Thursday, April 3, 2008

Briefly, Line Recognition

While calibrating military optics, Joseph Fraunhofer noted that the spectral lines, which specify elements to the amount of light their atoms emit or absorb; and the resulting wavelength, of the Sun differed from other stars.

Aldrich-Mees' lines appear horizontally along the nail bed after arsenic, thallium or other heavy metal poisoning or they may indicate renal failure.

Median incision begins along the linea alba, or white line, or the fusion of the aponeuroses of the abdomen, which separates the left and right rectus abominis muscles.

Where each phrase, clause or sentence corresponds to a line of poetry with a line break or caesura, enjambement delays the intention of the lines by "straddling" or "bestriding" them.

Conceivably, the Nazca lines of the Pampas de Jumana of Peru were made by removing the iron oxide rocks to expose the light earth underneath, and their longevity is owing to the relatively windless conditions of the desert there.

Ascenders and descenders categorize the Latin letters in the study of lineation, or typography.

Recognizing the line of sex role conflicts is tantamount to crossing it.

Djuna Barnes defines Nora of Nightwood as if the horizon line of day and night applies to soul metered by it:

"'Have I not shut my eyes with the added shutter of the night and put my hand out? And it's the same with girls,' he said, 'those who turn the day into night, the young, the drug addict, the profligate, the drunken and that most miserable, the lover who watches all night long in fear and anguish. These can never again live the life of the day. When one meets them at high noon they give off, as it were a protective emanation, something dark and muted. The light does not become them any longer. They begin to have an unrecorded look. It is as if they were being tried by the continual blows of an unseen adversary. They acquire an 'unwilling' set of features. They become old without reward, the widower bird sitting sighing at the turnstile of heaven, 'Hallelujah! I am sticked! Skoll! Skoll! I am dying!'"
...

The concept of lines enters my language lately since I clearly enjoy crossing them. What if the barriers that initially titillate us in their impenetrability or by the insistence of transversal keep things interesting, for the lack of another word?

13 comments:

Σφιγξ said...

Answer: I would probably feel less against it if I moderated myself a bit more. I was reading about sugar, sex, gambling, competing binges, which all overstimulate the hypothalamus and release dopamine. The only means to experience less "withdrawal" is to occupy oneself with concentration and consistency. It really takes twice as much effort to thwart our primative reward circuitry, to reach equilibrium.

Σφιγξ said...

Ha. The person concluding this about herself wanted to read Fred Previc's The Dopaminergic Mind in Human Evolution and History, so perhaps I will read it this July.

Σφιγξ said...

I just realized that it is from Job 17:12 in Nightwood, "those who turn the day into night". As a whole, the book has little to say to me beyond select annotations and William Blake's images of angleworms, boils, and Leviathans.

Job 3:9 Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let ... own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXkondOj7pg

Σφιγξ said...

*Not little to say, just passively digested for the most part in Western culture

Σφιγξ said...

http://www.pathologystudent.com/?p=9739

For the near distant future.

Σφιγξ said...

"So black, she said, now smiling. But I'm sure you get told that a lot" (51). Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Σφιγξ said...

Overleaping, that they are stars; I meant that as a film couple, for Dark Passage (1947), they really were married.

Σφιγξ said...

https://dominiquedupuis.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/hommage-a-frenhofer/

Σφιγξ said...

http://schabrieres.wordpress.com/2014/12/20/georges-perros-poeme-1967-3/

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/archive

Σφιγξ said...

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/dec/23/mice-naughty-and-nice/?insrc=wbll

For another exploration, another time.

Σφιγξ said...

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/417714.article

Σφιγξ said...

Thank you, for reminding me of Beatrix Potter. I did not know that my favorite book (seconded by The Tale of Jeremy Fisher, and The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, now that I have read both obsessively, with my niece) used a real dollhouse to stage the drama. I notice that there is something surreal, almost frightening, about the scale of the kitchen's wallpaper, as if the thoughts contained therein are too intense to be constrained by the room.

https://books.google.com/books?id=vOjvCKbu8D8C&lpg=PT224&ots=oGKY39Vpo5&dq=Hill%20Top%20dollhouse%20Beatrix%20Potter&pg=PT224#v=onepage&q=Hill%20Top%20dollhouse%20Beatrix%20Potter&f=false

http://www.nationaltrustimages.org.uk/image.aspx?id=138671&loggedIn=False

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo29geocbz8

https://www.william-morris.co.uk/shop/wallpaper/morris-archive-wallpapers-ii/daisy/?code=DARW212559

https://books.google.com/books?id=Pe1SAQAAQBAJ&lpg=PT24&dq=%22Jane%20Austen%2C%20a%20writer%20much%20admired%20by%20Potter%2C%20provides%20some%20clues%20to%20Potter's%20own%20techniques.%22&pg=PT24#v=onepage&q=%22Jane%20Austen,%20a%20writer%20much%20admired%20by%20Potter,%20provides%20some%20clues%20to%20Potter's%20own%20techniques.%22&f=false

Σφιγξ said...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1948/05/15/symbols-and-signs