random gleanings from the treasure trove


Subject: random gleanings from the treasure trove
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Tue Jul 31 2001 - 03:05:29 GMT


    It may be that Speedy Baader can discern the unconsious
    intentions of a writer after one, possibly two, of her gimlet
    eyed readings. I can only report that to achieve not even
    a comparable but still very tentative hunch, it takes me
    years & years & years - as the leaves through the study window
    unfurl through countless springs & wither through countless
    autumns - of chat, jokes, tears, abuse, questions, reproaches,
    ponderings, accusations ...

    A brilliant & highly lucrative career awaits her in psychoanalysis.

    Though I’m not so sure about her past incarnation as a mediaeval
    scholar - & at this point I’m reelly reelly chancing my arm;
    but may I suggest that ‘pulcra sunt quae visa placent’ could be
    better translated, simply, as: ‘the beautiful is [are] what [those
sights
    that] give[s] pleasure.’

    Nothing there of the emphasis on the individually subjective
    which seems to me to be inherent in ‘the eye of the beholder’.
    I’m not altogether clear where that gets us - except that it tends
    away from the implications of her last sentence (‘most meaning is
    in the hands of the reader ...’) which I find so repulsively & smugly
    presumptuous as to drive all breath from my body.

    _______________

    Which was, of course, her intention all along. This is what
    Stephen Potter first identified as Gamesmanship: ‘how to win
    at games without actually cheating’ ... how to disconcert & destroy
    your opponent with unusual courtesy or an excessive & spurious
    concern for his wellbeing.

    Because we already know that like 97% of the membership of
    this list, old Cec is a games enthusiast. All that hearty joviality
    about teams - the Cubs, the Bulls, the Penguins, whatever -
    they’re all at it: Will, Tim, The Man from the Frozen North
    & now even, God help us, the hitherto urbane & unillusioned Sean.

    Well, count me out, chaps. Here’s my latest aphorism for you
    to ponder: Original insight is born of play. And when play dies
    it becomes a game.

    Scottie B.

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