In case anyone was beginning to think about actually creating a lighting fixture for the labyrinth, here are some raw materials that you may certainly avail yourself of:
These are the pieces left over from my shaping the paving stones in the arcs of the labyrinth. There will be lots and lots of them if you want to figure out a way to use them.
These are the broken bits of the same pieces. I don’t know what you could do with these, but there will be a lot to play with if it inspires you. (I keep thinking I’ll use them in a fountain or something.)
An assortment of 2x4s and 2x6s, all about four feet tall. I’m going to use some for my “tubes of light,” but the rest are available.
Two largish pieces of 1/2″ plywood, about 48″ x 40″, and one smallish piece of treated 1/2″, about 24″ x 24″. Think standing sculpture. I keep thinking I want to do something large that hangs in the trees, something untoward and intriguing thereby.
Unpictured are eight 8-foot lengths of 2″ round, i.e., staffs. We probably want to hang on to those for future Lacuna ventures, but if you’re inspired, use them.
And now (Tuesday, 11/25) I have a drill press. A big one. Let the lacuna-making commence!
We had a fire the other night. MF stuck an old “cinnamon broom” into it and then quickly held it aloft. What a beautiful, surprisingly intense brief spectacle. If such a broom torch could flare continually and not be consumed…
The Eternal Puzzle, eh?
Is this to be taken metaphorically or literally?
I’m being literal. What eternal broom torch Dale’s sighing over, I have no idea.
I’m in Abingdon and don’t have my passwords to write a new post, so here it is in a comment:
Today is the birthday of Claude Levi-Strauss (who is actually 100 today) and of William Blake. Perhaps we should make this a Lichtenbergian high day.
If the hard drive of Dale’s computer were cleansed every password would appear in Abingdon as it is, infinite.
Was that a tribute to Levi-Strauss? Because I didn’t understand it.
My tribute to Levi-Strauss was done earlier:
http://www.lichtenbergian.org/?p=277#comments
As for my tribute to Blake, I could either sit out in my front yard naked or pick a fight with a uniformed reservist. Hm.
I want to return to JB’s sentence, and I am not about to be an asshole. There is something in the baffling effect of it that I find worth analyzing. It opens up a hole, a question, an enigma, the way poetry does at its highest and most challenging level.
It’s a simple If/then structure. No archaic or specialized words, no learned allusions, pretty much everyday speech. It is not trying to open a mystery. I think it intends us to grasp immediately the meaning. It is meant to be humorous. That’s part of the confounding enigma. We are being told we should “get it,” and yet we don’t. Why? Our perplexed response is amplified and intensified by the appearance of “infinite” at the culmination. A loaded word to say the least. The sentence scrambles our capacity to think, to parse it out, and then leaves us staring into infinity. We follow the trail of language–language as the promise of connection and communication and commonality–into an abyss.
I am seriously intrigued by this effect. I want to explore it further. It is like making some subtle mechanical adjustments in a machine and producing a spectacular breakdown.
“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.” William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
Sheesh.
“Break on thru to the other side…”
So shoot me. I didn’t know the second half. Welcome to the Island of Unrecognized Allusions.
Is that anything like Fantasy Island? Do I get my own Tattoo?
Reference to the nadir in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Sheeesh.
I know what you’re thinking. As sad as it is, Yukon Cornelius going over the precipice with the Abominable is not the nadir in the structural or existential sense.
“Island of Misfit Toys”
There, corrected me own self.
Hah! Too much stress! I was immediately delusional and thought I had written “Island of Unwanted Toys.”
Correcting delusional mistakes. Hm…
We are not just all nitwits
We are not just some misfits
No matter how much our noses glow
Seems we don’t fit in.