Grote's Tussock Moth Caterpillar

Grote's Tussock Moth (Calliteara grotei, 线丽毒蛾).

They range from the Himalayas to southeast Asia. It has been an unseasonably warm November in Changsha, so everywhere one examines nature, life seems to be experiencing one last hurrah before cold weather is unbridled: each week there are new flowers, new birds and new insect larva to be found. Recently these yellow and white caterpillars have been present on Yuelu Mountain in conspicuous numbers; it is the first time I have noticed any of them so far this year. Often they have been feeding and shedding their hair on broad-leaf trees. Two, we found resting together on a warm rock near the mountain summit. When disturbed, they raise their bristles and stare at you with their jet black eyes, but we left them unmolested as possible, so they could enjoy and destroy their allotments of woodland shrubbery.

Memory is Curious, Capricious

   Memory is curious, capricious, incalculable, inexplicable, like all other realities. What is it? Is it a thread? No, rather a nerve rivulet conveying what is left over of a vital experience from somewhere in the past to the present instant. The loss of memory begins with attenuating this flow until it almost stops. Thereupon this something that hitherto had a warmth, as if it were an extension, no matter how remote, of our blood-stream, ceases to be part of us, never to be reintegrated with ourselves, even if we do recapture it and save it for mere use. So much of what only the other day seemed part and parcel of my mental furniture has faded and vanished before I have perceived it. Could I have retained it with timely effort? I could not have believed that I would forget my Greek irregular verbs, the dates of the kings of England, the succession of our presidents, the rivers, the capitals, the boundaries of our individual states. I find that I am forgetting them or have lost them already. Huge lumps of memory break away and melt into oblivion. Why? How? Is memory a tablet, a palimpsest, criss-crossed and written over and over, till no ground is visible through a tangle of inextricable confusion? It that why we cease to retain easily and then not at all after a certain age, and why the tablet breaks off at the edges and cracks in the middle? Again, memory seems to act as if it consisted of a pile of photographic negatives. During our best years these negatives present themselves unbidden when wanted. Now they ignore my orders. What has happened? Have they failed in energy and readiness, have they failed in energy and readiness, have they faded, or is it my ego that can no longer command their obedience?

Bernard Berenson, Sketch for a Self-Portrait (New York: Pantheon, 1949), pp. 15-16.

Red-billed Starling

Red-billed Starling (Spodiopsar sericeus, 丝光椋鸟).

There are always a few of these starlings about, but at this time of year there are thousands of them by the river: migrating in huge vociferous flocks.

Fossilised Books

Certain genera of animals, once flourishing, but now extinct and known only by their fossilized remains, are described by paleontologists. Literary historians recognize also certain genera of literature, once flourishing, but now extinct and known only to a few specialists who care to delve into books which, gathering dust on library shelves, are all but forgotten and virtually fossilized.

Johannes A. Gaertner, ‘Latin Verse Translations of the Psalms: 1500-1620’, The Harvard Theological Review, 49.4 (1956), 271-305 (p. 271).

School and Leisure

Denn eines der Fundamente der abendländischen Kultur (und nehmen wir, vielleicht allzu verwegen, einmal an, jener Neubau werde in abendländischem Geiste geplant– eine Annahme, so sehr bestreitbar, dass man geradezu sagen kann: eben dies und nichts anderes stehe heute zur Entscheidung)–eines der Fundamente der abendländischen Kultur ist die Muße.–So steht es schon zu lesen in der Metaphysik des Aristoteles, in ihrem ersten Kapitel. Und auch die Wortgeschichte hält eine ähnliche Auskunft bereit: Muße heißt griechisch σχολἠ, lateinisch schola, deutsch Schule. Der Name also, mit dem wir die Stätten der Bildung, und gar die der Ausbildung, benennen, bedeutet Muße. Schule heißt nicht »Schule«, sondern: Muße.
 
For one of the foundations of Western culture (and we, perhaps too boldly, assume that the reconstruction will be carried out in a Western spirit—an assumption, so very debatable that one can almost say, that just this and nothing else is today open to question)—one of the foundations of western culture is leisure.—so it can be found in the first chapter of the Metaphysics of Aristotle. And also the history of the word conveys a similar message: leisure is σχολἠ in Greek, which is schola in Latin and ‘school’ in German. So the name which we give to places of education, and even to education, means leisure. School is not ‘school’ but leisure.

Josef Pieper, ‘Muße und Kult’ in Kulturphilosophische Schriften (Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1999), pp.1-44 (pp.2-3). My translation.

Small White

Small White (Pieris rapae, 菜粉蝶).

For the past month there has been no shortage of butterflies, but in recent days their numbers have been increasing still. Often I see close to a dozen types of butterflies and moths feasting on a single flowerbed, not including more reclusive species hiding under leaves. Small whites are common across the world: perhaps once upon a time they ventured into China from the eastern Mediterranean, but they are natives now.

Olive-backed Pipit

Olive-backed Pipit (Anthus hodgsoni, 树鹨).

A cooler weather resident in Changsha. I saw a few near the Xiang river last February. And recently I have been spotting them there again.

Quis custodiet ipsos censores?

Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books (London: Virago Press, 2012), p. 95:

We are culturally predisposed to sheltering criticism from criticism; we have enshrined the iconoclast. If our feelings register some minor shock, or if we suppose the public might be somewhat irked, or even if we think we can discern some earnest hope on the part of a writer to irk or to offend ourselves or our neighbors, then a book is praised as a creditable effort and excused from the kind of attention that might raise questions about its actual novelty or merit.

Chinese Black Bird

Chinese Blackbird (Turdus mandarinus, 乌鸫).

They are most conspicuous in the hot wet part of summer, as they can still be found out in the open, when most other birds have retreated from the sun. But They are active, foraging for worms and insects, all year round.

Radical Chic

Antonia Fraser, Must You Go?: My Life with Harold Pinter (London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2010):

Later we went up to Melvyn and Cate’s in Hampstead as before, in a hired car. Me to Harold: ‘Would it be the height of radical chic to ask for a driver who is a Labour voter?’

Bridget Jones: A Missing Scene

Salman Rushdie, Joseph Anton: A Memoir (London: Vintage, 2013), pp. 605-606:

The party scene took two days to film. Renée Zellweger stuck to her English accent all the time, even off-camera, so that he [Rushdie] had the odd feeling of meeting Bridget Jones, not the actress playing her. Colin Firth was funny and welcoming. “I secretly hope you’re going to be lousy at this, because I can’t write books.” And Hugh Grant kissed him. There was a scene in which he and Hugh were supposed to greet each other as long-lost friends, and before one of the takes Hugh asked, “Do you mind if I kiss you in this one?” and then planted a major smacker right on his amazed mouth. The scene didn’t make it into the final cut of the movie. His first screen kiss, he thought, and it was with Hugh Grant!, and it ended up on the cutting-room floor.

Araneus Ventricosus

Araneus ventricosus (大腹园蛛).

This orb weaver was occupying a tidy web by the Xiang river. If is is not one of the most common local spiders, it is one of the most noticeable: one often stumbles upon its large webs in dense bushes and forest pathways.

Male Yellow-bellied Tit

Yellow-bellied Tit (Periparus venustulus, 黄腹山雀).

Often seen from autumn to spring around the woods and waters of Changsha. They are frequently in mixed flocks, searching the trees, bushes and ground with smaller numbers of tits and Pallas's leaf warblers. When they are present nearby, one almost always hears their cavalier whistles.

Consolation for the Soul

Kempo van Texel (active c. 1505-1522)
Consolatio ad animam

Tristia quum dulcis resecantur stamina vite
   Te vocat altitonans ni malefacta premant.
 
When the sorrowful threads of sweet life are cut short, the high-thunderer calls you, unless your evil deeds restrain you.

Kempo van Texel, Carmina et epigrammata pulcherrima [(Zwolle : Peter Os van Breda, 150?)], p.23. My translation.