Quantum Convulsions

The sloth of my writing life is apparently cyclical, corresponding to the arrival in my perpetually unlocked mailbox of Harpers and Atlantic Monthly magazines. They tend to arrive together in an overwhelming embarrassment of reading riches. And they never fail to inspire me. Not every article, no, but usually at least one that has me rapt and joyous (the dryly hilarious "Findings"* in Harpers or depressed (the amazing writing power of Edward Hoagland, in his current essay, "Curtain Calls*) in a good way -- the way that the colorful universe of books in Barnes & Noble makes me want to write, too, and also stops me dead in my literary tracks. *

From "Findings" this month: Australian researchers were trying to solve the problem of humans outliving their eyes; scientists found that brownsnout spookfish grow mirrors to reflect light into the retinas. Gu Gu, a panda in China, bit his third human... Physicists looking for gravitational waves may have discovered instead the noise of space-time breaking down into individuals grains; these quantum convulsions, said one physicist, would confirm the theory that the universe is a blurry holographic projection of a distand two-dimensional plane. .. Coca-Cola is not an efective spermicide."

 And Hoagland's essay made me envision my own inevitable "twilight years" and death in a strangely comforting pastoral and amoral (in the best sense) way. His writing is alive with metaphor and simile: "Believing in life, I believe in death as well, and at seventy-six look forward to my immersion in the other plane of the see-saw also."

He has little patience for regret: "Memories, thank goodness -- not omissions -- make me wistful... As for the graph of my behavior zigzagging behind me through my places of residence like a snail's faintly luminescent trail, arrogant, dunderheaded embarrassments do prickle some of my memories, but no indelibly shameful acts." _________________________________________________

 In other news, my brother the professor joined Facebook. And a Friday night with A. drinking wine at Cercle Rouge and later Oscar included the horror of a sloppy-drunk possibly retarded and dubiously groomed stranger fingering my iPhone at the bar. Note to self: carry anti-bacterial wipes in purse at all times.

Blogger's Block and My/OurSpace

No, I haven't flown the coop. I've had blogger's block. I still have it but pledge (again) to post every day once more starting next Sundary since exactly 2 of you seem to think I have something of interest to say.

Favorite item of interest today: Harper's Magazine's cuckamonga "OurSpace" paean to the recently released Oxford Comprehensive Atlas of the World. (Psst, it's a "fifteen-pound, six-hundred-page, gold-gilt-edged, three-red-ribboned feast." Christmas is coming!

From the inspired article:

"...As a means of finding out about the world, the web is, in one way, without peer, but the narrowness of self tends to misdirect our use of that broad thing: our use of it mirrors our own constriction. MySpace indeed......

But the atlas, contributing editor Wyatt Mason posits, is:

More than merely being about the world, it bounds—binds—the world, and in a way that’s freeing. An atlas, any atlas, commands our interest, directs it outwards, forces us, agreeably, usefully, not to see ourselves, for once, as central to our world. We search an atlas for ourselves in vain: always, it exceeds us. This formal difference is productive. To be forced to encounter the world not on our terms but on the world’s terms teaches us a kind of intellectual and social humility.

My excerpting does the article little -- or no -- justice, by the way.

The Moon Looks Like a Walnut

I live for Harper's magazine's "Findings." The seemingly random selection of scientific factoids is so well done -- dry as a bone and yet often laugh-out-loud funny. Here are a few that cracked me up this month:

Canadian researchers found that men are almost as likely as women to be coerced into sex and that nearly a quarter of men are coerced into cuddling.

Astronomers confirmed that Saturn's moon Iapetus is half black and half white because its front side picks up space dust, and its back side accumulates ice. They also said that the moon has looked like a walnut for a very long time.

Female African jumping spiders that lose their viriginity to large males and avoid being eaten by them after sex tend to choose small, less threatening males for subsequent sexual encounters.

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This weekend has been a long one for me. Like 8 days long, at least. That's one upside of a breakup, I guess. Really, really long weekends...