Although I've never witnessed this enigmatic calcography in progress, I believe this woman is responsible:
I caught her as she tried to escape on a steamboat. I believe it is she who chalked "Pour nous chante deja plus hautaine aventure. Route nouvelle et feux, portes de cime en cime..." on the garden slate. And my poor but dogged attempts at mental translation generated the following: "Sing for us already haughty adventure. New course and lights, doors treetop to treetop ..." I try again: "High adventure is already singing for us. New routes, new lights, summits give upon summits..." I have no confidence in the second translation but I like it. It is a solution. I like solutions but they can be lonely business.
As many have found to their dismay, when we follow our interests into detail, social invitations cease. We are a country of people who like to romp a wide pile of issues, sink our teeth briefly into them and throttle them as puppies worry socks. We do not like to chew one problem long. We like to dash after fresh socks, abandon anything to do with the old. This is not a society that tolerates anyone boring enough to have solved a problem. I know, I solved a problem once and never got invited anywhere again.
One may follow a problem to its solution and that is admirable and confusing. One loses the sense of the two things being separate, which they are. One is better off following the calcographist up a gangplank and learning over dinner the line is from Saint-John Perse's "Chronique" and means we ain't seen nuthin' yet.
Which brings us back to square one:
She may be responsible for crop-circles too.
