Gutta-Percha

From The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001:

Natural latex obtained from Palaquium gutta and several other evergreen trees of East Asia. The latex, collected by felling or girdling the tree, is allowed to coagulate and is then washed, purified, and molded into bricks for shipping. Like caoutchouc, gutta-percha is a polyterpene, i.e., a polymer of isoprene (see rubber), but, unlike caoutchouc, it is not very elastic; the reason for the difference is that the polymer molecules in gutta-percha have a trans structure, whereas those of caoutchouc have a cis structure (see isomer). Gutta-percha is an excellent nonconductor and is often employed in insulating marine and underground cables. It is also used for golf-ball coverings, surgical appliances, and adhesives.

Malleable, insulating. There are anecdotes here, I believe. And wonderful metaphoric possibilities. This website on gutta-percha is particularly interesting:

http://www.altcorp.com/AffinityLaboratory/guttahistory.htm

"On Anecdotes"

From Charles Brockden Brown, from the Comments below:

"Anecdotes are literary luxuries. The refinement of a nation influences its literature; we now require not only a solid repast, but a delicious dessert. A physician, austere as Hippocrates; a critic, rigid as Aristotle, are alike inimical to our refreshments. We will not be fooled into their systems. We do not dismiss our fruits and our wines from our table; we eat, and our health remains uninjured. We read anecdotes with voluptuous delight; nor is our science impaired, or our wit rendered less brilliant. It is not just to consider anecdotes merely as means of improvement. They serve also the purpose of utility, and deserve to be classed higher on the scale of study than hitherto they have been."

"Voluptuous delight!" How about that!

Oracular

So two non-fatal disasters struck me in the last week. The question is: what does each mean? Do disasters have meaning? (Pat Robertson would of course say yes.) For the purposes of this blog, anecdotal value lies not only in the event but also in the making meaning.

Event number one: a huge tree fell on my guest house, slicing the house in two and shattering to splinters my first marriage bed. There had been a huge rainstorm overnight but the tree did not fall until after 10:30 in the morning. Had it fallen in the night it would have killed my husband, with whom I am separated, and who has been sleeping in the guest house since September. The guest house looks pretty good from the front (except for the roof) but you open the door and it is open to the air in the back and there is a huge gash in the wall cutting down to the floor, where the remains of the bed are strewn, along with insulation and roof shingles. But the bathroom, closet, bookshelves, and rest of the house stand unhurt.

Of course my husband has had to move back into the main house (I am moving out, into the townhouse referenced back in November). So should we read the falling tree as a sign of the final end of the marriage or the end of the separation or something else?

(For the record, nobody--none of our neighbors at least--heard the tree fall.)

Event number two: My computer at work crashed utterly. I never learned how to back up or use the "M" drive or whatever the special saving drive is named. So I lose everything: my writing, student papers, grade histories, etc. Moreover, not particularly loving my job for reasons best not blogged about, I have been actively job hunting on my work computer, and all of my job letters and resumes are now gone forever. (I've asked the helpdesk people to try to see if they can get certain named files, which is unlikely but possible, but I can't really ask them to spend money trying to get a file named "job search."

So is this a sign that yes, I should leave, or that I should stay and forget about my job search?

(For the record, when my hard drive died it made no sound.)