If you're lucky, you pull it all together with a twist of your wit

[George Stubbs's] portrait from life of a tigress that had been given to George Spencer, the fourth Duke of Marlborough (and a great great great greatgreatgreatgreat uncle of Princess Diana) by Lord Clive, the governor of Bengal, may have been seen by a twelve-year-old WIlliam Blake and inspired his famous poem The Tyger," writes Amba in a perfect little masterpiece of a blogpost. Tiny, above, pauses to read the silence after snowfall yesterday morning.

"I think cheating is the way to go, too. There's definite fodder there for a worlds-within-worlds blog post," writes Amba in her own comments in response to an extended comment we left at Ambivablog this morning, taking up her invitation to readers to consider themselves tagged for "the Page 123 Book Meme." She herself had been tagged by The Anchoress. Here are the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

We couldn't resist. Here's some of what we wrote in her comments, first re her post itself:

My favorite kind of blogpost, suggestive of worlds within worlds. One thing leads to another, and if you're lucky, you pull it all together with a twist of your wit. A perfect little masterpiece! All that, and cats, too [Be sure to go over and check it out].

I may take you up on your "open tag," although I'll probably have to cheat a little, since Merriam-Webster's Unabridged -- on the bookstand right behind where I sit at the computer -- has virtually no complete sentences on page 123. Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club -- on top of a pile of books including your own A Return to Innocence! across the room -- on the other hand, promises world without end.

Tiny in context -- a fuller crop of the above closeup -- is as the full page 123 of a book is to a selection of the three sentences following the fifth sentence on that page, object of the "Page 123 Book Meme" that is the subject of this post. Leaving more to the imagination, the closeup assumes a poetic dimension that encourages our mind to "'float away' and let another 'train of thought' carry it in some other direction," in Amba's words (see excerpt from A Return to Innocence below). Kind of like blogging itself, we commented to Amba. Take this trio from page 123 of Instapundit Glenn Reynolds's An Army of Davids and see what comes to mind: "Well, sort of. Everybody knows it. But they don't know it, yet, down deep where it counts."

"Maybe I could convince myself that since your book is at eye level -- the windows to the soul and all that -- it is truly the nearest to me. Hmmmm," we continued, proceeding to pluck out the three sentences following the fifth sentence on page 123 of Amba's book and several others in that pile on the other side of the room. From Amba's A Return to Innocence: Philosophical Guidance in An Age of Innocence:

"The ancient Buddhist texts explain that it keeps the mind steady, instead of letting it bob about like a pumpkin in water ['Reminds me of blogging] -- it is the opposite of superficial attention. So when your Bare Attention confronts the object you're examining, your mind doesn't 'float away' and let another 'train of thought' carry it in some other direction.

We were particularly intrigued with the three sentences following the fifth sentence on page 123 of The Metaphysical Club. The topic was evolution, "simply the incidental by-product of material struggle, not its goal":

It is a process without a mind. A way of thinking that regards individual differences as inessential departures from a general type is therefore not well suited for dealing with the natural world. A general type is fixed, determinate, and uniform; the world Darwin described is characterized by chance, change, and difference -- all the attributes general types are designed to leave out.

And Amba's response:

In the terms of my favorite psychologist James Hillmen, A Return to Innocence is too monolithically spiritual; blogging is soulful . . . Spirit is supercilious and monotheistic. It looks down on digressions and attempts to dismiss or purge them. The ground-clearing, defoliating absolutism of the "spiritual" perspective, manifested in radical Islam and more gently in Innocence (defoliate the weedy ground of your consciousness!), "regards individual differences as inessential departures from a general type is therefore not well suited for dealing with the natural world." Darwin is soulful.

Echoes of Christian charity?:

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

-- 1 Corinthians 13

As Jean Strouse wrote in a NYT review of The Metaphysical Club, "Evolutionary theory did away with the idea of a supernatural intelligence governing the universe (although not with the human yearning for some higher order)." It's the "wired for belief" thing.

Update: Carnival of the Cats #202 now open for business at Bad Kitty Cats Poohbox Clan Journal.

Comments

[amba]

And I went to high school and college with Jean Strouse, although for some reason we never had much use for each other.

[goomp]

Darwin's world can be beautiful and it can be harsh and cruel. One can understand the human need for shelter that is provided by a kind, all-knowing God. Darwin fits the need for reason. God fits the need for hope and forgiveness.

[Elisson]

This is a venerable meme, indeed. I first encountered it (albeit in slightly different form) almost three years ago.

But it's that Twisted Wit that makes all the difference.