Classics and the Western Canon discussion

Peeperkorn is dead, Clavdia has left again, and HC is, well, bored. I'm not sure where we are in years, but probably somewhere around year 5 or 6, all spent with no work to do and, as was noted several topics back, not much to life except eating and short walks and resting. At least we find out here that the residents go through phases of interest -- photography, stamp collecting, Esperanto, parlor games, solitaire -- clearly trying to find something, anything, to pass the time.

The failed attempt to treat what may have been an infection, holding out the hope of becoming cured, but not achieving it, leaves HC "playing solitaire -- eye to eye with the demon whose unrestrained power he could not help feeling was sure to come to some horrible end."

Did anybody else make a marginal note here of the saying "the devil finds work for idle hands to do"?

I noted the long discourse on pi--another reference to time, to infinity--and the early recycling plan! Most interesting to me: the idea that "life without time" is "dead life." We need passing time in order to keep us "alive."