[Expedition Arcadia~Past]: Et in eCanada ego?
Day 1,554, 09:55
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Published in Canada 
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by
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by Plugson
§▲§Past: Arcadian Blossoms; Carnal Decay ABCD~XYZ (alt.title)§▲§
~~Et in Arcadia ego by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (161
Wide-angle vista from several stories up. Cue Ode to Terry Gilliam
The scene opens in the manor of an Augustan estate, surrounded by the verdant splendour of stately elms and rolling greens…except in the far north corner, where Gardeners who once trimmed all to neat symmetry are now engaged in reingineering the landscape. Smoke wafts from burning brush as they clear swaths of the garden to reveal craggy rock and mossy mortar, introducing a Gothic disorder to the grounds.
Pan down to curtained stage
The curtain lifts to reveal a dimly lit studyroom, where a young girl and Victorian gentleman are engaged in the day’s lesson, variously involving Fermat’s Last Theorem, Pythagorean Triples, and Pascal’s Triangle. The girl appears bored, her attention distracted by a sketch she jots away at while her tutor marks the next equation on the boar
THE GIRL: Septimus, what is “carnal embrace”?
SEPTIMUS (looking flustered): Carnal embrace is…the practice of throwing one's arms around a side of beef. Now please, let us focus on the lesson at hand.
Seeking to widen the break in the lesson, she wedges in another distraction.
THE GIRL: Have you noticed, dear Septimus, when you stir your rice pudding, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backwards, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?
SEPTIMUS: No.
THE GIRL: Well, I do. You cannot stir things apart.
SEPTIMUS: No more you can, time must needs run backward, and since it will not, we must stir our way onward mixing as we go, disorder out of disorder into disorder until pink is complete, unchanging and unchangeable, and we are done with it for ever. This is known as free will or self-determination, and is the misfortune of a temporal existence.
THE GIRL: What a faint-heart! We must work outward from the middle of the maze. We will start with something simple. (She picks up the apple leaf) I will plot this leaf and deduce its equation. You will be famous for being my tutor when Lord Sutler is dead and forgotten. The only trouble with the perfect deduction, as things fall apart, you can't stir things back quite the same way, even with the perfect equation to plot from the first drop of jam onward.
SEPTIMUS: Your Daddy will not be pleased knowing his fees are being wasted on sketches while algebra lessons go uncharted.
THE GIRL: Oh, you are churlish with me because they have have run off without you. Well, let them elope, they cannot turn back the advancement of knowledge. I think it is an excellent discovery. Each week I plot your equations dot for dot, x’s against y’s in all manner of algebraical relation, and every week they draw themselves as commonplace geometry, as if the world of forms were nothing but arcs and angles. God's truth, Septimus, if there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be anequation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose? Do we believe nature is written in numbers?
SEPTIMUS: We do. He has mastery of equations which lead into infinities where we cannot follow. But what has this to do with Fermat or Pythagorus. Do let us focus.
THE GIRL: It saddens me that we cannot unstir the mixing. To think of all that was lost in the grand conflagration of Alexandria.
SEPTIMUS: (he sighs, seeing he must quell the romantic before moving to the mathematic) My dear, we shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?
Glancing at the hourglass, she spies the last grains fall through, declaring an end to the lesson.
THE GIRL: Time’s up, Septimus. You promised to teach me to waltz in time for my birthday. While I go fetch my slippers, I leave you with my ‘carnal embrace.’
She passes Septimus the paper she had been sketching on and he lights a candle from his desk and hands it to her. He looks at the abomination on the page, saw everything She had made, and it was good.
EXUENT
[Expediton Arcadia Series:
Preamble: (Expedition Arcadia): (Wanted) A Few Good Shepherds
eCanEgo Part 1: (Expedition Arcadia ~ Past): Arcadian Blossoms; Carnal Decay
eCanEgo Part 2: (Expedition Arcadia ~ Present): The Big Chill, feat. Addy Costner
eCanEgo Part 3: (ExArc ~ Future): Snowflakes in a Firestorm
~~Et in Arcadia ego by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (161
😎
Wide-angle vista from several stories up. Cue Ode to Terry Gilliam
The scene opens in the manor of an Augustan estate, surrounded by the verdant splendour of stately elms and rolling greens…except in the far north corner, where Gardeners who once trimmed all to neat symmetry are now engaged in reingineering the landscape. Smoke wafts from burning brush as they clear swaths of the garden to reveal craggy rock and mossy mortar, introducing a Gothic disorder to the grounds.
Pan down to curtained stage
The curtain lifts to reveal a dimly lit studyroom, where a young girl and Victorian gentleman are engaged in the day’s lesson, variously involving Fermat’s Last Theorem, Pythagorean Triples, and Pascal’s Triangle. The girl appears bored, her attention distracted by a sketch she jots away at while her tutor marks the next equation on the boar
😛
THE GIRL: Septimus, what is “carnal embrace”?
SEPTIMUS (looking flustered): Carnal embrace is…the practice of throwing one's arms around a side of beef. Now please, let us focus on the lesson at hand.
Seeking to widen the break in the lesson, she wedges in another distraction.
THE GIRL: Have you noticed, dear Septimus, when you stir your rice pudding, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backwards, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?
SEPTIMUS: No.
THE GIRL: Well, I do. You cannot stir things apart.
SEPTIMUS: No more you can, time must needs run backward, and since it will not, we must stir our way onward mixing as we go, disorder out of disorder into disorder until pink is complete, unchanging and unchangeable, and we are done with it for ever. This is known as free will or self-determination, and is the misfortune of a temporal existence.
THE GIRL: What a faint-heart! We must work outward from the middle of the maze. We will start with something simple. (She picks up the apple leaf) I will plot this leaf and deduce its equation. You will be famous for being my tutor when Lord Sutler is dead and forgotten. The only trouble with the perfect deduction, as things fall apart, you can't stir things back quite the same way, even with the perfect equation to plot from the first drop of jam onward.
SEPTIMUS: Your Daddy will not be pleased knowing his fees are being wasted on sketches while algebra lessons go uncharted.
THE GIRL: Oh, you are churlish with me because they have have run off without you. Well, let them elope, they cannot turn back the advancement of knowledge. I think it is an excellent discovery. Each week I plot your equations dot for dot, x’s against y’s in all manner of algebraical relation, and every week they draw themselves as commonplace geometry, as if the world of forms were nothing but arcs and angles. God's truth, Septimus, if there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be anequation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose? Do we believe nature is written in numbers?
SEPTIMUS: We do. He has mastery of equations which lead into infinities where we cannot follow. But what has this to do with Fermat or Pythagorus. Do let us focus.
THE GIRL: It saddens me that we cannot unstir the mixing. To think of all that was lost in the grand conflagration of Alexandria.
SEPTIMUS: (he sighs, seeing he must quell the romantic before moving to the mathematic) My dear, we shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?
Glancing at the hourglass, she spies the last grains fall through, declaring an end to the lesson.
THE GIRL: Time’s up, Septimus. You promised to teach me to waltz in time for my birthday. While I go fetch my slippers, I leave you with my ‘carnal embrace.’
She passes Septimus the paper she had been sketching on and he lights a candle from his desk and hands it to her. He looks at the abomination on the page, saw everything She had made, and it was good.
EXUENT
[Expediton Arcadia Series:
Preamble: (Expedition Arcadia): (Wanted) A Few Good Shepherds
eCanEgo Part 1: (Expedition Arcadia ~ Past): Arcadian Blossoms; Carnal Decay
eCanEgo Part 2: (Expedition Arcadia ~ Present): The Big Chill, feat. Addy Costner
eCanEgo Part 3: (ExArc ~ Future): Snowflakes in a Firestorm
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Apparently, you can only publish 1 article every hour.
Present and Future (pt 2 and 3) will be out later today.
If you are interested, please check out the preamble to this series:
Expedition Arcadia: (Wanted) A Few Good Shepherds
Quick Note:
Before anyone points to plagiarism, I fully admit that large portions of the dialogue in Past and Future were untimely ripped from Thomas Stoppard’s Arcardia.
Here’s a link(s) summarizing what some consider the best play written (sorry willie):
http://www.cherwell.oxon.sch.uk/arcadia/outline0.htm
Do like.
I read this all last night.... (Before you deleted it)
Well then you got a sneakpeak. Decided to go for a 3-part serial, since it was way too tldr all together.
things stir apart, the pudding cannot hold
For your future reference, if neede😛
http://socrates.acadiau.ca/courses/educ/reid/4183/Materials/Teaching-topics/literature/