Tam multa, ut puta genera linguarum sunt in hoc mundo: et nihil sine voce est.
Friday, March 31, 2023
The Jerusalem Post asteroid phenomenon
Sync: The two St. Valentine's Days show up again
Thursday, March 30, 2023
Sync: Odin at the door, DD lemniscates, sideways eyeballs
There's this idea of Odin sacrificing himself to himself by being nailed to a tree.From a Norse poem called Havamal:137. "I trow [think] I hung on that windy Treenine whole days and nights,stabbed with a spear, offered to Odin,myself to mine own self given,high on that Tree of which none hath heardfrom what roots it rises to heaven."138. "None refreshed me ever with food or drink,I peered right down in the deep;crying aloud I lifted the Runesthen back I fell from silence."Pretty clear this was created after Jesus.There's the identification of Hermes with Odin (I guess via Mercury). Maybe this Odin-sacrifice idea represents an association of Odin with Jesus specifically, rather than Odin being a stand-in for general God.And a synchronistic image used on this Wikipedia page:
The Stranger at the Door (1908) by W. G. Collingwood |
Sync: Arthur Koestler, scripture as fan fiction
Wednesday, March 29, 2023
Liverpool and the double-D lemniscate
In the mid- to late 1960s, paisley became identified with psychedelic style and enjoyed mainstream popularity, partly due to the Beatles.
Tuesday, March 28, 2023
The light of life (sync but not only sync)
Last night, I began working on the next installment in my notes on the Fourth Gospel, starting from John 8:12:
Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."
I spent quite a lot of time ruminating over this verse, noting the ambiguity of "the light of life" -- the light produced by life, or the light that illuminates life? -- and also various passages elsewhere in the Gospel where Jesus suggests that this "light of the world" will be a temporary thing -- e.g. "As long as I am in the word, I am the light of the world" (John 9:5), but "the night cometh" (v. 4).
After nearly an hour of chewing on this one verse, I put my Bible down and picked up something else I have been reading: Open That Door! (1916) by Robert Sturgis Ingersoll, a book about the meaning and value of reading. The very first sentences I read -- mere minutes after leaving John 8:12 -- were these:
Without disparaging those with whom I sit before the fire, and chat, and smoke, I must confess that I value equally with them the friends of eternal character that exist there in the book-case. They lighten the path of life; they are ready for converse when my spirit calls.
Go to the greatest books for your most enduring friends, but upon having formed their friendship do not leave them in the study, but carry them within your spirit to your business and the marts of men, and in holding their confidences burning in your heart you will find yourself a more thorough human being.
Ingersoll's "friends of eternal character" are actually mortals (Whitman, Tolstoy, Burns, Villon, Byron, Lamb, Carlyle, and Emerson), called "eternal" only because they live on in their books, but one would more naturally associate such an expression with Jesus, and "lighten the path of life" is remarkably similar to Jesus' statement about how his followers "shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." This is followed by a reference to "burning in your heart," which also suggests Jesus: "Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?" (Luke 24:32). The scriptures are, of course, "the greatest books."
The chapter of Open That Door! from which the above quotation comes begins with the observation that "the most potent inheritance, that books vouchsafe, is the personalities of the great authors who have inscribed their souls within them. Personal character affects our lives as does nothing else." Whitman is quoted: "This is not book; / Who touches this, touches a man." This of course suggests the Johannine "Word made flesh," but isn't it also a succinct expression of the value of the Gospels, and of scripture more generally? Isn't that what keeps us coming back to the Bible again and again and again? Not for "doctrine," but to spend time in the presence of such gigantic personalities as Moses, David, and above all Jesus Christ.
Did "the night come" when Jesus left this world? Perhaps, to a degree. But the midnight Sun of the Holy Ghost still shines for those whose hearts are open to it, and even the light of Christ's mortal life still shines as reflected moonlight, the pale fire of the Holy Bible -- dim and uncertain at times, but still invaluable to those who would not walk in darkness.
Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God.
Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow (Isa. 50:10-11).
Rocky Road to -- where exactly?
My recent post "Are the Irish better at math?" alludes heavily to the song "Rocky Road to Dublin." This led me to look up the song on Wikipedia.
Quick, without looking anything up, how would you complete this sentence?
"Rocky Road to Dublin" is a 19th-century Irish song written by Irish poet D. K. Gavan about a man's experiences as he travels to ________.
If you guessed Liverpool, you're absolutely right! If you didn't see that coming, well, neither did I. Despite the title and refrain, "all the way to Dublin" is only halfway through the journey, which is from Tuam to Mullingar to Dublin to Holyhead to Liverpool. (In fairness, the road only goes as far as Dublin, after which the journey must be continued by ship.)
The Wikipedia article also cleared up something else I've occasionally wondered about. As everyone knows, the song properly begins "In the merry month of June" -- so as to assonate with Tuam -- but one occasionally hears this ineptly altered to "In the merry month of May." Here's why:
There are many variations in the lyrics depending on the singer. For instance "June" in the first line is often replaced by its Irish counterpart "Meitheamh" mistaken by some to be the English "May".
So we have an unexpected Liverpool, and the sixth month being mistaken for the fifth.
In my March 17 post "You can set your watch by the green motorcycle," I relate a dream in which it was 2:00 p.m. in Taiwan, which I thought was "Tuesday morning at five o'clock, Liverpool time" -- the time at which, wherever you are in the world, you can see a green motorcycle go by if you keep your eyes open. After waking up, I checked and found that 2:00 p.m. in Taiwan is actually six o'clock in Liverpool, not five. So we have an unexpected Liverpool (no one says "Liverpool time"; Liverpool is on Greenwich time), and the sixth hour being mistaken for the fifth.
At the time, I didn't even notice the Irish connotations of posting about a green motorcycle on St. Patrick's Day, but perhaps that would be a modern-day traveler to Dublin's preferred means of rattlin' o'er the bogs.
A ptero more to Green Lantern's liking
I went to Project Gutenberg to look something up, and this was one of the recent releases (March 26, 2023) featured on the homepage.
It's not yellow, but pterodactyls of any color grace the covers of few enough books to make it a noteworthy coincidence nonetheless.
I scrolled down to the table of contents and saw that the third chapter, about pterosaurs, is called "Pirates of the Air" -- pretty similar to "winged raiders," isn't it?
According to the rather dated science of The Monster-hunters (1916), all mass-extinction events were caused by ice ages, and the periods punctuated by these ice ages are characterized as "empires."
With this upheaving, came the First Age of Cold. The coal-forests died, the pine-trees took their places. The marshes became plains. Nearly all species of life belonging to that warm age died. The Empire of the Fishes and Amphibians ended. The Mediterranean slowly diminished in size and again became an inland sea, while in Europe to the north, Africa to the south and in America, beyond the Atlantic, the Empire of the Reptiles began. . . . Yet the slow death of cold which had awaited the Fishes and Amphibians in the Permian Revolution was awaiting the Reptiles also. The Second Age of Cold was near. After the Cretaceous Period, the land began to rise, until, when hundreds of thousands of years had elapsed, the northern part of Europe was elevated, the Mediterranean lost its opening to the ocean, and became once more an inland sea. Then came the Second Ice Age, the second cataclysm of want and death. The Pterodactyls died away completely, the huge reptile monsters fell by thousands and all the giant Saurians had to give place to the warmer-blooded mammals.
The above quote is not in the "Pirates of the Air" chapter but in the next one, "Seeing the Sea-serpent," so the fact that pterodactyls get top billing in the list of casualties of the K-T extinction event is curious. This syncs with my March 18 post "Sync: Another yellow ptero, St. Valentine's Day, Empire of the Ants."
There, too, pteros are unexpectedly highlighted (in the thumbnail) in an account of the K-T extinction. And, as the title indicates, the same post features a sync having to do with the phrase "Empire of the Ants" -- paralleling the similar "Empire" phrases in The Monster-hunters.
The "Seeing the Sea-serpent" chapter also features this illustration, captioned "The Fiercest Monster That Ever Lived."
Isn't that a familiar turn of phrase? Where have we seen that before? Oh, right.
Looking at the list of illustrations after the table of contents, I noticed that the second one on the list was called "Scylla of the Seven Heads" -- one of a small collection of images of "Monsters Thought Real by the Ancients."
This got my attention because on March 17 I had posted old (2015-16) Scylla and Charybdis syncs in "Sync: Skylark and Charybdis" and included a picture of Scylla, though with the canonical six heads rather than seven.
I Ctrl-F'ed Scylla to see if she put in any other appearances in The Monster-hunters, and lo and behold:
"No signs of Scylla and Charybdis," said a voice behind him.
"That's so, Uncle George," the boy said, turning, "this is where the old Greeks believed Scylla to be, isn't it? But I'd rather tackle that six-headed monster, in spite of all her appetite, even though each head took a man from the crew, as it did from Ulysses' ship, than I would run the gauntlet of the guns of Gibraltar let loose on us. Still, even Scylla might be uncomfortable. What do you suppose was the basis of that old story, Uncle George!”
"Personification of the peril of adventure,” was the reply. “That is why Scylla and Charybdis were first said to hold guard over the Straits of Messina, between Sicily and Italy, while afterwards the twin terrors of the ravening whirlpool and the six-headed man-eating woman monster were located at Gibraltar. As the Straits of Messina became more familiar, the terror had to be put farther away, where only the most daring would venture.
"Remember, Perry, that the Greeks believed they saw a god or a goddess or a demon in all the forces of Nature. The sea was under the rule of Poseidon, or Neptune, as the Romans called him; the dawn goddess Eos, or Aurora, was the mother of the Winds, such as Boreas, the North Wind and Zephyr, the West Wind. So, you see, the Greeks felt sure that every point of danger must be guarded by some kind of demon or monstrous form, while beautiful places were inhabited by fair maidens. After all, Perry, it's not so very long ago since people believed in mermaids. So far as that goes, some people believe in them still."
Right after the references to Scylla and Charybdis, characterized as "the twin terrors," we read of "the dawn goddess Eos, or Aurora." In my March 7 post "Fever dreams and sync: Popol Vuh twins, Spinal Pap, stone worship, and more," I discuss terrible twins in Mayan myth and The Matrix Reloaded, and I also mention this:
In my flytrap post, the key phrase was "blushing trap," which I interpreted as a description of the rosy lobes of the Venus flytrap. The expression made me think of the Homeric "young Eos with fingertips of rose." In her comment, Debbie quotes Ovid on the Roman equivalent of Eos: "Aurora, watchful in the reddening dawn, threw wide her crimson doors and rose-filled halls." These rose references link back to William John's carnivorous "Poison Rose of Poetry."
Are the Irish better at math?
Studies have shown that Irish people are significantly better than non-Irish at solving this math problem. Remarkably, many of them are able to do so in a matter of seconds, without using a calculator or even a pencil and paper. The problem is as follows:
Suppose there is a population of hares which, though every bit as prolific as lagomorphs generally are, are heavily hunted and thus increase in numbers very, very slowly. In fact, from one year to the next, the hare population only increases by an average of 0.005615%. To the casual observer, the hares' numbers appear to be static, but in fact the population is slowly but surely growing and, given enough time, will eventually double. It's a long road, but in the end they will arrive there. Assuming the rate of increase does not change, precisely how many years will it take the hare population to traverse this rocky road to doubling?
Hannah Gifford, Hare and the Blackthorn Blossom |
Monday, March 27, 2023
There wasn't originally supposed to be a King of the Jews.
Friday, March 24, 2023
Assorted syncs: Going to the Moon and the Sun, Tori Amos's "Winter," inverted crosses, moonwalks
BA: No. The Sun is too hot. It is not a good place to go to.AG: What happens if they went in winter, when the Sun is cold?BA: The Sun is not cold in the winter.
Thursday, March 23, 2023
Aladdin's three elder brothers
Q: 我問你,阿拉丁有幾個哥哥?A: 三個:阿拉甲、阿拉乙、阿拉丙。
Q: Let me ask you, how many elder brothers does Aladdin have?
A: Three: Alajia, Alayi, and Alabing.
Belgian comic-book character Tintin is called 丁丁 in Chinese.Tin is not a possible syllable in Chinese, and Ting sounds like a girl's name, so the best they could do was Ding-ding. You know, like a bell. A tin bell. Like a tinker would make.The character 丁 is the fourth Celestial Stem, and as such is used to translate the letter D when used in an ordinal sense -- that is, when A, B, C, and D are used in the sense of "one, two, three, four," as in an outline or on a multiple-choice test. For example, Serie D football is rendered 丁級 in Chinese. So if you wanted to go Backstroke of the West on poor Tintin and translate his Chinese translation back into English, he'd be called DD.
A weird “glitch in the Matrix” experience
This morning I had a meeting at my school with the owner of a manufacturing company for which I do regular consulting work. He was coming to pay a bill and discuss some things. This was early, before the school's normal opening hours, so we were the only two there. I let him in and locked the door behind him. We do things the old-fashioned way, so he handed me an envelope of cash, and I sat down to count the money and write out a receipt by hand. He said he would go upstairs to the meeting room first and wait for me there.
When I counted the money, I found that it was $1000 short of the amount due. (A thousand is the largest denomination in everyday use in Taiwan, roughly equivalent to a twenty in the US, though its value is a bit higher than that.) I counted again several times, but the total kept coming up $1000 short. I checked to see if the missing bill was still in the envelope, or on the counter, or on the floor, but it wasn't. I counted again and again and checked everywhere, until I was 100% satisfied that he had given me the wrong amount. I took the cash upstairs and told him. He counted it himself, agreed it was the wrong amount, and handed me another thousand from his wallet.
I went back downstairs to stow the cash and write out the receipt -- and there in the middle of the counter, in plain sight, were two crisp new thousand-dollar bills in (using the term literally for once) "mint condition"! They were right there, on the otherwise empty counter on which I had counted the money, and where I had looked several times, very carefully, for the missing cash. It is simply not possible that the two bills were there all along. I had only gone upstairs for a minute, probably less; there was no one else in the building, and the door was locked. Yet there they were.
I thought to check the security camera footage to see what had happened, but the camera was -- very conveniently! -- out of order. My honest belief is that if I could view the footage, I would very likely see the $2000 just blink into existence out of nowhere. How confident am I that the money was not there when I left the counter? Extremely confident, not appreciably different from 100%. How confident am I that physical objects don't just materialize out of nowhere for no observable reason? Well . . . let's just say I've seen some pretty strange things in my puff.
After counting the cash several more times, to be absolutely certain that it was now $2000 more than the amount due, I went back upstairs and gave my client his receipt and $2000, explaining that I had somehow miscounted the first time around, and he had actually given me too much rather than not enough. He's the phlegmatic type who pretty much takes everything in his stride without asking too many questions, so he accepted this all as unremarkable, and we went on with our meeting.
But I didn't miscount the first time -- the first seven or eight times, rather -- and the two bills weren't there before. I'm as certain of this as I can be of any empirical matter. Even if we assume that I somehow did miscount, or somehow failed to notice the two bills lying right in front of me on the counter, isn't it remarkable that my error should have coincided with an equal and opposite error on his part -- with him mistakenly overpaying by $1000 and me mistakenly thinking he had underpaid by precisely the same amount?
Later, after the meeting, I counted the money several more times just to make sure the extra $2000 hadn't vanished again like fairy gold.
I realize that this story will not seem impressive to anyone except me, the one who experienced it. You'll just think, "Well, he must have made a mistake." But I'm sure I didn't. Either (a) things can just appear out of nowhere for no explicable reason, or (b) I can be 100% sure about something I've seen with my own eyes and carefully confirmed and reconfirmed and yet still be wrong. Either way, all bets are off.
Wednesday, March 22, 2023
Sync: Ne(m)o and Morpheus
2016 Mar 3 (Thu) – I read a few pages (pp. 87-89) of Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine in [a cafe called] FM Station. They were playing the Lukas Graham song “7 Years,” which I had never heard before. It begins:
Once I was seven years old, my mama told meGo make yourself some friends or you'll be lonely.Once I was seven years old.
It then goes through various other ages: once I was 11, 20; soon I’ll be 30, 60. It ends by repeating the opening lines quoted above.While listening to this, I was reading pp. 88-87 [sic] of Dandelion Wine. The children are discussing how Colonel Freeleigh is a “Time Machine” because he can remember so many of his past experiences.
‘Maybe old people were never children, like we claim with Mrs. Bentley, but, big or little, some of them were standing around at Appomattox the summer of 1865.’
Tom and Doug discuss what Doug calls “far-traveling” – meaning going back in time through memory.
“Far-traveling. You make that up?”“Maybe yes and maybe no.”“Far-traveling,” whispered Tom.“Only one thing I’m sure of,” said Douglas, closing his eyes. “It sure sounds lonely.”
Thus the chapter ends.A bit earlier in the book, on pp. 72-73, old Mrs. Bentley insists that she was once a little girl, but the children refuse to believe it. She shows them a photo to prove that she was 7 years old once.
In triumph she flashed her trump card, a postal picture of herself when she was seven years old…“Who’s this little girl?” asked Jane.“It’s me!”The two girls held onto it.“But it doesn’t look like you,” said Jane simply. “Anybody could get a picture like this, somewhere.”They looked at her for a long moment.“Any more pictures, Mrs. Bentley?” asked Alice. “Of you, later? You got a picture of you at fifteen, and one at twenty, and one at forty and fifty?”The girls chortled.“I don’t have to show you anything!” said Mrs. Bentley.“Then we don’t have to believe you,” replied Jane.“But this picture proves I was young!”“That’s some other little girl, like us. You borrowed it.”
Like the song, this focuses on the fact that one was younger in the past – with a specific focus on “seven years old.” Both also emphasize loneliness.
Longue journéeQui s'achève dans une chambre foncéeJ'entends au loin les sirènesQui comme une vague me tirent, m'amènentChez MorphéeÉmerveilléCe doux piègeOu les gammes en délire s'arpègentM'emportent si loin des villesEt je fuis,je fuis les escadrilles du privilègeBeau sortilègeOn solde les vieux pays au marché des gorillesCaché dans les bras de Morphée je rêneNemo en exilSur mes rêves fragiles
Long dayThat ends in a dark roomI hear the sirens in the distanceWhich like a wave pulls me, brings meTo MorpheusAmazedThis sweet trapWhere delirious scales arpeggioTake me so far from the citiesAnd I run awayI flee the squadrons of privilegebeautiful spellWe sell the old countries at the gorilla market (???)Hidden in the arms of Morpheus I reignNemo in exileOn my fragile dreams
Tuesday, March 21, 2023
Russell M. Nelson is Skull and Bones
Just something to file away, from his 1979 autobiography From Heart to Heart:
Earth accuses earth: The Pericope Adulterae (Notes on John 7:53-8:11)
Monday, March 20, 2023
Further green motorcycle syncs
I felt as if the house was in a large valley type of area. It was in the summer because there were green plush leaves on the trees and the grass was green. . . . I could feel that something wasn’t right. I then looked outside the window to see what was going on and I could see the moon bouncing (like a ball) in the sky. . . . At one point we could see a motorcycle with a young White man and his girlfriend. What was bizarre is that the motorcycle came down from the sky!! It landed in the field where my mother and I were standing.
Imagine my surprise when I researched the lyrics and OMG! Check out the reference to MOTOR CAR, Painted GREEN. Although a car is not a motorcycle but do in keep in mind they both are vehicles.
Long time agoLife has begunEveryone went to the sunCars full of motorsPainted greenMouths full of chocolateCovered creamArms that can onlyLift a spoonEveryone's gone to the moon
Friday morning at nine o’clock, she is far away.Waiting to keep the appointment she made,Meeting a man from the motor trade
Saturday, March 18, 2023
Sync: Another yellow ptero, St. Valentine's Day, Empire of the Ants
Friday, March 17, 2023
You can set your watch by the green motorcycle
I dreamed that I was on a city sidewalk with a group of professional-looking people who were discussing something important. In the middle of the discussion, I noticed the time -- in a few seconds it would be 2:00 p.m. -- and interrupted:
"Excuse me, sorry to interrupt, but it's nearly two, and the green motorcycle is due to pass by. I believe you should be able to see it over in that direction."
But no one showed the slightest interest in what I was saying or inclination to look in the direction in which I was pointing. They just looked annoyed at the interruption. A few seconds later, the green motorcycle did in fact pass by, exactly when and where I had predicted. None of them was looking, and I didn't get a very good look at it, either, because some of them were standing in the way, blocking my view.
"Oh, you just missed it," I said, "and the chance only comes once a week -- Tuesday morning at five o'clock, Liverpool time. Also, it's a little known fact that if you play Sergeant Pepper on repeat all week, you'll find that the green motorcycle always comes by right when they're singing about it."
One of the group took me aside and said in a low voice, "Look, no one cares about this, and no one is impressed. Why even bring it up?"
⁂
My understanding in the dream was that wherever you were in the world, if you kept your eyes open at 5:00 Tuesday morning, Liverpool time, you would see a green motorcycle go by, timed to sync with the Beatles singing about it on Sergeant Pepper. Only there are no motorcycles, green or otherwise, in any of the Beatles' lyrics. And the time mentioned on Sergeant Pepper is "Wednesday morning at five o'clock." And two p.m. in Taiwan is six a.m. in Liverpool.
Here in Taiwan, green motorcycles are closely associated with the postal service. Not sure if that means anything.
The emphasis on the time five o'clock also makes me think of this record, with its hourglass and ampersand.
Sync: Skylark and Charybdis
2015 Nov 1 (Sun) – Ate at a Korean restaurant in Taichung. On the way, passed signs for a restaurant called “Skylark,” and I explained to V what a skylark was. Went to Mollie [Used Books]. V got The Odyssey, retold by Robin Lister and illustrated by Alan Baker. I skimmed it and was struck by the unusual rendition of Scylla:
Later that night I was reading Dunne’s Intrusions? and found the following (p. 52):
Ward writes: ‘A whole swarm of meteors might have streaked the sky unheeded while Ulysses, life in hand, steered between Scylla and Charybdis.’
2015 Nov 2 (Mon) – Finished Intrusion?. Later, on pp 113-114, Scylla and Charybdis put in another appearance, this time in an extended metaphor:
On to turmoil and destruction! Forward to the Mindless Automaton! There is the Scylla and there is the Charybdis between which Man the Flaming Soul has to steer a course which Nature herself has not yet been able to discover.Scylla is the nearest, now. We have to dodge those snapping jaws before we can give heed to anything else; and, fortunately, our ship’s crew is in complete accord on that point. Unfortunately, however, the majority of them are clamouring for a helm hard down and a course –– the shortest possible –– laid straight for the centre of Charybdis.If we reached that, what would it matter whether we circled there for a thousand years or a million years before disappearing down the vortex? We should have bungled the whole voyage, and have missed making the open sea.What lies in the open sea? All our hopes for the future of the Human Race.I do not believe that Man has reached his zenith. I do not believe that a woman moaning ‘ye-ew’ down her nose to the accompaniment of a tom-tom is the acme of musical achievement (and this notwithstanding the bandmaster’s assurance that the nasal trouble in question is a ‘great voice’). I do not believe that the Painter has no choice save that which lies betwixt the Representational and the Disgusting. I do not imagine that the cigar-box indicates the apotheosis of Architectural Form. On the contrary, I hold that Music has barely unfolded its skylark wings, that Art has not yet wandered beyond the fringe of its powers, that Invention is in its infancy, and that the common man’s ability to appreciate beauty is only just awaking from its natal sleep. And I believe that in those aspects of the Open Sea, the Flaming Soul will find satisfaction for its needs. For Creation –– Creation untrammelled by tradition, unheeding the discouragement of the multitude, undaunted by the opposition of Nature –– is the greatest of all adventures.Oh, God! allow us to reach the Open Sea!
2016 Aug 6-7 (Sat-Sun) – Finished rereading J. W. Dunne’s Intrusions? On Saturday. Finished The New Immortality a day or two before. On Sunday, reread the entirety of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (except the first page or two, which I’d read much earlier and then taken a long break).From Dunne:
But God, thank God! Is not ‘just’. Justice is of Man. God is, to us, what the Seers have seen in Him. He is the Escape from Self. He is Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful. He is the Father Who does not will that one of these little ones shall perish. He is Love. But he is not a distributor of rewards for ‘virtues’ and of punishments for ‘iniquities’. (New Immortality, p. 106)Ward writes: ‘A whole swarm of meteors might have streaked the sky unheeded while Ulysses, life in hand, steered between Scylla and Charybdis.’ (Intrusions?, p. 52)I was extremely keen on singing, and had just discovered that a callous choir-master had ruined my voice (I had been the school soloist) by making me continue to sing alto long after that voice had begun to crack. I had waited for two years before trying my new, man’s register; but, when I did so, I heard to my dismay a horrible reedy thing with a range of barely twelve notes. (p. 76)On to turmoil and destruction! Forward to the Mindless Automaton! There is the Scylla and there is the Charybdis between which Man the Flaming Soul has to steer a course which Nature herself has not yet been able to discover. Scylla is the nearest now. We have to dodge those snapping jaws before we can give heed to anything else; and, fortunately, our ship’s crew is in complete accord on that point. Unfortunately, however, the majority of them are clamouring for a helm hard down and a course -- the shortest possible -- laid straight for the centre of Charybdis. … I do not believe that Man has reached his zenith. I do not believe that a woman moaning ‘ye-ew’ down her nose to the accompaniment of a tom-tom is the acme of musical achievement (and this notwithstanding the bandmaster’s assurance that the nasal trouble in question is a ‘great voice’). … On the contrary, I hold that music has barely unfolded its skylark wings,...” (pp. 113-114)
From Shakespeare (page numbers from my edition of the Complete Works):
When we are both accouter’d like young men,I’ll prove the prettier fellow of the two,And wear my dagger with a braver grace;And speak, between the change of man and boy,With a reed voice; (p. 219)Truly then I fear you are damned by both father and mother; thus when I shun Scylla your father, I fall into Charybdis, your mother; well, you are gone both ways. (p. 220)But mercy is above this scepter’d sway,––It is enthroned in the heart of kings,It is an attribute of God himself;...Though justice be thy plea, consider this––That in the course of justice none of usShould see salvation: we do pray for mercy; (p. 222)Music! hark! …The crow doth sing as sweetly as the larkWhen neither in attended… (p. 226)
I noticed the Scylla and Charybdis link first, then the reedy voice. The other two are less specific.
2016 Mar 17 (Thu) – I was checking . . . homework at Doob2. I was just correcting a line [a student] had written: “She looked like an angel,” when it should be “She was like an angel.” At the same time, the music playing in the restaurant had a repeating line that sounded like “She seems like an angel.” I looked it up later, and it turned out to be “She sings like an angel”; the song was “Unforgivable Sinner” by Lene Marlin.Some days previous, the idea had come out of nowhere that if I ever quote my Mosquito Song (“O brother, shrink not from the kill / ‘Tis but your own suck’d blood you spill”) I should attribute it to “the West Alleghany Singing Devils.” This idea came back to me on 3/17 and I wrote it down in my planner. I can’t be sure if it was before or after hearing the Lene Marlin song, though.
Meme syncs: Good Times Roll, Reality Temple, Blue Wizards
In his September 2023 post " Asenath vs. the Son of Baal-ox within the Sawtooth Mountains " (on the old, public blog), William Wri...
-
Following up on the idea that the pecked are no longer alone in their bodies , reader Ben Pratt has brought to my attention these remarks by...
-
Disclaimer: My terms are borrowed (by way of Terry Boardman and Bruce Charlton) from Rudolf Steiner, but I cannot claim to be using them in ...
-
1. The traditional Marseille layout Tarot de Marseille decks stick very closely to the following layout for the Bateleur's table. Based ...