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Channel: Epigrams and Conundrums – Via Negativa
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Solstice meditation

I’ve always felt a little sorry for the sun because it cannot cast a shadow. What does it have to remind itself of its own eventual death? What would the henge builders say about a god who never eats...

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Heartwood

It might be useful, this heart-shaped hole: flying squirrels could use it to get out of the weather. In warmer months, spiders could spin webs in it. Caterpillars could pupate in it. A true desert is...

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Lines in response to Ren Powell’s Mercy Island

This is the third of four books that Kristin Berkey-Abbott and I are encouraging others to also read and blog about this month. (You can order from the publisher before the end of the month and receive...

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Exam

1. Jot or tittle? Eye or eye-drop? Hole or window? Explain. 2. Make yourself uncomfortable. 3. What is it? How many legs does it have? Is it woody or chitinous? 4. You are a cat. No, not you— you are...

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Untweeted

A lot has been going on here lately. Had I not been feeling so reticent, I might’ve posted the following updates to Twitter or Facebook. A dry high: the best weather for brewing. * The face of an...

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Epigrammatically incorrect

I’m taking a break and highlighting some classic posts from my first full year of blogging, 2004. Epigrammatic posts and humor have been mainstays of Via Negativa from the beginning. Here’s a post that...

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Semi-lucid

I used to be embarrassed to call these ridges mountains until I went to Mississippi and saw what they called hills. * The end of October, and a dandelion is in full bloom beside the driveway. I recall...

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Cargo Culture

I used to think that doors were failed windows. Now I see that windows are aborted doors. * Were the Melanesian cargo cults ever true religious movements, or were they just short-lived cons perpetrated...

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Pilgrimage

for Yahia Lababidi A star turns cold in an effort to cast a shadow. Or so they say. A mayfly fresh out of the water, finding itself without functional mouthparts, molts one more time just to make sure....

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Snophistry

Now that the barn’s been painted, all the buildings on the farm are camouflaged against the snow. The cold is a fierce hunter. One has to take every precaution. Contrary to popular belief, the snow...

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The Canela tweets

I use Twitter for a bit more than just Morning Porch updates these days. Three weeks of dog-sitting — and especially dog-walking — yielded a few insights, which I shared on Twitter because they...

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Proverbial (3)

Up among my workmen, my head akeing all day from last night’s debauch. To the office all the morning, and at noon dined with Sir W. Batten and Pen, who would needs have me drink two drafts of sack...

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Proverbial (4)

Up early, my Lady Batten knocking at her door that comes into one of my chambers. I did give directions to my people and workmen, and so about 8 o’clock we took barge at the Tower, Sir William Batten...

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Proverbial (5)

At the office all the morning, at noon to the Change, and then home again. To dinner, where my uncle Fenner by appointment came and dined with me, thinking to go together to my aunt Kite’s that is...

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Proverbial (6)

By coach to White Hall with Sir W. Pen. So to Mr. Montagu, where his man, Mons. Eschar, makes a great complaint against the English, that they did help the Spaniards against the French the other day;...

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Proverbial (7)

This morning up early, and to my Lord Chancellor’s with a letter to him from my Lord, and did speak with him; and he did ask me whether I was son to Mr. Talbot Pepys or no (with whom he was once...

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Proverbial (8)

Fast-day for the murthering of the late King. I went to church, and Mr. Mills made a good sermon upon David’s words, “Who can lay his hands upon the Lord’s Anoynted and be guiltless?” So home and to...

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Proverbial (9)

At my musique practice, and so into my cellar to my workmen, and I am very much pleased with my alteracon there. About noon comes my uncle Thomas to me to ask for his annuity, and I did tell him my...

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Proverbial (10)

All the morning at the office by myself about setting things in order there, and so at noon to the Exchange to see and be seen, and so home to dinner and then to the office again till night, and then...

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Panopticon series

“To see and be seen is to be taken prisoner.” ~ D. Bonta I don’t remember what it was— The Pope’s visit? In any case the park was ringed with orange cones. I was very pregnant. I had to pee. The...

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