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Wednesday, June 6, 2012

A magic pen?

Early Chinese
blue and white porcelain,
manufactured circa 1335
This morning's kitchen tenor was distinctly different from that of yesterday's. It was a bit glum. The "aliveness" I reported yesterday was missing from today's thoughts parading before my consciousness. Had I insufficient sleep last night, or less effective—something as simple (and complex) as that?
    Harris did write in Free Will that:
It is one thing to bicker with your wife because you are in a bad mood; it is another to realize that your mood and behavior have been caused by low blood sugar. This understanding reveals you to be a biochemical puppet, of course, but it also allows you to grab hold of one of your strings: A bite of food may be all that your personality requires. [emphasis minep. 44]
A bit more or better sleep perhaps?
    But then, immediately after breakfast, while diligently starting up my computer and seeing the Library of America's Collected Poetry & Prose of Wallace Stevens, I remembered my intention yesterday to read today the poem "The Idea of Order at Key West."
    As soon, then, as I'd finished both of today's Sudokus (from the newspapers left on our driveway), I read it. And instantly my glumness vanished in the reader's delicious sense of having gotten it, having in this case gotten something supposedly difficult to get, for in Wikipedia yesterday I had read of the poem that it
is philosophically complex. Stated by critics as “perhaps impossible to interpret fully,” the poem “affirms a transcendental poetic spirit yet cannot locate it.” One critic has deemed the poem as "desperately" ambiguous, containing unresolvable difficulties.
What critics? Hardly ever have I read a "difficult poem" whose "meaning" seemed so readily discernible.
    I'll give you a day to read the poem too, before I summarize what I think it "means." The poem's first (of seven) stanzas:
She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
In the meantime, a note about the Sudokus.
    To do them (I always use a pen) I deliberately used a beautiful new pen given me yesterday by a friend—a blue and white porcelain pen from China. Literally from China, for my friend had purchased it there and brought it back after her visit with family and friends in and about Nanjing. (She also provided a link to a Wikipedia article about blue and white porcelain, from which I obtained the photo.)
    Using the beautiful and beautifully flowing new pen, I correctly (and quickly) completed both Sudokus. And into my mind popped the idea that perhaps I am the beneficiary of a magic pen?
    On the hypothesis that my new pen might indeed be a magic one, how many Sudokus need I complete with it to more or less prove the hypothesis? (Or how many difficult poems need I understand after using it?)
    Note that proving the hypothesis is a good deal more challenging than disproving it. To disprove it, I need fail to complete only one Sudoku (or fail to "get" only one difficult poem?). But could I ever prove that it's a magic pen?

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