Attentive And At Peace
A friend lays claim to the title, Ultimate Introvert, and offers as proof he deserves that appellation, “I even like to watch other people fish.”
As introverted as I am, that beats any claim I might have made on the title. I have never had an urge to watch other people fish. I do, however, like taking pictures of other people fishing.
I took the photo above many years ago in Cascais, Portugal, and the one below last year when capelin were roiling the surface of the sea in one of Newfoundland’s many coves.
With A Thousand Eyes
A few lines from Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha have taken residence in my mind thanks to a comment from Dan Oestreich to a previous post. I guess I am supposed to pass the lines on.
Tenderly, he looked into the rushing water, into the transparent green, into the crystal lines of its drawing, so rich in secrets. Bright pearls he saw rising from the deep, quiet bubbles of air floating on the reflecting surface, the blue of the sky being depicted in it.
My Place In The Grand Scheme Of Things
Two recent experiences showed me just how insignificant I am when measured on a scale more grand than my own immediate concerns (which can loom as monumental if I let them).
Grains Of Sand
The first experience was stimulated by an exhibit in the underground Johnson Geo Centre in St. John’s, Newfoundland. The exhibit consisted of four clear acrylic towers, standing in a line, each of them containing a quantity of sand, each grain of sand representing one year.
How Many Names For Hot?
The notion that Eskimo people have a particular and large number of words for snow has become a popular urban myth that even has a Wikipedia entry:
In reality, the number of words depends on the definitions of Eskimo (there are a number of languages) and snow, and on the method of counting numbers of words in languages that have quite different grammatical structures from English…the number of Eskimo words for snow is essentially unbounded.
This came up because The Scout was looking at a book titled, The Newfoundland Tongue (why she was looking at that particular book is another story). It lists forty-three terms that Newfoundlanders use to describe wind. Here are a few examples:
