WORK
It was the kind of promise a father makes easily and sincerely, knowing at the same time that it will be impossible to keep. The truth of some promises is not as important as whether or not you can believe in them, with all your heart. A game of baseball can’t really make a summer day last forever. A home run can’t really heal all the broken places in our world, or in a single human heart. And there was no way that Mr. Feld could keep his promise never to leave Ethan again. All parents leave their children one day.
—Michael Chabon
—from Summerland
WORD(S)
limen /LI-mən/. noun. A threshold, typically of consciousness and sensation. The point below which a sensation isn’t perceived. See also, the more common adjective, liminal. Latin līmen (threshold).
“Margin of evening, an indeterminate limen between creatures diurnal and nocturnal. Twilight congeals as the first raccoons descend the chinquapin oak.” (Christopher Dewdney)
“I could complicate this with a few more real and imaginary castles—and a loving and respectful reference to your own seminal work on the limen and the liminal. What do you think? Will it wash? Will I be torn by Maenads?” (A.S. Byatt)
“Such to the dead might appear the world of the living—charged with information, with meaning, yet somehow always just, terribly, beyond that fateful limen where any lamp of comprehension might beam forth.” (Thomas Pynchon)
“…getting drunk does serve to mobilize the internal contradictions and conflicts, to point up and make urgent the appetites and needs which are smoldering below the limen of awareness, and so to ignite the fuse.” (Robert M. Lindner)
WEB
-
Thibaud Poirier’s amazing photos of grand libraries
-
What the Bard can teach science about language and the limits of the human mind → Shakespeare’s Genius Is Nonsense
-
DNA evidence exonerated six convicted killers. So why do some of them recall the crime so clearly? → Remembering the Murder You Didn’t Commit :: See also, The Problem with Eyewitness Testimony.
-
A Golden Age for Dystopian Fiction: What to make of our new literature of radical pessimism.
-
Did Bob Dylan Crib Some of His Nobel Prize Lecture from SparkNotes? Hilarious, if true.
-
Jane Solomon’s Dictionary Playlist of songs related (sometimes tenuously) to language and linguistics. Can you think of more?
-
This Guy Spent A Year Exploring The Subculture Of Competitive Punning
-
A Postal Museum photo essay following a package in the 1960s. → Sorting the Past :: Pairs with The lost genius of the Post Office.
-
Hysteria over hyphens :: pairs with A Linguist Says ‘Yes!’ To The Exclamation Point.
-
Today in 1984, talk show radio host Alan Berg is gunned down in his driveway in Denver, Colorado. Berg’s loud, bitter and mostly liberal views angered and engaged radio listeners, though his style was tame by today’s standards.
WATCH/WITNESS
Merch Mulch (2017) is “a three-dimensional photogrammetric amalgamation of abandoned shopping malls, digitally reconstructed from YouTube videos taken prior to the sites’ destruction.”
WHAT!?
Comedian Jamie Loftus is eating the book Infinite Jest. Or occasionally butt-chugging it. Follow her progress via the hashtag #eatinginfinitejest. Thanks to the two Readers C. (or should that be Reader Cs?).
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
-
Reader B.: "That opening quote [by Denis Johnson] was moving, until the last line knocked me sideways. Well done, and RIP. ¶ PS: In the Realm of the Senses is definitely date night material. Consider it a test, at least.
-
Reader M.: “How is it that someone can design a movie poster-a-day? How is it that most are better than the originals?”
-
Reader F.: “Isn’t the jè just another interrobang?”
I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.
Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day and concīs http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.
And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.