subconscious venus fly trap doodling while wandering off in class, hey, wasn't i talking about venus fly traps the other day??? oh yes, now i remember...

today there were discussions about the secrets of the section - and of course the etymological beginnings of secrets. secrets revealed and concealed, told to someone in order to prove it's existence yet hidden to prevent it's complete being. the latin word "arcanum" has much to do with the uncanny/the mysterious/the forbidden/the sacred and begins to reveal the importance in defining what a secret is. anyhow, the conversation was turned to kircher and his invention of "listening tubes" --- he had an intricate set of tubes set into the walls that ended up at the front door, or other rooms in the house, where he could listen to conversation without being known. some ends were carefully placed in the mouths of statues so that if he did choose to speak, it would appear as if the statue itself were talking. these things intrigue me...much like those who have an affinity for voyeurism. the conversation continued into a kind of morbidness as we began talk of vesalius and the connection between disection and section (the knife of the surgeon to the body as related to the pen knife of the architect to the building)---anyhow, i would have like to been a participant in these "operating theatres" where disection was an annnual public affair. anyhow, i must find the copy of vesalius' frontispiece for his treatise "the architecture of the human body" in order that i might see for myself...note to self - vesalius describes and illustrates this book about the human form much like the way in which we attempt to describe buildings - thereby once again emphasizing the extremely close relationship between body and building. ugh---so many things to read, and so many things i yet do not know. ah...and now that i am pondering the subject, here is [ how a venus fly trap works ]...i was wondering since i didn't get such a detailed explanation the other day...