The New York Times reports the death yesterday, January 30, 2024,
of the wife of Beach Boys co-founder Brian Wilson.
According to the Catholic Church, therefore, yesterday was her
dies natalis — day of birth into heaven.
According to the Times, her secular dies natalis was Oct. 3 (10/03) —
"Melinda Kae Ledbetter was born on Oct. 3, 1946, in Pueblo, Colo."
According to this journal, yesterday's significant "10 03" was a time —
Fans of hallucinatory fiction might recall a saying of Philip Pullman:
"The meaning of a story emerges in the meeting
between the words on the page
and the thoughts in the reader's mind.
So when people ask me what I meant by this story,
or what was the message I was trying to convey in that one,
I have to explain that I'm not going to explain.
Anyway, I'm not in the message business;
I'm in the 'Once upon a time' business."
Words that are somewhat less hallucinatory —
