SLSL: Concavity, convexity, balls

[The Great Quail]

Elaine writes,

> can somebody clear up the image for me?  It seems to me that what he should
> fear is an eventual concavity, an image that also accords better with
> womb-fears.  Right?  Or am I just having trouble seeing upside-down?

I think he likes concavity *because* of its womb-like state, with him at the
low-lands, resting at sea-level. I think overall, Flange *likes* wombs,
because they are murky, snug, comforting, warm, and full of potential. He
fears the filling up of concavity, and worse, he fears convexity because it
will expose him, thrust him into action, responsibility, precarious balance:

"What he worried about was any eventual convexity, a shrinking, it might be,
of the planet itself to some palpable curvature of whatever he would be
standing on, so that he would be left sticking out like a projected radius,
unsheltered and reeling across the empty lunes of his tiny sphere..."

Dave writes,

> Cf. not only ... 
> "... let the world shrink to a boccie ball"
> But also ...
> Let us roll all our strength and all
> Our sweetness up into one ball ...
> 
> Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress" (1681)
> 
> And would it have been worth it, after all,
> After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
> Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
> Would it have been worth while,
> To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
> To have squeezed the universe into a ball ...

I am not sure that the above two examples fully answer to Flange's worries.
Flange is afraid of the world shrinking underneath him, exposing him as the
limbs of the curve bend downwards....

--Quail