Together they cost €2. Their combined worth is priceless. They contain wisdom, learning. Books well chosen provide clues to help the reader understand this fleck in the universe known here as Earth.
Today the morning paper informs me that a newly discovered galaxy 13.3 billion light years from my location has been noted.
MACS0647-JD is not the name I would have chosen for the newly discovered galaxy. But then again I wouldn't have named our own particular spiral The Milky Way.
The Earth is sick. Physically sick. This speck and we who dwell in it, gorging ourselves like parasites in a sick dog are in our turn sickening.
The noble geniuses and the gentle peacemakers deigning to live amongst us strive as best they can to rise above the parasitic banquet. Their outpourings are the outpourings of dreamers and kranks. They are the required amusing distraction. The necessary evil.
sick dogs
nosing in the faeces
sore it goes
The first book I read avidly as a teenager - the title made it impossible to ignore! (A few years later I visited the Dali Museum in Figueras). I don't share his evaluation of Mondrian, though.
ReplyDeleteThe second I haven't read.
We have a good similar source of books near here- often it's just Readers Digest, etc., but recently it's thrown up EE Cummings, a Borges, Prevert and Barry MacSweeney.
Dominic, I neglected to mention the other book I bought: "Age-Defying Fitness" by Moffat and Lewis, which I'm glad is so-titled and not "Age Defying-Fitness" ;-), by the way I was recently in your wonderful county of Yorks (see my BOTR blog).
ReplyDeleteOh, Dominic I had to read Appendix 1 first. You may remember it possibly by its alternative title: The Sly Artilleryman's Manual by Count Trumpet. OK then, it's called: The Art of Farting.
ReplyDelete