Peas and queues

The important thing about the vase is the emptiness it can hold. But what about tiles? They hold whole kitchens.

Talking of cuisine, with a large proportion of the world’s population starving, we in Europe have apparently lost touch with the idea of seasonal alimentation, and want to eat everything all year round. This is not 100% true in France because the arrival of certain products is still in evidence, asparagus, for instance. At the weekly market, on Monday mornings here, some small growers still sell their own produce.
I know I should wait till the right time to mention this, I’m definitely off season, (what does “off-side” mean?), but I was very surprised to find that the khaki, an orange fruit that ripens here in August, is called persimmon in English.

persimmon took me to Persepolis,

which took me to entropy (reminds me of lithops.)

“In thermodynamics, entropy is a measure of the unavailability of a system's energy to do work.”

I knew there was a word for it. So much depends on how you define "work".

The word "entropy" is derived from the Greek εντροπία "a turning toward" (εν- "in" + τροπή "a turning"), and is symbolized by S in physics.

Now where did that S come from? Lacan’s subject before it was barred from pottering about?

More tiles. Photos by Robert Grezes.

Errata

Maybe patchwork or cave drawing would be a more accurate ‘description’ of this blog than palimpsest. I have not actually rubbed anything out yet.

I found an online translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and discovered I had remembered “A moment’s inattention” wrong. The beast was indeed unleashed as a consequence of Oedipus solving the riddle of the Sphynx, but Oedipus did not have a secret affair with Diana – Laelaps, the hound, was a gift to Procris, who gave it to her husband Cephalus, along with a magic hunting spear.

Talking about holes:

1) I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost … I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

2) I walk down the same street.
There is a hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

3) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it there.
I still fall in … it’s a habit
My eyes are open
I know where I am
It is my fault.
I get out immediately

4) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I walk around it.

5) I walk down another street.

- Excerpt from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche

Empty spaces

"The word parchment, usually pergamenum in medieval Latin, derives from the name of the city of Pergamum whose ancient King Eumenes is said by Pliny to have invented it in the second century BC during a trade blockade on papyrus.”

Parchment is made from animal skin and has imperfections; sometimes in pages of manuscripts one sees holes.