As a somewhat creative person, I do come up with the most imaginative description of post culinary indulgences while responding to pathology tests. One doctor even guessed I was a writer based on the poetic justice I did to what appeared to be a drab report that exposed me not only to amoebae and bacteria but also to a future reader.
Given this little episode in the nascent stages when my literary yearnings got a boost, I can conjecture with a degree of certitude that it has to do with the seating arrangement.
The difference between a scientist and an artiste is that the former can soak in a bath tub, think up something and run out stark naked screaming ‘Eureka’ because he has a hypothesis; the latter, due to the peculiar task at hand cannot leave until it is over and therefore there is time to ruminate and think it through. You can later always say that you were preoccupied with your Muse.
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“I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.”
(Holden Caulfield in Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye)
Hi Farzana,
ReplyDelete>>There is literary merit . . .<<
Maybe. Certainly on repairing to the "head" (in naval terminology) or "water-closet" (more Victorian, I think -- perhaps then expressive of the relative novelty of indoor-plumbing) I've been known to announce (not my copyright, I hasten to add), should anyone call or wonder to where I've disappeared, that I could be found "in my office." I'm not exactly sure why such a description should prompt the wry smile it invariably does -- perhaps it plays on the suspicions many of us have as to the primary activity taking place in "official" redoubts the world over.
It all sort of rolls downhill anyway, as it has been averred. Witness the dung beetle, Ronald Reagan, Sisyphus . . .
Of course, the auctioning of Salinger's toilet-seat would seem to be an argument for osmosis, or a sort of transference -- or trade, even.
>>One doctor even guessed . . .<<
Wow! No rubber hoses? That *is* saying something, Farzana -- especially for such certified anal retentives.
>>. . . I can conjecture with a degree of certitude . . . .<<
Well, yes, certainly. There is, after all, the somewhat obscured suggestion that "steps" -- such as might be employed in ascending to such rarified atmospheres (both literally and figuratively) -- may not always lend to the certitude many seek. Elsewhere, in the same vein, perhaps, we are encouraged to first seek the lowest seat, whereupon "literary merit" may then follow. I think the general idea is that such pyramidal arrangements too easily lend to those with lesser apogee (or appoggiatura) to be sort of "shouting up the skirts" (or broadly-fringed robes, as the case may be) of those more ascendant.
Salinger, with the success of his The Catcher in the Rye, would seem to have quickly cottoned on to this.
Mark
Mstaab:
ReplyDeleteMark, I did not know about "in my office"...I guess it appears a more leisurely activity. Perhaps the wry smile would be that the 'offalic' seem 'officious'.
Of course, the auctioning of Salinger's toilet-seat would seem to be an argument for osmosis, or a sort of transference -- or trade, even.
The parameters here would be most basic for the transference, which begs the question of whether it amounts to reductionism.
This brings us to your 'ascendant' theory and the pyramidical paradigm. It is to start at the bottom, so to speak, and find ascendancy in (or on) the throne by a default mechanism.
>>One doctor even guessed . . .<<
Wow! No rubber hoses? That *is* saying something, Farzana -- especially for such certified anal retentives.
Such retentiveness perhaps alludes to the potential,even as it remains elusive :)