Lucubration, be running, thinking

I came across the word lucubration this morning, and not for the first time, forgot that it meant nocturnal study or meditation. I like both the word and, though I rarely lucubrate, what it describes. Dylan Thomas may or may not have known the word, but he knew all about lucubration (lubrication too, by all accounts), when he wrote:

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

This African proverb is quoted in The Week this week from a programme on Radio 4:
Every morning in Africa, a gazell wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle...when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.


"Thinking can be dangerous". From the Thoughts of Chairman Plutarch