“
Sometimes no words come as a response, only shapes spring to mind. But after you tell me you love me, I can’t very well reply, “Hexagon!
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
“
The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries.
”
”
Jorge Luis Borges (The Library of Babel)
“
She could not fathom the hexagonal miracle of snowflakes formed from clouds, crystallized fern and feather that tumble down to light on a coat sleeve, white stars melting even as they strike. How did such force and beauty come to be in something so small and fleeting and unknowable? You did not have to understand miracles to believe in them, and in fact Mabel had come to suspect the opposite. To believe, perhaps you had to cease looking for explanations and instead hold the little thing in your hands as long as you were able before it slipped like water between your fingers. (kindle location 2950)
”
”
Eowyn Ivey (The Snow Child)
“
The Library is a sphere whose exact centre is any one of its hexagons and whose circumference is inaccessible.
”
”
Jorge Luis Borges (The Library of Babel)
“
Bees... by virtue of a certain geometrical forethought, knew that the hexagon is greater than the square and the triangle and will hold more honey for the same expenditure of material.
”
”
Pappus of Alexandria (Greek Mathematical Works: Volume II, From Aristarchus to Pappus. (Loeb Classical Library No. 362))
“
Codes and patterns are very different from each other,” Langdon said. “And a lot of people confuse the two. In my field, it’s crucial to understand their fundamental difference.”
“That being?”
Langdon stopped walking and turned to her. “A pattern is any distinctly organized sequence. Patterns occur everywhere in nature—the spiraling seeds of a sunflower, the hexagonal cells of a honeycomb, the circular ripples on a pond when a fish jumps, et cetera.”
“Okay. And codes?”
“Codes are special,” Langdon said, his tone rising. “Codes, by definition, must carry information. They must do more than simply form a pattern—codes must transmit data and convey meaning. Examples of codes include written language, musical notation, mathematical equations, computer language, and even simple symbols like the crucifix. All of these examples can transmit meaning or information in a way that spiraling sunflowers cannot.
”
”
Dan Brown (Origin (Robert Langdon, #5))
“
Perfect hexagonal tubes in a packed array. Bees are hard-wired to lay them down, but how does an insect know enough geometry to lay down a precise hexagon? It doesn't. It's programmed to chew up wax and spit it out while turning on its axis, and that generates a circle. Put a bunch of bees on the same surface, chewing side-by-side, and the circles abut against each other - deform each other into hexagons, which just happen to be more efficient for close packing anyway.
”
”
Peter Watts (Blindsight (Firefall, #1))
“
It is a Law of Nature with us that a male child shall have one more side than his father, so that each generation shall rise (as a rule) one step in the scale of development and nobility. Thus the son of a Square is a Pentagon; the son of a Pentagon, a Hexagon; and so on.
”
”
Edwin A. Abbott (Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions)
“
In terms of systems design; ovals, circles and hexagons are more efficient than rectangles, squares and straight lines — Thats something to consider when designing supply chain systems.
”
”
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
“
Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows—only hard with luminous edges—and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen.
”
”
Edwin A. Abbott (Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions)
“
Fight your genes.' The Big Hoom said to us once, to Susan and me. He did not explain. He did not know how to. But we knew what it meant. It meant that we were to march into the hall and take out our school books and reproduce the slipper-shaped animalcule whose psuedopodia power it through a world without feeling; to learn how to inscribe a hexagon into a circle without tearing the paper; to assimilate the causes and consequences of the battle of Panipat without ever identifying your own enemy because that would be mean identifying yourself.
'Fight your genes'. Focus. Be diligent. Concentrate. Do
”
”
Jerry Pinto (Em and The Big Hoom)
“
Denied a Lenin and deprived of Napoleon, France retreated into the last and, we must hope, indestructible redoubt, the world of Astérix. The postwar vogue for Parisian thinkers barely concealed their collective retreat into Hexagonal introversion and into the ultimate fortress of French intellectuality, Cartesian theory and puns.
”
”
Eric J. Hobsbawm
“
They found he’d had a lethal dose of something that only a doctor could pronounce properly. As far as I remember it sounds vaguely like di-flor, hexagonal-ethylcarbenzol. That’s not the right name. But that’s roughly what it sounds like.
”
”
Agatha Christie (A Caribbean Mystery (Miss Marple, #10))
“
As their song crescendoed I had the sudden conviction that the world, which I had considered the province of meaningless chances, a mad dance of atoms, was as orderly as the hexagons in the honeycombs I had just crushed into wax and that behind everything, from Helen's weaving to Circe's mountain to Scylla's death, was a subtle pattern, an order of the most compelling lucidity, but hidden from me, a code I could never crack.
”
”
Zachary Mason (The Lost Books of the Odyssey)
“
True,” said the Sphere; “it appears to you a Plane, because you are not accustomed to light and shade and perspective; just as in Flatland a Hexagon would appear a Straight Line to one who has not the Art of Sight Recognition. But in reality it is a Solid, as you shall learn by the sense of Feeling.” He
”
”
Edwin A. Abbott (Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions)
“
She could not fathom the hexagonal miracle of snowflakes formed from clouds, crystallized fern and feather that tumble down to light on a coat sleeve, white stars melting even as they strike. How did such force and beauty come to be in something so small and fleeting and unknowable?
”
”
Eowyn Ivey (The Snow Child)
“
Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows—only hard with luminous edges—and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen. Alas, a few years ago, I should have said "my universe:" but now my mind has been opened to higher views of things. In such a country, you will perceive at once that it is impossible that there should be anything of what you call a "solid" kind; but I dare say you will suppose that we could at least distinguish by sight the Triangles, Squares, and other figures, moving about as I have described them. On the contrary, we could see nothing of the kind, not at least so as to distinguish one figure from another. Nothing was visible, nor could be visible, to us, except Straight Lines; and the necessity of this I will speedily demonstrate.
”
”
Edwin A. Abbott (Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions)
“
The newspapers kept stroking my fear. New surveys provided awful statistics on just about everything. Evidence suggested that we were not doing well. Researchers gloomily agreed. Environment psychologists were interviewed. Damage had ‘unwittingly’ been done. There were ‘feared lapses’. There were ‘misconceptions’ about potential. Situations had ‘deteriorated’. Cruelty was on the rise and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The populace was confounded, yet didn’t care. Unpublished studies hinted that we were all paying a price. Scientists peered into data and concluded that we should all be very worried. No one knew what normal behavior was anymore, and some argued that this was a form of virtue. And no one argued back. No one challenged anything. Anxiety was soaking up most people’s days. Everyone had become preoccupied with horror. Madness was fluttering everywhere. There was fifty years of research supporting this data. There were diagrams illustrating all of these problems – circles and hexagons and squares, different sections colored in lime or lilac or gray. Most troubling were the fleeting signs that nothing could transform any of this into something positive. You couldn’t help being both afraid and fascinated. Reading these articles made you feel that the survival of mankind didn’t seem very important in the long run. We were doomed. We deserved it. I was so tired.
”
”
Bret Easton Ellis
“
Things in life never come full circle. Maybe once or twice they’re hexagonal, but to me they’re almost always misshapen, as if drawn by a toddler in crayon.
”
”
Michael Diamond (Beastie Boys Book)
“
Because I am committed to protecting my peace and you are so far from my inner circle you're basically a hexagon. Get thee behind me.
”
”
Talia Hibbert (Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute)
“
Studying ice crystals as a graduate student, he eventually found the basic design (equilateral, equiangled hexagon) so icily repeated, so unerringly conforming, that he couldn't help but shudder: Beneath the splendor--the filigreed blossoms, the microscopic stars--was a ghastly inevitability; crystals could not escape their embedded blueprints any more than humans could. Everything hewed to a rigidity of pattern, the certainty of death.
”
”
Anthony Doerr (About Grace)
“
Across the street an addict was mumbling, his words, like Dan Smooth’s, reminiscent of the structure of graphite, which is to say comprised of slender hexagonal plates of atoms which slough off at a touch like the multitudinous crusts of a Turkish pastry.
”
”
William T. Vollmann (The Royal Family)
“
When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books, the first impression was one of extravagant happiness. All men felt themselves to be the masters of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal or world problem whose eloquent solution did not exist in some hexagon. The universe was justified, the universe suddenly usurped the unlimited dimensions of hope. At that time a great deal was said about the Vindications: books of apology and prophecy which vindicated for all time the acts of every man in the universe and retained prodigious arcana for his future. Thousands of the greedy abandoned their sweet native hexagons and rushed up the stairways, urged on by the vain intention of finding their Vindication. These pilgrims disputed in the narrow corridors, proffered dark curses, strangled each other on the divine stairways, flung the deceptive books into the air shafts, met their death cast down in a similar fashion by the inhabitants of remote regions. Others went mad ... The Vindications exist (I have seen two which refer to persons of the future, to persons who are perhaps not imaginary) but the searchers did not remember that the possibility of a man's finding his Vindication, or some treacherous variation thereof, can be computed as zero.
”
”
Jorge Luis Borges (Ficciones)
“
In terms of systems design, shapes are important. Rectangles are not common in nature. That's probably because from a systems design perspective, rectangles often degrade efficiency instead of contributing to efficiency. Yet humans have designed an entire supply chain system based on rectangles, squares and straight lines. If we want to be more efficient, we should replace those rectangles, squares and straight lines with ovals, circles and hexagons. And maybe some other nature inspired geometries.
”
”
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
“
They sat and drank their pints. The tables in which their faces were dimly reflected were dark brown, the darkest brown, the colour of Bournville chocolate. The walls were a lighter brown, the colour of Dairy Milk. The carpet was brown, with little hexagons of a slightly different brown, if you looked closely. The ceiling was meant to be off-white, but was in fact brown, browned by the nicotine smoke of a million unfiltered cigarettes. Most of the cars in the car park were brown, as were most of the clothes worn by the patrons. Nobody in the pub really noticed the predominance of brown, or if they did, thought it worth remarking upon. These were brown times.
”
”
Jonathan Coe (The Rotters' Club)
“
The exact science of one molecule transformed into another -- that Mabel could not explain, but then again she couldn't explain how a fetus formed in the womb, cells becoming beating heart and hoping soul. She could not fathom the hexagonal miracle of snowflakes formed from clouds, crystallized fern and feather that tumble down to light on a coat sleeve, white stars melting even as they strike. How did such force and beauty come to be in something so small and fleeting and unknowable?
”
”
Eowyn Ivey (The Snow Child)
“
She paints for a long time, standing back from the tavola, leaning in close. She progresses from bowl to honey to the pleats and wrinkles in the cloth. She navigates her course through the arrangement of objects, how they interact with each other, the spaces and conversations between them, shrinking herself to the size of a beetle so that she may wander through the crannies between peaches, along the interlocking hexagons of the honeycomb. She feels her way around the corresponding painting, using her brushes like feet or antennae, seeking a route through the unfamiliar terrain of the items, hacking her way through the undergrowth of the work.
”
”
Maggie O'Farrell (The Marriage Portrait)
“
The little Hexagon meditated on this a while and then said to me; "But you have been teaching me to raise numbers to the third power: I suppose three-to-the-third must mean something in Geometry; what does it mean?" "Nothing at all," replied I, "not at least in Geometry; for Geometry has only Two Dimensions." And then I began to shew the boy how a Point by moving through a length of three inches makes a Line of three inches, which may be represented by three; and how a Line of three inches, moving parallel to itself through a length of three inches, makes a Square of three inches every way, which may be represented by three-to-the-second. xxx Upon this, my Grandson, again returning to his former suggestion, took me up rather suddenly and exclaimed, "Well, then, if a Point by moving three inches, makes a Line of three inches represented by three; and if a straight Line of three inches, moving parallel to itself, makes a Square of three inches every way, represented by three-to-the-second; it must be that a Square of three inches every way, moving somehow parallel to itself (but I don't see how) must make Something else (but I don't see what) of three inches every way—and this must be represented by three-to-the-third."
"Go to bed," said I, a little ruffled by this interruption: "if you would talk less nonsense, you would remember more sense.
”
”
Edwin A. Abbott (Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions)
“
Seventeen more days,” Jessi breathed wonderingly. “God, you must be climbing the . . . er, walls . . . or whatever’s in there, huh?”
“Aye.”
“So, just what is in there, anyway?” She tested the glass by shaking it gently, and deemed it secure enough. It shouldn’t slide now.
“Stone,” he said flatly.
“And what else?”
“Stone. Gray. Of varying sizes.” His voice dropped to a colorless monotone. “Fifty-two thousand nine hundred and eighty-seven stones. Twenty-seven
thousand two hundred and sixteen of them
are a slightly paler gray than the rest. Thirty-six thousand and four are more rectangular than square. There are nine hundred and eighteen that have a
vaguely hexagonal shape. Ninety-two of
them have a vein of bronze running through the face. Three are cracked. Two paces from the center is a stone that protrudes slightly above the rest, over which I tripped for the first few
centuries. Any other questions?”
Jessi flinched as his words impacted her, taking her breath away. Her chest and throat felt suddenly tight. Uh, yeah, like, how did you stay sane in
there? What kept you from going stark raving mad? How did you survive over a thousand years in such a hell?
She didn’t ask because it would have been like asking a mountain why it was still standing, as it had been since the dawn of time, perhaps reshaped in subtle ways, but there, always there. Barring cataclysmic planetary upheaval, forever there. The man was strong—not just physically, but mentally and
emotionally. A rock of a man, the kind
a woman could lean on through the worst of times and never have to worry that things might fall apart, because a man like him simply wouldn’t let them.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Spell of the Highlander (Highlander, #7))
“
Examples of such self-reorganization abound in Order Out of Chaos. Heat moving evenly through a liquid suddenly, at a certain threshold, converts into a convection current that radically reorganizes the liquid, and millions of molecules, as if on cue, suddenly form themselves into hexagonal cells.
”
”
Ilya Prigogine (Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature (Radical Thinkers))
“
If a person sees a beehive, and has not seen one previously, he will become bewildered because he does not understand who made it. If he then learns that it is the work of the bee, he will be bewildered again by how this weak creature makes these hexagons, the likes of which a skilled engineer would be unable to make with a compass and ruler.
”
”
Zakariya al-Qazwini
“
Life', said Marvin, 'don't talk to me about life
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Hexagonal Phase)
“
red hexagon which means Stop.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale)
“
A pattern is any distinctly organized sequence. Patterns occur everywhere in nature—the spiraling seeds of a sunflower, the hexagonal cells of a honeycomb, the circular ripples on a pond when a fish jumps, et cetera.” “Okay. And codes?” “Codes are special,” Langdon said, his tone rising. “Codes, by definition, must carry information. They must do more than simply form a pattern—codes must transmit data and convey meaning.
”
”
Dan Brown (Origin (Robert Langdon, #5))
“
The vulgar modern argument used against religion, and lately against common decency, would be absolutely fatal to any idea of liberty. It is perpetually said that because there are a hundred religions claiming to be true, it is therefore impossible that one of them should really be true. The argument would appear on the face of it to be illogical, if anyone nowadays troubled about logic. It would be as reasonable to say that because some people thought the earth was flat, and others (rather less incorrectly) imagined it was round, and because anybody is free to say that it is triangular or hexagonal, or a rhomboid, therefore it has no shape at all; or its shape can never be discovered; and, anyhow, modern science must be wrong in saying it is an oblate spheroid. The world must be some shape, and it must be that shape and no other; and it is not self-evident that nobody can possibly hit on the right one. What so obviously applies to the material shape of the world equally applies to the moral shape of the universe. The man who describes it may not be right, but it is no argument against his rightness that a number of other people must be wrong.
”
”
G.K. Chesterton
“
Give winter nothing; hold; and let the flake
Poise or dissolve along your upheld arms.
All flawless hexagons may melt and break;
While you must feel the summer's rage of fire,
Beyond this frigid season's empty storms.
Banished to bloom, and bear the birds' desire.
”
”
James Wright
“
And So It Came To Pass That The Hourglass Orifices Hexagonal Prismatics At Its Sandy Zenith, And In The Whorl Ring The Town Portal That Time Consumes The Empty Ether, Was The Tomb Of King Leoric, The Crown, A Topaz Orange Elixir Of Magic The Ring Is Mine...My Own...My Precious...
”
”
Jonathan McKinney
“
People don’t realize how smart bees are, even smarter than dolphins. Bees know enough geometry to make row after row of perfect hexagons, angles so accurate you’d think they used rulers. They take plain flower juice and turn it into something everyone in the world loves to pour on biscuits.
”
”
Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)
“
If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Hexagonal Phase: And Another Thing...)
“
This planet has—or rather had—a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Hexagonal Phase)
“
They used to say that the universe is made essentially of hexagonal rock crystals, also — and especially — where it is darker and more shapeless, in the spaces that open up beyond the Milky Way. Those same hexagonal crystals are alveoli in the brain, where images emerged. And the central commissure of the encephalon, two entwined serpents, is to be found in the Milky Way.
”
”
Roberto Calasso (Il cacciatore celeste)
“
Ode to the Beloved’s Hips"
Bells are they—shaped on the eighth day—silvered
percussion in the morning—are the morning.
Swing switch sway. Hold the day away a little
longer, a little slower, a little easy. Call to me—
I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock
right now—so to them I come—struck-dumb
chime-blind, tolling with a throat full of Hosanna.
How many hours bowed against this Infinity of Blessed
Trinity? Communion of Pelvis, Sacrum, Femur.
My mouth—terrible angel, ever-lasting novena,
ecstatic devourer.
O, the places I have laid them, knelt and scooped
the amber—fast honey—from their openness—
Ah Muzen Cab’s hidden Temple of Tulúm—licked
smooth the sticky of her hip—heat-thrummed ossa
coxae. Lambent slave to ilium and ischium—I never tire
to shake this wild hive, split with thumb the sweet-
dripped comb—hot hexagonal hole—dark diamond—
to its nectar-dervished queen. Meanad tongue—
come-drunk hum-tranced honey-puller—for her hips,
I am—strummed-song and succubus.
They are the sign: hip. And the cosign: a great book—
the body’s Bible opened up to its Good News Gospel.
Alleluias, Ave Marías, madre mías, ay yay yays,
Ay Dios míos, and hip-hip-hooray.
Cult of Coccyx. Culto de cadera.
Oracle of Orgasm. Rorschach’s riddle:
What do I see? Hips:
Innominate bone. Wish bone. Orpheus bone.
Transubstantiation bone—hips of bread,
wine-whet thighs. Say the word and healed I shall be:
Bone butterfly. Bone wings. Bone Ferris wheel.
Bone basin bone throne bone lamp.
Apparition in the bone grotto—6th mystery—
slick rosary bead—Déme la gracia of a decade
in this garden of carmine flower. Exile me
to the enormous orchard of Alcinous—spiced fruit,
laden-tree—Imparadise me. Because, God,
I am guilty. I am sin-frenzied and full of teeth
for pear upon apple upon fig.
More than all that are your hips.
They are a city. They are Kingdom—
Troy, the hollowed horse, an army of desire—
thirty soldiers in the belly, two in the mouth.
Beloved, your hips are the war.
At night your legs, love, are boulevards
leading me beggared and hungry to your candy
house, your baroque mansion. Even when I am late
and the tables have been cleared,
in the kitchen of your hips, let me eat cake.
O, constellation of pelvic glide—every curve,
a luster, a star. More infinite still, your hips are
kosmic, are universe—galactic carousel of burning
comets and Big Big Bangs. Millennium Falcon,
let me be your Solo. O, hot planet, let me
circumambulate. O, spiral galaxy, I am coming
for your dark matter.
Along las calles de tus muslos I wander—
follow the parade of pulse like a drum line—
descend into your Plaza del Toros—
hands throbbing Miura bulls, dark Isleros.
Your arched hips—ay, mi torera.
Down the long corridor, your wet walls
lead me like a traje de luces—all glitter, glowed.
I am the animal born to rush your rich red
muletas—each breath, each sigh, each groan,
a hooked horn of want. My mouth at your inner
thigh—here I must enter you—mi pobre
Manolete—press and part you like a wound—
make the crowd pounding in the grandstand
of your iliac crest rise up in you and cheer.
”
”
Natalie Díaz
“
(A number n of the possible languages employ the same vocabulary; in some of them, the symbol "library" possesses the correct definition "everlasting, ubiquitous system of hexagonal galleries," while a library—the thing—is a loaf of bread or a pyramid or something else, and the six words that define it themselves have other definitions. You who read me—are you certain you understand my language?)
”
”
Jorge Luis Borges (The Library of Babel)
“
Judge Woodward envisioned the new Detroit as an urban Arcadia of interlocking hexagons. Each wheel was to be separate yet united. This dream never quite came to be. Planning is for the world's great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to culture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to money, and so design had given way to expediency.
”
”
Jeffrey Eugenides (Middlesex)
“
All faults or defects, from the slightest misconduct to the most flagitious crime, Pantocyclus attributed to some deviation from perfect Regularity in the bodily figure, caused perhaps (if not congenital) by some collision in a crowd; by neglect to take exercise, or by taking too much of it; or even by a sudden change of temperature, resulting in a shrinkage or expansion in some too susceptible part of the frame. Therefore, concluded that illustrious Philosopher, neither good conduct nor bad conduct is a fit subject, in any sober estimation, for either praise or blame. For why should you praise, for example, the integrity of a Square who faithfully defends the interests of his client, when you ought in reality rather to admire the exact precision of his right angles? Or again, why blame a lying, thievish Isosceles when you ought rather to deplore the incurable inequality of his sides?
Theoretically, this doctrine is unquestionable; but it has practical drawbacks. In dealing with an Isosceles, if a rascal pleads that he cannot help stealing because of his unevenness, you reply that for that very reason, because he cannot help being a nuisance to his neighbours, you, the Magistrate, cannot help sentencing him to be consumed - and there's an end of the matter. But in little domestic difficulties, where the penalty of consumption, or death, is out of the question, this theory of Configuration sometimes comes in awkwardly; and I must confess that occasionally when one of my own Hexagonal Grandsons pleads as an excuse for his disobedience that a sudden change of the temperature has been too much for his perimeter, and that I ought to lay the blame not on him but on his Configuration, which can only be strengthened by abundance of the choicest sweetmeats, I neither see my way logically to reject, nor practically to accept, his conclusions.
For my own part, I find it best to assume that a good sound scolding or castigation has some latent and strengthening influence on my Grandson's Configuration; though I own that I have no grounds for thinking so. At all events I am not alone in my way of extricating myself from this dilemma; for I find that many of the highest Circles, sitting as Judges in law courts, use praise and blame towards Regular and Irregular Figures; and in their homes I know by experience that, when scolding their children, they speak about "right" or "wrong" as vehemently and passionately as if they believed that these names represented real existences, and that a human Figure is really capable of choosing between them.
”
”
Edwin A. Abbott (Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions)
“
We also have knowledge of another superstition from that period: belief in what was termed the Book-Man. On some shelf in some hexagon, it was argued, there must exist a book that is the cipher and perfect compendium of all other books, and some librarian must have examined that book; this librarian is analogous to a god. In the language of this zone there are still vestiges of the sect that worshiped that distant librarian. Many have gone in search of Him. For a hundred years, men beat every possible path and every path in vain. How was one to locate the idolized secret hexagon that sheltered Him? Someone proposed searching by regression: To locate book A, first consult book B, which tells where book A can be found; to lo cate book B, first consult book C, and so on, to infinity....It is in ventures such as these that I have squandered and spent my years. I cannot think it unlikely that there is such a total book on some shelf in the universe. I pray to the unknown gods that some man-even a single man, tens of centuries ago-has perused and read that book. If the honor and wisdom and joy of such a reading are not to be my own, then let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my own place be in hell. Let me be tortured and battered and annihilated, but let there be one instant, one creature, wherein thy enormous Library may find its justification.
”
”
Jorge Luis Borges (The Library of Babel)
“
The swirling lines of snow were composed of separate flakes, and each flake was a cluster of separate ice crystals--scientists had counted over a hundred of them in a single flake. Under the microscope each minuscule crystal, colorless and transparent, revealed a secret symmetry: six sides, the outward expression of an inward geometry of frozen molecules of water. But the real wonder was that no two crystals were precisely alike. In one of this father's camera magazines he had seen a stunning display of photomicrographs, and what was most amazing about the enlarged crystals was that each contained in its center a whole world of intricate six-sided designs, caused by microscopic air pockets. For no conceivable reason, Nature in a kind of exuberance created an inexhaustible outpouring of variations on a single form. A snowstorm was a fall of jewels, a delirium of hexagons--clearly the work of a master animator.
”
”
Steven Millhauser (Little Kingdoms (Vintage Contemporaries))
“
You really don’t believe that anything can have a value of its own beyond what function it serves for human beings?” Resaint said. “Value to who?” Resaint asked Halyard to imagine a planet in some remote galaxy—a lush, seething, glittering planet covered with stratospheric waterfalls, great land-sponges bouncing through the valleys, corals budding in perfect niveous hexagons, humming lichens glued to pink crystals, prismatic jellyfish breaching from the rivers, titanic lilies relying on tornadoes to spread their pollen—a planet full of complex, interconnected life but devoid of consciousness. “Are you telling me that, if an asteroid smashed into this planet and reduced every inch of its surface to dust, nothing would be lost? Because nobody in particular would miss it?” “But the universe is bloody huge—stuff like that must happen every minute. You can’t go on strike over it. Honestly it sounds to me to like your real enemy isn’t climate change or habitat loss, it’s entropy. You don’t like the idea that everything eventually crumbles. Well, it does. If you’re this worried about species extinction, wait until you hear about the heat death of the universe.” “I would be upset about the heat death of the universe too if human beings were accelerating the rate of it by a hundred times or more.” “And if a species’ position with respect to us doesn’t matter— you know, those amoebae they found that live at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, if they’re just as important as Chiu Chiu or my parents’ dog, even though nobody ever gets anywhere near them—if distance in space doesn’t matter, why should distance in time? If we don’t care about whether their lives overlap with our lives, why even worry about whether they exist simultaneously with us? Your favorite wasp—Adelo-midgy-midgy—” “Adelognathus marginatum—” “It did exist. It always will have existed. Extinction can’t take that away. It went through its nasty little routine over and over again for millions and millions of years. The show was a big success. So why is it important that it’s still running at the same time you are? Isn’t that centering the whole thing on human beings, which is exactly what we’re not supposed to be doing? I mean, for that matter—reality is all just numbers anyway, right? I mean underneath? That’s what people say now. So why are you so down on the scans? Hacks aside. Why is it so crucial that these animals exist right now in an ostensibly meat-based format, just because we do? My point is you talk about extinction as if you’re taking this enlightened post-human View from Nowhere but if we really get down to it you’re definitely taking a View from Karin Resaint two arms two legs one head born Basel Switzerland year of our lord two-thousand-and-when-ever.” But Resaint wasn’t listening anymore.
”
”
Ned Beauman (Venomous Lumpsucker)
“
4. Or else:
Rough draft of a letter
I think of you, often
sometimes I go back into a cafe, I ist near the door, I order a coffee
I arrange my packet of cigarettes, a box of matches, a writing pad, my felt-pen on the fake marble table
I Spend a long time stirring my cup of coffee with the teasspoon
(yet I don't put any sugar in my coffee, I drink it allowing the sugar to melt in my mouth, like the people of North, like the Russians and Poles when they drink tea)
I pretend to be precoccupied, to be reflecting, as if I had a decision to make
At the top and to the right of the sheet of paaper, I inscribe the date, sometimes the place, sometimes the time, I pretend to be writing a letter
I write slowly, very slowly, as slowly as I can, I trace, I draw each letter, each accent, I check the punctuation marks
I stare attentively at a small notice, the price-list for ice-creams, at a piece of ironwork, a blind, the hexagonal yellow ashtray (in actual fact, it's an equilaterial triangle, in the cutoff corners of which semi-circular dents have been made where cigarettes can be rested)
(...)
Outside there's a bit of sunlight
the cafe is nearly empty
two renovatior's men are having a rum at the bar, the owner is dozing behind his till, the waitress is cleaning the coffee machine
I am thinking of you
you are walking in your street, it's wintertime, you've turned up your foxfur collar, you're smiling, and remote
(...)
”
”
Georges Perec
“
The contemporary design argument does not rest, however, on gaps in our knowledge but rather on the growth in our knowledge due to the revolution in molecular biology. Information theory has taught us that nature exhibits two types of order. The first type is produced by natural causes-shiny crystals, hexagonal patterns in oil, whirlpools in the bathtub. But the second type-the complex structure of the DNA molecule-is not produced by any natural processes known to experience.
”
”
Nancy R. Pearcey (The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy)
“
Like all men of the Library, in my younger days I traveled; I have journeyed in quest of a book, perhaps the catalog of catalogs. Now that my eyes can hardly make out what I myself have written, I am preparing to die, a few leagues from the hexagon where I was born. When I am dead, compassionate hands will throw me over the railing; my tomb will be the unfathomable air, my body will sink for ages, and I will decay and dissolve in the wind engendered by my fall, which shall be infinite.
”
”
Jorge Luis Borges (Ficciones)
“
It bugged him. He stepped back, stepped back some more so he saw the building proper and realized he had been here before. Back in the ’70s. The restaurant had been a community center or the like, legal aid, a view of the desks so you can see that everybody looks like you. Help you fill out the application for food stamps and other government programs, break down the discouraging bureaucratese, probably run by some former Panthers. He was still working for Horizon so it had to be the ’70s. Top floor, middle of summer, and the elevator was out. Humping up all that white-and-black hexagon tile, the steps worn from so many feet that they seemed to smile, a dozen smiles every floor.
”
”
Colson Whitehead (The Nickel Boys)
“
Before that, before it was ever a hotel at all, five full centuries ago, it was the home of a wealthy privateer who gave up raiding ships to study bees in the pastures outside Saint-Malo, scribbling in notebooks and eating honey straight from combs. The crests above the door lintels still have bumblebees carved into the oak; the ivy-covered fountain in the courtyard is shaped like a hive. Werner’s favorites are five faded frescoes on the ceilings of the grandest upper rooms, where bees as big as children float against blue backdrops, big lazy drones and workers with diaphanous wings—where, above a hexagonal bathtub, a single nine-foot-long queen, with multiple eyes and a golden-furred abdomen, curls across the ceiling.
”
”
Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See)
“
Planning is for the world's great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to culture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to money, and so design had given way to expediency. Since 1818, the city had spread out along the river, warehouse by warehouse, factory by factory. Judge Woodward's wheels had been squashed, bisected, pressed into the usual rectangles.
”
”
Jeffrey Eugenides (Middlesex)
“
(To visualize this, consider the simple problem of why the Northeast has so many potholes in its highways. Every winter, water seeps into tiny cracks in the asphalt; the water expands as it freezes, causing the asphalt to crumble and gouging out a pothole. But it violates common sense to think that water expands when it freezes. Water does expand because of hydrogen bonding. The water molecule is shaped like a V, with the oxygen atom at the base. The water molecule has a slight negative charge at the bottom and a positive charge at the top. Hence, when you freeze water and stack water molecules, they expand, forming a regular lattice of ice with plenty of spaces between the molecules. The water molecules are arranged like hexagons. So water expands as it freezes since there is more space between the atoms in a hexagon. This is also the reason snowflakes have six sides, and explains why ice floats on water, when by rights it should sink.)
”
”
Michio Kaku (Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100)
“
People have wracked their brains for an explanation of benzene and how the celebrated man, August Kekulé, managed to come up with the concept of the benzene theory. With regard to the last point especially, a friend of mine who is a farmer and has a lively interest in chemistry has asked me a question which I would like to share with you. My 'agricultural friend' apparently believes he has traced the origins of the benzene theory. 'Has Kekulé,' so ran the question, 'once been a bee-keeper? You certainly know that bees too build hexagons; they know well that they can store the greatest amount of honey that way with the least amount of wax. I always liked it,' my agricultural friend went on, 'When I received a new issue of the Berichte; admittedly, I don't read the articles, but I like the pictures very much. The patterns of benzene, naphthalene and especially anthracene are indeed wonderful. When I look at the pictures I always have to think of the honeycombs of my bee hives.
”
”
August Wilhelm von Hofmann
“
An Zhe held out his hand, and a hexagonal snowflake landed on his finger. The beautiful shape gradually lost its form amidst his skin's warmth and drew in upon itself to form a crystalline droplet of water.
"I've known you all for only three months," he said. "But this is my whole lifetime."
The wind grew louder, and thousands of snowflakes blew into the corridor like willow catkins carried aloft by the spring wind. An Zhe looked up. He thought that everything from the forgotten past was unfolding before his eyes and dispersing into twinkling fragments.
The tempestuous storm subsided, the waves and undercurrents simultaneously ceasing to flow. He couldn't describe it as sad, nor was it anywhere close to being happy. He only felt that the snow was beautiful.
The joys and sorrows throughout his life,the meetings and partings, were just like the births and deaths of all the tangible things in this world. They were all ephemeral snowflakes.
"Are you cold?"
"Not anymore."
He memorized the shape of that snowflake, and in that second he obtained eternity.
”
”
Shisi (Little Mushroom: Revelations (Little Mushroom, #2))
“
In his great book How to Do Things with Words (1962), J.L. Austin considers the apparently simple sentence "France is hexagonal." He asks if this is true or false, a question that makes perfect sense if the job of a sentence is to be faithful to the world. His answer is that it depends. If you are a general contemplating a coming battle, saying that France is hexagonal might help you assess various military options of defense and attack; it would be a good sentence. But if you are a geographer charged with the task of mapping France's contours, saying that France is hexagonal might cost you your union card; a greater degree of detail and fineness of scale is required of mapmakers. "France is hexagonal," Austin explains, is true "for certain intents and purposes" and false or inadequate or even nonsensical for others. It is, he says, a matter of the "dimension of assessment" -- that is, a matter of what is the "right or proper thing to say as opposed to a wrong thing in these circumstances, to this audience, for these purposes and with these intentions.
”
”
Stanley Fish (How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One)
“
Zeka ve geleceği görme yeteneğiyle donatılmış birçok asansörün düşünmeyi gerektirmeyen ve yalnızca yukarı çıkıp aşağı inmekten ibaret bu iş yüzünden müthiş bir bunalıma girmesi de gayet normaldi, sonuçta varoluşçu bir tepki olarak, kısa bir süre için yanlamasına gitmeyi denediler, karar verme sürecinde rol almayı talep ettiler ve son olarak da suratlarını asıp bodrum katında oturma grevine başladılar.
Bugünlerde Sirius yıldız sistemindeki gezegenlerin herhangi birini ziyaret eden ve parasız her otostopçu bu nevrotik asansörlere danışmanlık görevi yaparak kolayca para kazanabilir.
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Hexagonal Phase)
“
I remember the images of snow crystals that accompanied these explanations. The book was bound with thin interleaving sheets of glassine to protect the color plates. I had turned the translucent paper to find a page filled with variously shaped snow crystals. Their intricacy overwhelmed me. Some of the crystals had smooth hexagonal columns instead of symmetrical plates, and the tiny captions beneath explained that, on the boundary of snow and rain, snowflakes took these elongated forms. For weeks and months afterward, I had pictured those delicate, silvery columns whenever I saw sleet. On days of heavy snowfall, I used to extend my coat sleeve to watch the flakes settle on the fluff on its dark fabric and dissolve. It made me dizzy to consider the innumerable combinations of coruscating hexagonal crystals like the ones I’d seen in the book that made up each grain of snow. For days after, I had woken from sleep and, while my eyes remained closed, imagined it was still snowing outside. I had seen snow drift down around me indoors while I lay sprawled on the floor, working on some tedious holiday assignment. Flakes landing on my hand, from which I’d just removed a hangnail. Flakes landing on the loose hairs and eraser dust strewn across the floor.
”
”
Han Kang (We Do Not Part)
“
The differ-
ence between solids and liquids is, then, that in a solid the atoms are arranged in
some kind of an array, called a crystalline array, and they do not have a random
position at long distances; the position of the atoms on one side of the crystal
is determined by that of other atoms millions of atoms away on the other side of
the crystal. Figure 1-4 is an invented arrangement for ice, and although it con-
tains many of the correct features of ice, it is not the true arrangement. One of the
correct features is that there is a part of the symmetry that is hexagonal. You can
see that if we turn the picture around an axis by 120°, the picture returns to itself.
So there is a symmetry in the ice which accounts for the six-sided appearance of
snowflakes. Another thing we can see from Fig. 1-4 is why ice shrinks when it
melts. The particular crystal pattern of ice shown here has many "holes" in it,
as does the true ice structure. When the organization breaks down, these holes
can be occupied by molecules. Most simple substances, with the exception of
water and type metal, expand upon melting, because the atoms are closely packed
in the solid crystal and upon melting need more room to jiggle around, but an
open structure collapses, as in the case of water.
”
”
Richard P. Feynman (The Feynman Lectures on Physics)
“
...aslında bütün marifet kendini yere doğru fırlatıp yeri ıskalamakta yatar.
-----
'Cennet bahçesi. ağaç. elma. o ısırık, hatırlıyor musun?'
'Evet, elbette hatırlıyorum.'
'Sizin tanrınız, bir bahçenin ortasına bir elma ağacı koyar ve der ki, 'hey arkadaşlar ne isterseniz yapın, ama bu elmayı yemeyin.' sürpriz, sürpriz, elmayı yerler ve o da saklandığı çalının arkasından fırlayarak bağırır 'yakaladım, yakaladım.'oysa yemeselerdi de sonuçta bir şey değişmeyecekti.'
'Niye değişmesin?'
'Çünkü eğer karşındaki, kaldırıma içinde tuğla bulunan şapkaları bırakmaktan hoşlanan bir zihniyete sahipse, gayet iyi bilirsin ki bundan vazgeçmez, er ya da geç seni gafil avlar.'
'Sen neden söz ediyorsun?'
'Boş ver, meyveyi ye
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Hexagonal Phase)
“
Methodical writing distracts me from the present condition of men. But the certainty that everything has been already written nullifies or makes phantoms of us all. I know of districts where the youth prostrate themselves before books and barbarously kiss the pages, though they do not know how to make out a single letter. Epidemics, heretical disagreements, the pilgrimages which inevitably degenerate into banditry, have decimated the population. I believe I have mentioned the suicides, more frequent each year. Perhaps I am deceived by old age and fear, but I suspect that the human species - the unique human species - is on the road to extinction, while the Library will last on forever. Illuminated, solitary infinite, perfectly immovable, filled with precious volumes, useless, incorruptible, secret.
Infinite, I have just written. I have not interpolated this adjective merely from rhetorical habit. It is not illogical, I say, to think that the world is infinite. Those who judge it to be limited, postulate that in remote places the corridors and stairs and hexagons could inconceivably cease - a manifest absurdity. Those who imagine it to be limitless forget that the possible number of books is limited. I dare insinuate the following solution to this ancient problem: the Library is limitless and periodic. If an eternal voyager were to traverse it in any direction, he would find, after many centuries, that the same volumes are repeated in the same disorder (which, repeated, would constitute an order: Order itself). My solitude rejoices in this elegant hope.
Mar del Plata 1941
”
”
Jorge Luis Borges
“
Wait for it, he thought, replaying it again. Wait for the blood to boil in his sad, pathetic veins. Wait for his confusion, his sense of loss. Wait for her to stare at him, lying like only she could lie, and wait for him to think, for the first time, about the way she’s never really answered a question. It was charming at first, wasn’t it? An eccentricity, an artistic detail, a golden little hexagon on the mark of what she was. It was infatuating, learning to read her, only she’s not just a problem without a solution, she’s a broken loop that can’t be fixed. Wait for him to realize it, to place things into categories in his head, and then wait for him to wonder if, while he was experiencing something special, she had ever really felt the same?
Wait for him to think, My god, she’s a forger. She’s a thief, she replicates things. Wait for him to say to himself: I am not only the same as Marc, but Marc is the same as the man before him, and the men who are the same as the men before that, and perhaps we are all counterfeit bills, recreated over and over while she cheapens our value, drains us of meaning, spends us like currency and throws us away. Wait for him to think, It’s too fast, everything is too fast—and surely he doesn’t really believe this, but how could he not, when the signs are all there? He is supposed to recognize the patterns. He is the one who calls things that are always true by their names, he understands the difference between constants and variables, he assigns logic to exceptions and rules. Wait for him to look at her as if he has no idea who she is, or who he is, or what they are.
Wait for it—
”
”
Olivie Blake (Alone With You in the Ether)
“
HEXAGON
Snowflakes descend purposefully
or wistfully
but, surrounded by their tiny peers,
each is confident they together will soon
hide the meadows, driveways, roofs,
fences, the stripped gardens.
A speck of dust or pollen
lofted to the top of the sky
encountered a water drop
that in the celestial cold
adhered and froze, forming an ice crystal
which, now weightier than
the air it floated on,
began to waft downwards,
adding water particles as it traveled,
six spikes or arms creating
a filigree all its own as it passed through
differing temperatures and amounts of
dampness. Its delicate white
intricacy, though, contains an inner space
also unique. One offers a forest of snowy evergreens
where, as afternoon light dims,
a man wearing a homespun hooded garment
and bent under a sack thrown over a shoulder
plods along a footpath
winding uphill between firs and pines.
With each step, his breath appears like smoke
until he and his burden are lost from view,
and a chill wind sways the thin twigs of bushes
emerging from drifts beside the track.
In that flake is preserved
an era in which the body endures and welcomes
the simple opposites: icy cold against face skin
and eventually a fire’s warmth, sodden feet and, at last,
these dried once more, while the eye
registers an omnipresent starkness
—white fields, white roads, white trees—
which, like a minor key, can please the mind.
Here is the past returned to Earth
by the water that changes form
but does not die. In this vision, each frozen tuft
among the millions that lower to the ground
is a memento mori that affirms:
No life is useless
or pointless, since each in its turn
advances the future. Yet all are swiftly forgotten
in the beauty of the falling
snow.
”
”
Tom Wayman
“
Aunt Jane came around from the back of the house, her black silk cape fluttering from her shoulders, and a calico sunbonnet hiding her features in its cavernous depth. She walked briskly to the clothes-line and began patting and smoothing the quilts where the breeze had disarranged them.
"Aunt Jane," I called out, "are you having a fair all by yourself?"
She turned quickly, pushing back the sunbonnet from her eyes.
"Why, child," she said, with a happy laugh, "you come pretty nigh skeerin' me. No, I ain't havin' any fair; I'm jest givin' my quilts their spring airin'. Twice a year I put 'em out in the sun and wind; and this mornin' the air smelt so sweet, I thought it was a good chance to freshen 'em up for the summer. It's about time to take 'em in now."
She began to fold the quilts and lay them over her arm, and I did the same. Back and forth we went from the clothes-line to the house, and from the house to the clothes-line, until the quilts were safely housed from the coming dewfall and piled on every available chair in the front room. I looked at them in sheer amazement. There seemed to be every pattern that the ingenuity of woman could devise and the industry of woman put together, — "four-patches," "nine-patches," "log-cabins," "wild-goose chases," "rising suns," hexagons, diamonds, and only Aunt Jane knows what else. As for color, a Sandwich Islander would have danced with joy at the sight of those reds, purples, yellows, and greens.
"Did you really make all these quilts, Aunt Jane?" I asked wondcringly.
Aunt Jane's eyes sparkled with pride.
"Every stitch of 'em, child," she said, "except the quiltin'. The neighbors used to come in and help some with that. I've heard folks say that piecin' quilts was nothin' but a waste o' time, but that ain't always so.
”
”
Eliza Calvert Hall (Aunt Jane of Kentucky)
“
Adamın birinin, değişiklik olsun diye bundan böyle halka nazik davranmanın ne kadar iyi olacağını dile getirdiği için bir ağaca çivilenmesinden yaklaşık iki bin yıl sonra, bir perşembe günü, rickmanswort'de küçük bir kafede tek başına oturan bir kız, bunca zamandır ters giden şeyin ne olduğunu birden fark edip en sonunda dünyanın nasıl iyileştirilebileceğini ve mutluluğun hüküm sürdüğü bir yere dönüştürülebileceğini anlamıştı. bu sefer doğru olanı bulmuştu, işe yarayacak ve hiç kimsenin bir yerlere çivilenmesi gerekmeyecekti.
Ama ne yazıktır ki, bir telefon bulup birilerine bundan söz edemeden korkunç aptal bir felaket meydana geldi ve fikir sonsuza dek yitip gitti.
bu, o kızın öyküsü değil.
-----
varlıgımı kanıtlamayı reddediyorum" der tanrı. "cünkü kanıt inancı yok eder. ve inanç olmazsa ben bir hiçim.
-----
Halkı yönetmeyi en çok isteyenler, bunu yapmaya en az uygun olanlardır.
-----
- keske annemi dinleseydim
+nelerden bahsederdi ki
- bilmem hic dinlemedim
-----
Tanrım beni bilmem gerekmeyen şeyleri öğrenmekten koru. Hatta beni bilmediğim şeyler olduğunu öğrenmekten de koru. Öğrenmemeye karar verdiğim şeyler olduğunu öğrenmemeye karar verdiğimi bilmekten koru. Amin.
Tanrım, tanrım, tanrım.. Beni yukarıdaki duanın sonuçlarından koru.
Amin.
Yaşamda insanların başına gelen şeylerin çoğu bu son kısmı kaçırmış olmaktan dolayı başlarına geliyor.
-----
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Hexagonal Phase)
“
When we arrived at the wedding at Marlboro Man’s grandparents’ house, I gasped. People were absolutely everywhere: scurrying and mingling and sipping champagne and laughing on the lawn. Marlboro Man’s mother was the first person I saw. She was an elegant, statuesque vision in her brown linen dress, and she immediately greeted and welcomed me. “What a pretty suit,” she said as she gave me a warm hug. Score. Success. I felt better about life. After the ceremony, I’d meet Cousin T., Cousin H., Cousin K., Cousin D., and more aunts, uncles, and acquaintances than I ever could have counted. Each family member was more gracious and welcoming than the one before, and it didn’t take long before I felt right at home. This was going well. This was going really, really well.
It was hot, though, and humid, and suddenly my lightweight wool suit didn’t feel so lightweight anymore. I was deep in conversation with a group of ladies--smiling and laughing and making small talk--when a trickle of perspiration made its way slowly down my back. I tried to ignore it, tried to will the tiny stream of perspiration away, but one trickle soon turned into two, and two turned into four. Concerned, I casually excused myself from the conversation and disappeared into the air-conditioned house. I needed to cool off.
I found an upstairs bathroom away from the party, and under normal circumstances I would have taken time to admire its charming vintage pedestal sinks and pink hexagonal tile. But the sweat profusely dripping from all pores of my body was too distracting. Soon, I feared, my jacket would be drenched. Seeing no other option, I unbuttoned my jacket and removed it, hanging it on the hook on the back of the bathroom door as I frantically looked around the bathroom for an absorbent towel. None existed. I found the air vent on the ceiling, and stood on the toilet to allow the air-conditioning to blast cool air on my face.
Come on, Ree, get a grip, I told myself. Something was going on…this was more than simply a reaction to the August humidity. I was having some kind of nervous psycho sweat attack--think Albert Brooks in Broadcast News--and I was being held captive by my perspiration in the upstairs bathroom of Marlboro Man’s grandmother’s house in the middle of his cousin’s wedding reception. I felt the waistband of my skirt stick to my skin. Oh, God…I was in trouble. Desperate, I stripped off my skirt and the stifling control-top panty hose I’d made the mistake of wearing; they peeled off my legs like a soggy banana skin. And there I stood, naked and clammy, my auburn bangs becoming more waterlogged by the minute. So this is it, I thought. This is hell. I was in the throes of a case of diaphoresis the likes of which I’d never known. And it had to be on the night of my grand entrance into Marlboro Man’s family. Of course, it just had to be. I looked in the mirror, shaking my head as anxiety continued to seep from my pores, taking my makeup and perfumed body cream along with it.
Suddenly, I heard the knock at the bathroom door.
“Yes? Just a minute…yes?” I scrambled and grabbed my wet control tops.
“Hey, you…are you all right in there?”
God help me. It was Marlboro Man.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
“
If love were circular, like a yawn, and I were dynamic and geometric, like an isosceles triangle, would you take me to bed like some hedonistic hexagon?
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
“
Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows—only hard with luminous edges—and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen. Alas, a few years ago, I should have said "my universe:" but now my mind has been opened to higher views of things.
”
”
Anonymous
“
The rhombic dodecahedron is a three-dimensional shadow of the four-dimensional tesseract analogous to the hexagon as a two-dimensional shadow of the cube.
”
”
John Martineau (Quadrivium: Number Geometry Music Heaven)
“
The dodecagon is also made from six squares and six equilateral triangles fitted around a hexagon
”
”
John Martineau (Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology)
“
The certitude that some shelf in some hexagon held precious books and that these precious books were inaccessible, seemed almost intolerable.
”
”
Jorge Luis Borges (The Library of Babel)
“
Was the hexagon a ship here to abduct the best and brightest of us? If that were the case, I probably had nothing to worry about.
”
”
J. Pal (They Called Me Mad (MAD, #1))
“
Welcome to the dawn of Aquarius, where every thought is an identical, hexagonal section of the Hive Mind.
”
”
David Archer (Odin (Alex Mason #1))
“
The worlds of movies, soap operas, or cartoons were already so meticulous that there were no blanks left for me to fill in. These stories on screen existed exactly as they had been filmed and drawn. For example, if a book had the
description, “A blond lady sits cross-legged on a brown cushion in a hexagon shaped house,” a visual adaptation would have everything else decided as well, from her skin tone and expression to even the length of her fingernails. There was nothing left for me to change in that world. But books were different. They had lots of blanks. Blanks between words
and even between lines. I could squeeze myself in there and sit, or walk, or scribble down my thoughts.
”
”
Sohn Won-Pyung
“
...And So It Came To Pass That The Hourglass Orifices Hexagonal Prismatics At Its Sandy Zenith, And Inside That Whorl Ring The Town Portal That Time Consumes The Empty Ether Was The Tomb Of King Leoric, The Crown, And The Topaz Orange Elixir Of Magic That The Whorl Ring Cucked On A Hidden Shrine, And The Ring Is Mine, My Own, My Precious In Time...
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Jonathan McKinney
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And So It Came To Pass That The Hourglass Orifices Hexagonal Prismatics At Its Zenith, Although Nor Half Empty Nor Half Full In The Time Consumed, Was The Topaz Orange Elixir Of Magic In The Town Portal To King Leoric's Tomb
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Jonathan McKinney
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And So It Came To Pass That The Hourglass Orifices Hexagonal Prismatics At Its Sandy Zenith, And In Its Glass Nor Empty Nor Half Xor Full Time Consumed, Was The Tomb Of King Leoric, The Crown, And The Topaz Orange Elixir Of Magic Portal Up To Town
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Jonathan McKinney
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The Isle Kit: kit Inna kit keep Inna set keys Inna list
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Jonathan Roy Mckinney
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Inna Map Mapped A Key, Inna Sage Saged A Gift, Inna Whorl Turn Ring A Portal Rifts A Vortex...
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Jonathan Roy Mckinney
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Space Time : Inna Map Mapped A Key, Inna Sage Saged A Gift, Inna Whorl Turn Ring A Portal Rifts A Vortex...
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Jonathan Roy Mckinney
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The I.C.S.L.E.S., In A World Needing A Brand New Idol? INNA CIRCLE SET LIKE SQUARE, Explanation = Like^2 list key keep
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Jonathan Roy Mckinney
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...And So It Came To Pass, Inna Whorl Turn Ring A Portal Rifts A Vortex, The Key Sages A Gift, And The Past Maps The Future, To The East...Always To The East...
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Jonathan Roy Mckinney
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THOHPAISZINXORBITS GPL Instruction Set Is To.Pass.In.Xor.Bits Inspired By My Quotes, The Hourglass Orifices Hexagonal Prismatics At Its Sandy Zenith For The Rectangular Orifix In The Square Is Triangulated To Binary
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Jonathan McKinney
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Sage Derives To Mana Stone From The River Jordan In The Bible In Leveraging Hexagonal Prismatics, 13 = S-6, G-7 : 2A = F-6 = A-1, E-5 : M-13, N-1
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Deckard; Blizzard Entertainment Cain
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The Sage's Gift A Seed Maps The Topaz Keyring A Sandy Zenith The Hexagonal Prismatic Oculus
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WhorlTurn Wizard
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The Sage's Gift A Seed Maps The Topaz Keyring A Sandy Zenith The Hexagonal Oculus Prism
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WhorlTurn Wizard
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...And So It Came To Pass That The Hourglass Orifices Hexagonal Prismatics At Its Sandy Zenith, And Inside The Whorl Ring That Town Portal The Time Consumes The Empty Ethereal Tomb Was King Leoric's Crown, The Topaz Orange Elixir Of Magic Affixed In Time, And In The Second Awakening Cucked On A Hidden Shrine The Compass Rose That Ring Is Mine...My Own...My Precious Dime
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Jonathan McKinney
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...And So It Came To Pass That The Hourglass Orifices Hexagonal Prismatics At Its Sandy Zenith, And Inside The Whorl Ring That Town Portal The Time Consumes The Empty Ethereal Tomb Was King Leoric's Crown, The Topaz Orange Magic Elixir Was Affixed, And The Second Awakening Was That The Brilliant Dazzling Compass Rose Cucked On A Hidden Shrine But The Ring Was Mine...My Own...My Precious Diadem In Time...
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Jonathan McKinney
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And So It Came To Pass That The Hourglass Orifices Hexagonal Prismatics At Its Zenith, Although The Glass Not Half Empty Or Half Full In Time Consumed, Was The Topaz Orange Elixir Of Magic In Town Portal To King Leoric's Tomb?
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Jonathan McKinney
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The Hourglass Orifices Hexagonal Prismatics At Its Sandy Zenith
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Jonathan McKinney
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El universo -recitaba el enano como si estuviera en una habitación hexagonal y blanca, acariciando un pelícano atragantado con un salmón coleante-, es obra de un dios apresurado y torpe. Su pretensión lo llevó a concebir cosas sublimes, rosadas y con pisos, como un cake helado de La Gran Vía; también le salieron -añadía, señalando con un índice oscilante, de falanges hinchadas como canutos, a la Tremenda, con una musaraña repugnante, como si le pegaran a la cara una papaya abierta- mamarrachos como éste: un pedazo de carne con marvelline en los ojos. Nuestro propósito -concluía exaltado-: el caos total. Terminar con esta jarana de mal gusto que todo rememora, desde las auroras boreales hasta la tortilla tahitiana.
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Severo Sarduy (Maitreya (English and Spanish Edition))
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The unit was housed in a facility built after the model of the Pentagon, not in the sense of seven sides, but in the sense that the hexagon-shaped building surrounded and enclosed a large open area.
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Victoria Danann (My Familiar Stranger (Knights of Black Swan, #1))
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we now know that UFOs apparently come in an array of shapes and sizes. They are shaped like ovals, cigars, triangles, trapezoids, disks, spheres, coins flipped on their sides, boomerangs, crescents, hexagons, Vs, lenticulars, diamonds. They are black, silver, metallic, smooth, textured, and can change colors and shapes. They range in sizes as huge as a football stadium and as small as a VW. The crafts reportedly move at incredible speeds, can hover, hang seemingly motionless in the sky, and are capable of astounding maneuvers. They usually make no sound, don’t have wings, often have a dome on top, and even lit portholes.
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Trish MacGregor (Aliens in the Backyard: UFOs, Abductions, and Synchronicity)
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since the Revolution, the French have become prisoners of the heritage of their past. The idea of the Hexagon as a model for the world is not one which many people could objectively defend in the twenty-first century, but it remains a potent reason to repel change or foreign influences. The French want to see their country as the bearer of a special mission bequeathed by their history, the Gallic cockerel crowing proudly to the world as they proclaim the historic virtues of the republican civil religion, on the basis of institutions dating
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Jonathan Fenby (The History of Modern France: From the Revolution to the War on Terror)
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since the Revolution, the French have become prisoners of the heritage of their past. The idea of the Hexagon as a model for the world is not one which many people could objectively defend in the twenty-first century, but it remains a potent reason to repel change or foreign influences. The French want to see their country as the bearer of a special mission bequeathed by their history, the Gallic cockerel crowing proudly to the world as they proclaim the historic virtues of the republican civil religion, on the basis of institutions dating back two centuries.
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Jonathan Fenby (The History of Modern France: From the Revolution to the War on Terror)
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S'allunya, vegetal, l'últim record
d'una primera cèl·lula.
Es transforma, hexagonal, l'eixam
i es torna cendra. Desdibuixats contorns.
Cal·ligrafia esborrada en un espill glaçat.
Submergit, nu, el cos, ja un altre,
en el fred laberint de la nit.
Tan sols la gènesi del joc que oculti el frau.
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Zoraida Burgos (Blaus (Columna) (Catalan Edition))
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It meant that we were to march into the hall and take out our school books and reproduce the slipper-shaped animalcule whose pseudopodia power it through a world without feeling; to learn how to inscribe a hexagon into a circle without tearing the paper; to assimilate the causes and consequences of the battle of Panipat without ever identifying your own enemy because that would mean identifying yourself.
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Jerry Pinto (Em and the Big Hoom)
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There is one packing puzzle which, I believe, holds the record for the longest time between the answer being discovered and proof being found that this answer is definitely the correct answer. A solution was found before humans even existed, but it wasn't proved until 2001. The puzzle is: what is the best shape to pack in 2D? By 'best', we mean that this is a shape that fits together leaving no gaps and covers the maximum area possible for the length of its edges. The winner is the hexagon, as was discovered by bees long before humans even conceived of mathematics. Known as the honeycomb conjecture, it was not until millions of years later that the American mathematician Thomas Hales proved that, even if you resort to crazy shapes with strange curved sides, you'll never flat-pack better than you can with a hexagon.
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Matt Parker (Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension)