Styling T Rex

I got the proofs for an essay yesterday that opens with a mention of Tyrannosaurus rex. “Shouldn’t that be italicized?” asked a co-author. Well, yes. Most publications would say that the scientific names should be italicized. But should it be? Maybe T. rex should be bold - to suggest the extra space that I'd be willing to cede to a predator of T. rex's stature. Or perhaps italic's tilt does reflect T. rex's literal posture, as it leans forward chasing its prey. Should I elect an underscore, a subtle nod at italics, or a stylized sketch of the ground across which a T. rex races? Maybe it’s best to use strikethrough - suggesting what might happen to me should I be too slow to escape a Tyrannosaurus.

Which brings me to fonts. Serif? Non-serif? I think the serifs hint at the teeth and claws that stand ready to shred a T. rex’s prey. Leave the smooth roundedness of Arial or Comic Sans to the brontosaurs (though they don't exist? didn't exist?)

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At least according to Wikipedia, brontosaurs are indeed dinosaurs. 

And I did correctly correct the proofs and italicize Tyrannosaurs rex. TBH I italicised it, it’s a British publication.

(Un)rest stop

I fed my youngest, Math Guy, and his husband’s cats the other day and saw this bench along the trail that runs near their house. The pinwheels were pinwheeling madly in the breeze. It was just too much. Just looking at it made me feel tense. So much movement in a spot that is designed for rest and respite. Why? 

I felt…curmudgeonly.

Breathing is complex

"Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that's what makes it so boring." Edward Gorey

The trick, perhaps, is to see the astonishing underneath the boring.  Every once in a while I recall that more than fifteen of every hundred nitrogen molecules I breathe is behaving in a way that would cause any self-respecting 19th century physicist to shriek, "Impossible! Imaginary^* velocities? No, no and simply, no!" (Also, that's on the order of 10²¹ molecules in each and every breath I take.)

Or, to Gorey's point, that there is a non-zero probability that I could tunnel through the closed door of my study. Vanishingly small, true, but still, non-zero. Could today be the day that the door shivers and my wavefunction slips through its wavefunction to emerge on the upstairs landing? The door is marginally more exciting when seen in that light, no?

Or perhaps the boring is what would delight us? I follow TinyTales on Bluesky for a quick step outside the maelstrom of current events. (Browse their offerings if you, too, need a moment of respite: tinytalesdaily.com) The other day the story was about a diary:

The diary predicts tomorrow, but only the boring parts.
"You'll forget your keys," I read. "Lunch will be adequate."

My diary these days is pretty boring. Errands. Medical appointments. Email. I might forget my keys (roughly as likely as that air molecule ibeings stretched beyond its classical limit.) Lunch will be adequate. (#defaultLunch: plain yogurt, cheese and crackers, a piece of fruit — the same thing I have had for lunch most days since graduate school.)  

And in the mornings, I write. Don't tell my diary. It's not in the least boring.

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*By "imaginary" I don't mean the velocities are made up, I simply mean that the values are complex. Just to complicate things, "complex"in this context doesn't mean complicated, but means they are not real numbers. Right. Well, they involve factors of i, where i is the square root of -1. Never mind...just trust me, it's very, very upsetting to a classical physicist.

A potent wizard

I follow an account on bluesky (@bookgaga.bsky.social) that regularly posts poetry. Today's selection was short and evocative for me, "Emerald Inula" by Sam Cherubin. (Full poem is here)

"i.

Apples in Schiller’s desk, Balsam of Peru, rockrose,

rose alba, Helichrysum Everlasting, Immortale.

Why can’t this be enough?

ii.

Dried petals staining the pages.

Attar of cells breathing sun.

Flesh never accepting, but aching."

I learned that inula was a plant and that the 18th century German poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller kept decaying apples in his desk drawer because their aroma spurred his creative juices when he was feeling stuck in his writing. 

Smell is a potent wizard, wrote Helen Keller. Indeed. Like Schiller's apples, the scent of rose congou in the afternoon can draw words to the page.  The shadowy fragrance of incense, all balsam and frankincense, that shakes out of my alb transports me to a darkened church, prostrate before mystery. The sweet sharp smell of an organic chemistry lab summons my father's ghost. What is scent enough for me to stir sentences into words, to conjure up  memory, to assuage the aches of loss? One molecule? Two?

Three Books: Stones Laid Before the Lord

Three books set in contemplative spaces, two fiction, one non-fiction.

I picked up Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood when I was in London last year (it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize). It is set in Australia, in an isolated monastery. It reminded me very strongly of In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden, both in style and themes. So much so I went back re-read Godden's novel (which I'd first read in high school.) 

Both follow a group of women living in a isolated religious community. Overall the plots revolve around an older woman who comes into the community by a unusual route. There are mysterious deaths. Threads from the past that pull at the future.  A member of the community that doesn't quite fit in, she is a bit too high profile, a bit too polished. The style of the two is also similar, slightly disjoint, jumping in time, demanding that the reader fill in the gaps.

Wood's descriptions of the mouse plague in Australia were epic (and epically disturbing), and track actual event. While cold feet might have been a trial to my vocation as they were to Godden's Dame Phillipa, I think I could have toughed it out. The mice? I think I would have fled in horror.

Aflame, Pico Iyer's memoir of his experiences with silence and contemplative monks (Catholic and Buddhist), takes us inside a non-fictional monastery of men who cling to the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur. I have been to this monastery and stayed in the hermitages there. I recognize some of the people and many of the places.  For all that I love this place and sacred silence in general and appreciate Iyer's writing, the book felt oddly thin. Admittedly it can be hard to wrap words around silence, to reveal what might be moving in heart and soul. Perhaps that why fiction feels more real? 

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The title was inspired by Stones Laid Before the Lord: A History of Monastic Architecture, a focus on the buildings, less so on the people who inhabit them. 

More books from my shelf that are related: An Infinity of Little Hours (Nancy Maguire, an anthropologist looks at the journeys of novices at a modern-day Carthusian charterhouse in England); Love on the Mountain: The Chronicle Journal of a Camaldolese Monk (Robert Hale, O.S.B. Cam., just what it says, autobiographical account of life as a monk at the monastery Iyer describes) and The Hermits of Big Sur (Paula Huston, a history of the Camaldolese monastery at Big Sur).