Sedulia's Quotations

Joe Mozingo: The Wiers start over in their eighties

POWAY, CALIF. -- The 88-year-old man sits on a bench and lights a cracked briar pipe. He looks out at the black void and sighs.

The firestorm three months ago killed most of the sound here. No birds warble, no leaves flutter, no coyotes yelp in the night. The giant, tilted slabs of granite on the ridge peer like statues down on a moldering pyre.

Jerome "Joe" Wier comes up here most days in his little Chevy pickup and secondhand clothes. He sits for hours under a scraggly tree, staring up at the boulders -- and at the place where his house once stood.

A neighbor across the gully has seen him crying. He denies it.

He built the house with his own hands. When the fire took it, Wier and his wife, Marion, lost every possession they had collected over 58 years of marriage. They lost every photo of their family, the bundle of letters that Joe sent her while he was in the Navy, the leather-bound journal Marion scribbled her thoughts in for the last quarter century. They lost all their clothes, keepsakes, records, medications -- even Joe's hearing aid and dentures.

And they lost this bit of wilderness that fed the life in themselves.

"Remember the hummingbirds we had here, Joe?" Marion asks, looking out at the canyon. "Oh, sure, nature will rejuvenate itself in a few years. But we don't have a few years, Joe. That's the sad part."

     --Joe Mozingo in the Los Angeles Times, 23 January 2008

Münster swan jilts swanboat

A female black swan in the German city of Münster, who became famous for her "well-known tragic liaison" with a swan-boat for the past two years, has now fallen in love with a white mute swan.

"'And of course the swan-boat is the last to find out,' stated zoo boss Adler soberly, adding, 'It's almost painful.'"

John Hawks: Ten thousand years ago, no one on planet Earth had blue eyes.

Ten thousand years ago, no one on planet Earth had blue eyes.

--Anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin, discussing recent findings that imply that human evolution has been rapid within the past 10,000 years. From an article by David Biello in Scientific American, December 10, 2007

Vultures gather over Britain

An increasingly large wake of vultures is gathering over southern Britain, but nobody knows why.

--U.K. Telegraph, 14 November 2006

E.E. Cummings: Pity this busy monster, manunkind...

pity this busy monster, manunkind...

    --E.E. Cummings (1894-1962)

Snow on the job: Bush administration keenly committed to environmentalism

Perhaps folks have not taken notice of the fact that this is an administration that's been keenly committed both to environmentalism and conservationism from the start.

       --White House spokesman Tony Snow, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, 11 Feb 2007

Duke Huan and the ghost

As Duke Huan [of the land of Qi] was hunting in the marshes, with Guan Zhong driving [his chariot], he saw a ghost. He took  Guan Zhong's hand and said, "What do you see, Uncle Zhong?" Guan Zhong answered, "I don't see anything." The duke returned home, and felt sick; he could not go out for several days.

The sage of Qi, Huangzi Gao-ao, said, "Duke, you yourself are making yourself ill. How could a ghost hurt a duke?"...

Duke Huan said, "But are there such things as ghosts?"

The sage replied, "There are. The brazier has a ghost of shoes, and the kitchen stove has a hair-bun ghost [that looks like a pretty girl in red]. Inside the gate there is a troublesome thunder ghost. In the lower part of the northeast wall, a frog ghost and a lizard ghost are jumping around; on the lower part of the western wall, there is an yi-yang [a fabulous creature with the head of a leopard and the tail of a horse]. In the water there is a deceitful image that looks like a small child. On the mound there is a doglike ghost [with horns]. On the mountain there is a kun, a one-footed ghost, and in the wilderness there is a wavering ghost [that looks like a snake with two heads and a colored body]. Out in the marsh there is a wei-she [wrong-snake] ghost.

Duke Huan said, "May I ask what a wei-she looks like?"

The sage said, "A wei-she is as big as the hub of a wheel, long as a wagon-shaft, and wears purple clothes and a red hat. The thing about him is, he is terrified of the thunder of chariot wheels. So when he hears it, he pops up, holding his head. Anyone who sees him becomes overlord."

Duke Huan burst out laughing. "That's the one I saw," he said. He straightened his clothes and hat and sat down with the sage, and before the end of the day, his illness had gone without his noticing it.

        --From Zhuangzi (ca 370-ca 301 B.C.)

桓公田于泽，管仲御，见鬼焉。公抚管仲之手曰：“仲父何见？”

对曰：“臣无所见。”

公反，诶诒为病，数日不出。

齐士有皇子告敖者，曰：“公则自伤。鬼恶能伤公？...”

桓公曰：“然则有鬼乎？”

曰：“有。沈有履，灶有髻。户内之烦壤，雷霆处之；东北方之下者，倍阿鲑蠪跃之；西北方之下者，则泆阳处之。水有罔象，丘有峷，山有夔，野有彷徨，泽有委蛇。”

公曰：“请问委蛇之状何若？”

皇子曰：“委蛇，其大如毂，其长如猿，紫衣而朱冠。其为物也，恶闻雷车之声，则捧其首而立。见之者殆乎霸。”

桓公冁然而笑曰：“此寡人之所见者也。” 于是正衣冠与之坐，不终日而不知病之去也。

The giant Gippsland earthworm may be as old as you or I

The giant Gippsland earthworm [up to one meter long; southern Australia]  is more often heard than seen. As these subterranean creatures move about in their tunnels they produce sounds like water going down a plughole, or more occasionally like a toilet being flushed....The worms are long-lived. They may be as old as you or I.

    --From a  review of David Attenborough's Life in the Undergrowth by Tim Flannery, the Times Literary Supplement, 2 April 2006

James Thomson: All-conquering Heat, oh, intermit thy wrath!

All-conquering Heat, oh, intermit thy wrath!
...Night is far off, and hotter hours approach.

   --James Thomson (1700-1748), "Summer"

Patrick McGrath: The living are larvae

"I remember reading somewhere that the living are just a rare species of the dead. I don't believe this. The living, I think, are larvae of the dead-- dead bodies at an early stage of development."

        --Sir Hugo Coal in The Grotesque, by Patrick McGrath