Phanerothyris Sinearia

Phanerothyris sinearia (中阈尺蛾).

The last geometer moth of the month, it was resting on the reeds by the Xiang River. I believe they can be found in Northern and Central China, as well as Japan.

Uglier Traits of Human Nature

There are few uglier traits of human nature than this tendency—which I now witnessed in men no worse than their neighbours—to grow cruel, merely because they possessed the power of inflicting harm.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (New York: The Modern Library, 2000; 1850), p. 37.

Timandra Stueningi

Timandra stueningi (史氏褐线尺蛾).

It has been a bumper week for moths. Like many others, this one was hiding in the new growth on Yuelu Mountain. They are named after Timandra the mythological daughter of Tyndareus and Leda, and sister of Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra. Like her more famous sisters, Timandra was an unfaithful wife, but now she has a genus of moths named after her, so things worked out.

Trauervokal

“Ja, das sagst du wohl, Effi. Aber was sollen wir denn singen?”
“Irgendwas; es ist ganz gleich, es muß nur einen Reim auf ‘u’ haben; ‘u’ ist immer Trauervokal. Also singen wir:
                    Flut, Flut,
                    Mach alles wieder gut ...”

“Yes, Effi, so you say easily enough. But what shall we sing?”
“Anything; it doesn’t matter, only it must have a rhyme in ‘u’; ‘u’ is always a sorrowful vowel. Let’s sing:
                    Flood, flood,
                    Make it all good ...”

Theodor Fontane, Effi Briest (Berlin: Ullstein, 1994; 1896), p. 15. My translation.

Idaea Ptyonopoda

Idaea ptyonopoda (赤腰姬尺蛾).

A geometer moth with a fairly wide range over southern Asia. This one was on a leaf in Wangling Park exposed to the sun: it will be lucky if it avoids the beak of laughingthrush before sun set.

To Renounce the Fumcigar

   “To renounce the fumcigar,” says Pott, from the sawmill (fumo means “tobacco” in Portuguese), “is possible, but difficult, difficult. And one might fare like Matteus, up in the Camp district.”
   “What happened to him?” I asked politely.
   “He just smoked too much, day and night. And then a friend tells him, ‘You,’ he says, ‘if you put all that money that goes into smoke into the bank, you would be a rich man at the end of the year!’ ‘Right you are,’ says Matteus, throws charutos and cachimbos [cigars and pipes] away, and stops smoking. And sure enough, at the end of the year he has a lot of money. The second year more. Times were different then. The milreis was on the gold standard and worth as much each month as the month before. Before very long - may I fall dead if it isn't true - the man buys a papelão factory!”
   “Papelão? What's that?”
   “The stiff paper you make boxes of! They make it from wood.”
   “Cardboard?”
   “Yes, papelão. A nice factory. He left his colonia to the weeds and earned contos and contos [1 conto=1,000 cruzeiros]. Well, um dia de noite, one day in the evening, a friend invites him to a birthday party. And while they’re sitting there, eating and drinking and eating again, a rider gallops up shouting, ‘Hurry up! Your factory is afire!’ He jumps into his cart and speeds off at a breakneck pace! And when he gets there, what does he see? Just ashes and embers, and smoke - smoke everywhere. And there, on a still smoldering beam, he lit his cigar again. ‘The money was destined to go up in smoke,’ he said. And he went back to his colonia and capeened and smoked his fumcigar as long as he lived.”

Alexander Lenard, Valley of the Latin Bear (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1965), p. 115-16.

Vision

It is true. At the moment of vision the eyes see nothing.

William Golding, The Spire (London: Faber and Faber, 1983), p. 24.

Bradina Admixtalis

Bradina admixtalis (稻暗水螟).

A pallid brown grass moth. I noticed it by a construction site when I was walking to the park: they are long accustomed to dwelling alongside humans, and range from South Africa, across Asia down to Australia. Its long and slender abdomen is a noticeable feature.

Trypanophora Semihyalina

Trypanophora semihyalina (网锦斑蛾).

This moth was active in the afternoon, carefully exploring several tree trucks in Wangling Park, either looking for food or a place to avoid being disturbed. This is the first time I have noticed one in Changsha though I don't believe they are in fact uncommon here.

Homer Instead of Hygiene

 Scene, a club in a Canadian city; persons, a professor, a doctor, a business man, and a traveller (myself). Wine, cigars, anecdotes; and suddenly, popping up, like a Jack-in the-box absurdly crowned with ivy, the intolerable subject of education. I do not remember how it began; but I know there came a point at which, before I knew where I was, I found myself being assailed on the subject of Oxford and Cambridge. Not, however, in the way you may anticipate. Those ancient seats of learning were not denounced as fossilised, effete, and corrupt. On the contrary, I was pressed, urged, implored, almost with tears in the eye—to reform them? No! to let them alone!
   “For heaven’ sake, keep them as they are! You don’t know what you've got, and what you might lose! We know! We’ve had to do without it! And we know that without it everything else is of no avail. We bluster and brag about education on this side of the Atlantic. But in our heart of hearts we know that we have missed the one thing needful, and that you, over in England, have got it.”
   “And that one thing?”
   “Is Culture! Yes, in spite of Matthew Arnold, Culture, and Culture, and always Culture!”
   “Meaning by Culture?”
   “Meaning Aristotle instead of Agriculture, Homer instead of Hygiene, Shakspere instead of the Stock Exchange, Bacon instead of Banking, Plato instead of Pædagogics! Meaning intellect before intelligence, thought before dexterity, discovery before invention! Meaning the only thing that is really practical, ideas; and the only thing that is really human, the Humanities!”
   Rather apologetically, I began to explain. At Oxford, I said, no doubt the Humanities still hold the first place. But at Cambridge they have long been relegated to the second or the third. There we have schools of Natural Science, of Economics, of Engineering, of Agriculture. We have even a Training College in Pædagogics. Their faces fell, and they renewed their passionate appeal.

G. Lowes Dickinson, Appearances: Notes of Travel, East and West (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & company, 1915), pp. 192-93.

Tongeia Filicaudis

Tongeia filicaudis (点玄灰蝶).

Another local typical blue butterfly. Over the past two weeks I have seen several on the lower reaches of Yuelu Mountain, either resting on ramie plants or feeding on the various wild flowers or Japanese cheese plants.

Pseudo-realities

So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.

Philip K. Dick, ‘Introduction: How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later’, in I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon (London: Grafton Books, 1988), pp. 7-34 (p. 11).

Agenocimbex Maculatus Larva

Agenocimbex maculatus (朴童锤角叶蜂).

For the past week I have been watching this clubhorn sawfly larva resting under leaves that it must be vigorously feeding upon during the night. It is lazy and slow to move but did exert itself enough to spit yellow juice on my hand as I gently overturned this leaf.

Past Events

Shirley Hazzard, The Bay of Noon (New York: Picador, 2011; 1970), p.2:

When I was a child I used to be filled with envy when adults recalled events of twelve or fifteen years before. I would think it must be marvellous, to issue those proclamations of experience – ‘It was at least ten years ago’, or ‘I hadn’t seen him for twenty years’. But chronological prestige is tenacious: once attained, it can’t be shed; it increases moment by moment, day by day, pressing its honours on you until you are lavishly, overly endowed with them. Until you literally sink under them. A centenarian has told me that memory protects one from this burden of experience. Whole segments of time dropped out, she said: ‘Of five or six years, say, around the turn of the century, all I can remember is the dress that someone wore, or the colour of a curtain.’ And I would be pleased, rather than otherwise, at the prospect of remembering Naples in similar terms – a lilac dress Gioconda wore one morning driving to Caserta, or the Siena-coloured curtains of the apartment in San Biagio dei Librai. But memory, at an interval of only fifteen years, is less economical and less poetic, still clouded with effects and what seemed to be their causes. The search is still under way in unlikely places – too assiduous, too attenuated; too far from home.