So, it seems that I have a sinus infection. Haven't had one of these in a long time, especially one this bad. It's really quite painful you know. O, how I suffer!
Well, whatever - let the pain I currently endure with stoic resolve at the least explain the rambling nature of this post. For the seventeen or so of you out there who are real as opposed to VirtualBots - and that number has grown dramatically in recent days, as it used to be only around five or so - this will be the thrill of your Saturday. O yes it will.
What to do, what to do...
I know, let's pick some books from around the desk, open 'em, and see what we find. Of course, the question then becomes, Where to start, where to start...
From Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, we read, 'But it would be idle to controvert, by reference to modern analogies, the conjectures of those who think they can ascend in their retrospect to the origin of our system. Let us, therefore, consider what changes the crust of the globe suffered after the consolidation of that ancient series of rocks to which we have adverted. Now, there is evidence that, before our secondary strata were formed, those of older date (from the old red sandstone to the coal inclusive) were fractured and contorted, and often thrown into vertical positions. We cannot enter here into the geological details by which it is demonstrable, that at an epoch extremely remote, some parts of the carboniferous series were lifted above the levels of the sea, others sunk to greater depths beneath it, and the former, being no longer protected by a covering of water, were partially destroyed by torrents and the waves of the sea, and supplied matter for newer horizontal beds.'
Lyell's great work appeared in three volumes from 1830 to 1833. Think what you will of the science, and I think quite highly of it, but you cannot deny, without thereby showing both moral and intellectual wickedness, that the prose is just damn fine.
Now, Lyell's work exerted a profound influence on the work of one Charles Darwin, so how fortunate that we have to hand Darwin's The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. (Just trips off the tongue, doesn't it?) The passage in question is not entirely a random choice. I marked and noted it just last night, as it is indicative to my ear of Darwin's character as a writer and scientist. That is, he is both a Romantic in quest of the Absolute and the Sublime, and a Victorian in quest of the Vulgar and the Utilitarian. To wit: 'In looking at Nature, it is most necessary to keep the foregoing considerations always in mind - never to forget that every single organic being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers; that each lives by a struggle at some period of its life; that heavy destruction inevitably falls either on the young or old, during each generation or at recurrent intervals. Lighten any check, mitigate the destruction ever so little, and the number of the species will almost instantaneously increase to any amount. The face of Nature may be compared to a yielding surface, with ten thousand sharp wedges packed close together and driven inwards by incessant blows, sometimes one wedge being struck, and then another with greater force.'
If that does not strike you, dear reader, as a Kafkaesque image of Sublime Nature as a perpetually punitive Nightmare, then you lack all sensitivity to literature. What drives Sublime Nature to assume the form of a perpetually punitive Nightmare? Why nothing more than a concern with numbers in a ledger; with, if you please, an equation that is ever on the verge of flying out of balance.
With that, I must away. The drugs have worn off, so with your indulgence, I will drop some few doses of antibiotics, decongestants, and antihistamines, then slip back into bed.
Peace out.
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