In the eleventh canticle of Dante’s furnace lie the ambulatory and infirmed and a guy named Omar who sells Persian rugs. He, Omar, figured he could make a solid living selling rugs, and in the process ply his trade as a tarot card reader. There was one particularly corpulent friar, a short-order cook on the upside of the furnace, who liked smelts broiled in lemon and garlic, scallops and cruet skillet-fried in fennel and allspice. The eleventh canticle penitents’ wished they were tenth canticle penitents’ so they could have one of those monad-windows that Leibniz so raved about. The friar-cook pilfered Omar’s tarot cards, hiding them in his laundry basket where he stowed his soiled aprons and surplices, and bribed Leibniz for a window-seat, offering to fry him up smelts and scallops, in fennel, allspice and cumin, of course, and listen to him wax on about algebra and vectors and not being able to see clearly out his window.
