowles, Wormholes

I have never really wanted to be a novelist. For me the word carries a load of bad connotations--like author and literature and reviewer, only worse. It suggests something factitious as well as fictitious, insipidly entertaining; train-journeyish. One can't imagine a "novelist" 's ever saying what he actually means or feels--one can hardly even imagine his meaning or feeling.

These words have had connotations because they suggest that in some way writing and being a writer aren't central human activities.

I've always wanted to write (in this order) poems, philosophy, and only then novels. I wouldn't even put the whole category of activity--writing--first on my list of ambitions. My first ambition has always been to alter the society I live in; that is, to affect other lives. I think I begin to agree with Marx-Lenin: writing is a very second-rate way of bringing about a revolution. But I recognize that all I am capable of is writing. I am a writer. Not a doer.

Society, existing among other human beings, challenges me, so I have to choose my weapon. I choose writing; but the thing that comes first is that I am challenged.

--John Fowles --
from Wormholes


Wormholes is a collection of John Fowles' non-fiction writings: "essays, literary criticism, commentaries, autobiographical statements, memoirs, and musings." The quotation is the very first lines of the work. It's quite a surprise to read that one of the premiere English novelists (or so I regard him) "never really wanted to be a novelist." He's a revolutionary who doesn't believe the pen is mightier than the sword, yet found that his best weapon is the pen.

Are his novels really the response to challenges from society?


Some novels by John Fowles: The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Magus, The Collector, The Ebony Tower, and Daniel Martin.

Something to think about

3

That we pursue something passionately does not always mean that we really want it or have a special aptitude for it. Often, the thing we pursue most passionately is but a substitute for the one thing we really want and cannot have. It is usually safe to predict that the fulfillment of an excessively cherished desire is not likely to still our nagging anxiety.

In every passionate pursuit, the pursuit counts more than the object pursued.

-- Eric Hoffer --
from The Passionate State of Mind




Well, one part that I can agree with is that even getting what we want doesn't satisfy us for long.

Do we often go after substitutes instead of what we really want?

Is the chase more important than the capture or the acquisition? Or, possibly another way to ask: Is the journey more important than the destination?

Joseph Wood Krutch: Baja California

Joseph Wood Krutch's Baja California and the Geography of Hope is a very unusual book, in that it's hard to explain just what it is. It's a Sierra Club Publication (copyright 1969), and my copy is a large format paperback book. It's getting rather decrepit, so one of these days I'm going to search for a hard back copy.

It has text by Krutch, some of which comes from other works by him, photos by Eliot Porter, and lines of poetry by Octavio Paz, translated by Muriel Rukeyser. The color photographs are taken in Baja California. I don't know if Paz's poetry is specifically about Baja, but they do seem to be about a desert landscape, so they are appropriate. I'm doing a search now for the book from which Paz's poetry was taken to see if I can learn more. Krutch's text varies: some of the commentaries are about Baja while some seem more to be inspired by Baja than specifically about Baja California.

I am going to make several posts about the book over the next few weeks. Rather than attempting to tell you about the book, I'm going to let Krutch speak for himself. He does a far better job than I ever could. Baja California and the Geography of Hope is part travelogue, part philosophical musings, part societal commentary, and part . . .?


"I can understand how an astronomer may conclude that God is a mathematician. The planets seem to know where they are going and what they are about. Theirs is a formal, unvarying dance which moves in accord with an abstract scheme of delightful regularity; and the mathematical physicist seems to have discovered that the microcosm is, despite the disturbing presence of certain principles suggesting indeterminacy, a good deal like its big brother the system of heavenly bodies. But the world of living things exhibits no such co-operation of part with part, no such subordination of the unit to the whole. The God who planned the well-working machines which function as atom and solar system seems to have had no part in arranging the curiously inefficient society of plants and animals in which everything works against everything else; and the struggle between, let us say, the mouse which would continue its species and the owl which would feed its young goes on inconclusively millennium after millennium."

-- Joseph Wood Krutch --



Los huesos son relampagos
en la noche del cuerpo.
Oh mundo, todo es noche
y la vida es relampago.

Our bones are lightning
in the night of the flesh.
O world, all is night,
life is the lightning.

-- Octavio Paz --


There is much talk today about disturbing the balance of nature or the web of nature or ecological networks, while others use system theory when they talk about the environment. Are these really out there in the environment, in nature, or are these abstract constructs applied by us? I wonder if we lose anything by using these models.

Edgar Allan Poe: "The Black Cat"

"For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not--and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events have terrified--have tortured--have destroyed. me. Yet I will attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but Horror--to many they will seem less terrible than baroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place-- some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects."

This is the opening paragraph of one of my favorite Poe tales, "The Black Cat." This tale can be read in a variety of ways. Most often it is printed in a collection of supernatural horror stories. It can also be seen as the ravings of a madman. Another way, and my favorite, is as a story told by a sane man who has concocted a mix of fact and fiction, designed to convince the reader that the teller is mad and therefore should not be executed by reason of insanity.

"The Black Cat" is one of a group of tales by Poe that I call "1st person confessionals." It's been awhile since I read all of Poe's stories, so there may be some that I have missed, but for now, I put four stories in that category: "The Black Cat," "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Tell-tale Heart," and "The Imp of the Perverse." (See my post on May 17, 2009 for some comments on this story and Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground).


1. All four are told in the 1st person.
2. All four are murderers.
3. All four are now revealing the whole story.
4. All four were driven by uncontrollable forces to commit their crimes.


The problem is that these are first person narratives. They cannot be evaluated in the same way as a third person narrative. The third person narrator can be trusted since the third person narrator is outside the story and, therefore, has no reason to deceive or mislead the reader. The first person narrator, however, is inside the story, may be involved in the events, and therefore may have solid reasons for deceiving the reader or listener. The reader must evaluate the story in the same way any person's story would be judged--on the basis of what is known about the teller, the teller's possible motivation, and the likelihood of the story itself. How likely or unlikely are these events? Can these events by verified by other sources?

To begin, what is your reaction to the first paragraph of the story which I just quoted? How does it strike you? Notice that the teller contradicts himself throughout. First, he calls the story "wild" and then immediately afterwards, calls it "homely." It's as if he can't make up his mind as to how he wishes to present the tale so that it would be most convincing: is it "wild," a "Horror," "terrible," a "Phantasm"? Or "homely," "mere household events," "common-place," "an ordinary succession of very natural causes and events"? How could the reader avoid being sympathetic to the teller who is so completely confused by this inexplicable series of events?

What do we know about the teller? He obligingly fills in a bit of his background: "From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them. This peculiarity of character grew with my growth, and, in my manhood, I derived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure. " He was lucky in his choice of a spouse for he tells us that "I married early and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own."

What happened to turn this genial, kindly, docile, and humane person into the monster that he reveals later in the story? "The Fiend Intemperance --through which my general temperament and character . . . experienced a radical alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence. My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them." It was the "Fiend Intemperance"-- a demon outside him that controlled him. He is not responsible.

He now proceeds to tell the reader the events that lead him to his cell, and the gallows in the morning. His story regarding the mutilation of his first cat doesn't sound reasonable. He is very drunk when he comes home and decides to cut out the cat's eye. Cutting out an eye requires considerable coordination. Could someone drunk really do that? Gouge or stab the eye perhaps, if he got lucky, but, imagine holding a struggling cat in one hand while very drunk and trying to cut out an eye? Not too likely I should think. He may have done it, but I don't think he was drunk when he did it. And, of course, we have only his word for this. Who else could confirm that this happened?

The second and most ridiculous? unbelievable? impossible? unlikely? series of events takes place when the house burns down. In the morning, most of the house is destroyed except for the wall behind the bed, where appeared "as if graven in bas relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat. The impression was given with an accuracy truly marvelous. There was a rope about the animal's neck." How can this be explained?

It's simple. He relates that he had killed Plato, the cat, by tying a rope around its neck and hanging it in the garden. When the house caught fire, people had rushed into the garden and attempted to waken him by taking the hanging corpse of the cat and throwing it through the window. It then struck the newly plastered wall with such force that it was covered by dripping plaster.

Is it really plausible that one would kill a cat by hanging it from a tree? And, is it really likely that someone would cut down the corpse of a cat hanging from a tree and throw it through the bedroom window in hope of awaking the occupants when the house was on fire? Or, is it more likely he had killed the cat and had plastered it in the wall to see if that was possible, as perhaps an experiment of some sort?

The third series of unlikely events culminates in the death and burial of his wife. He asks his wife to accompany him on some household errand (never explained) downstairs into the basement, where he is nearly tripped up by the second cat. Enraged he raises his axe (which he conveniently just happens to carrying--perhaps for that household errand?) to kill the cat, but his wife interferes and enraged, he kills his wife instead. Fortunately for him, there was a false wall in the basement which he could easily remove and place his wife's corpse in the opening. There he buries her and plasters up the wall. Again, I have some serious doubts about his tale of what happened.


I think Poe has created a fascinating narrative in which a sane man attempts to convince the reader that he is mad, and at the same time provides, through inconsistencies, evidence of his sanity. As for the mysterious events about the cat, well, what witnesses are there to corroborate his story? His wife?

Serendipity

Greetings,

Here are two poems that I discovered while slowly working my way through a collection of poetry. In fact the two are on the same page.

The first poem is not really that memorable, except for its title and one line. It's a lament for what we lose as the years pass by. If someone wishes to provide a translation for the title, I will add it to the post and, of course, credit the source.



Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam*

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for awhile, and then closes
Within a dream.

-- Ernest Dowson --
(1867-1900)

After rereading it, several times, I think I may take back what I said above. This seems to be one of those quiet poems that slowly and subtly work their magic. That magic line, of course, became the title of a very decent film, and if I'm not mistaken, the theme song from the film was high on the pop charts at that time. It's been a long time since I watched the film, but I feel that the film did capture the poem--that sense of loss--but conveying that ironically by referring to two symbols not usually associated with loss: wine and roses.

The second stanza would be my favorite.

*The following translation of the title and comment are from Steven Pentz, who is the author and owner of the very classy blog First Known When Lost, the address of which is posted following his comment. You can also log on directly by going to the blog list in the column on the right side of this page.

"Fred: the title of Dowson's poem comes from Horace's Odes (I,iv,15). One translation is: "the short span of our life forbids us to indulge in long-term hope." Disclaimer: I did NOT figure this out for myself -- I found it in the edition of Dowson's Collected Poems edited by R.K.R. Thornton (pages 224-225).

http://firstknownwhenlost.blogspot.com/
-------------------------



A contemporary bit of wisdom, which unfortunately by now has become a time-worn and hackneyed cliche, has something to do with taking time to smell the roses. Here's a poem which presents the same idea, but adds something to it.


Leisure

What is this life, if full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like stars at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

-- William Henry Davis --
(1871-1940)


Today we are more likely to be staring at the lifeless flat screen of a TV set, or a computer monitor, or a mobile phone. Our life is filled with electronic bits and not with our organic brothers and sisters, or even with granite or marble (unless shaved and smoothed).


Both poems are from The World's Best Poems
Mark Van Doren and Garibaldi M. Lapolla, ed.

The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XLIII

This quatrain is the fifth in a series of six linked quatrains that refer to the grape or to wine, and specifically to its superiority to reason and logic.


First Edition: Quatrain XLIII

The Grape that can with Logic absolute
The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:
The subtle Alchemist that in a Trice
Life's leaden Metal into Gold transmute.



Second Edition: Quatrain LXI

The Grape that can with Logic absolute
The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:
The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice
Life's leaden metal into Gold transmute:



Fifth Edition: Quatrain LIX

The Grape that can with Logic absolute
The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:
The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice
Life's leaden metal into Gold transmute:




There are minimal differences among the three editions. Several nouns go from upper case to lower case in the second and the fifth editions. "Subtle" in the first edition changes to "sovereign" in the second and fifth editions which makes the Grape more of a ruler and supreme. Gold itself was often referred to as the Sovereign Metal. The most significant difference occurs at the end of the fourth line: in the first edition, the quatrain ended with a period, while the second and fifth editions end in a colon. The period indicates that the thought is complete within that quatrain, whereas the colon in the second and fifth indicate that the thought is not complete yet. The colon often tells the reader that what follows the colon will either extend the thought of or provide an explanation for or an example of the idea immediately prior to the colon.

I've read comments that state that the "two-and-seventy sects" refer to all the world's religions. The only point that's not clear is whether Islam is included. Alchemy was the forerunner of chemistry (I suspect some might dispute this), and it's focus was the transmutation of metals into gold. This was to be accomplished by employing the Philosopher's Stone which would change anything it came into contact with into gold. It's not quite clear just what the Philosopher's Stone was supposed to be, probably because no one ever found or created it.

Again, the narrator puts forth the theme that religious disputations are a waste of time, and that one would be wiser and happier drinking wine. Wine's "Logic absolute" is superior to the contending religious groups, for it is impossible to debate anything with one who has imbibed a considerable amount of alcohol.

Serendipity

This seems strangely familiar. It's probably as true today as it was over five hundred years ago and no doubt as true as it has been throughout human history.

"I should readily excuse in our people the having no other pattern and rule of perfection than their own manners and customs; for it is a common fault, not of the vulgar only, but of almost all men, to aim at and abide in the manner of life to which they are born. . . But I complain of their special lack of discernment in allowing themselves to be so cheated and blinded by the authority of present usage, that they are capable of changing; their opinions and judgements every month, if custom so pleases, and that they form such diverse judgements about themselves. When they wore the busk of the doublet between the breasts, they maintained by vigorous arguments that it was in its proper place. Some years later, lo, it has dropped down to between the thighs; they jeer at the former fashion, declare it unbecoming and unbearable. The present style of dressing makes them incontinently condemn the earlier style, with so great a determination and so universal an accord, that you would say that it is some sort of mania that turns their understanding about. Because our changing is so sudden and so swift in this respect, that the inventive powers of all the tailors in the world could not supply enough novelties, it is inevitable that the despised styles should often come again into fashion, and the others themselves soon after fall into disrepute; and that the same judgement may, in the course of fifteen or twenty years, adopt two or three, not simply different, but quite contrary, opinions with an incredible inconsistency and fickleness. There is no one of us so keen of wit that he does not allow himself to be fooled by this contradiction, and his inner as well as his outer eyes to be unconsciously dazzled."

Michel de Montaigne
from Chapter XLIX Of Ancient Customs
The Essays of Montaigne

I would disagree with Montaigne only about the length of time involved. It may have been a few years when he wrote this, but today, fashions change every year, or less. And it's equally true in politics, as well as for celebrities, songs, books . . .

Joseph Wood Krutch and the Boogum Tree

The boogum tree is one of the oddest trees on the planet and is found mainly in Baja California. Following are some comments by Joseph Wood Krutch about the boogum.



"One finds the boogum wild only in Lower California. If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I should not believe it, for it is far more improbable looking as a tree than the giraffe is as an animal. Whether it was christened by some admirer of Lewis Carroll or whether some accident of convergence is responsible for the fact that even the gravest botanical treatises call it by a name which occurs elsewhere only in The Hunting of the Snark, I do not know. In any event, the name is gloriously appropriate because the boogum tree looks far more like something out of Alice or the Snark than like any real tree.

Speaking of the strawberry, Dr. William Butler, a worthy who was one of Shakespeare's contemporaries, made the sage remark, 'Doubtless God could have made a better berry but doubtless God never did.' Doubtless he could have also made a queerer tree than the boogum, but if He did I have never heard of it.

What one sees when one undertakes to contemplate it is an inverted, green-backed cone, six or eight feet high and with the proportions of a carrot. The general effect is rather like a huge taproot that has for some reason grown up into the air instead of down into the earth. From this cone scattered twigs a few inches long project foolishly in all directions. At some seasons a few futile leaves dangle from these twigs, though they were bare when I saw them. Only another Lewis Carroll word will do to describe it; like the borogoves in Alice, it is "mimsy"--which, as Humpty-Dumpty explains, means both flimsy and miserable.

So inelegant a solution of a problem is seldom achieved or at least seldom persisted in by Nature, who may not be infallible but who has buried most of her mistakes in geologic time, where this one ought to have been forgotten along with some of the equally inadvisable animals who had their regrettable day. The essayist Charles D. Stewart once analyzed the orthodox tree "as an invention," but he did not mention this one which, so far from being a credit to the inventor, looks like one of those unbelievable triumphs of no ingenuity exhibited by the patent office in hopes of raising a smile. To see three of these vegetable monstrosities together--and three together I have seen, one like a chunky carrot, the other two foolishly elongated--is to suspect that some of nature's journeymen had made trees and not made them well, they imitated an organism so abominably. If the time ever comes when the desert no longer seems to me at all strange, I know how I shall remind myself that it is. I shall imagine a mouse-that-never-drinks [the kangaroo rat] resting in the conical shade of a boogum tree."

Joseph Wood Krutch
from Baja California and the Geography of Hope



I have seen a boogum tree. It was shortly after I arrived in Tucson to attend the University of Arizona. I was walking about the campus and came across a small desert garden with several types of cacti and mesquite trees. There was also some thing else there which I knew had to be a boogum. I had never seen one before, but I had read a description of the tree. Nothing else would dare look like that.