Thursday, November 19, 2015

Weather relativity







I will argue passionately for the unassailable virtues of the sculptures of Bernini, beyond taste or predilection. I will perhaps manage to be vaguely polite in response to your pronouncement of not much liking blue cheeses, but will know in my heart that it is not a matter of preference; Good quality blue cheeses are objectively tasty. My leftist humanism is ordained by all that is good and true in the universe. Ursula K. LeGuin is a great writer just as flowers are pretty and the world is round. But when it comes to weather, I am a relativist.

Cold rain can be a good day. Sunny and seventy can be depressing. An ice storm might thrill to my mood, and a sweet, breezy day mock me. Three days of darkness and downpour have been upon us. It's worked out for me, but I fully understand others feelings of dismay.

Here I stand entirely in Hamlet's camp:

for there is no weather either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Yes, over a thousand daily essays and only now I get around to quoting Shakespeare. I've been saving up.

The quote is wrong?

No, no, my quote is from the first draft of Hamlet, when the play was more about weather, not whether.





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