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I had already risen in importance from my lunch with him ... Even the page-boy by the swing doors glanced at me with respect. My companion accepted it as natural, of course, he knew nothing of the ill-carved ham of yesterday. I found the change depressing, it made me despise myself. I remembered my father and his scorn of superficial snobbery.

(Cont)
… it will not matter. There would be no sense of strain.

“You don’t believe me,” he said, “never mind, come and sit down. We needn’t talk to each other unless we feel like it.”
We sat down, and he gave me the menu, leaving me to choose, and went on with his hors d’oeuvre as though nothing had happened.
His quality of detachment was peculiar to himself, and I knew that we might continue thus, without speaking, throughout the meal and … (cont next)

How young and inexperienced I must have seemed, and how I felt it, too. One was too sensitive, too raw, there were thorns and pin-pricks in so many words that in reality fell lightly on the air.

The scrubby vineyards and the crumbling stones become things of no account, for if I wish I can give rein to my imagination, and pick foxgloves and pale campions from a wet, streaking hedge.
Poor whims of fancy, tender and un-harsh. They are the enemy to bitterness and regret, and sweeten this exile we have brought upon ourselves.

I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire…. I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end. We have conquered ours, or so we believe.

These things were permanent, they could not be dissolved. They were memories that cannot hurt.

A cloud, hitherto unseen, came upon the moon, and hovered an instant like a dark hand before a face. The illusion went with it, and the lights in the windows were extinguished. I looked upon a desolate shell, soulless at last, unhaunted, with no whisper of the past about its staring walls.
The house was a sepulchre, our fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins. There would be no resurrection.

(Cont)

In classical electromagnetic theory, vector fields convey both electric and magnetic forces. These fields fill space like a boundless sea of energy. Electric fields represent the amount and direction of electric force per unit charge at each point in space. Magnetic fields characterize the amount of magnetic force per unit moving charge at each point (classically, only moving charges experience magnetism).

(Cont)

Think of a weather map to understand the difference between scalar and vector fields. At any given time, each point has a single temperature. Therefore, the temperature readings for each location form a scalar field. Each point also has a certain wind velocity, which, unlike temperature, has both a magnitude (speed) and a direction. Consequently, the map of wind velocities constitutes a vector field.

(Cont from last update)

Fields that have single values at each point are called "sca-lar fields." Fields with multiple values at each point, detailing how the magnitude (amount) and direction of the chosen property change from location to location, are called "vector fields."

A "field" is a kind of landscape of a chosen property (e.g., electrical strength) depicting how that property's values vary from point to point throughout all of space. It is like a map with data (e.g., GPS co-ordinates, elevation, population density) associated with every single location. (Cont next update)

Certainly not Feynman, who realized from an early age that life is too short and time too precious to base one's actions on what other people think. He knew that he stood out but found this a source of humor and strength rather than embarrassment.

I didn’t care that she wore a clean dress and wasn’t hungry. No one wanted to trade places with her.

If you hurry things, you always get left in the end.

She kept out of everyone’s way, and was hard to manage only when the other children interferes with her. Then there was trouble indeed: bursts of temper which used to alarm Mrs. Kronborg. “You ought to know enough to let Thea alone. She lets you alone,” she often said to the other children.

…she was willing to be just as big a fool as people wanted her to be. Very well; Thea Kronborg wasn’t. She would rather be hated than be stupid, any day.

Thea asked Mrs. Johnson… Mrs. Johnson, with an eagerness which told how she had waited for this moment, replied… As she delivered this thrust, her eyes glittered more than the Ancient Mariner's, Thea thought... She so enjoyed an opportunity to rebuke Thea, that, tightly corseted as she was, she could scarcely control her breathing, and her lace and her gold watch-chain rose and fell "with short, uneasy motion."

From the preface:

She seemed wholly at the mercy of accident; but to persons of her vitality and honesty, fortunate accidents will always happen.

Certainly her husband had never been able to make her out. Such little, mean natures are among the darkest and most baffling of created things. There is no law by which they can be explained. The ordinary incentives of pain and pleasure do not account for their behaviour. They live like insects, absorbed in petty activities that seem to have nothing to do with any genial aspect of human life.

He would even have cherished hopes for her, except that he had become superstitious. He believed that whatever he hoped for was destined not to be; that his affection brought ill fortune…; that if he held anything in his thoughts, he harmed it… And there was always the old enemy, more relentless than the others. It was long since he had wished anything or desired anything beyond the necessities of the body.

“I don’t care,” he muttered, stirring his coffee; “they oughtn’t to make boys speak. It’s all right for girls. They like to show off.”

Mrs. Kronborg let her children’s minds alone. She did not pry into their thoughts or nag them. She respected them as individuals…

Page 40

What are we without this?
Whirling in the dark universe,
alone, afraid, unable to influence fate —

What do we have really?
Sad tricks with ladders and shoes,
tricks with salt, impurely motivated recurring
attempts to build character.
What do we have to appease the great forces?

…he was a fool, thinking
it could be controlled. He should have said
I have nothing, I am at your mercy.

At the top of the tree was what I wanted.
Fortunately I had read books:
I knew I was being tested.

perception of beauty, desire for knowledge.
And in the great minds, the two often configured as one.

This is the problem of silence:
one cannot test one’s ideas.
Because they are not ideas, they are the truth.

I’m my first dream the world appeared
the salt, the bitter, the forbidden, the sweet
In my second I descended

I was human, I couldn’t just see a thing
beast that I am

I had to touch, to contain it

I hid in the groves,

…

I even loved a few times in my disgusting human way

and like everyone I called that accomplishment
erotic freedom,
absurd as it seems

Under the full moon
Maria was folding the washing;
the stiff sheets became
dry white rectangles of moonlight.

Mother died last night,
Mother who never dies.

Winter was in the air,