GR translation: shearing alongside for miles
Mike Jing
gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com
Wed Jul 26 20:47:03 CDT 2017
Understood. Thanks, Monte.
On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 5:46 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's related to the noun "shears" (scissors) -- think of how the blades
> slide against each other. Think of the ethnic groups on P's road, not in
> neat distinct columns but still more or less following those of their own
> kind and not mixing enough to lose group identity,. Maybe the Ghegs walk a
> bit faster than the Tosks in the morning and slower in the afternoon, like
> smoke trails of different colors in an erratic wind: shearing alongside
> [each other] for miles.
>
> On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 4:51 PM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Thanks, Monte, for the explanation and suggestion. At first glance, the
>> Chinese term for "wind shear" doesn't seem to fit, but I'll have to think
>> it over some more.
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 4:27 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Closest to "wind shear" in meteorology or aviation: notional layers of
>>> a fluid (gas or liquid) moving adjacent to each other at different
>>> velocities, with momentum transferred more or less smoothly between them at
>>> the interface -- turbulence arises (i.e. the layers mix and tangle into
>>> vortices) if the velocity difference is too great. (For me, this also harks
>>> back to Achtfaden & co. and the "boundary layer" at the skin of an A4 as it
>>> moves through the air.) The same applies to convection currents in a heated
>>> cauldron: look at a patch of oil or fat sliding across the surface.
>>>
>>> I may be stretching here, but I wouldn't put it past P. to have in mind
>>> that the whole picture of successive sliding layers -- foundation of
>>> aerodynamics for decades before 1945 -- is a *fiction* for mathematical
>>> tractability, the reality being uncountable gas molecules moving with all
>>> speeds and velocities in all directions, the layers emerging only as
>>> statistics. Maybe there's a hint that the tribal/ethnic labels are also
>>> fictions? That after their near-death experience as victims of abstraction
>>> and systematization, the "Czechs" and "Slovaks" streaming along side by
>>> side might be better off as individual I and Thou?
>>>
>>> Anyway... look back to your Peenemunde passages, and if possible
>>> translate "shearing" with a technical flavor, maybe whatever a Chinese
>>> weather forecaster uses for "wind shear"
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 7:44 PM, Mike Jing <
>>> gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> V549.28-36, P559.5-13 . . . Sudetens and East Prussians shuttling
>>>> between Berlin and the DP camps in Mecklenburg, Czechs and Slovaks, Croats
>>>> and Serbs, Tosks and Ghegs, Macedonians, Magyars, Vlachs, Circassians,
>>>> Spaniols, Bulgars stirred and streaming over the surface of the Imperial
>>>> cauldron, colliding, shearing alongside for miles, sliding away, numb,
>>>> indifferent to all momenta but the deepest, the instability too far below
>>>> their itchy feet to give a shape to, white wrists and ankles incredibly
>>>> wasted poking from their striped prison-camp pajamas, footsteps light as
>>>> waterfowl’s in this inland dust . . .
>>>>
>>>> What does "shearing" mean here?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
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