Quotes and memes

DeWolfe Apts., on the Feast of St. Medard

I returned to Cambridge yesterday and moved into our summer housing at DeWolfe. We have our own kitchen, with a fridge that's larger than the one at home and a nice stove to boot. I'm sharing one of the two bedrooms with my roommate Nan. It's the first time we've actually shared living space--during the school year, we split our doubles suite into two singles, you see--but so far, it hasn't been too difficult at all. I suppose it's because neither Nan or I are intrusive people. I have my desk by the window, which looks out on a beautiful view of the trees behind DeWolfe. All in all, I'm rather pleased with our living arrangements.

I finished Chesterton's hagiography of Thomas Aquinas on Sunday. It's been nearly two years since I started it, but what with college and my bad habit of starting new books before I finish old ones, I hadn't gotten around to reading the last three or four chapters. It's not a long book at all, by the way, and I'm a bit ashamed that it's taken me so long to finish it. In any case, I'll spare you any religious discussion, but here are some amusing quotes on philosophy:

"The Hegelian may say that an egg is really a hen, because it is a part of an endless process of Becoming; the Berkeleian may hold that poached eggs only exist as a dream exists; since it is quite as easy to call the dream the cause of the eggs as the eggs the cause of the dream; the Pragmatist may believe that we get the best out of scrambled eggs by forgetting they were ever eggs, and only remembering the scramble."

"A man wrote to say that he accepted nothing but Solipsism, and added that he had often wondered it was not a more common philosophy. Now Solipsism simply means that a man believes in his own existence, but not in anybody or anything else. And it never struck this simple sophist, that if his philosophy was true, there obviously were no other philosophers to profess it."

"But in a general sense there has entered that primeval world of pure actality, the division and dilemma that brings the ultimate sort of war into the world; the everlasting duel between Yes and No. This is the dilemma that many sceptics have darkened the universe and dissolved the mind, solely in order to escape. They are those who maintain that there is something that is both Yes and No. I do not know whether they pronounce it Yo."

Chesterton has such expressive turns of phrase, and I'm always delighted by how lucid his prose is, even in their most elaborate and figurative moments. Saint Thomas Aquinas is probably easier reading for someone who doesn't disagree with Chesterton's self-avowed "medievalism" but it does have these peculiarly novel, even topsy-turvy ways of looking at history, and I'd recommend it simply for Chesterton's interesting interpretations.

(You know, if I ever get around to reading The City of God, I want to read The Republic at the same time to see if Chesterton's premise makes sense. I mean, of course, it makes sense in the fact that Augustine was very much a neo-Platonist, but I want to know if the two, er, ideal constructions resemble each other in terms of literary atmosphere.)

I stopped by the library today and checked out Claudius the God, which I've been meaning to read ever since I finished I, Claudius senior year. I have a much better perspective on the history behind it now, after having taken Rome of Augustus last year. Claudius is still relating the adventures of his friend Herod Agrippa at the moment, and I was particularly amused by this (rather gory) passage about the latter's grandfather, Herod the Great:

"I never heard that it had any name but Herod's Evil or that anyone else had suffered from it before him, but the symptoms were a ravenous hunger followed by vomiting, a putrescent stomach, a corpselike breath, maggots breeding in the privy member and a constant watery flow from the bowels."

It sounds like a tapeworm infection to me. Any medical experts willing to comment?

Both murinae and schwimmerin tagged me for the favorite songs meme:

( Music meme )

Tagging: tryogeru, solidark, aetherangelette, issen4, klio911 and faeryetale (apologies to anyone who may have already done the meme)

I've also been meaning to ask (taken from memlu from months back): Why am I on your f-list? ("I don't know" and "I haven't gotten around to removing you yet" are perfectly valid answers, as is "You friended me first and I have a policy of adding everyone back? :D" even if it makes me cry! in my soul!) Please respond in comments and, if you're feeling up to it, post this one in your own journal.

For the most part I know everyone on my friends list, from having stalked you for your writing or seen you around on LJ, but I'm still curious. (Oh, um, no need to say, "I know you in real life." ^_^)

Yours &c.

Post-script: Have actually started writing again. postboxes should be updated tonight, hopefully, as long as Claudius the God doesn't distract me too much.