obiter scripta

Obiter Scripta, no. 127

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Would that I had words that are unknown, utterances and sayings in a new language, that hath not yet passed away, and without that which hath been said repeatedly — not an utterance that hath grown stale, what the ancestors have already said.

— Khekheperre-Sonbu, quoted in The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians: Poems, Narratives, and Manuals of Instruction from the Third and Second Millenia B.C.

This week marked eighteen years since I first pushed off from shore in my little blog-boat. When I think of how little I know and how little I have to say about it, I’m amazed I’ve kept going so long. I’ve never really felt like I suffer from writer’s block per se, because I’ve never had to write on a schedule, but there have certainly been many times when I’ve felt lacking in inspiration, wondering if I’d ever have an interesting or amusing thought again. And yet, somehow I’ve managed to pile up all these tiny writer’s blocks and assemble them into a miniature pyramid. Something to be said for sheer diligence, I suppose.

Obiter Scripta, no. 126

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Talk as if you were making your will: the fewer words, the less litigation.

— Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom

I did it, fellows. I recently went an entire work day without speaking to anyone. Now, like Apocryphal Alexander, I weep, for what is left for me to conquer? In order to extend my silence even longer, I’d probably have to officially join some kind of monastical order. No, I’m afraid I’ve reached the limits of my potential.

I haven’t intended to be silent here, by the way. It’s just the usual thing where the inanity and fatuity of the world reduces the onlooker to mute incomprehension. These things always pass, though.

Obiter Scripta, no. 125

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One of the things which make life on this planet more or less agreeable is the speed with which alarums, excursions, excitement, and rows generally, blow over. A nine-days’ wonder has to be a big business to last out its full time nowadays. As a rule the third day sees the end of it, and the public rushes whooping after some other hare that has been started for its benefit.

— P.G. Wodehouse, The Head of Kay’s

One of the smaller pleasures of this time of year is reading the year-end summaries of notable events and thinking, “Oh, yeah, I forgot all about that.” For three days, the fate of the world seemed to hinge on this thing, and now it’s just an afterthought. I admit I take a tiny satisfaction in seeing how many supposedly-momentous happenings passed into obscurity without managing to solicit any comment from me.

Obiter Scripta, no. 124

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Some people predict that it’s only a matter of time until our ordinary telephones disappear and are replaced by individual devices about the size of a pocket watch—one side will have a TV screen and speaker; the other will entail a set of buttons you can use to activate various functions or dial world information for any given individual. And if that person doesn’t answer, it will mean that they are dead. Under such circumstances, absolutely no one can get lost anymore.

—Alan Watts, Just So: Money, Materialism, and the Ineffable, Intelligent Universe

I had noticed over the last few weeks that my phone seemed to be slow to receive emails, and I was having problems getting texts to go through to certain people. I didn’t think much of it, because a smartphone is little more than an mp3 player to me. Today, though, I rebooted it and promptly received five voicemails and a couple texts that had apparently been in limbo for who knows how long. I know full well that various corporate and political actors would love to eliminate the possibility of true “private time,” and that the little surveillance devices we all carry around make it easier for them to do so, but it still pleases me to see how, for no particular reason, things just sometimes stop working as expected, introducing just that little bit of unpredictability into events again.

Obiter Scripta, no. 123

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Where moderation is an error, indifference is a crime.

— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books

Dictionary dot com’s Words of the Day for the past week have been: choice, dissent, draconian, autonomy, galvanize, and liberation. Is it really too much to ask to get an interesting, possibly unknown word delivered to my mailbox every morning — you know, just for fun — without it becoming yet another opportunity for political sermonizing? Boy, I really didn’t know what to think previously about complex topics like abortion or federalism, but now that the person in charge of the dictionary email listserv has oh-so-subtly made their point, I’m convinced!

Obiter Scripta, no. 122

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Is there, after all, any solace like the solace and consolation of Language? When I am disconcerted by the unpleasing aspects of existence, when to me, as to Hamlet, this earth seems a sterile promontory, it is not in Metaphysics nor in Religion that I seek for reassurance, but in fine phrases. The thought of gazing on life’s Evening Star makes of ugly old age a pleasing prospect; if I call Death mighty and unpersuaded, it has no terrors for me; I am perfectly content to be cut down as a flower, to flee as a shadow, to be swallowed like a snowflake on the sea. These similes soothe and effectually console me. I am sad only at the thought that Words must perish like all things mortal; that the most perfect Metaphors must be forgotten when the human race is dust.

— Logan Pearsall Smith, All Trivia: A Collection of Reflections & Aphorisms

I was thrilled to discover the existence of a book called Wodehouse Nuggets, a collection of that genius’s finest phrases. Granted, I love the entire stories, but I admit it feels deliciously decadent to sit down with a big bag of similes, as it were, and stuff handfuls into my greedy mouth, so to speak. Now, if only someone would compile a similar effort called Nietzsche Nuggets. Damn. That’s going to end up being my job, isn’t it?

Obiter Scripta, no. 121

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I woke this morning out of dreams into what we call Reality, into the daylight, the furniture of my familiar bedroom—in fact into the well-known, often-discussed, but, to my mind, as yet unexplained Universe.

Then I, who came out of the Eternal Silence and seem to be on my way thither, got up and spent the day as I usually spend it. I read, I pottered, I complained, and took exercise; and I sat punctually down to eat the cooked meals that appeared at regular intervals.

— Logan Pearsall Smith, All Trivia: A Collection of Reflections & Aphorisms

I woke this morning, as I often do, with a strange self-consciousness of my own mortality. I’m alive! One day, I won’t be! I briefly thought about how fortunate it is that we don’t simply lose all our memories while we sleep and awaken as total strangers to ourselves. As usual, my mind stalled upon attempting to make the cessation of consciousness an object of conscious reflection. A short while later, I opened Smith’s book and read this aphorism, which gave me an eerie feeling of standing in front of an infinity mirror. After that, I was happy to work, exercise, and punctually partake of my meals. Smith seems to imply that this reversion to the habitual mean is some sort of moral or philosophical failing. I disagree. I concur with Nietzsche: deep problems are best approached like cold baths — quickly in, quickly out.

Obiter Scripta, no. 120

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We want words to do more than they can. We try to do with them what comes to very much like trying to mend a watch with a pickaxe or to paint a miniature with a mop; we expect them to help us grip and dissect that which in ultimate essence is as ungrippable as shadow. Nevertheless there they are; we have got to live with them, and the wise course is to treat them as we do our neighbors, and make the best and not the worst of them. But they are parvenu people as compared with thought and action. What we should read is not the words but the man whom we feel to be behind the words.

— Samuel Butler, The Notebooks of Samuel Butler

My words have always been taciturn neighbors. We’ll exchange greetings over the fence if we’re both out in the yard at the same time, but we tend to mind our respective business. Lately, I haven’t seen them around much. I don’t see any lights on in the windows, and I haven’t heard them coming and going for a while. Maybe I should request a wellness check. Of course, if nothing’s wrong, I’m afraid I’ll cause an irreparable breach in our relations by having the authorities come knock on their door. What to do, what to do…

Obiter Scripta, no. 119

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In the preface to The Anatomy of Melancholy, Burton explained that he wrote the book to rid himself of his own melancholia. This it failed to do; Bishop Kennet wrote that Burton’s only relief from despondency was to lean over the foot-bridge at Oxford and listen to the bargemen swearing at each other.

— Frank Muir, The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose

I’m not melancholy or despondent, but I’m also not easily provoked to more than a smirk and a chuckle. Very few things cause me to literally LOL. One thing that does reduce me to uncontrollable giggling like a drunken fool is listening to prank calls using soundboards. They tickle my absurdist/surrealist funny bone. One of the staples of the genre is when a poor victim is called with a soundboard of their own voice, using insults recorded during previous prank calls. It’s amazing how long it takes people to recognize their own voice, or even their own choice phrases. It’s like watching a bird trying to fight with its own reflection in a window. If only Burton could be here now to spend a silly evening on YouTube!

Obiter Scripta, no.118

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After years of patient work around the globe, volcanologists and climate modelers are now sure: in the years 536 and 539/40, there occurred at least two volcanic eruptions of almost unprecedented magnitude. The first of them may have been somewhere in the tropics, although the location has not yet been pinned down conclusively. The second was at Lake Ilopango in El Salvador, an explosion so vast that the entire volcano collapsed and left only the flooded caldera that can be seen today, large enough to contain the capital city. It is estimated that Ilopango alone produced up to eighty-seven cubic kilometers of ejecta, a figure big enough to induce double-takes in even the most skeptical authorities.The sulphate emissions may have measured up to two hundred megatonnes, significantly higher than those from Tambora (1815), which was the second-greatest eruption in history. The Ilopango eruption was among the ten largest on earth in the last seven thousand years, and remember, this was preceded by the 536 volcano, so far unlocated. New research suggests these may have been followed by a third major eruption, in 547.

— Neil Price, Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

Price goes on to describe the resulting effects upon the people who would become known to history as the Vikings. Global temperatures fell anywhere from two to four degrees Celsius. The catastrophic effects upon Scandinavian agriculture caused up to a fifty percent population loss, and the consequent collapse of social institutions. Various Norse myths can be plausibly read as referring to those terrible times when the sun disappeared for years. I was talking with a geologist friend the other day, and we idly wondered how much of human culture and self-conception has been shaped by natural disasters, from whichever Middle Eastern flood inspired the myth of Noah’s Ark, to Pompeii, to the Lisbon earthquake. If the Big One hit the West Coast tomorrow and sent California to the bottom of the Pacific, how much would that reshape the American identity? If another Ilopango erupted next week, how would the narrative around climate change be altered? It’s kind of funny to think about how much human pride depends upon the benign neglect of volcanoes, earthquakes, and asteroids.

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