Today is Tuesday, June 17th 2008

Today I saw a caterpillar. It was thin, brown and patterned with blue. It moseyed on the sidewalk; I am not certain where it aimed to go. I watched it for several seconds.

Another observation: The entrance to the John Crerar Library at the University of Chicago is adorned with an arch made of fossiliferous limestone. It is not the gloriously fossiliferous type that comprises the columns outside Widener Library; in fact, it strongly resembles poured concrete from two feet away. But if you look from really, really close up (less than 1/2 inch), you can distinguish shell fragments, oolites and other fossiliferous objects. I love that word. I really only wrote about this so I could say it out loud a few times. Fossiliferous.

That said, I hate sedimentary rocks and think fossils are boring.

Volcanic rocks are exciting, though. Especially volcanic rocks from paradisiacal ocean islands such as the Cook-Australs, aka Thesis Islands. I have been writing about these islands a lot lately, but not on this page. More on that, later in the summer.

I don't have any good ideas for a title. And so, my title is just a statement of plain fact, regarding today. My brain is tired, what with all the writing about islands, and obvious things are bringing me the simplest pleasures. My toes are small. Tonight I will eat a Hot Pocket. Later I will drink a beer. A Newcastle, obviously.

My humble apologies for a spaced-out post. In the vein I've been following on Facebook and elsewhere, I'll end with a delightful snippet from E.M Forster's A Room with a View:

Conversation was tedious; she wanted something big, and she believed that it would have come to her on the wind-swept platform of an electric tram. This she might not attempt. It was unladylike. Why? Why were most big things unladylike? Charlotte had once explained to her why. It was not that ladies were inferior to men; it was that they were different. Their mission was to inspire others to achievement rather than to achieve themselves. Indirectly, by means of tact and a spotless name, a lady could accomplish much. But if she rushed into the fray herself she would be first censured, then despised, and finally ignored. Poems had been written to illustrate this point.

There is much that is immortal in this medieval lady. The dragons have gone, and so have the knights, but still she lingers in our midst. She reigned in many an early Victorian castle, and was Queen of much early Victorian song. It is sweet to protect her in the intervals of business, sweet to pay her honour when she has cooked our dinner well. But alas! the creature grows degenerate. In her heart also there are springing up strange desires. She too is enamoured of heavy winds, and vast panoramas, and green expanses of the sea. She has marked the kingdom of this world, how full it is of wealth, and beauty, and war--a radiant crust, built around the central fires, spinning towards the receding heavens. Men, declaring that she inspires them to it, move joyfully over the surface, having the most delightful meetings with other men, happy, not because they are masculine, but because they are alive. Before the show breaks up she would like to drop the august title of the Eternal Woman, and go there as her transitory self.

Ah, Forster: witty proponent of egality in Joy, Life. Goodnight,

RP