Aphorismatica

(Animation EAC 02)


Aphorismatica (2)


Buying And Selling

Alles ist kaufen und gekaufen!--everything is buying and selling.

So some would have it.

Thus also the imperative of the price on their heads.



Cats

Cats are strange critters. They come in litters. No one ever sees them leave.



Construction

“All language is subject to construction”—so goes the old saw of the law schools.

The trouble is the saw itself is language, thus subject to being construed.

Why not then as, say: “Some language is subject to construction”.

“Some”, as any lawyer will tell you if it pays him to do so, is not “all”.

But who is silly enough to pay attention to lawyers, most especially in regard to words and the constructions they find it convenient, and usually very lucrative, to make upon them?



Chairperson

A Britisher asks: “Why are department heads called ‘Chairpersons’ in America?”

The answer is simple and elegant: “person” is derived from the Latin persona from personare, that is: “to resound, reecho”.

The “chair” prefix tells you where the sound comes through.




Curtain Fall

The function of the stage curtain is to block sight, thus mark change or discontinuity in what happens on stage.

The fact that in contemporary theater the curtain falls is incidental. Among the ancient Romans, for example, stage curtains rose from below.

Insofar as the medium is the message, and dramatic metaphors find currency in daily life, might therefore the Romans have been comfortable with a day’s end in which, say, “darkness rises”?

In fact one has spent many decades looking about the natural world for a darkness that seems to fall. Instead, what one sees at the end of the day is the light going down, and in the mountains, among other places, the shadows and darkness climbing.

[copyright EAC]