ARCHIMEDES

The Archimedes Palimpsest at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore

Blog en travail

GNOMON: musing on words at 40,000 feet.

I first saw the word Gnomon on Mass Ave in 1968 Cambridge, Massachusetts:  Gnomon Copy with its Art Nouveau door newly sanded to essential oak that swirled with début de siècle élan.   Gnomon sounded like a hunchback who lived in an old cellar, or a half-monster crouching mysteriously in one’s thoughts, a kind of intellectual incubus.  Or a very obscure figure of speech.

I enjoyed not knowing the definition for a few months so I could work on my private glossary.  But of course being a bit of a wordie I did look it up and was almost disappointed to learn gnomon is 

1)   the stable post or piece that casts the shadow on a sundial, the shadow that moves aroun as the sun travels east to west in the day sky;

2)   a line on a parallelogram.

Gnomon Copy was next to Harvard Square.  Students after all-nighters with long essays, doctoral dissertations, needing to have their words reproduced—these were the usual clients.  Copy centers were coming into their own, revolutionized by the invention of the photocopy machine, the ascent of Xerox, the miracle of paper reproduction.  No need for printing presses, stinky purple ink printers, hard to correct stencils, mimeographs and such.

* * *

The gnomon of the parallelogram creates a parallel by its very existence,  that which completes the parallel, lines that never meet up. (And what is it that happens with the curve of space-time when our parallel lines go on to infinity?) 
(Perhaps the secret to why they can go on forever is that they never meet and tangle in the first place, as in a long-distance relationship). 

* * *

The sundial was replaced by the analog clock and then eventually the digital. 

The analog clock is what we know best; but it’s the moving arm, not the shadow that shows the time.

The digital timepiece flips numbers at us.  Defining time with numbers only…

But time’s not a given. We learn now that CERN scientists believe they have discovered neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light, with additional results and calculations that appear to confirm this.  The measure of our daily science, the speed of light is now fuel for discussion.  Light-years may be redefined. Or superseded (superspeeded?)

* * *

It's 4:30 US time and we are only an hour away from Baltimore.  The sun has been setting for hours, a pink-rose-lavender glow out the right-hand windows of our 767 from Heathrow-- a continuous streak of gorgeous color.  Our plane journeys west and we seem to escort the sun, parallel to it.  The horizon holds no mountains or clouds right now, so the horizon is pure, ending somewhere at the end of our vision.
* * *
A gnomon enables us determine time of day, using light, revealing by shadow.  

* * *

As a small child the night sky scared me because there were planets and moons and stars and galaxies so far away they were part of what I thought of as 'the infinity'.  It was accompanied by fear of space, space without shadow, or space as huge unfathomable shadow, an existential terror; the concreteness of death and the remoteness of something without end.

* * *

I’ve never had a real guru or mentor.  I tried not to listen to my parents. I admired my piano teacher and a number of academics whose paths I crossed, yet I was anti-mentor, and by age 17, not wanting to be guided, was mistrustful and independent-minded, isolated and unprepared.  So be it.   I was lacking a 'gnomon' who could cast a protective shadow, telling me what time it was and why and how one could view it, interpret it.  How to work with science.  How to pray, or how to meditate on it all.

Without a gnomon I was, in fact quite déboussolée --- disoriented, not knowing my magnetic north, not knowing what I wanted to do when I grew up.  

My compass still spins, but not as fast. 

* * *

The lid of my computer stands at 90 degrees, a sort of laptop gnomon. It is computer day when the top is open, the computer awake.  I read, I write. Top closed, it is computer night, there is no gnomon,  only the white apple shining through the silver crust.

* * *

The sunset colors have turned dull, the sky a deep blue. We seem to have caught up with night. The cabin crew is coming around economy class with plastic sandwiches, preparing us to alight on another continent.

                                                           Man as Gnomon......!

Blog-shy: how I (mis)manage my time

So I've been a bit blog-shy for the past couple of weeks. Sometimes I'm too busy, other times, despite the  words arranging themselves in my brain, I don't actually do anything about them, so they either vanish or fester, or in the best case scenario, come to slow maturity like a good cru bourgeois.
I wish.
Some ideas are too intimate for the blogosphere.  Or too over-arching and in need of some supportive architecture, flying buttresses of thought.  Damned if I have the time to build up those buttresses when I'm reinforcing core muscles and abs with my dear slave-driver of a Pilates teacher. But I make time for my Pilates once a week in exchange for English lessons, and we each feel we have a great deal.  There's time for group gym once a week and semi-private gym training once a week, luxuries I accepted when I realized after fifteen years of self-flagellation (not good exercise) I would never do upper body work unless someone made me do it.  Thank you Virginie, thank you Nick. And then there's always the rewarding plat du jour after Pilates, during which I really do teach English, and then the fine cafeteria where I must eat copiously to build up strength for afternoon workouts after Shakespeare class...........There's time for the two choirs and classical voice lessons with a terrific teacher.  There's time to attend John's jazz concerts, visit with friends, help out friends, transport friends, go to MetOpera broadcasts, travel to Paris (last week) to help out family, which turned into a medley of long daily hospital visits with a well-loved relative, and tourism, using my new iphone GPS to navigate on foot, and iphone metro map to navigate the Metro.  Time to read the press in French and English, time for John to read me Underworld by Don deLillo (wow), time to feed nine cats and clean the kittens' litter, do housework & other paperwork obligations I won't bore you with.
I mismanage writing time.  I have blogs blogging in my head, so it's time to get serious about Time for Blogging and Other Writing Projects.


Meanwhile we leave before dawn tomorrow for four days in Spain with dear friends.  So much for serious.  But I am, I really am. Serious.