12 frogs read think get curious

Wheat, Windfarm in Kansas

originally uploaded by kathyv.

An Invisible Sign of My Own (page 123)

On Friday, listening to the now-familiar sound of retching in his room, I taught more subtraction to the second grade using word problems about the kids in the class: Ann DiLanno grew five heads in September and by October had only two heads. How many heads did she lose?

I have one head, Ann interrupted. I am not losing a single head.

I was fidgety because it was Friday, which meant tomorrow was Saturday, and after Saturday was Sunday, and that was two days of no work and all worry.

Aimee Bender’s novel — which I’m reading now — is about OCD and math. I guess that makes it a fitting subject for the page 123 meme.

If you are reading this, consider yourself tagged. Feel free to play along in the comments.

tattoos

bioluminescent fungi

Organization creates the illusion of control

I love the Borges catalog of animals from “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins”:

1. those that belong to the Emperor
2. embalmed ones
3. those that are trained
4. suckling pigs
5. mermaids
6. fabulous ones
7. stray dogs
8. those that are included in this classification
9. those that tremble as if they were mad
10. innumerable ones
11. those drawn with a very fine camel’s hair brush
12. others
13. those that have just broken a flower vase
14. those that resemble flies from a distance

The list isn’t a predictable pattern. It’s fanciful; it’s absurd. It’s also about control: the first kind of animals are the Emperor’s. And it’s an admission of the impossibility of the task — what won’t resemble flies from a great enough distance?

Why yes, I have been working on and thinking about web site organization. And my desk is a mess right now.