And finally, moving from this subset of public private letters to the final poem, "Poem for Bill Cassidy," which the end notes of the book explain is addressed to a friend of Christle's who had recently died, the book's trajectory is again altered, this time veering into perhaps the most arcane-feeling logic yet encountered.
Look up arcane symbols that appeal to you.
For most Scots, whose pound notes already look different from English ones, the problem the unionists describe seems arcane and, amid a general anti-establishment feeling, possibly designed to confuse.
This arcane fiction has transfixed generations of followers who glory in feeling libidinous while proving themselves super-smart.
What any successful production of "The Chalk Garden" has to do is show how these words become an elaborate defense system, an arcane means of both disguising and signaling deep needs and feelings.
"Tell you what," I say, fully recovered from the urge to teach my father to beat eggs, in fact feeling considerably older and wiser for having a skill so arcane it can't even be expressed on four sides of lined A4. "Tell you what, why don't I just go on baking them for you for a bit?" And so I did.
There are lots of arcane, wonky details involved, and not much in the way of gut feeling or visceral connection.
WASHINGTON -- It is tempting to think that the authors of the 1974 federal budget law were feeling mischievously ironic when they chose "reconciliation" as the name for a particularly arcane process the bill established.
It would appropriate another $200m to the total debt but the ballyhooed debate has descended to arcane discussion over whether funding for UN world conferences includes annual meetings of UNCTAD, a trade body.The feeling within the UN is that the United States will probably get its way, at least over the lowered assessments.
But like all of us -- including you and all these bloggers I've discovered -- if you care about prepdom, you have a kind of passionate proprietary feeling like, "No one knows it like I know it, or no one knows about this arcane business of collars and cuffs and monograms," so I did it.
In case you're feeling put out by all of this, keep this in mind: If the judge still has to wear an arcane black robe in the courtroom, it's not unreasonable for you to be required to put on something that would pass for your Sunday best.
