Letter 7 To jump one needs firm ground under one's feet. Fish have water, birds have air - how does a rocket move through empty space? Newton's 'To every action there is an opposite and equal reaction' - explains nothing to me! To explain it to myself, in a commonsense fashion, I imagine the rocket fuel ignited and the 'particles' agitated, moving away from one another, some shooting from the end of the rocket into space while the others shoot towards the rocket pusing it forward. Congestion? No, once the particles have exhausted their energy they dissipate. Did you see those documentaries on TV showing volcanos blowing smoke rings and whales blowing rainbows? Television - my window on the world! The window in my little room moves, I don't have to. You mentioned climate change the last time I spoke to you by land line. Are you sure it's not all the hot air spouted by 'experts'? We've had such changes in the past! Don't forget that colossus in space, the sun, nor the earth's attitude to that colossus. I've just composed a triplet: It matters not how you behave the date and cold and lonely grave closes over saint and knave. I see they've been dishing out the gongs again. All the monkeys and magpies gathering for a bit of glitter dolled out by dinosaurs and dodos! At my age I don't care what people think: "The universe is a computer - dealing out space, time and particles." What did it sit in? By the way, I've read of intuitionists, irrationalists, transcendentalists etc. But what is a C9 mathematician? They keep propsing mechanical organs to explain "creation". There was no beginning. Existence is eternal: contrast-change-emotion = consiousness therefore existence. Methinks their organs don't have a starter motor! A cold creator? The iceman cometh and the iceman geoth but in the meantime the iceman blowsith! I think it's time. I'll end with rhyme. Excuse the rhythm. I'm not paid a dime: The Iceman I could was lyrical on one so cold OK, so I'm not ending with a rhyme - but I wonder if they'll ever sell a TV for lonely people. A TV which radiates human pheromones and body heat. Or would that be a drag? B.W. Here I go again - I'm a rambler. Last week Andrew said that if a square manhole cover was stood on its end, diagonaly, over its square hole in the road it would fall through. I said I would have to measure it. After I left him at the station to return home the thought struck me :"The square on the hypotenuse..." (read years previously.) of course! That little formula explains it all. I never considered the formula a work of art till that moment. If a square is bisected diagonally two triangles are produced and by any "stretch" of the imagination one side of the three must be the greater. Yes, the lid will fall through. But with a ledge in the hole it would not. No need for me to sum the squares. In my mind it was a picture - two equilaterals forms and a square also. A round hold is easier to bore than a square one. How is it lined? Precast concrete rings? Cast iron tube? I was never that interested in manholes. Come to think of it, a manhole is like a horse hole or a dog's hole or any other kind of living hole. The puckered wrinkle resembles a purse closed tight by its drawstring. I suppose it is a money bag to a young male prostitute. I was expecting 'A Picture of Britain' on television to be a delight. But the reading of Wordsworths 'The Daffodils' was vapid. They probably think the poem is just a pretty little thing, omitting the most important line, the last sentence. Stubbs painting of Rockingham's horse is disproportionate - the colours in some of the other paintings were "SUBTLE". I thought them garish. I'd better end or I'll ramble on for hours. Kaput! Finito! Finissimo! Newton's encapsulation needs extrapolation. Mechanisation requires initiation! Explanation? Comparitive, superlative - 'Territorial imperative.' Like sex you will find that its all in the mind. OK, OK ------ back to homepage |