Ingenium

Lacking ability,  a power greater than my own urges me on.—Ovid, Fasti 2.123 (8 CE)

Thus Ovid's Calendar, or Book of Days.

How to account for present ways?

Nothing lasting, nothing stays.

A sown whirlwind bears no fruit,*

Still, we must play it as it lays.

Folks' habitus is life's pursuit.

You will know them by their loot.

Much greater than a vibe, its root.

*Hosea 8.7, KJV: “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.”

August–December 2025

The Cyclist in the Apple Tree

Cornelis Corneliszoon van Haarlem, The Fall of Ixion (ca. 1588). Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

“Lucretius could not credit centaurs:

Such bicycle he deemed asynchronous.”

— William Empson, “Invitation to Juno.”

The yellow-bellied sapsucker

in the apple tree might conceivably

be me. AI’s oxymoronic science's*

relentless pecking fills the world.

Grab an umbrella, but keep it furled

—even rain now makes no sense!

The cyclist embedded in this wood

sought symbiosis, as he should, but

"Ixion rides upon a single wheel.”**

Seek an answer, cop a feel—

to countless nothings lately flew

the many arts that Tully knew.***

* Cf. Ignorance Unmasked: Essays in the New Science of Agnotology, ed. Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger (Stanford University Press, 2025).

 ** Empson, ibid. Ixion, king of the Lapiths, sought to seduce Hera (aka Juno), wife of Zeus, who, however, substituted a cloud for her. From that copulation the half-horse, half-human race of Centaurs was born. Ixion was condemned in punishment to be bound to an eternally spinning wheel of fire. The first-century BCE Roman poet-philosopher Lucretius questions this tale, inter alia, in his De rerum natura [On the Nature of Things].

 *** Marcus Tullius Cicero, De senectute [On Old Age], 78: “Tot artes tantæ scientiæ.”

Tueday, December 1, 2025

God's Hooks

The Iron Crown of Lombardy, traditionally believed to incorporate nails of the True Cross, "God's Hooks" —in the seventeenth-century English exclamation, "Gadzooks!"

All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.—Julian of Norwich (14th century)

The Office of the Dead's been said.

Sealed in her cell, Julian prays.

What with all the books I've read,

I pay their due to God's hooks,

which dissembles puzzled looks.

Stuck without a fair conclusion,

undeceived, and full of years,

I dream up crops of random fears.

“Certain, since impossible,” Tertullian*

taught (if not to someone, perhaps

for naught). Credo quia absurdum [est].

So to say, could that be best?

All manner of things might well be well.

But if they’re aren't, how would we tell?

* Who he? Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus (ca. 155–220 CE), the North African Punic “father of Latin Christianity,” who supposedly said, "I believe because it is absurd."

Sunday, November 30, 2025