Previous - 102. Ove & me
Ove
We just got to the chapter where we learn why Ove's beautiful wife fell for him (surprisingly conventional really, he's just like her dad). As I was putting down the book at the end of the chapter, I looked out the window and was captivated by a woman walking past on Market street -- and I still had my reading glasses on so I couldn't see that well. Also my eyes are still dilated from an exam.I find that I spend way too much time thinking up answers to questions no one will every ask me, like, "What went wrong with Napoleon in 1815?" or, "Would the American Civil War have ended sooner if that ass General Butler hadn't been in command of the Army of the James in 1864?" or, and this is the one that is pertinent now, "Which is your favorite curve on a woman's body?"
There are a couple good answers to that last question, and to a large extent it depends on the viewing angle. But for a woman strolling past my window the answer is simple, the small of the back. What's curious (to me) about this is that that particular curve, as exemplified in the young woman with excellent posture who just walked past, is a sure indication that she does not have the lower back problem I have. What I've never liked about the look of my own lower back I now recognize as an indication (the obvious sign that no doctor or even masseur has ever commented on) of my lowest vertebra being in poor shape.
So I would say that my snap appraisal and approval -- of a fuzzy shape passing by -- was aesthetic and I could justify that as being consistent with my fondness for some other curves. But I also suspect that is just my conscious software app rationalizing lower level OS processes that are still (at my age) pointing out mates that might produce more viable offspring.
Absalom
p246 Quentin? His father or his grandfather? "...destiny had fitted itself to him [Sutpen], to his innocence, his pristine aptitude for platform drama and childlike heroic simplicity... he stated calmly, with the frank innocence which we call 'of a child' except that a human child is the only living creature that is never either frank or innocent, the most simple and the most outrageous things...."I have no problem at all denying innocence to children, but I am still confused by what Faulkner is getting at or means by innocence. I can see Sutpen as childlike, though. I can even see him as an adult being innocent in much the way juveniles are considered to be innocent by the criminal justice system. Though I also question what percentage of the "adult" population could be judged to be legally competent if you really looked into the matter. I'm afraid that I see one great advantage of Faith is that you can say "kill them all and let God sort them out."
p250 "... Because he was not afraid until after it was all over [the siege during the slave revolt], Grandfather said, because that was all it was to him -- a spectacle, something to be watched because he might not have a chance to see it again, since his innocence still functioned and he not only did not know what fear was until afterward, he did not even know that at first he was not terrified... a spot of earth [Haiti?] which might have been created and set aside by Heaven itself, Grandfather said, as a theater for violence and injustice and bloodshed and all the satanic lusts of human greed and cruelty, for the last despairing fury of all the pariah-interdict and all the doomed -- a little island set in a smiling and fury-lurked and incredible indigo sea, which was the halfway point between what we call the jungle and what we call civilization, halfway between the dark inscrutable continent from which the black blood, the black bones and flesh and thinking and remembering and hopes and desires, was ravished by violence, and the cold known land to which it was doomed, the civilized land and people which had expelled some of its own blood and thinking and desires that had become too crass to be faced and borne longer, and set it homeless and desperate on the lonely ocean -- a little lost island in a latitude which would require ten thousand years of equatorial heritage to bear its climate, a soil manured with black blood from two hundred years of oppression and exploitation until it sprang with an incredible paradox of peaceful greenery and crimson flowers and sugar cane... overseeing what he oversaw and not knowing that he was overseeing it... p252 ...Grandfather said he apparently did not know, comprehend, what he must have been seeing every day because of that innocence..."
SR-71
The A-12, the CIA precursor of the SR-71 first flew in 1962. I was living in Boulder, Colorado at that time. Would have been fourth grade. I wouldn't have been playing football yet. They would still have been building houses to fill in the final gaps in our subdivision.1962 was such a different time. President Kennedy hadn't even been assassinated yet. And yet the SR-71 remains the most extreme aircraft the world has developed (the X-15 is not quite the same thing).
Best laid plans
I had such a great plan. I would take advantage of a break between storms to run some errands, get some exercise, get lunch, and spend some hours in a nice warm pizzeria reading and writing. I made sure I had my shopping bag and the book I need to finish in the next few days. That was the plan.I don't know why, but the pizzeria was closed, so I had to retrace my steps a block to another cafe where I had a very nice crepe and salad. Then I discovered I hadn't put my Chromebook into my backpack. I'm now writing this with a pen onto paper... so last century.
In my book I immediately ran into something I wanted to Google. So frustrating. And I don't get free refills on my iced tea here.
