It Is Appropriate: Cum Cunno Mihi Mentula Est Vocanda

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Obscenis, peream, Priape, si non
uti me pudet improbisque verbis
sed cum tu posito deus pudore
ostendas mihi coleos patentes
cum cunno mihi mentula est vocanda

("I'd rather die than use obscene and improper words; but when you, as a god, appear with your balls hanging out, it is appropriate for me to speak of cunts and cocks.")

- From Wikipedia: Latin Profanity

Auguries: Instead of the cross, the Albatross about my neck was hung

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"These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent. "

- Midway - Message from the Gyre  

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At length did cross an Albatross,

Thorough the fog it came ;

As if it had been a Christian soul,

We hailed it in God's name.

It ate the food it ne'er had eat,

And round and round it flew.

- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

"Auguries were also drawn from the notes of birds, birds being divided by the augurs into two classes: (i) oscines, "those which give omens by their note," and (ii) alites, "those which afford presages by their flight."[1] Another method of augury was performed by the feeding of chickens specially kept for this purpose. This was done just before sunrise by the pullarius or feeder, strict silence being observed. If the birds manifested no desire for their food, the omen was of a most direful nature. On the other hand, if from the greediness of the chickens the grain fell from their beaks and rebounded from the ground, the augury was most favourable. This latter augury was known as tripudium solistimum. "Any fraud practiced by the 'pullarius'," writes the Rev. EDWARD SMEDLEY, "reverted to his own head. Of this we have a memorable instance in the great battle between Papirius Cursor and the Samnites in the year of Rome 459. So anxious were the troops for battle, that the 'pullarius' dared to announce to the consul a 'tripudium solistimum,' although the chickens refused to eat. Papirius unhesitatingly gave the signal for fight, when his son, having discovered the false augury, hastened to communicate it to his father. 'Do thy part well,' was his reply, 'and let the deceit of the augur fall on himself. The "tripudium" has been announced to me, and no omen could be better for the Roman army and people!' As the troops advanced, a javelin thrown at random struck the 'pullatius' dead. 'The hand of heaven is in the battle,' cried Papirius; 'the guilty is punished!'"

- Superstitions Concerning Birds

- Thanks to L. Bender

Eunoe: The sweet draught that ne'er would satiate me

Don Eddy, Eunoe, 1993, mezzotint, 19 x 12 inches

But Eunoe behold, that yonder rises;
Lead him to it, and, as thou art accustomed,
Revive again the half-dead virtue in him."

Like gentle soul, that maketh no excuse,
But makes its own will of another's will
As soon as by a sign it is disclosed,

Even so, when she had taken hold of me,
The beautiful lady moved, and unto Statius
Said, in her womanly manner, "Come with him."

If, Reader, I possessed a longer space
For writing it, I yet would sing in part
Of the sweet draught that ne'er would satiate me.

Dante, The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio: Canto XXXIII

***

Eunoe is a feature of Dante's Commedia created by Dante as a sixth river of the dead. Penitents reaching the Garden of Eden at the top of Mount Purgatory are first washed in the waters of the river Lethe in order to forget the memories of their mortal sins. They then pass through Eunoe to have the memories of their good deeds in life strengthened.

The word "eunoe" is one of Dante's many neologisms presumably derived from Greek "eu-," meaning "good" and "noe," meaning "mind."

- From Wikipedia: Eunoe

O Happy Dead!

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"O happy dead! O spirits elect already!"
Virgilius made beginning, "by that peace
Which I believe is waiting for you all,

Tell us upon what side the mountain slopes,
So that the going up be possible,
For to lose time irks him most who most knows."

Dante, The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio: Canto III

A Kind of Lostness

In response to a question about what being an American was like for him at the end of the 20th century, he told the online magazine Salon in 1996 that there was something sad about it, but not as a reaction to the news or current events.

“It’s more like a stomach-level sadness,” he said. “I see it in myself and my friends in different ways. It manifests itself as a kind of lostness.”

- New York Times: David Foster Wallace, Influential Writer, Dies at 46

Wallace may have foreshadowed his own death in a 2005 speech to students at Kenyon College that spoke of the struggle with the mind.

“Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master. This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth,” he said.

“It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

- TimesOnline