|k| clippings: 2015-09-01 — stopping up our ears

WORK

We have eyelids but not earlids, for the ears are the portals of learning, and Nature wanted to keep them wide open. Not content with denying us this door, she also keeps us, alone among all listeners, from twitching our ears. Man alone holds them motionless, always on alert. She did not want us to lose a single second in cocking our ears and sharpening our hearing. The ears hold court at all hours, even when the soul retires to its chambers. In fact, it is then that those sentinels ought to be most wide awake. If not, who would warn of danger? When the mind goes lazily off to sleep, who else would rouse it? This is the difference between seeing and hearing. For the eyes seek out things deliberately, when and if they want, but things come spontaneously to the ears. Visible things tend to remain: if we don’t look at them now, we can do so later; but most sounds pass by quickly, and we must grab that opportunity by the forelock. Our one tongue is twice enclosed, and our two ears are twice open, so that we can hear twice as much as we speak. I realize that half, perhaps more, of all things heard are unpleasant and even harmful, but for this there is a fine solution, which is to pretend not to hear, or to hear like a shopkeeper or a wise man. And there are things so devoid of reason that one walls up the ears with the hands. For if the hands help us to hear, they can also defend us from flattery. The snake knows a way to escape the charmer: he keeps one ear to the ground and plugs the other with his tail.

—Baltasar Gracian (trans. by Christopher Maurer)
—from A Pocket Mirror for Heroes

WORD(S)

retiarius /ree-shee-E-ree-ə-s/. noun. A Roman gladiator who fought with a net and a trident. From rēte (net) + ārius (a man belonging to or engaged in).

“…the old man displayed a rather rotten-looking fisherman’s net, which he generally spread out invitingly on the sands, as if it were a carpet for queens; but occasionally whirled wildly round his head with a gesture almost as terrific as that of the Roman Retiarius, ready to impale people on a trident.” (G.K. Chesterton)

“…I was engaged in duels of fierce continual struggle, with some person or body of persons, that sought, like the Roman retiarius, to throw a net of deadly coercion or constraint over the undoubted rights of my natural freedom.” (Thomas De Quincey)

“Turned on my new axis to a swathe
of shriven grey, I remind myself
of a cork float in a fishing-net spread out
to dry in the sun, waiting for the fisherman
— both retiarius and secutor —
to attend to what is broken and undone.”
(Robin Robertson)

WEB

1. concīs magazine, a new little side-project of mine, debuts today with a poem by the inimitable Skip Fox.

2. Say Hello to the Exclamation Comma: The Punctuation Mark You Never Knew You Needed

3. Despite my typophilia, I don’t often share specific typefaces here…but Infini is so pretty, so complete (even a pictographic set) and so free…

4. How The Ballpoint Pen Killed Cursive

5. Today in 1972, Boris Spassky phones in his resignation to Bobby Fischer, making Fischer the first United States native to win the World Chess Championship and ending the Soviet Union’s 24-year domination of the title. The Fischer-Spassky match continues to interest—even enthrall—many not just because of the deep political implications (and imagination: think Rocky v. Drago on the chessboard), and not just because Fischer was perhaps the best to ever play the game (his dominance on the way to the title match remains the greatest performance in chess history), but because Fischer was a compelling, complicated and unbalanced figure. I, for one, have read and watched everything I can about Fischer and look forward to ► Pawn Sacrifice, the latest movie about him and this historic battle.

WATCH/WITNESS

“In October of 1995, Ginsberg visited Paul McCartney and his family at their home in England. He recited ‘The Ballad of the Skeletons’ while one of McCartney’s daughters filmed it. Ginsberg mentioned that he had to give a reading with Anne Waldman and other poets at the Royal Albert Hall and was looking for a guitarist to accompany him. ‘Why don’t you try me,’ McCartney said. ‘I love the poem.’” → ‘The Ballad of the Skeletons’ by Allen Ginsberg with Paul McCartney and Philip Glass

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader E. should’ve faxed us this comment: “It might be too late for Yacht’s fax experiment, but apparently the fax isn’t dead yet. In a weird way, I’ll miss them.”

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