Without Lifting A Finger

                                                                                                                                

Already? Jack Frost hasn't even painted the pumpkins. *        

Time, said Austerlitz in the observation room in Greenwich, was by far the most artificial of all our inventions, and in being bound to the planet turning on its own axis was no less arbitrary than would be, say, a calculation based on the growth of trees or the duration required for a piece of limestone to disintegrate, quite apart from the fact that the solar day which we take as our guideline does not provide any precise measurement, so that in order to reckon time we have to devise an imaginary, average sun which has an invariable speed of movement and does not incline towards the equator in its orbit. If Newton thought, said Austerlitz, pointing through the window and down to the curve of the water around the Isle of Dogs glistening in the last of the daylight, if Newton really thought that time was a river like the Thames, then where is its source and into what sea does it finally flow?

Their correspondence broke off during the First World War. Nothing is known of Lydia Petrovna Kochetkova’s death. This is from the last available letter. “My darling! Do you know what I regret most of all? I could have given you all the fullness of my love, but I gave you nothing but pain. Forgive me, if you can. And my heart cries out at the thought that my highest calling was just that—to give you my affection and tenderness, but instead I squandered my worthless life on phantoms.”



    

      

Hadn't been there in years (other than around the somewhat scary perimeter). Last year I went to UCLA (one of my alma maters), this year USC. Took some of the seniors from school. *                     

        

                                          

The offbeat, dystopic view of LA was there, but the story wasn't. Besides being too long (the wife's input), the storyline really seemed to suffer. Perhaps it needed a Ridley Scott or Philip K. Dick. What do I know ...

Perhaps not all that I was hoping for, but still an event. As someone once said: Anything to get you out of the house. Anyway, Charlie enjoyed the walk (though he doesn't look up), a circle of ladies enjoyed Charlie, and we caught a few nocturnal swimmers doing their thing (both of the human and bioluminescent variety). *           

Certainly one of his longest. And work keeps me from everything. Still, sticking with it. There are gems and precious stones from time to time. * The majority is not necessarily in tune with the times just because it’s the majority, I thought, though this too is a common belief that is often acted upon, to the detriment of the times. A minority may also be in tune with the times, often more in tune than the majority; even an individual may be more in tune with the times than the majority, indeed more so than everybody else. The majority has always brought misfortune, I thought, and even today we have the majority to thank for most of our ills. The minority and the individual are crushed by the majority because they are more in tune with the times and act accordingly. Ideas that are in tune with the times are always out of tune with them, I thought, for such ideas are always ahead of the times if t hey are truly in tune with them. Hence whatever is in tune with the times is in r...