The Hourglass

The title of this blog is based on a passage from Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (Project Gutenberg). For those unfamiliar with the story, A nineteenth century Connecticut man finds himself displaced in time to the era of King Arthur and in the presence of the king himself. The Yankee seeks to enlighten the king in the manner of contemporary thought on a variety of issues. In the midst of one such discussion, the Yankee says the following of the king.

The king looked puzzled — he wasn’t a very heavy weight, intellectually. His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.

I’ve always liked this passage because I find that I really identify with the king in my own intellectual pursuits. Compared to many that I have had the pleasure to learn with and learn from, I find that I need much more time to absorb and fully comprehend some new learning. I need to approach the learning from several different angles in various contexts in order for it to be integrated into my knowledge. Hence, I see the king’s hourglass as a metaphor for how I wish to approach the writing of this blog: I hope that each blog entry is just one more grain of sand in the process of learning and enlightenment. However, let me be perfectly clear: I do not see myself as the Yankee, as it were, dispensing grains of wisdom to the intellectual lightweights of the internet. Rather, in all humility, I see myself as one like the king, who is struggling earnestly to stow ideas, grain by grain.