5th september 2006
the same, a little later
After about two hours of reading or discussion, we would go for a walk and then have tea at Lyons, or in the restaurant above the Regal cinema. Sometimes he came to my house in Searle Street for supper. Once after supper, Wittgenstein, my wife and I went for a walk on Midsummer Common. We talked about the movements of the bodies of the solar system. It occured to Wittgenstein that the three of us should represent the movements of the sun, earth, and moon, relative to one another. My wife was the sun and maintained a steady pace across the meadow; I was the earth and circled her at a trot. Wittgenstein took the most strenuous part of all, the moon, and ran around me while I circled my wife. Wittgenstein entered into this game with great enthusiasm and seriousness, shouting instructions at us as he ran. He became quite breathless and dizzy with exhaustion.

– Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: a Memoir (via atem/metameat, via Eudaemonist)

I seem to have inhabited an identical landscape at a different time: Searle Street was where we went on Fridays to play with Jill and Jenny. Crackerjack was on television, and we always ate some impossibly glamorous English cakeshop bastardization of the millefeuille: it was life lived at the very extremes of pleasure.
Midsummer Common was a more sombre proposition; it often seemed to be raining, especially during cross-country running and football. I did however have some kind of orbital moment when I joined in a chase for a runaway dog on the day I got extra-strong new glasses: the lenses made me spiral inwards like a moth into a flame and any attempt to run ended in falling over, sucked into the black hole of my own feet. I became quite breathless and exhausted with dizziness.

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