NPPR: Commentary Line 137 Lemniscate

[Mary Krimmel]

At 03:18 PM 9/24/03 -0700, sZ offered a number of pertinent remarks:

>Accomplishing a figure-eight in wet sand on a bicycle is a rigorous test of
>balance and steering control while changing directions. Stands in stark
>contrast to Shade's awkwardness.

If there really is a figure eight, could it have been made by a unicycle? 
That too would be a challenge and I don't know whether it would be easier 
or harder than using a bicycle. At least the problem of getting the rear 
wheel to follow the front wheel's track would be eliminated.

The miracle could be either the perfection of the figure or the vision of 
infinity in Shade's mind. No mention is made of a track leading into or out 
of the lemniscate. But the next paragraph starts "A thread..."

Isn't it reasonable for us to take the "lemniscate" sentence as a whole and 
assume that the miracle occurred in sleeping dreams while young Shade 
played with other chaps? That would eliminate all difficulty of how the 
track was made, why we are apparently on a beach, etc. Bicycle tires often 
leave interesting double tracks which are sometimes not easy to explain 
when we try to reconstruct the cycle's route. Miracles are pretty common in 
dreams, waking or sleeping.

Mary Krimmel


>Bicycle tracks on wet sand
>
>pheasant tracks pointing back
>
>Sherlock Holmes: reversing shoes
>
>Sherlock Holmes: switching animal shoes in a story which also investigates
>the pattern of bicycle tires
>(The Adventure at the Priory School)
>
>the Shade shoe mystery stamp/impress on damp turf
>
>quartic = 'of the fourth degree' -> Jack Degree
>
>Lemniscate of Bournoulli (involves Ex and Wye squared)
>Lemniscate of Gerone
>http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/Texts.Folder/Lem/Lemniscates.html
>
>The boy was picked up at a quarter past/Eight in New Wye
>
>You scrutinized your wrist: "It's eight fifteen.
>[And here time forked.]
>
>The curving arrows of Aeolian wars.
>You said that later a quartet of bores,
>Two writers and two critics, would debate
>The Cause of Poetry on Channel 8.