goodbye old paint

According to the calculations of H. Gerstenkorn, later developed by H. Alfven, the terrestrial continents are simply fragments of the Moon which fell upon our planet. According to this theory, the Moon originally was a planet gravitating around the Sun, until the moment when the nearness of the Earth caused it to be derailed from its orbit. Captured by terrestrial gravity, the Moon moved closer and closer, contracting its orbit around us. At a certain moment the reciprocal attraction began to alter the surface of the two celestial bodies, raising very high waves from which fragments were detached and sent spinning in space, between Earth and Moon, especially fragments of lunar matter which finally fell upon Earth. Later, through the influence of our tides, the Moon was impelled to move away again, until it reached its present orbit. But a part of the lunar mass, perhaps half of it, had remained on Earth, forming the continents.

(Source: des.emory.edu)

Plutchik’s psychoevolutionary theory of basic emotions has ten postulates.

1. The concept of emotion is applicable to all evolutionary levels and applies to animals as well as to humans.
2. Emotions have an evolutionary history and have evolved various forms of expression in different species.
3. Emotions served an adaptive role in helping organisms deal with key survival issues posed by the environment.
4. Despite different forms of expression of emotions in different species, there are certain common elements, or prototype patterns, that can be identified.
5. There is a small number of basic, primary, or prototype emotions.
6. All other emotions are mixed or derivative states; that is, they occur as combinations, mixtures, or compounds of the primary emotions.
7. Primary emotions are hypothethical constructs or idealized states whose properties and characteristics can only be inferred from various kinds of evidence.
8. Primary emotions can be conceptualized in terms of pairs of polar opposites.
9. All emotions vary in their degree of similarity to one another.
10. Each emotion can exist in varying degrees of intensity or levels of arousal.

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over and over stitch

jorie graham

Late in the season the world digs in, the fat blossomshold still for just a moment longer.   Nothing looks satisfied,but there is no real reason to move on much further:this isn’t a bad place;   why not pretendwe wished for it?The bushes have learned to live with their haunches.   The hydrangea is resignedto its pale and inconclusive utterances.Towards the end of the seasonit is not badto have the body. To have experienced joyas the mere lifting of hunger   is not to have known it   less. The tobacco leaves   don’t mind being removedto the long racks—all uses are astoundingto the used.There are moments in our lives which, threaded, give us heaven—noon, for instance, or all the single victoriesof gravity, or the kudzu vine,most delicate of manias,which has pressed its luckthis far this season.It shines a gloating green.Its edges darken with impatience, a kind of wind.Nothing again will ever be this easy, livesbeing snatched up like dropped stitches, the dry stalks of daylilies   marking a stillness we can’t keep.

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We descend upon you and all things—we arrest you all; We realize the soul only by you, you faithful solids and fluids; Through you color, form, location, sublimity, ideality; Through you every proof, comparison, and all the suggestions and determinations of ourselves.   You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers! you novices!
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward; Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us; We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently within us; We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also; You furnish your parts toward eternity;
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.

crossing brooklyn ferry, whitman