AtD translation: scaleless moments

Paul Cray pmcray at gmail.com
Thu Jun 3 15:54:06 UTC 2021


"[S]caleless moments" suggests to me that the person has become unmoored in
time. Some biological and physical processes in the desert, mountains and
meadows might occur on timescales of seconds or fractions of a second,
others on timescales of years, thousands of years or tens and hundreds of
millions of years. If we took a time-lapsed sequence of photographs of some
process and sped it up or slowed it down, we would not necessarily have any
idea what its true characteristic timescale was. On the timescale of tens
of millions of years, after all, the mountains are like ripples on the
river.

Paul

On Thu, 3 Jun 2021 at 16:28, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> P515.14-19   He lapsed into silence, torpor, for scaleless moments seized
> by memories of desert plateau, mountain peaks, meadows full of Indian
> paintbrush and wild primrose, some unexpected river two steps off the
> trail—then released back into this twenty-knot push into the uncreated. He
> was not sure what it was he felt. If anyone had said desperation, he’d’ve
> shrugged and rolled a cigarette, shaking his head. Not it. Not it exactly.
>
> What does "scaleless" mean here?
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