Nora Chadwick in the Pelican guide to The Celts (1970) describes the writing and copying of Irish poetry in the 6^th and 7^th centuries. “Only fragments of these early poems remain, commonly scribbled on the margin of the book which the scribe happened to be copying. One who is copying a manuscript of Cassiodorus on the Psalms writes on the margin, ‘Pleasant is the glittering of the sun today upon these margins because it flickers so.’”

Here’s a Celtic bowl from the 7^th  century, found at Lullingstone, Kent. There is a fish lower on the sides, but it’s hard to see.

The monk’s pleasant flickering reminds me of Albert Camus, dying in a car crash in 1960, as the intermittent light through the plane trees confuses publisher Michel Gallimard, who’s driving the Facel Vega HK500:

For sunlight on water, the series Surfing Essay, by Anthony Friedkin, is wonderful.

And the pleasant flickering of light on a surface also reminds me, of course, of cinema projection.