Playfellow and Friend

[from Frankenstein (A Norton Critical Edition) © 1818, Mary Shelley & 1996, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., p19-20:]

---From this time Elizabeth Lavenza became my playfellow, and as we grew older, my friend.  She was docile and good tempered, yet gay and playful as a summer insect.  Although she was lively and animated, her feelings were strong and deep, and her disposition uncommonly affectionate.  No one could better enjoy liberty, yet no one could submit with more grace than she did to constraint and caprice.  Her imagination was luxuriant, yet her capability of application was great.  Her person was the image of her mind; her hazel eyes, although as lively as a bird's, possessed an attractive softness.  Her figure was light and airy; and, although capable of enduring great fatigue, she appeared the most fragile creature in the world.  While I admired her understanding and fancy, I loved to tend on her, as I should on a favorite animal; and I never saw so much grace of person and mind united to so little pretension.
---Every one adored Elizabeth.  If the servants had any request to make, it was always through her intercession.  We were strangers to any species of disunion and dispute; for although there was a great dissimilitude in our characters, there was an harmony in that very dissimilitude.  I was more calm and philosophical than my companion; yet my temper was not so yielding.  My application was of longer endurance; but it was not so severe whilst it endured.  I delighted in investigating the facts relative to the actual world; she busied herself in following the aërial creations of the poets.  The world was to me a secret, which I desired to discover; to her it was a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own.

[What do you think?  I'm just starting out on a re-reading of Frankenstein, and i do love Mary Shelley's use of the English of that time.] 

Last Surviving Mystery

[from Consciousness Explained © 1991 by Daniel C. Dennett, p21-22:]

---Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery.  A mystery is a phenomenon that people don't know how to think about—yet.  There have been other great mysteries:  the mystery of the origin of the universe, the mystery of life and reproduction, the mystery of the design to be found in nature, the mysteries of time, space, and gravity.  These were not just areas of scientific ignorance, but of utter bafflement and wonder.  We do not have the final answers to any of the questions of cosmology and particle physics, molecular genetics and evolutionary theory, but we do know how to think about them.  The mysteries haven't vanished, but they have been tamed.  They no longer overwhelm our efforts to think about the phenomena, because now we know how to tell the misbegotten questions from the right questions, and even if we turn out to be dead wrong about some of the currently accepted answers, we know how to go about looking for better answers.
---With consciousness, however, we are still in a terrible muddle.  Consciousness stands alone today as a topic that often leaves even the most sophisticated thinkers tongue-tied and confused.  And, as with all the earlier mysteries, there are many who insist—and hope—that there will never be a demystification of consciousness.

[This was the book that, in 1993, gave me something substantial to work on, probably for the rest of my life:  developing a computational consciousness.  Yay, language!  Yay, computation!]

Who Am I To Blow Against The Wind

['I Know What I Know' © Paul Simon, 1986:]

She looked me over,

And I guess she thought

I was all right,

All right in a sort of a limited way

For an off night.

She said "Don't I know you

From the cinematographer's party?"

I said "Who am I

To blow against the wind."

[I've tried to make this my primary mantra in life:  "Who am I to blow against the wind?"  I love it, plain and simple.  Thank you, Paul Simon.  :-)  Who indeed?]

the other side of silence

[George Eliot, Middlemarch, 1871-2 / 1874]

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.  As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.

[This single piece of text, nearly on its own, woke me up as an English major more than anything else i've ever read.  I put it as the opening quote of anomaly, and it remains one of my favorites.  You go, girl.]

Lost (and Found :-)

[from Life, the Universe and Everything ©  Douglas Adams, 1982:]

---The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was.

---It wasn't just that the cave was cold, it wasn't just that it was damp and smelly.  It was the fact that the cave was in the middle of Islington and there wasn't a bus due for two million years.

---Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in, as Arthur Dent could testify, having been lost in both time and space a good deal.  At least being lost in space kept you busy.

[This is one of my favorite bits of writing, despite (and because of) the word 'was' appearing nine times in the first two sentences (including contractions); and it's my great pleasure to quote it in this inaugural posting.

In terms of language use, Douglas Adams is one of my primary heroes.  I was weaned on (a selection of) the classics, but i knew i was home when i found The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.

And welcome back, readers, after what seems like a long respite.]