Boomer's mom took me to the library and I bought this book: Chasing Vermeer. It's a kids book, probably for 10 year olds, but it was great fun to read. OK writing, good mystery, full of puzzles and codes clues hidden in the illustrations and coincidences ... and this great quote:
We shall pick up an existence by its frogs.
Wise men have tried other ways. They have tried to understand our state of being by grasping at its stars, or its arts, or its economics. But, if there is an underlying oneness of all thngs, it does not matter where we begin, whether with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. One measures a circle beginning anywhere.
I have collected 294 records of showers of living things. [As in, it's raining frogs and fishes.] ...
It is the profound conviction of most of us that there never has been a shower of living things. But some of us have ... been educated by surprises out of much that we were "absolutely sure" of ...
I have never heard of any standard, in any religion, philosophy, science, or complication of household affairs that could not be made to fit any requirement. We fit standards to judgments or break any law that it please us to break. ... We have conclusions, which are the products of senility or incompetence or credulity, and then argue from them to premises, and then argue from the premises, thinking we began there.
From the book Lo! by Charles Hoy Fort
3 comments:
you are a fabulous addition to this blog, what a lovely post.
This might be a little over my head, but I very much like the phrase "complication of household affairs" and like even more that it's grouped with science, religion and philosophy.
and are we all aware that Charles Fort is the same one whose writings and observations led to the establishment of the magazine "The Fortean Times"?
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