Misadventures in the Land of Fables #64
You do not always get to where you intended to go. You discover the road you’re travelling does not lead where you thought it would. You watch uneasily as your path veers away and the twinkling lights of the settlement at the head of the valley disappear behind the brow of the hill. What then? […]
Aphorisms #3
~~~ “He planned to paint his shadow from dawn to dusk. At midday, he gave up.” ~~~ Is this a rebuke to those who lack resolve? Or an admonition to make better plans? This individual understood that shadows change—it was his subject—but forgot that change includes a (short) period of loss when the sun reaches […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #63
I’ve been roaming this land of fables for so long I fear I may be going around in circles, of figures of eight, infinities. I return to the same stories from different directions and forget the sights I’d seen and the thoughts I’d had. Sometimes I repeat them. I read again Arthur Golding’s curious rendering […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #62
Regular readers may have noticed I’ve been referencing a volume of fables called ‘A Moral Fabletalk’ on and off throughout the year. I forget where I first encountered it, but I confess I only recently got around to reading the accompanying introductory essays. I discovered the manuscript was never published. Golding was a Tudor author […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #61
‘The Ant and the Grasshopper.’ This fable has always bugged me, if you’ll forgive the pun. I don’t know exactly when I first heard it, at school no doubt, but I do know I have always had objections. I probably don’t need to recite the story here, but I will, in its most blunt form, […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #60
An example of creative confusion. Two bird fables from Arthur Golding got conflated in my recollection while I was occupied with other business. Add an original thought of my own—they happen!—and a new fable was conceived, the off-spring of these three parents. In one fable, a ‘puttock’ (a bird of prey) seizes a nightingale and […]