counting backwards between sentences on the phone.


The Song of 10

From the Romans' decem our decibels and decimal system, O tenfold
the sorrows of Israel, Decameron tales meant to be told over ten nights

in December, solstice month frozen in moondrifts of snow. Our fingers
and toes. Kingly ten-pointed stags reigning over Europe's greenwoods,

for miners a measure in tons of coal or type of tallow candle weighted
ten per pound, the legion poor mending by its light. What else is there

to say? Higher than nine. A number whose power is mighty to multiply,
comprising one and nil, wand and egg, gold spindle and heavenly wheel

of goddess Fate who turns time and tides; what our parents say summer
evenings, hearing our voices dart and flicker in neighboring yards before

we dance from them into darkness and love's rule ends — I'll count to ten.

-- Ellen Wehle

Edit:

Best Supporting Actor

Nuntio vobis gaudium magnum: habemus papam!

Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum, Dominum Josephum, Sanctæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ Cardinalem Ratzinger, qui sibi nomen imposuit Benedictus Sextus Decimus.

Joseph Ratzinger, thy name is Interim XVI.

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GUILDENSTERN: A weaker man might be moved to re-examine his faith, if in nothing else at least in the law of probability.

(tomstoppard)

Serendipitous, this letter today.

GUILDENSTERN (musing): The law of probability, it has been oddly asserted is something to do with the proposition that if six monkeys (he surprised himself)... if six monkeys were ...
ROSENCRANTZ: Game?
GUILDENSTERN: Were they?
ROSENCRANTZ: Are you?

Well -- are you?

Please tell me the cockney "'Elios" is Garfinkle's and not yours.

Garfinkle’s view depicts two seemingly disparate and irreconcilable cultures coming together for the benefit of something more than their ideas of the world. It’s sf like this that seems necessary in a polarized world like ours.

Something more? Like what?

You keep transcending those ossified orders, I'll keep building them, and the world will keep turning; it needs us both. Our metaphysics are good for us.

But then, on dualism and materialism as humanisms, there's dear John.

Communitie

Good wee must love, and must hate ill,
For ill is ill, and good good still,
But there are things indifferent,
Which wee may neither hate, nor love,
But one, and then another prove,
As wee shall finde our fancy bent.

If then at first wise Nature had
Made women either good or bad,
Then some wee might hate, and some chuse,
But since shee did them so create,
That we may neither love, nor hate,
Onely this rest, All, all may use.

If they were good it would be seene,
Good is as visible as greene,
And to all eyes it selfe betrayes,
If they were bad, they could not last,
Bad doth it selfe, and others wast,
So, they deserve nor blame, nor praise.

But they are ours as fruits are ours,
He that but tasts, he that devours,
And he that leaves all, doth as well,
Chang'd loves are but chang'd sorts or meat,
And when he hath the kernel eate,
Who doth not fling away the shell?

On that note, a re-watching of both Ghost in the Shell movies is on for this week. It's a golden spring this time around. Direct -- univalent. Letter-less. Thank you.