Goose

Indian Nativity

2009-12-12T22:36:00.000-07:00

Scanned reference images from Art History by Marilyn Stokstad

2009-10-21T00:29:00.002-06:00

THINGS I AM STRUGGLING WITH

1. I am struggling with acceptance of difficult positions and beliefs of other people, struggling to rid myself of the intolerance I accuse other people of (see previous entry).

2. I am struggling with the geography of our lives. You and I are in two different cities, and sometimes I wish we didn't need to be.

3. I am struggling to let go of the stressful parts of this art thing -- remembering that I want to be MAKING ART, not MAKING MONEY. I am struggling with convincing myself that this is going to make the quality of my work much richer, and this in time will draw the attention I want, rather than fawning for attention at a time when I might not need it.

3a. Relatedly, I am struggling with this phase:

I am struggling with the quality of the art work itself, and feeling glum about it sometimes.

4. Specifically I am struggling with clarity and a certain image-conciseness that illustration must have in order to work. I am struggling with achieving this visual literacy while maintaining an aesthetic that I want to see. The ideas I have in my head are not necessarily images but rather feelings and inklings, and it's not until I begin to piece together the bones in the real world that the image reveals itself, and right now I am struggling with that process, with making it into a workable path.

4. I am struggling with the patience all of this requires.

But I think the most likely reason of all was that his heart was two sizes too small.

2009-10-19T23:29:00.000-06:00

I heard an item on NPR this morning about "new" atheism, one that evangelizes for its cause, focusing on hatred and contempt, casting all religion as dangerous and ignorance.

They interviewed a man who'd posted a photograph of a communion host impaled on a rusty nail on his blog. He laughed, saying, "People got very angry. I don't know why."

I thought, yet you do. Because it Means Something. Otherwise you would not have done it in the first place.

I was surprised how deeply upsetting the story was to me. It quite literally gave me a sick feeling in my stomach that I couldn't shake for the rest of the day. I understand wary questions and even cynicism, but I don't understand circumventing the natural act of discussion by objecting in such a mean-spirited way.

It seems to me that at a most basic level, religion emphasizes the importance of symbols and ritual on the soul. The importance of CULTIVATING the soul. The focus on the spirit, as well as the mind and body. So what I take home from this story is: it's weird that people don't want others to do that. I know religion gets big and messy and fundamentalists really ruin it for everyone, but I have poked around quite a bit and have yet to find a religion with central tenants of nastiness and cruelty to others.

And atheist fundamentalism is still fundamentalism.

And within that I suppose there is also the problem of respect for others. I would not dream of tearing the pages from the Sikh holy book, just as I would not dream of trampling my neighbor's flower garden. It worries me that other people don't see things that way, regardless of opinion on higher powers.

It's the intolerance I find so distasteful, and I realized this morning that I was thinking to myself, I am intolerant of intolerance, which I realized is completely unsound. How does that make me different, in a big cosmic sense, than the people inventing Blasphemy Day? I don't think it does. And if I am going to claim to be at peace with everything in this world -- really at peace -- then I'm going to have to come to terms with this somehow.

Which is why I am here, in this image, as both the accepting loving heart and the frozen heart of the intolerant bigot. Because until I can work this out -- this intolerance problem -- I'm just as bad.

Re-translation

2009-10-15T23:43:00.003-06:00

1: Being hurts.

2: We want pain.

3: To hurt less, want less.

4: To want less, watch what you want,
then you can want what you want,
so you can say what you want,
to do what you want,
to become what you want,
and then go where you want,
see what you want,
and finally think what you want.

If you do all this, you will know what you want, and then you will be free.

2009-10-05T22:38:00.001-06:00

A little sketch to accompany this beautiful passage from "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones," compiled by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki.

"Or, imagine the five colored circles of the peacock tail to be your five senses in illimitable space. Now let their beauty melt within. Similarly, at any point in space or on a wall -- until the point dissolves. Then your wish for another comes true."

2009-09-30T21:15:00.001-06:00

Yesterday I went with Melinda to watch swifts.

Per the website's cheerful insistence, we parked at Montgomery Park and walked three blocks along 27th to get to a lovely view of the school from the curb. But even before we could see the chimney we could hear the swifts, twittering away. When we looked up we were absolutely spellbound.

The sky was teeming with birds. It was memorizing. Swifts and swallows are the otters of the sky -- there is an frenetic exuberance to their path that comes from the diet of elusive bugs, but turns out looking like great fun. It lifts the spirits. The nearby hill featured about 50 or so people camped out with jackets and blankets applauding when the birds formed accidental formations. Children in the field turned into birds.

We gasped when a dangerous looking larger bird came darting in to sit protectively on the chimney and cheered when the mass of tiny birds chased him off. And all at once, the birds formed a spiral column and flew into the chimney.

I have never seen anything like it in my life. It looked like tiny pieces of black paper were being sucked in by a giant vacuum. Thousands of birds vying for space inside the chimney. After about a hundred made it inside the mass would regroup, circle around, form the column again, and it began again. To be sucked inside by fatigue and rapid blindness from the night. How do they do it? How do they keep from bumping into one another? How do they make it into the chimney so effortlessly?

I understand the chimney is kept on the school grounds exclusively for the purpose of this remarkable event. If I had money I would donate to help keep it there. Instead I suppose next year I could volunteer to man the Audubon Society table or mind the sandwich board at Montgomery Park. I could sweep bird droppings from the bottom of the flue. Something. I'll think of something.

2009-09-27T21:53:00.001-06:00

I've had a dreamy couple of days.

2009-09-15T09:18:00.000-06:00

LINKS WITHHELD

I need to share this with you, because it's creepy. And I don't know what else to do with it. And I can't stop thinking about it.

An acquaintance from high school has been surfacing on facebook lately promoting her blog and twitter feeds. Her blog, it is about blogging, but it's worse than that. It's not an insightful muse on the medium in particular, indeed there are no in depth thoughts of any kind to be found as far as I can tell. It's "instructions" on how to write a blog. How to manage a twitter feed, ten things you never knew you never knew about linkedin.

Everyone has been using these media as long as she has, and they are evolving as quickly as she can read the FAQs and lurk around on the sites. An email from Twitter itself just four days ago stated: "as Twitter has evolved, we've gained a better understanding of how folks use the service." So I'm not sure how it is that she has magical knowledge beyond what I'd have access to if I gave it some thought. And I hesitate to get sage I've been there done that type knowledge in a brand new blog from a robotic technocrat.

The best part: all of this information is coming from a person who, on her facebook profile, makes sentences instead of keywords under the various "interests" categories.

Ownership, entrepreneurialship, making money. I shouldn't beef with people who are genuinely interested in the topic, but I can't help but wonder how the hell she can afford to do all this, unless she is being paid to blog (which I suspect, since those gigs generate fairly poor quality content). She isn't connecting with others, she is connecting with pixels and gadgets and things that people have to buy into, or buy. Things that people like me don't have time for. Or don't have money for.

I don't mean to pick on this person specifically, (although she has made it very easy to do,) it's the larger issue at hand.

Listen: it is stupid to pay for a domain name and have tons of banners pointing to ME ME ME when what you want to do, truthfully, is blog. Which is to say: you have thoughts you want to type out. Maybe people will read it, maybe they won't. It seems to be that people who are "successful" at this -- people who have been doing it for a long time, with a lot of content, who have a nice readable page -- just blog. They don't particularly want anything to come of it, they just do it. The readership and comments and warm feelings come later.

Because you don't need money to blog. You can get a quite serviceable blog for nothing at all, there are countless platforms to do so, and if you need help in this area we can chat about it becuase I have bounced around quite a few of them. Or ask the bloggers you read. Or something.

I keep coming back to this idea of genuine living vs. robot people, and this is such a perfect example.

2009-07-23T22:19:00.002-06:00

Faith

2009-05-24T21:15:00.002-06:00

Sometimes we don't know what's going to happen.
And really it's most times.

There is a certain sort of faith, that the powers that be,
God, more often than not,
but also our friends,
our families,
government and infrastructure,
devices and machines,
all of the safety, net after net
will protect us, will catch us if we fall.
And a lot of the time
that's true.
There are a lot of nets,
and so walking across the tightrope,
if in a panic we look down, we are sure to see that it is a long fall
but the net is there
so it's alright to fall.
What we need to do is focus on the task at hand
and keep our balance
so we can make it across, and no one will have to catch us.

And so there is a kind of faith in those nets.
And there is a faith in ourselves.
We can make it across.
We have done this before,
or maybe something like it,
or at least,
we've done something
sometime.
And so we have courage,
because we know we have skills.
I think I can.
I think I can.
And so that is another kind of faith.

Finally, there is the final faith
that even if I fall
and there is no net
and everything is broken
that too is a role I can play.
That last faith,
come what may
is the real heart of courage.
We can only really
take that next step
if it's ok to fall
net or no net.

(If you want to swim
you've got to be ok to sink.)

I've got support,
but it's ok if I don't, I don't need it
because I can do it,
but it's ok if I can't
because it's ok to fall too.

There isn't a monster under the bed,
and even if there was, I could take him,
and even if I couldn't, what a great story.

I sure want to get to the other side,
to cross the tightrope,
but I can only take another step
if I accept
that this might be the part
where I slip.
And knowing that
I'll step careful
and maybe make it across.

We can only wait and see.

Curbside

2009-05-20T07:38:00.001-06:00

As I was making coffee yesterday morning I heard a story on NPR about a young special ed kid named Moses. He had been handcuffed to a chair by school security. His mother tearfully described the bruises and cuts in his wrists from the tight cuffs.

It reminded me of David, one of the special ed kids we grew up with. Not because he was abused by school authorities, but because we didn't always understand him, and we didn't always want to be friendly to him.

I first met David when he stumbled into my Drama class in 6th grade. It was his first week at school and I was a little frightened of him. Our drama teacher (who I was also a little frightened of) was very vocal and welcoming to him, in a way that no other teacher had. After David left he said, "David is always so cheerful... that is more than can be said for other kids his age."

I hadn't thought of it that way, and David was changed in my eyes.

We grew up with several special ed students, but David was with us for the longest -- from 6th grade all the way to graduation, where he received a rather loud applause. He changed from someone to be wary of and turned into a charming fixture in his own little way. He was severely autistic, so he was never very responsive despite the huge grin on his face. His interior dialogues must have been very positive and curious. He spoke very loudly in a nasally monotone. He always had lots of toys with him.

In high school he spent a lot of his time with a student aid running errands for the office. During first block when I was drawing in the sunny stairwell in the art building he would always go up the stairs on his rounds, and I always mused how hard he stomped up the stairs. He never hesitated like the other guy (whose name I never caught -- I learned he hesitated because he did not have a sense of depth perception. How heroic that he still tackled those stairs every day, without any urging from his student aid.)

My French teacher also liked David, and always greeted him in a flurry of French, pronouncing his name Dah-VEED. David responded in a remarkable way to this treatment: he would erupt into a monologue about his day. Madame was delighted; she mused that sometimes one needed to follow a different path to get into the mind, and perhaps French was such a path for David. She began counting with him in French every morning when he came to deliver his daily news paper. She would point to something in the paper and count, and David would repeat.

Un (un)
Deux (deux)
trois (trois)
quatre (quatre)
cinq (cinq)
six (six)
sept (sept)
huit (huit)
neuf (neuf)
dix (dix)

I want to simplify everything

2009-05-19T07:39:00.001-06:00

Once my French teacher put a photograph of a penguin on the whiteboard.

She said, (in French,) "Tell me about this penguin."

We exercised our shaky usage by stating the obvious.

He is black and white!
He is tall!
He swims!

Eventually Tim or someone equally brilliant piped in and said, "He's daring".

This opened a new world. We gleefully began to wax poetic and get very imaginative about this penguin.

He is worried about money!
He misses his girlfriend!
He likes chocolate cupcakes!
He is on vacation with his Aunt!

Ireland: Day 1 (Dublin)

2009-05-08T13:33:00.001-06:00

Leave Denver June 24th 10:45AM ---arrive Atlanta 3:45PM
Leave Atlanta 8:25PM arrive Dublin June 25th 9:25AM

The smog layer over Atlanta is substantial, I sort of want to hold my breath. One sort of forgets about these things until one returns to them. Also it is hot. And filled with people milling around and stopping in the middle of walkways, taking up the entire moving sidewalk. The pace of life changes is a soupy air whirling around air condition fans. I need to take my swift Yankee city paces in stride when dealing with those south of the Mason-Dixon, and the longer I am away the more I forget about it.

I read a little pamphlet on the way to the central food court. In 1925 the Atlanta airport was an abandoned racetrack acquired by the city when Mayor Walter A. Sims signed a five-year lease. Now, 83 years later, Hartsfield-Jackson International is one of the busiest airports in the world, serving almost 85 million passengers per year. As a Delta hub it has a special resonance for me personally, as we would often fly standby when I was younger, and Atlanta Airport (with its five concourses accessible via connected underground moving walkways) was hands-down my favorite place to get stuck if we had to be stuck at all. International airports also lend fantastic people watching.

After joking back and forth that we have real tickets out of the airport (even taking pictures of them to text to our friends), Mom and I split for a few hours to mill around before we make our connection into Dublin. I of course spent an obligatory period making my ritualistic walk from concourse A to E to Linkin Park's Reanimation -- the anthem of airport waiting.

I nose around two wonderful art exhibits along my way, which is admittedly something I was not expecting at the Atlanta Airport. The first: "Found Objects Transfigured," a collection of pieces that made chairs, sculpture and 2-D pieces out of discarded materials. The second: a collection of Zimbabwean stone Sculpture, which completely blows me away.

Of course, the real treat was to arrive in the international concourse. A wonderful gumbo of languages, clothing styles, and the frenzied distraction the accompanies all air travel, no matter where you're from. The gate next to ours was flying to Barcelona, and would repeat the boarding calls in Italian. There were a few flights that came in with families speaking foreign languages trying to find the baggage claims and things. And of course all the background people like me gawking at humanity positively glowing that were were all HERE. And we are all GOING SOMEWHERE.

I check my email here, in what Forbes describes as the No. 1 wired airport (based on passenger number). There are plenty of laptop kiosks, particularly in the international kiosk, next to windows affording views of the adjacent parking garage. There is not, however, plenty of internet. At least, not the free wifi I have come to assume will be transmitted through the very airwaves. It was an $8 charge for 12 hours of internet service. My thrifty tendencies lurch but in the end I pay for it anyway, reasoning that there will be no internet on the flight and possibly none at the hotel in Dublin.

I meet up with Mom later and have a quick meal at one of the buffet counters. Bourbon chicken, rice, veggies and a dissonant food cup bought for the look of the pineapple alone. Everything is devoured quickly. I am loaded down with snacks as it is: dried fruit, homemade granola and some yogurt bars that don't need constant refrigeration.

I don't think I've ever been fed a meal food on an airplane before this moment, and while it isn't really what Michael Pollan would describe as "food", I happily find it warm and deeply satisfying.

Most of the flight is an attempt to instill in the passengers a nighttime routine. We are fed dinner, then a midnight snack, then the lights are dimmed for bedtime. A flight attendant expertly beds down in an luxurious empty row behind us and I feel pangs of envy. I wonder if I should have practiced sleeping in a chair before this flight.

Mom and I mostly don't speak much during the flight; we listen to ipods or try to read when we aren't pretending to sleep. I do have her look out the window when we are flying over New York City (a spectacular sight of lights perfectly outlining the edge of the country) and again later when I noticed the moon reflecting on the ocean down below. I had expected to feel nervous over the ocean but I don't particularly. My generation really trusts technology, possibly to unhealthy degrees. At least in this case it makes my overnight flight merely uncomfortable, not anxious.

At dawn we are given little breakfast kits and I hungrily scan the outside world for the first signs of Ireland.

To my great astonishment the ground is not the even grid of farmland one finds in the USA but instead a pastiche of erratic shapes in every shade of green imaginable. Presumably (though this is more speculation than fact) it is because the stone walls have no permanent gates; to let the sheep out, one merely moves some stones.

Sleepy yet excited, we are shepherded through Customs (A STAMP ON OUR PASSPORTS! We show one another gleefully) and wait for checked baggage to catch up to us.

Ireland: intro

2009-05-08T13:32:00.002-06:00

A BRIEF ASIDE, INTRODUCTION, OR EXPLANATION

I like to go on adventures. I think that's the most concise way to put it.

Lately I've become slightly obsessed with wanting to go places; my own version of spring fever. I've been getting into Travel with Rick Steves and the Michael Palin documentaries to at least get my brain out into the world. As I wash into the turbulent waters of fiscal independence, particularly in this economy, my dreams of Trekking Nepal or spending several weeks on Indian trains are a farther off than I care to think about. To cure the itchy feet (and to try and resign to the very real trips I am going on soon -- a long camping holiday in the Canadian Rockies and hopefully (hopefully!) a very long road trip to the Yucatán peninsula), I have been unpacking my trip to Ireland last year.

Most of what will follow are things that were hastily jotted down in my notebooks, or emailed to Anthony when I could shark a wireless connection somewhere.

NOW THEN

Last summer (2008) Mom and I went to Ireland. It was our first real trip abroad aside from a four hour stint in Victoria, Canada -- pretty, but hardly foreign-feeling, just on duration alone.

Mom has joked that there is gypsy blood in the family from way back -- we have an almost insatiable thirst to see new places. From as early as I can remember I have been filled with WanderLust. While my brother would peck away at the buttons of his NES, Gameboy, (whatever game-platform was smallish and portable at the time, it changed through the years of course) I would sit with the Atlas open on my lap pouring over the city names coming up on our route. I would look up what the symbols meant in the key, add up the miles between key landmarks, check it with time of our arrival. My eyes would gobble up the landscape around me, whether it was the barren wheat fields of Kansas or the winding switchbacks on a precipice of the Sangre de Cristos.

As we got older our trips became a little more adventurous. A two-week campout in Yellowstone (in near-constant rain that tested the moral fiber of all members of the party). A similar trip through the Canyonlands in Utah (Brice, Zion) that featured a side trip to this gorgeous orchard in a different state park that I cannot for the life of me remember what it was called. (I know it featured the oldest, fattest cottonwood I have ever seen before or since. The four of us linking hands could scarcely make up half of the circumference.) Trips to actual cities (Pittsburgh, Seattle) and trips to landmarks (Disneyland, Mount Rushmore).

So when graduation presents were being talked about, a trip abroad seemed like the natural choice. Beginning as a huge affair with extended family members, the numbers eventually dwindled to just Mom and I, both green yet eager to give it a shot.

I recall the original bag I took was this enormous Jan Sport Euro Sak, which arrived in a care package from Mom along with "Ireland for Dummies". The bag looks manageable in those photos but when compared to a petite 5'2' woman it could be compared to trying to carry a giant barrel filled with water on your back. I neglected to walk around with my pack at home but instead packed in a whirlwind just before I hopped on the bus, which was a terrible mistake.

LESSON 1: let your excitement take over and pack early. It lets you rethink the amount of clothes you are taking and weed out the unnecessary things you aren't going to wear. And pack LESS. I would have been so much happier with a small backpack in hindsight.

As Mom was not settling down in a brand-new city at the time, she handled most of the pre-trip affairs: costs and planning. My part was to navigate public transit and make sure we got to the destinations once we were in the thick of things. Because of this I wasn't paying very close attention to our itinerary until we were just about underway.

Our plan was to tackle the Southern end of the country in a week. We would meet at DIA, fly to Atlanta, and then make the connection to Dublin. From there we would spend the night in a hotel, and then begin our lives as bus transients, making our way to Kilkenny, Cork, Dingle, Bunratty Castle, a quick day trip to the Cliffs of Moher, and then fly out of Shannon airport. One night in each place at a Bed and Breakfast. Doing all this in one week was probably not something I would have agreed to if I had been a little more involved, but as Mom put it we were going on a "scouting trip," to see what to spend more time at the next time around.

When the dates of our itinerary were finalized I made sure to fly out to Denver a bit early to catch PrideFest and spend some time with friends. I had only lived in Portland for three weeks at that point, and this would be my first time coming "home" to what already felt more like home than Northern Colorado ever had. Still, it was good to get a little taste of the old familiar before I headed out for adventure.

An Open Letter to Alain Badiou

2009-05-05T11:03:00.002-06:00

Greetings Badiou!

I have recently picked up your book, Being and Event, and I am finding that you and I have been thinking about a number of things in similar ways, though you have been thinking of them in the way you have for the last 20 years or so and I have only been alive a little bit longer than that. It's funny, I keep finding out that everything I might set out to do has already been done in one way or another by somebody else. This is the only way philosophy ever proceeds I suppose, and in fact my current project is in so many ways an attempt to show in fine detail that there really isn't anything new under the sun, at least not anything new that we are inclined to care about: we've all been playing the same game of moving from the 'natural' perspective to the 'philosophical' or 'enlightened' one and it has always had roughly the same rules. They are just really difficult rules to explain to someone who has not yet mastered some of those rules themselves.

In any case I have been thoroughly enjoying your work so far, but there is one little tid-bit that I might pester you about. Much of your system seems to rely on the understanding that the null-set, the void as you call it (or as your translator has you calling it anyway, the logic is clear enough what you mean), is unique. It is the name of being, as you say, and as it can not be differentiated, there can be no difference between one void and another. On this point, sir, I must beg your pardon.

I should point out that I have not finished your work, and I have not taken the trouble to do an exhuastive search of the records, so if this question is answered in some satisfactory way in another place, I do apologize for my own blindness with regard to the vast sea of publications.

In pure set theory, as operated on by mathematicians who are blind to the ontological signifigance of their work, there is no worry about the uniqueness of the empty set. As you point out, it is the axiom of extensionality that actually proves the equality (and therefore replaceability) of any empty set with any other. This is, my friend, a far cry from uniqueness. The problem is one concerning the universe of discourse. In pure set theory, there is no universe of discourse at all. There are ony symbols and rules of symbolic manipulation. Mathematicians (in your understanding of mathematicians, which is just to say the mathematician qua mathematician, no worries about any actual human beings here...) play set theory the same way that a computer plays chess. Just bumping around in the possible manipulations of the various symbols given the rules they have for manipulating them. But when we make the meta-ontological jump, as it were, and start assigning meaning to the symbols in play, now we have a universe of discourse to take into account, and you have been none too explicit about this, which I believe may have you painted into a bit of a corner. You see, given a particular universe of discorse, some set is null with regard to it so long as no element of the universe of discourse is a member of the set. So if we are looking at the set of all vehichles manufactured in the USA and Japan, the set whose members include and are limited to you and I would be null. It would not be absolutely null, of course, but relatively null, with regards to our particular universe of discourse. Within that universe of discourse, many many sets that are not identical could only be treated as identical and as the void itself. This is all well an good, you might say, since you are dealing with the absolutely null. The truely empty set. The set which has no members. And I want to say: under what interpretation, my friend? What is or universe of discourse?
I see two possible answers. The first is that the universe of discourse just is the null set itself. This is not a bad answer: if our universe of discourse is in fact empty, then our set theoretical operations on various permutations of the empty set will be very close to the sort of operations that mathematicians perform. I believe that your answer would almost certainly be something along this line. This gives us an interpretation of the theorems of set theory as operating on that which cannot be presented. The problem is, it does not yet gurantee the uniqueness of the empty set in question. Having our universe of discourse limited absolutely to the empty set itself only locks us into the possibility that our universe of discourse is empty relatively, which would imply the possibility of an alternate interpretation, perhaps inspired by some event (I am actually hoping this is where the book goes, though I am nt sure yet. If it is, you can keep quiet and not spoil the suprise, and I shall turn out delighted if the event is in the end just exactly the finding out that what was termed the void was actually full in some way.... but I have my doubts about you) in which our empty set is only empty relative to some universe of discourse that is not exhaustive of all of being.

I suspect that it might seem that I am missing the point. Ontology presents presentation, and cannot present the unpresentable. Agreed. The unpresentable must be that which ontology operates on, to sho the presentation of the unpresentable in all its unpresentable glory. Doubly agreed. The unpresentable will forever appear within any given interpretation as identical. Thrice I nod. The void is unique. Now we part ways. The only way to gurantee the absolute uniquness of the void is to have it be null, not with regard to some limited universe of discourse, but to be null with regard to the absolute universe of discourse: the multiple of all multiples, the set of all sets. This set is forbidden in set theory, and you follow that forbiddence. I do not blame you. To allow the set of all sets, the multiple of all multiples, is to invite paradox on paradox, contradiction upon contradiction. It is pandoras box, to be sure. But either the null set is only null with regard to some limited universe of discourse and is therefore not necessarily unique, or the null set is the absolute void, in which case our universe of discorse is the set of all sets.

I propose that it must in fact be the case that set theory must operate in this second, terrifying way. Every arrangement of the symbols of set theory that is well formed has the same sort of being as any other, including sets that are 'too large' for set theory to handle, such as the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. Set theory must operate on these sets in one way or another, and the first operation it does on the troublesome ones is to kick them out of the city. To lock them away, hide them from view, and make sure they don't muck up the game we are playing. We play our game of theorem derrivation, of proofs and su-proofs, on a tiny island of logic in a vast sea of chaos, filled to the brim with sets we just cannot bear to bring ourselves to think about. Their very names strike fear in our hearts. Foridding them is akin to forbidding some possible move in a board game. Perhaps some opening always is discovered that always leads to a win, and so we forbid that particular opening in order to continue playing the game in an iteresting way. Forbidding the self contradictory sets is much like that. We could allow them, sure, but our game would be broken, we would no longer have reason to play. So instead we lock them in the mad house, mumble about their madnes here and there, and go about our lives in the walled city, perfectly content that we are protected from their ever ruining our fun. But we can only forbid them in the first place, we can only lock them up because they are there for us to see. Our universe of discourse in any symbolic system is always primarily the set of all possible strings of symbols, from which we then cut out a tiny slice called the set of all well formed formulas, which we then cut down in size, often to as close to nothing as we can get. To a few axioms perhaps. From there we take our building blocks and start to play our game, and if ever we find that we have built a mad-man, we must tinker with our tools so that such a construction is no longer possible, and we must lock him away as an example to those who might forget why our axioms are shaped the way they are.

We must never forget that we built the city we live in, and that no matter how large it grows, there will always be a wilderness outside of it, and within it, there will always be the possibility of mad men. To overcome either of these difficulties entirely, to overtake the wilderness or to lock away every last madman, would be to end the game. It is sometimes the dream of logic to make that final move, but our goal more often is simply to make sure the game stays interesting, and keeping both the threat of the wilderness and the mad alive is a part of keeping the thrill of the game alive.

I look foreward to reading the rest of your book, and perhaps someday its sequal.

Good day!

Wonderous finds for bony behinds

2009-04-27T00:17:00.003-06:00

So I saw these beautiful chair pads on SouleMama's blog on Friday and knew I couldn't not do this this weekend.

(Why yes I do have a Bachelor's in English, why do you ask?)

Amanda was inspired by the twin forces of the book, "Patchwork Style" and a lovely bunch of Anna Maria Horner's Good Folks fabric, though the actual product was not a pure project from the book but rather a blend of several techniques.

As I recently learned the secret to log-cabin patterns (by looking up instructions online, particularly this of all things -- scroll down to the drawing,) I've been anxious to do a log cabin type pattern yet not really keen on doing another quilt at the moment. Not a project that big. I've been wanting something smaller, and this fit the bill nicely.

Everyone knows the first step to any good project is to take very exact measurements.

Next I gathered my supplies and meticulously ordered them around my workspace.

And then, (all kidding aside,) I poured a lovely glass of cheap Spanish wine, tuned my Netflix play-it-now to Micheal Palin's Pole to Pole, and got to work.

Augmenting fabric when needed -- perfection is never my goal.

I actually went ahead and made two. The first's filling was a haphazard combination of leftover batting supplemented with some really poofy strange fabric I've never found a good use for. The second has real batting, GREEN batting, in both the color and carbon-footprint sense of the word.

Look carefully, it really is a lovely pale green. Quilter's Dream is now making a batting made entirely out of plastic bottles. They even sell it in bulk at Fabric Depot, which is great for me since I like to have bits of batting around for impulsive projects like this.

Once the top-batting-bottom sandwich was made I sewed the binding by hand.

And that's basically it.

I didn't end up putting ties on, mostly because that sort of limits the usage of the things. (Although I suppose one could tie them in bows when they aren't in use...ah well it's not too late.) Anyway. No ties, just floating little cushions which, like Amanda's, are not terribly luxurious (don't want to sit ALL day) but do provide a bit of comfort and color. My art-stools are fairly comfy as they are, (they're a sort of Chinese-y curved wood design which I highly recommend if you are in the market for things to sit on), so these translate nicely to my workstations as well. I'd like to make about ten more.

And of course, why not.

2009-04-26T11:07:00.002-06:00

Schizophrenia has been resurfacing in the world, it seems.

The Soloist is out this weekend, and because it's based on a true story NPR has been talking about it quite a bit. They warmed up with a three part series on Skidrow in California, and then introduced the story of Mr. Ayres on the 22nd. Then they focused on the actual story vs. the movie plot Morning Edition, and then on Fresh Air they rebroadcast the interview with Mr. Lopez.

On This American Life (the first act) there's the rebroadcast of Scott Carrier's experience of administering an oral exam to schizophrenics.

Interesting how that happens sometimes.

A Space for Time (I & II & III)

2009-04-09T11:03:00.014-06:00

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity introduced the world at large to a concept we lovingly (or sometimes terrifyingly) know as Space-Time. This was a fundamental change in our understanding of time, which up until then had largely been thought of in a way that was radically separate from our concept of space. For Kant, for example, Time was the pure form of inner sense, and Space was the pure form of outer sense: the two were entirely separate, divided by a boundary harder than diamond. In our everyday life, space and time seem different enough to warrant such a hard division, though we are all comfortable with metaphors that cross over the line. We think of a long stretch of time for example. Einstein's insight into time as another dimension of space, the fourth dimension in particular, can be thought of as simply taking spacial metaphors for time seriously: no longer is it metaphoric to think of time as a dimension of space, that is the way things really are. The time-line is the most common way of thinking of time as a dimension, and if we have done much graphing in the Cartesian coordinate system, we are used to thinking of the x-coordinate as the dimension of time, and the y-coordinate as a single dimension of space. Most of us have at least dealt with that kind of graphing a little, and so thinking of time as a dimension, thinking of time-lines as a real sort of space, doesn't tend to strike people as quite the crazy idea that Space-Time might have once seemed to be. (Of course, relativity itself is still pretty crazy, but we're not going to worry about any of that right now: We're only concerned with Space-Time here.) The time-line, as a picture of time as a dimension of space, is in particular a picture of Diachronic Time. Paul Ricœur, in his Time and Narrative, makes a distinction between this diachronic time and Synchronic Time, which is what Heidegger called Authentic Time . The distinction between diachronic (or inauthentic) and synchronic (or authentic) time goes something like this: diachronic time fits perfectly well on a time-line, with the present moment as a single point, an instant, somewhere along the smooth and continuous line, with the past stretching out behind and the future stretching out ahead. But synchronic time, which is the lived present, does not fit this picture so well: authentic time has a special privilege of the Now, as a tripartite moment. The Now retains the past within itself, and projects itself into an open future. For synchronic time, the present moment contains the past within itself, and that past moment (as it is present in the current Now) contains the present moment as an empty possibility of the future. There is a similar structure for the future as it presents itself in the present Now, and it lends the present now a character of "being already past" just as it has a character of "having been future". Synchronic time then has a sort of fractal structure to it: The present moment contains within it the full past as a sort of crystalline structure of previous moments, (each of which has a similar structure to the present Now), as well as an opening up to an empty future that is anticipated as having the same temporal structure as the present Now, but not yet being filled. This synchronic, authentic time then is poorly represented by the time-line. The time-line lacks any kind of fractal structure, and points along it are seen as being simply divisible. Spans of time are seen as just collections of instants, and instants are completely unique, separate grains of time.

What I intend to do, in the following little labyrinth of proofs and arguments, is to describe a space that would fit the structure of synchronic time. There are a number of concepts we need to understand in order for the space to make sense, so I will go through those first, and then combine them in such a way as to have a space in which we could imagine synchronic time as spacial, as an authentic space-time.

Part I: Cantor and Infinities Bigger than Infinity

To start with, we're going to go all the way back to Georg Cantor's proof that there are different levels of infinity, or as he called them, different cardinalities. (As it turns out, Cantor is pretty much essential to this whole argument, as he came up with one-to-one correspondence as well as cardinality, and I make some pretty heavy use of both of those concepts here.) First it is clear from the start that there are an infinite number of counting numbers: it is impossible to imagine a number that one counted to that one could not continue counting from. This is a round about way of saying that starting from 1, if you count up by whole numbers, 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on, you'll never reach a stopping point. [The round about phrasing is to avoid the phrasing "it is impossible to imagine a number which could not be counted beyond" as there are in fact infinite numbers, and counting from or to them is impossible, but then we're getting off track.] So we have our first sort of infinity, the infinity of the natural numbers. We can then call this natural or countable infinity, and any infinite set that can be systematically numbered with the counting numbers will be said to be countably infinite.
There are a lot of countably infinite sets of numbers. For example, the even numbers are countably infinite, 2, 4, 6, 8..., as are multiples of three and any other set of multiples. While it might seem at first that there would be fewer multiples of two or three than there are counting numbers in general, it is not terribly hard to see that one can set up a one-to-one correspondence between the counting numbers and any set of multiples of some given counting number, and that given any counting number, one would be able to decide where in a list of all of the numbers you could find its counterpart among the multiples by multiplying by the number in question. For example, if I wanted to know what the 56th even number is, I just multiply 56 by 2, to get 112. So 112 is the 56th even number. This process can also be reversed, and so one can find out which place in line any given even number is in. The same holds for multiples of three or any other countably infinite set.
Now, looking for a set of numbers that is not countably infinite is tricky. We might start by thinking of the integers, because we would be doubling the number of numbers we have. But then just like the even numbers and the counting numbers, it is not hard to line up all of the integers in a row if we only alternate back and forth between positive and negative numbers: 0,1, -1. 2, -2, 3, -3, and so on.
Rational numbers, also might seem to be a set that is bigger than the counting numbers, and it is hard to see how one might go about numbering them all for there are an infinite number of rational numbers between any two counting numbers. So between 1 and 2 there is 1 1/2, 1 1/3, 1 1/4 and so on, and that's just the numbers with a 1 in the numerator. But we can get kind of tricky with how we organize the rational numbers and then we can line them up one-to-one with a list of counting numbers no problem. The way that I have seen this done time and again goes this way:

0 1 2 3 4 5
1 1/1 2/1 3/1 4/1 5/1
2 1/2 2/2 3/2 4/2 5/2
3 1/3 2/3 3/3 4/3 5/3
4 1/4 2/4 3/4 4/4 5/4
5 1/5 2/5 3/5 4/5 5/5

We arrange the rational numbers in a chart like the one above: it shouldn't be too hard to see that this chart can be extended infinitely to include every possible positive rational number, and since we know that adding in the negatives isn't troubling, that's enough for now. Now we just need a way to work through the chart systematically to get all of those rational numbers into a line so we can count them and decide who is first and who is second and so on. We so this by going through in successive diagonals, starting from zero and working our way down. There are a few decisions to make (do we zig zag? Go just one direction over and over? Which direction?) but once we make them we get a nice list of rational numbers that will include them all in a way that lines up with the counting numbers without problem. To demonstrate, we could proceed this way: 0, 1/1, 2/1, 1/2, 3/1, 2/2, 1/3, 4/1, 3/2, 2/3, 1/4.... and so on, each time moving from the top right to bottom left, and proceeding across the top row one number at a time. So even though there are infinite rational numbers between any two counting numbers, we can in fact line up the rational numbers to be counted, so they are countably infinite, of the same cardinality as the counting numbers.

Which brings us to the Reals. Real numbers include numbers like pi, the square root of two, e, and such. They are numbers that are not necessarily representable by a given ratio, but perhaps only by an infinite sum of ratios (this is what the decimal notation of a real number really represents: pi is 3.1415.... which means pi is 3 + 1/10 + 4/100 + 1/1000 + 5/10000 + etc etc). Many many (so, so so many) real numbers then are not yet represented by either the counting numbers or the rational numbers, though those numbers can be included among the reals. It can be troubling to think about numbers that "go on forever", even if we do acknowledge or (dare I say) understand that numbers like pi or the square root of 2 are numbers that are like that, but we can just think of them as being represented by unique sequences of the digits 0-9 that have no termination. This is in fact what Cantor thought about when he did his proof, so it will work well enough for us. Just as it is easy to see that there are an infinity of counting numbers, it should be easy to see that there are an infinity of infinite ordered strings of the digits 0-9. In fact, as a string of numbers gets longer, there are more and more possible strings: for a single digit string, there are 10 possibilities, for two digits 100, for 3 digits 1000 and so on. So if we imagine the set of all possible strings of numbers, including infinite strings, then we are in the same head space as Cantor when he discovered an infinity bigger than infinity. Cantor argued like this:
Say we could make a list of all possible strings of the digits 0-9. Like our list of the rational numbers, this would mean that we would have a complete one to one correspondence with the counting numbers for the set of all strings of numbers. But if such a list existed, it might be possible to construct a string that was not on the list at all, which would mean that the list was incomplete. Cantor's method for constructing such a number works like this: since we (hypothetically) have our list of strings, we just start at the top and work our way down, constructing our string of digits one digit at a time, but making sure each digit that we add is different from at least one digit of at least one string on the list. So we start with our first digit, and we look at the first digit of the first string on the list. Whatever that first digit of that first sting is, we pick a different digit for our magic number. So now we have a one digit string that is different than the first string on the list. Then we look at the second string on the list, but we only look at its second digit, and whatever it is, we pick a different digit for our second digit. Then we have a two digit string that is different from the first and second strings on the list. We move to the third string and look only at its third digit, and so on. This is what is called the diagonalization proof, as we proceed down the list of strings diagonally, differing one digit at a time from every string on the list. We can see that no matter how the list is arranged, it cannot have our number on it, for our number differs in at least one place from every number on the list. So no matter how we arrange a list of all possible infinite strings of digits, we can never complete such a list, and it will never have a one-to-one correspondence with the counting numbers.
This is to say that there is an infinity bigger than infinity. We can see now that while both the counting numbers and the set of all strings of digits are both infinite sets, the second set is bigger than the first, and so we say with Cantor that it is of a higher cardinality.
This is a mind warping concept, and its implications are staggering. But it is also proved beyond the shadow of a doubt given the concepts of number and infinity. And again, so long as we can count, we have both of those concepts. So anyone that can count already has the ingredients in their head for this infinity bigger than infinity. Which is already pretty crazy.

Briefly then before we move into bringing together space and number, we should note that there are a countably infinite number of primes. This is proved by the following: Say there were finite primes, and you knew them all. Multiply them all together, and then add one. You will now have an odd number that is not a multiple of any of the primes in your list. So if there are finite primes, there is at least one more prime. So there are infinite primes. And since the primes are a subset of the counting numbers, and every prime is finite, we know they are countably infinite.

With that, we turn to the application of number to space.

Part II: Numbered Space

A: Squeezing Space Into Space

The Cartesian Coordinate System gives us a way of pairing up numbers (whether just the counting numbers, or the rationals, or all the way up to the reals. We could get real crazy and throw the imaginary numbers and other sets in too, but none of that needs to concern us right now) with points in space so that every single point in a space corresponds to a set of numbers. The most familiar variant of this system is the one with two variables, nearly always referred to as x and y. The x-y plane gives every point of space within an infinite plane (that is oriented about a center we call the origin) a pair of numbers that identify it uniquely (e.g. (0,0) is the origin, (1,1) is a point directly northeast of the origin (at a distance equal to the square toot of 2) and so on) and, when we are working with the reals, there is no point within the plane that does not have its own unique pair of numbers to identify it. The real coordinates completely describe the plane, they match up exactly with every point in the space.

We should pause here and note that Descartes' coordinate system is a monumental achievement in the history of ideas. We have in it a link between space and number. With his system, we can easily translate numerical relationships into spacial ones, and (with somewhat greater difficulty) create numerical relationships that correspond to spacial ones. Descartes' coordinate system allows us to graph, to draw out, to make visible, relationships of number that lie hidden from obvious view in an algebraic system. And it allows us to take spacial relationships and turn them into relationships of number, algebraic equations can be derived from a particular curve, cluing us in to variables, hinges of one sort or another, points of interest or importance that would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye. With Leibniz and Newton's calculi then, we find that the smooth continuity of space can be captured in numerical in numerical relationships. They bring the infinitely divided into the realm of number, and in doing so make it clear just how tightly the realm of number and the realm of space can be. It is by thinking of time as a kind of space that this numeric-spacial system is brought to bear on the world as a whole: modern science consists in large part in fitting numerical and spacial models (which are one and the same thing after Descartes, reinforced by the Calculus) to the data of the natural world. The smooth continuity of the real numbers are brought to bear on the dynamic, temporal relations of the natural world and presented to us in terms of static spacial relations. The arc of a ball thrown into the air becomes a static parabola, its changing speed a simple angular line, and its negative acceleration becomes a constant number which represents the ever present force of gravity that determines its curve through the air.

And here's where the properties of the reals begin to get interesting. Because every point in the plane can be represented by a unique pair of numbers, it is possible to encode the entire, infinite plane within a finite line segment. This can be proved in the following way: say we want to encode an infinite plane of two dimensions within a line segment that consists only of all of the points along the x-axis between x = 0 and x = 1. To accomplish this squeezing of the entire plane into this piece of a line, we need a way to encode the coordinates of each point into a single number. That this can be accomplished is a direct consequence of Descartes' coordinate system. Since every point can be represented by a pair of numbers, we only need to construct a unique real number for each pair of coordinates, and make sure that each number is less than one but more than zero. To do this, we first convert our coordinates into binary. This is non-problematic: any given number can easily be converted from one base to another. 11 in binary is exactly the same thing as 3 in base ten, and it is also the exact some thing as 10 in base three. The base system determines the way we name a given number, but it does not change the number in any way. Decimals and real numbers can be handled just as well in binary as in base ten. So: now every point in our plane is given by a unique pair of real binary numbers.
Now what we do to get those two numbers to become one is interlace their digits. This will best be explained by an example. Say the pair of numbers we want to turn into a single number is the point (1101001.1101, 11011.1). We construct our unique new number by placing each digit of the x-coordinate in a place in our new number that is the next successive even digit, and we place each digit of our y-coordinate in the next successive odd coordinate. So our number will begin this way: 0.11110011010 and then we hit a hitch: we have a decimal in our y-coordinate that needs to be represented somehow. But since our new number does not have to be binary, we can just represent the decimal by the number 2. So then our complete new number to represent this particular point in space will look like this: 0.11110011010211201010010000000000000000.... This is a unique real number that symbolizes a single point in the x-y plane. We can decode this number by pulling out our digits one at a time and placing them in order in the x and then y coordinates, which will get us back to the point we started with. It is also true that if you put an even number of zeros in front of our new number, it will encode the same point (eg. 0.00001111001101021120101001000....), and so there are in fact an infinite number of numbers between one and zero that encode this particular point in the system we have set up. And that is true for every point within the space: any given point that is given by a pair of real numbers (which exhausts the x-y plane) can be encoded in this way to become a unique real number that only encodes a single point. And so we have fit the entire infinite x-y plane into a finite line segment.

In fact, this sort of transformation is a necessary condition for the possibility of computers. We must be able to reduce spacial relations into particular strings of numbers in order to do any sort of computation involving those relationships. The method I have described is not at all like the methods used in actual computing, but we can do a lot of things with computers that are possible only with finite strings of digits, and I am here working outside of the finite realm. I could have made an effort to match in one way or another the sorts of processes that are used in computer science, but so long as my method makes any sense at all it was not necessary that I confine myself to those patterns. There are an infinite number of ways to do the sort of encoding I am discussing here and each of them demonstrates equally well the point I am trying to make: a relation that consists of a set of pairs of numbers can be equally well represented with a set of individual numbers. This is to squeeze a plane, a two dimensional space, into a line, a one dimensional space.

But what if instead of the x-y plane we were dealing with the x-y-z space? Or even some higher space? With a slight modification of this method, we can encode a space of any number of dimensions (even an infinite number of dimensions, though only a countably infinite number). This is possible thanks to the infinity of the primes: rather than giving each digit the evens or the odds, we divide up our digits by prime powers. So for a 3 dimensional plane, we would only use the digits in the places numbered by the powers of 2 (the 2nd digit , 4th digit, 8th digit and so on), the powers of 3 ( 3rd, 9th, 27th...) and the powers of 5 (5th, 25th, 125th...). This will result in a number that consists mostly of zeros, but it will encode any number within the x-y-z space, and will have room for any number of dimensions you want to add into it. This means we can encode infinite space of infinite dimension within the real numbers between one and zero. All Possible Space, in a little line segment. And when you get right down to it, we didn't even use all that much of the space we had.

So this is fine and dandy, but it still leaves something to be desired. A line segment is still a space of its own, so it doesn't seem quite totally ludicrous that we fit all the space in it (not as ludicrous as things are about to get anyway). We can see, even, that it would be possible to fit all of this space in smaller and smaller portions of the line segment: just throw a whole bunch of zeros at the front of every one of your numbers: presto! Now you're in a much smaller space! But then any portion of the line segment, we can see, is infinitely rich. Any portion of the reals has the same sort of cardinality to it as the reals as a whole have. But what about a single point along that line. Would it be possible to encode all of the space that a line segment has within it (which is rich enough to encode all possible space) into a single, solitary point? Into just one real number?

B: Squeezing Space Into Number

Yes. Well a single point anyway. Though our number might not be a regular real one. It looks like we're going to have to take another step into the wide wide world of numbers and use a hyper-real, or an infinitesimal. A hyper-real is a number that is bigger than infinity. And infinitesimal is what you get when you divide one by a hyper real. As it turns out every infinitesimal is 'very close' to some particular real number, so in what we're about to do I like to imagine that we are working with a particular infinitesimal number, which would then be a given point along the number line. This point will be located in a one dimensional space then, but the point itself, as a particular number, will be of zero dimensionality. We are going to be thinking a lot about the numerical expansion of this particular infinitesimal, and we should not confuse the numeral with the number, but we should remember also that the numeral corresponds to a particular number. There will be some discussion of complications surrounding these issues at the end of the section.

What we are going to do here is look at a construction of an infinite series of digits, but the way that series of digits is arranged necessitates that we have an uncountably infinite number of digits. This sounds kind of crazy, but so long as we keep things well ordered then it won't be so crazy as to be meaningless as we will retain the ability to differentiate our number from another. The important thing is to get every single infinite string of digits that would serve to represent a real number between zero and one into a single well ordered string of infinite digits. If we do that then we have a single string of digits (which then has the same sort of being as a real number, even if it doesn't quite qualify as one) that includes within it a representation of every real number (we're just going to deal with reals between zero and one, but that's just as many as all of them, thanks to the craziness of infinity) and so then based on what we've said above this string of digits could encode for every possible space of countably infinite dimension. This can be done.

We can show this by the following: we are going to start, much like Cantor did with his list of all the reals, by assuming that we have a representation this number already. We (hypothetically) know that we are looking at it, and we are going to refer to this behemoth of a number by the symbol B. Now we just need to show that there is a way to find within our numerical representation of B, which is an infinite string of digits, a representation of any given real number. To do this, we need to know some properties of B:
First: the numerical representation of B that we are dealing with consists only of the digits 0,1,2, and 3.
Second: Every real has been encoded only in binary: just using the digits 0 and 1. When we look at B, any place we see 0's and 1's is a particular real being encoded.
Third: the 2's and 3's in B are called signposts and are a kind of guide. They are to be understood as a second kind of binary in which a 2 is a zero and a 3 is a one. So for example the number three (normally 11 in binary) would be represented by 33, the number eight (normally 1000 in binary) would be 3222 and the number zero would be a single solitary 2.
Fourth: Each signpost number is surrounded to the left and to the right by a unique infinite sequence of 1's and 0's
Fifth: The solitary 2 representing zero in our secondary type of binary occurs only once within B. Thus out of the possible sequences 121, 120, 021, or 020, only one of the four can be found in B, but one of the four must be found.
Sixth: to the left of the 2 that is zero there is exactly one occurrence within B of the solitary symbol 3 bordered by 1's and zeros. So either 131, 130, 031 or 030 occurs just once to the left of the 2 that is zero. The same is true to the right: the solitary 3 occurs just once to the right side of the 2 that is zero.
Seventh: Now, counting upwards in signposts, our binary made of 2's and 3's, we find to the left and to the right of each signpost an instance of the next higher number that can be found without moving past any signpost of lower significance (from the right hand 3 for instance, there are two instances of the symbol 32 to the left, but only one of those is to the right of the 2 that is zero; the other is the 32 that is to the right of the left hand 3).

We can get an idea of the organization of B by looking at this fractal:

Looking at this picture, we can think of this fractal structure governing the construction of B. If we were to draw a horizontal line across the centers of the circles and then think of that line as the numerical representation of B, each place where a circle intersected the line would be the location of a signpost number consisting of 2's and 3's, and and space between would be filled with 1's and 0's encoding our real numbers.

Now: we find any given real between 0 and 1 (encoded in the binary of 1's and 0s) in the following fashion: Let 1 signify the left, and 0 signify the right. Starting with the first digit of the real in question, we ask: is this digit a one or a zero? Now, from the 2 that is zero, we make a decision about which signpost to traverse to based on that first digit, if it is a 1, left, if it is a 0, right. At each signpost we arrive at, we check the sequence of 1's and 0's to the left and to the right of the signpost we have just arrived at. That sequence will begin (from the signpost, reading to the right as normal on the right, but reading to the left if not) with the sequence we have used to decide our course so far. If either of those sequences is the real we are looking for, then our journey is complete, otherwise, we look to the second digit to decide which direction to move in to navigate to our next signpost.

Looking at the fractal image above as a symbol of B, we can think of ourselves as a traveler in a branching tunnel. We have in our hands a particular real that we are looking for, and it serves as its own address within B. It is a map to its own house, in a way. The series of digits in the real we are looking for guides us through the tunnels until we arrive finally (perhaps after an infinite number of choices) at exactly the real we were seeking.

So then: B is a string of digits that can be found in a representation of a hyper-real number (since a given hyper-real has an infinite number of digits) and which contains all possible reals.

C: Wait, really?

This should strike us as immediately problematic, since a given real can only have a countably infinite number of digits, and it is clear that B must have an uncountable infinity of digits. But: the place within B that we find any given real will not be given by a digit that can be counted to, since there are an infinite number of digits between any two signposts within B. And so we are dealing with an uncountably infinite strings of digits. If we were to attempt this sort of trick with a normal real number, we would have to start from the beginning of its numerical representation and just count out to the right until we find the real we are looking for which would be impossible even if the reals were countable: we would never get past the first real number we got to. B then cannot be located within itself, as it cannot be given (as the reals we are used to can be given) starting with its first digit and moving one digit at a time to the right until all its digits are accounted for. B contains a real infinity (rather than a countable infinity) of digits. B should be considered to be a hyper-real, or an infinitesimal rather than a real. In either case, its numerical representation is a well-ordered infinite sequence of the digits 0, 1, 2, and 3 and so should be considered the representation of a unique, particular number without any more qualms than the numerical expression for square root of two or pi or any other real is considered to correspond to a number. That our normal system of naming reals is inadequate to name B is no surprise: there are even an infinite number of reals that can not be indicated in any finite way. Certain reals, the ones we are familiar with, like pi, e, the square roots of non-square numbers and such, are special and interesting because they are real numbers that seem to contain infinite information, but can be indicated precisely with a finite, ordered symbolic sequence. Or a picture of a particular spacial ratio, more often than not. But besides these reals that can be easily indicated in any number of ways by a finite sequence of symbols or a picture of some particular spacial ratio, there are an infinite number of reals that cannot be so indicated in their particularity, but only suggested by a sequence of digits understood to go on forever. The number 5.829864321987653287432873487653932083.... cannot be said to have been given in its entirety, and indeed, if that is to be understood as a particular real, it implicates in fact an infinite field of possible reals, even if we only mean by it a single number from within that field.

There is no systematic way to name every real. And while every real can in fact be symbolized by an infinite sequence of digits, that in no way guarantees a finite symbolic pattern that will identify any particular real: in fact if there were for every real a single finite symbol sequence that could name it in particular, we would have a situation similar to Cantor's diagonalization proof, unless by some strange magic we managed to have a symbol set that was as rich as the reals. Such a symbol set can be imagined, perhaps, but to decide from a given symbol from it into the real it corresponded to would take an infinite amount of information: such an alphabet would be entirely unreadable. And so B is just a particular number (or if we want to be quite careful, B as described could be any one of an entire class of numbers) that fits the description above. It is the case that there are a number of arbitrary choices that had to be made in our construction of B: each of these choices could be made differently, resulting in other numbers that share the wonderful property of B of encoding every real between zero and one and thus encoding in turn every point in an infinite space of countably infinite dimension. There is a real infinity of such numbers, and numbers that fit our description of B represent only the tiniest slice of them.

B can then be thought of as a single point of zero dimension (to be found in a one dimensional space), just as much as any single number is without dimension, that encodes the full richness of the reals, which then in turn encodes the full richness of infinite space of infinite dimension.

It is true that B does not encode itself, or any other hyper-real or infinitesimal. Three brief notes before we move on any further:

1) That a coordinate system with real numbers exhausts every bit of space that can be meaningful might not necessarily mean that it exhausts every bit of space. Thinking about hyper-reals and infinitesimals can sometimes appear to be the same sort of thinking involved in trying to answer the question, "How many primes are blue?" Since the real number system is already beyond sufficient for any possible science (since we can only ever deal with finite representations of numbers, the rationals will do just fine, thanks, and anyway it's looking more and more like we live in a pixelated universe, so let's just cut the worry about smoothness and continuity right?) it seems to be worthless to explore any sort of number that might still lie outside of that system, and indeed I have known a professor or two that was unwilling even to admit the reals themselves as legitimate numbers. Wittgenstein himself felt that set theory had just pretty much rotted everyone's head it wriggled into (though he never said it quite like that, his feelings on the matter were strong enough). But the fact of the matter is that these sorts of consequences are necessary conclusions of some very simple assumptions that we just don't want to abandon under any circumstances. Such as 'there is no biggest number'. And we could try to avoid any direct reference to infinity, but we would have to give up calculus or start thinking of it as just a fancy method of estimation, and you're going to have whole leagues of scientists and engineers up in arms if you try to send them back to the dark dark days before Leibniz and Newton came along and treated infinity as unproblematic.

2) Whether or not you want to run with me on this whole B is a number thing, it should at least be clear that whatever you can fit in a line, which can only be understood through a synthesis of all of the individual points in the line, can be gotten out of a single point understood in the proper way. It's not so much that it has to be a special sort of point as that we have to have a special sort of way of looking at it. The way we name it (the way its numerical expression is organized) and the relationships we look for in its name are choices we make, but the possibility of making those choices, e.g. the logical space necessary for encoding an infinite field of infinite dimension, is already given by the simplest assumptions about the relationships of space and number if we are only willing to follow out the consequences of those relationships.

3) As Godel's famous theorem also shows, things that represent systems of number will always be in some way inadequate of completely representing themselves. The field of number swallows up any unification made of its field into an even greater field not yet represented. But any field of number that cannot in fact be completely explored within a particular representation of natural numbers (say the real numbers or the hyper-reals for instance) can be indicated within that system with finite strings of natural numbers just as much as it can be represented within natural language or natural minds. What I mean is this: B cannot encode itself in the same way that it encodes the reals, but so far as everything I have typed here is captured by a string of data that consists of 1's and 0's, B will contain a representation of everything said here, and moreover, so far as a logical language can be represented by numerical relationships, and so far as numerical relationships can be represented by logical relationships, and so far as any logical argument or proof will always be given in a finite sequence of steps (even steps involving the idea of infinity), every logical relationship, every truth of mathematics can be encoded within a number like B, including a rigorous proof that B cannot contain a complete representation of itself. Laws of infinity can be given within finite symbolic strings. A proof of the infinity of the primes, for example, or the infinity of the natural numbers, does not require infinite steps. Infinity is a completely negative property, it is established by the absence of walls, rather than the positive being of anything in particular. And so while B cannot represent itself, or other numbers of its class, with the same completeness with which it represents the reals, it does capture every truth about itself that can be gotten at in a finite way, and a number of things that can only be gotten at in infinite ways.

We should also, finally, note that if we look only at finite strings of binary data (and living in the digital world we all are well aware of the enormous power of finite strings of binary data) it would be sufficient to construct a single real number to contain every possible sequence of 1's and 0's of finite length. This could be accomplished by simply counting in binary. 0.011011100101110111... A number of this type already contains within it every possible string of 1's and 0's that is not infinite, and is a definite real number located on the number line just as much as pi is. Such a number, thanks to our understanding of encoding information in binary data, contains within itself every book that could ever be written, every photograph that could ever be taken with a digital camera, every piece of music that could make its way onto a digital music player, every film that could ever be shown on a digital projector, any conceivable computer program, including incidentally a number of programs that would only function with an infinite number of lines of code, so long as those lines of code could be generated by some finite algorithm. If we were content with discreet data, and unconcerned with the smooth and continuous, such a number would do just fine for our purposes, and those of you feeling woozy about B can just imagine everything I say from here on out just deals with this one little real number rather than the whole lot of them. Many of the consequences remain the same, though we lose out on the sort of overwhelming quality of B's unfathomable infinity. The infinity of a real number, just a countable infinity mind you, is already stupendously, wonderfully, inconceivably large, but it can be almost easy to forget that sometime, having seen so many infinite sequences truncated after the 7th or 8th member. And so B both gives us the wonder of the smooth and continuous, and it also overwhelms. These two aspects I find stylistically important for what is to follow. But if you're just not going to stand for such ridiculousness, I hope you will at least grant me the real number which contains every finite binary sequence. With that we should be able to at least make due.

It is my intent now to show that synchronic time requires a space that is something more like B than like the number line.
We will examine that and some other possible weirdness indicated by the existence of B in Part III.

Part III: Moments of Time

So now that we've slogged through all that, we can come back to the question I opened all of this up with, the search for a space for synchronic time. My claim at this point is that it makes a certain sort of sense (the same sort of sense as thinking of a timeline as diachronic time) to think of B as a particular moment of synchronic time. The immediate temptation is to think of the 2 at the center of B as the present, with the past stretching out in one direction and the future stretching out in another, but then we would be left in exactly the same sort of position we are in with the timeline, albeit with the present moment having the special quality of being in the center. But that isn't really all that interesting. We could have just had a timeline with NOW at the center and that would have done just fine. No, the special thing about B is that it exists in a sort of crystalline state, without change, all of it at once, its complete ridiculous massive infinity. And that all at once contains within it the full possibility of every spacial relationship that can be captured by ordered sets of real numbers. If you arn't terribly into science that might not sound like all that much, but if you stick with me we might get somewhere. That every point within any given space of countably infinite dimension can be found within B also means that every relationship of points with such a space can be found. A sort of Kantian way of saying this would be that B contains within it all possible pure forms. Relationship of any sort is can be found with B.

To make sure we don't get too starry eyed: To get any particular relationship out of B one needs to have a way of translating B from numerals into whatever sort of matter you're interested in. Say you're wanting to look for color relationships, so you're going to be navigating the three dimensional field of color, and then maybe you will be wanting to put pixels of color in a two dimensional grid. To put pixels of color in a two dimensional plane requires 5 coordinates per pixel: one for each of three dimensions of color and one for each of two spacial dimensions. Looking at B then we could pull out particular reals and think of them as giving us ordered quintuplets in one way or another or we could pull a single real out and think of it as giving us a string of ordered quintuplets. By doing this we could create full color pictures by pulling out and translating reals that we find in B. In this way, because B contains every real between zero and one, we would be able to find every possible image that can be represented by pixels of color in a two dimensional plane. If we remember that software and data are digitally stored in binary, we could also see that every possible bit of software as well as every possible bit of data can also be found in B, we just need a Turing machine of some sort (a computer) to turn our 1's and 0's into something that means something. Once we start thinking about data and the vast capabilities of digital storage, we can start to think about how whole worlds could be found in B. And that's when we might start getting starry eyed to some degree if we forget that any way of translating the reals into this sort of data is going to produce almost exclusively nonsense. We find ourselves in a circumstance similar to Borges' Library of Babel, in which one can find every possible book that is 400 pages long and consists of the letters of the alphabet, commas and periods. In such a library there must exist a book that explains in detail the library itself and all its contents, but that book will only be one of countless volumes that claim to do so, and those volumes in turn will only make up a tiny slice of the vast library which consists almost entirely of completely nonsensical works. We should remember that for every world that might make sense that is contained in B there are an unfathomable number of worlds that are utter chaos, completely devoid of any possible meaning. Such is the full realm of form.

To think of B as the full repository of all form is not quite right: it only contains those forms that are representable within the reals, which is quite a lot, considering the smoothness and continuity they are so famous for, but B remains a particular representation of all the reals, of which there are infinitely many that cannot be represented within B. This is just to say that B does not contain itself, nor any number quite like it. So B is a particular arrangement of the field of smooth and continuous form. A static, unchanging being that represents countless types of change, so far as that change can be represented.

Alright: With the timeline, we have a particular form, the line, which we apply to time as its matter. The parts that make up the line, points, we think of as points of time. Now: B itself we are thinking of as a form made up of forms. It is a complete compendium of all spacial forms that can be represented by relationships of real numbers. It is only one particular complete representation of that field, of which there are infinitely many, none of which are entirely represented by B, but many of which (all those that can be) are indicated so far as they can be indicated within a logical system consisting of strings of symbols. So if we are going to think of B as a moment of time, that moment of time contains within it, in a complete, simultaneous way, all possible spacial forms arranged in a particular way. It does not contain every moment of time, as other moments of time would be things of the same sort. So it does not contain itself, nor any other complete moment of time. It contains representations, forms. But so far as time can be understood as a spacial dimension, and so far as qualities can be represented as spacial relations, this moment of time we are calling B contains within it representations of every possible (and impossible, and nonsensical, and contradictory, etc etc) spacial relation. So as a moment of time it would contain within it representations of moments of time as thought of diachronically, but it could only indicate moments of time thought of synchronically (similar to B itself) through symbolic manipulation: no moment of synchronic time could be represented in full as each is of the same order of complexity as B itself, but every arrangement of diachronic time (sensible or not) could be found within it.

Ok: That leaves us saying that this single point, this number that is represented by the uncountably infinite string of digits arranged in a fractal pattern such that every real gets its own place can be thought of as representing a particular arrangement of all possible forms, and that such an arrangement can be thought of as a unique moment of time, where another moment of time would be a different arrangement of all possible smooth and continuous spacial forms. If we're Kantians, we are going to want to say, ok, you've got the form maybe, if I allow all this craziness, but what about the matter?

What about the matter indeed. For a good Kantian, by the way, Form is a unity, a particular relationship, while Matter is a part considered as a part. If we stick with the Kantian division of Form and Matter (and I don't see any reason not to) every bit of matter is in turn a particular form. This is of course how we understand matter in the sciences at this stage: each bit of stuff can be thought of as a particular relationship of smaller bits of stuff, and it's turtles all the way down, or it's chaos at some point. But that chaos is just a formal relationship that is unpredictable, and therefore unresolvable into specific matters. We have maintained the Kantian division, and it seems to be working just dandy, so I don't see any reason to be afraid of it. Especially since it seems then that one of its consequences is that form is primary, matter is just an aspect of form, a placeholder that has not yet been resolved into pure relationship. And so far as the world can be resolved into formal relationships, it is comprehensible and intelligible, and so far as it can't, it is unintelligible and incomprehensible. If we accept then that matter either resolves further into form or that matter is merely a symbolic placeholder at bottom that only exists as a formal relation to other parts of some whole, then the world resolves into a super-complex form. So far as that form has a simultaneous existence, it can be thought of as a particular possible moment of time, or as a particular possible arrangement of forms, either of all possible forms or of some sub-set. And so the world a a simultaneous temporal totality has a form similar to B.

The question then becomes: in what way can a particular arrangement of all possible form, all possible relationship, be thought of as a moment of time? So glad you asked: within such a moment of time one will find the particular set of formal relationships that makes up your present condition, so far as that condition can be represented by formal relationships. Unless we've somehow exploded Kant's castle, the knowable universe at any given point of time has exactly this sort of being-for-us. A Heideggerian might want to stop the show here. 'Relations of Being cannot be reduced to purely formal relationships,' they might say. Well alright, perhaps that is the case, but if so I'm willing to take a step back and say that I'm not aiming at capturing anything about Being in particular, but only about our representations of Being. 'Now, haven't we found all kinds of problems with representations? And don't we want to move on from representational thinking?' Oh sure we have, and sure we do, but let's take things one step at a time shall we? We have to understand what representation is if we are going to avoid it, and there's no harm in fleshing out just one more big representation for us to avoid thinking about later on if that's what we're into. Leave me alone would you? 'But what about being-in-the-world? What about care? What about temporality? What does this have to do with facing up to your death? Didn't you mention Heidegger way back at the start? I thought this was supposed to have something to do with authentic temporality!' Alright, you've got me. I'm arguing here that even Heidegger's authentic temporality can be captured by a certain sort of representation. And it happens just when all of being shows up as having the possibility of being nothing at all. Of not-being-anything. Death for Heidegger is the ever present possibility of our own non-being. It looms. And so does B, in its way: B is a certain sort of nothing that the world turns out to be if you look at the world in a funny sort of way. All of a sudden you are reduced to a purely formal relation in a field of mostly meaningless purely formal relations that in the end are really nothing at all. Suddenly your normal understanding of time is just one representation among many. And here you are, hearing the call of conscience, your own being-here calling you through its peculiar silence. Which is the sort of way that infinity calls. By just not being anything at all. By not showing up. Infinity is a sort of absence that contains all presence. And a moment of time is a sort of particular relationship of infinite relationships. Its form is settled, we are thrown into something without having given it shape, but it is being revealed and there is always more out ahead that we have to project ourselves out into.

Let's take all of this from the perspective of a given individual: Being-here on this view turns out to be a particular arrangement of forms within a totality of possible forms arranged in some way. Either Being-here is made up of forms that can be represented by finite relationships (even an infinity of them) and can therefore be represented by a single real, or Being-here can only be represented by an infinity of infinite relationships, in which case a particular Being-here (so far as Being-here could be particular in this case...) will be made up of a number of reals that are in some sort of relation to one another. This moment of time will then be, for this particular Being-here we are considering, made up of forms that are revealed and forms that are concealed. The revealed forms, those that Being-here is made up of (Being-in-the-world here is being made up of forms, not so much being presented forms, which is more Heideggerian than say Kantian: we don't have an abstract subject presented with forms, but merely an arrangement of the world that happens to be such that it can be thought of as Being-here from our outside perspective) are arranged in a particular way such that they make up a particular being here: there is the situation, given as pre-existing, the throwness of Being-here; then there are the projects, those forms given as open possibilities that Being-here can participate in. These forms are,primordially and for the most part, arranged in such a way that they do not reveal themselves as being so arranged: Being-here is just casually involved in day to day goings on, living in thein-authenticity of the they-self (which isn't so much bad as it is incomplete). In this first and for the most part, Being-here takes for granted the forms it is presented as being something other than Being-here itself. In this mode, the forms that represent the timeline are taken to be the time that Being-here finds itself in. But, given a proper re-arrangement of things, in a certain sort of moment, Being-here can find itself presented with Being-here itself: we come to find ourselves as the particular situation we find ourselves is, thrown into a world we did not choose and opened up to a field of possible projects, including the ever looming possibility of our own non-being, death. This particular arrangement of forms is the call of conscience, in which Being-here is called by Being-here's own silence to simply be what it is. Suddenly the normal understanding of time as a timelineindependent of Being-here's existence is shown to be a mere shadow, a false appearance. Time shows up as a pure moment of unfolding, unconcealing existence. In this moment, we can imagine something like B being presented within B itself. Not of course the full numerical representation of B, but perhaps a sudden realisation of the in-finity of possible presentation. A revelation of the absolute relativity of all Being-here, as only a tiny slice of the unconcealed, very nearly nothing at all. This could take many many different forms, most of which would have almost no direct relation to B as I have presented it here, but all bearing on the looming possibility of being-nothing-at-all.

To see the way in which the call of conscience necessarily takes place as a particular arrangement of forms that shows the presentational nature of presentation is to see the way in which B can be thought of as a space for lived time. This is mired in my own take on Heidegger and so it may look at first like a bunch of gobbledygook. That's understandable. Being and Time often looks that way, and I am building weird on top of weird here. The key point is this though:

Being-here is always a particular arrangement of forms. Sometimes that arrangement of forms reveals itself as an arrangement of forms.

Hofstadter's 'Strange Loop', if one is familiar with it, could be worth thinking about here. We find ourselves finding ourselves: representation can never be fully represented as such (the seeing eye can never see its own seeing) but it can be symbolized in such a way as to reveal itself as representational. In the language of Sartre's Transcendence of the Ego, we can indicate consciousness, we can symbolize it, but it can never be a proper object of consciousness. Consciousness can not become a proper object of consciousness. There are many many ways of formulating this same idea, each of which coming down to the impossibility of a true self-representation, but the inevitability of at least some partial self-presentation. For Kant, it is the necessary possibility of the addition of 'I think' to any of our presentations. Consciousness is always consciousness-of something: it is intentional. Being-here is always situated in a world. But there are special moments in which consciousness reflects, turns back on itself, and in one way or another catches a glimpse of its own un-representationality. That particular moment, that particular arrangement of forms, is when the synchronic nature of time shows up as such. It is for that reason why a timeline is incomplete: it takes for granted the structure of moments of time in order to give their arrangement relative to one another. But the arrangement of a moment of time is of the utmost importance for understanding what we are, if it means anything to ask the question, 'what am I?'

I have an awful lot more explaining to do, to be sure, and to that end we're going to turn to Borges in the next couple parts, specifically to his stories "The Aleph" and "The Zahir", to show ways we can go about thinking about something like B, and ways that maybe we should be real careful to avoid. After some of that we will look at some of the really interesting consequences of smoothness and continuity and the various ways that they affect our thinking when we are careful about them.

My First Solipsism!

2009-04-06T23:49:00.002-06:00

My First Solipsism!

Sometimes I play that my room just goes poof
when I walk out through the door, cuz I'm kind of a goof.
It's a game that I play called solipsism, see?
Where nothing exists, except for just one thing, ME.
I pretend that I'm dreaming, that nothing is real,
except what I see and except what I feel.
I'm all alone, though there's human bodies,
so I pretend they're robots, or brain dead zombies.
I pretend that I live in an old pickle jar,
that I'm just a brain in a vat out on mars.

Some people will tell you solipsism's bad.
But it's just pretend, no need to be mad.
It's fun to imagine these things, it is true
but it's nice to come back, where here's me and there's you.
And us two together, then we can pretend,
and a monad together, our game can begin:
and then we'll be the world, and the others are fakes,
then they're all pod people, they're all mistakes.
Back to back, you and me, we'll take on the world,
a monad of two, just a boy and a girl.

So we can imagine a world of just two
A world that's empty except for me and you.
And then, hey why not, the whole family can play,
We'll invite them all over, what do you say?
We'll call all of our neighbors, call our church or our town
invite all the people nearby to come 'round
And then the game's different, but it's bigger is all.
It's like our town is magic, of if we've got the gall,
we'll say that there's monsters beyond our town hall
that it's risk to go farther than the borderline wall.
We can pretend that the Earth's on the brink of collapse
or that there is no future, that we're gonna be last.
Or we'll make believe that the Earth is quite young,
created last Tuesday, with a bang like a gun.
We can all play together that way just for fun
With the whole Earth as monad, a big spinning One.

But then we remember, how vast is the sky?
How stars, planets and galaxies circle up high
That there are more worlds than there's grass blades in sod
And the one that we know is just one little clod.
So then our game grows and it fills up all space,
it spans billions of light years, a humongous place.
But to think that there's only or could be just one,
is to make it a monad and forget where we're from.

So down here on Earth in our town on our street,
in our house, in our room with our shoes on our feet,
we can start to remember just how many things
are stuffed in this world till it bursts at the seams.
And as fun to pretend that our room disappears
when we shut up our eyes and plug up our ears,
but it's nice to remember the whole world is real,
that we're just a part, that there's mountains and fields.
The world is stupendously wonderfully huge,
though from far away, it's just a dot that looks blue.

So now you can play this fantastic game
where you're all that there is and "the world" is you name.
That's solipsism for you, in a nutshell or three,
though there's only one shell in that game and it's ME.

So we don't forget

2009-03-13T09:18:00.003-06:00

ORDER OF OPERATIONS

Circumcision
Tonsillectomy
Wisdom teeth removal
Lasik
Vasectomy
Hip Replacement
Triple Bypass

Now don't start that again...

2009-03-04T19:29:00.003-07:00

Everyone's favorite puzzle to hate is the old and trusty, 'How do I know that my red looks like your red?'

It's an old question, and most of us have wondered it from time to time. Sure, you can I can both agree that the red apples look different from the green apples, but apart from the words you use to describe them, what does your red have in common with mine? Could the be different?

A lot of philosophers want to make this problem disappear in a poof of smoke. It's a 'pseudoproblem', a 'bewitchment of language'. It's metaphysical hogwash. There's no such thing as 'my red' or 'your red', there's no such thing as RED! Only red things of course. Nothing to see here. Move along.

But then most of us have met at least one person who is red-green colorblind, and they throw a pretty big wrench in things. They see things differently, that's for sure. But how do they see things? What does the world look like if you're colorblind? I can imagine a black and white world, But one where red and green are the same, but the other colors are still different? What could that mean? What could that be like?

A good way to go about these things is the synesthetic route. If we can get really good at describing colors in terms of other senses, and we can agree on things that we supposedly agree on (yellow is warm and happy and sweet say) then we can try to imagine what it is like to miss out on a few colors. We can get a feeling for how the colors we see sync up with the tones we hear and the things we smell and the ways we feel, and we can stretch our imaginations just a little and get into somebody else's head.

But a lot of us have rather rusty imaginations. We might just try manipulating some photography: I know what a black and white world would look like, because I have seen black and whte pictures and movies and whatnot. And if we can do one dimensional color (greyscale woooooo) and we can do three dimensional color (how many hex codes do you know?) then surely two dimensional color can't be a problem. Just lock one of your three dimensions to another (probably Red to Green, for accuracy), average them out and set both to the same value every time. Or just keep one of the values at zero all the time. Or any other way of slicing a plane out of the color cube. If you play around with it, you should at least be able to get some sense of what it might be like if You were colorblind anyway, whether or not that has any real bearing on the question at hand. But what about the colorblind person trying to imagine what the rest of us see? Some of us, after years of trying to imagine a color we have never seen, gave up and decided that we can only imagine re-combinations of things we've seen somewhere before. And so the colorblind person is just out of luck if that's how it works. But it can be fun to try every now and again anyway. Maybe you'll see a new color. You just won't be able to show anyone else, now will you?

It's thinking like that that drives empiricist and behaviorist and language centric thinkers up the walls. What the hell could it even mean to imagine a color that doesn't exist? That's just insane. Gobbledeegook. Balderdash. Humbug. But you know, tell that to the colorblind kid who's decided that they're living in a world of schizophrenics who all think they can see a color that isn't really there. And tell that to the scientists who are looking at the light spectrum outside of the normal visible range. And for that matter tell that to your skin, which senses heat, which is just electromagnetic radiation (also known as 'light') in the infrared frequency range, but can't tell the difference between purple and yellow.

So: whatever Wittgenstein or Hume might have to say about the problem not being a problem, there are an awful lot of loose ends to tie up. If only we could figure out just what our sense of the color red was, then we could maybe have some idea of how it could differ in other people, even if we still had trouble imagining it.

Ok so strap yourselves in for some fantastic Brain Science, and maybe a little lesson in calculus, we'll see.

What your nerves do is detect change. This is an important first thing to notice, since we're used to thinking that our nerves detect properties, like temperature, color, tone, etc etc. But each of your nerve cells is like a tiny little solipsist. It doesn't know that there's a world out there and it couldn't be bothered to imagine one. But certain situations will either excite the little self centered beast or relax it. After a while though they get used to the situation and forget what happened if things don't continue to change. This sounds kind of crazy, but there are lots and lots of ways to prove it to yourself. Like the ol' three bowls of water trick: one with ice, one lukewarm, and one hot. Left hand in ice, right hand in hot. Wait for a while, then stick both in the lukewarm. If you've got a certain sort of metaphysics, you should now clean up your brains. Then stare for a while at something with a nice bright color, and then look at a white surface of some sort. The after image that you see in the optically opposite color of whatever it was you looked at to begin with is your eye telling you about whats going on inside you eye. Because that's what eyes have access to: the changes that happen inside them. That those changes happen to correlate wonderfully with what's going on in the outside world is something we'll look at in a bit, but right now, just notice that the colors that you see are the result of changes going on inside you eye, just like the temperature your hands feel is about changes taking place in the hands themselves (that's why they feel different in the lukewarm water, one is getting warmed up and the other cooled down; those little solipsistic nerves don't care what the objective situation is, just their own excitability).

Well all right then Mr. Fancy Pants, nerves detect changes in themselves, so what?

First we need to get a little bit more clear: since all the nerves do is fire in a rhythm that speeds up or slows down depending on their situation, we can't even say that the nerves detect change so much as rates of change. They don't know that anything is different. They don't know anything at all, the little critters. They just fire faster, or slower, that's it. And the nerves they're connected to then, they receive signal faster or slower, and so they react in a similar fashion. A given nerve cell in the chain leading up and into you brain will be connected to lots of nerve cells, and when enough of them fire, it will fire, so if a bunch of them speed up or slow down, the one we're looking at will also speed up or slow down. Things do get a little bit more complex when we throw in that certain nerves have an inhibitory function on some of their neighbors (which just means if the inhibitor speeds up, the inhibited slows down) and that neurotransmitters of all sorts change just how this rat effects that rate, but what we really want to notice is that it is rates of change that constitute the messages making their way around your nervous system, up and down your spine and around and around your brain.

[if you've either got a really good sense about how your brain works, or don't care to learn, or find my droning on and on terribly dull, you can skip down a bit to the next set of brackets]

Now then, these pulses in a rhythm, as they make it into your brain come up through the part of your brain that evolved the earliest first and make their way up to the new primate parts of the brain last. We can roughly divide the human brain into three sections, the reptile part, the proto-mammal part and the new fancy hardware. If Antonio Damasio knows anything about the brain, each of these newer areas get all of their info from the part that's older then them, and it's this cascade that generates feeling, in the following way (Roughly. His book, The Feeling of What Happens is more than a few paragraphs long, so I won't pretend to be capturing everything here. Also: I am not exactly following his vocabulary so much as the shape of things he describes, so this isn't a repetition or explication so much as a riff off of his work): when the rhythm hits the reptile brain, it bounces around for pure cause and effect. Certain types of rhythms trigger certain immediate effects, without there being any way to say that there was really awareness involved. This is just knee-jerk response type activity, nothing like thought or feeling, or at least nothing like thought or feeling that's going to make it into a poem anyway. At this level, we might say that there is only a sort of protoself. No real memory structure, no real sense of the future or the past, no real processing even, just a lot of stuff all going on at once, and sometimes the fight or flight alarm goes off and everything goes crazy. Damasio, for his part, will say that if this is all the brain you've got, we don't wanna say you have feelings anymore than we wanna say your computer has feelings. Input goes in, output comes out. Not too exciting.

But then just above this reptile brain is the middle of the road, the proto-mammal brain stuff. This middle part of your brain is hooked up to the lower part, and it keeps track of rates of change in the reptile brain, and can then nudge it this way or that if the situation calls for it. Now we're gonna call this structure the Core Self. This bit of newer brain hanging out with that bit of older brain, it's not so immediate. It can take things in over time, and so it can change a little bit slower. Sure, it can change real fast if things get messy down in the reptile brain, but since its one step removed from everything, it can take the time to have some feelings about whats going on. (I'm doing some serious injustice to Damasio here, but really I think this is close enough to whats going on without getting into even messier details.) Now with this middle section we can start keeping track of a little bit more of the past, anticipate a little bit more of the future, have a little sense of time, maybe some memory even.

And then there's the party upstairs. The brand new cortex of complexity. This outer shell of your brain gets input from everything going on downstairs, and, far away from the world as it is, sets about trying to figure out what is going on outside the skull it's trapped in, and in the meantime make up some stories and characters and scenery to go with it. The so-called autobiographical or extended self. This is where language and mathematics and social relations of all sorts can happen. This is the Brain as we think of our Brain, at its very best, cruisin along and just trying to figure out this wild wild world by carefully monitoring and then affecting the stuff gong on down below it.

[and now the punchline:]

What's important in all of this is the recursive structure. Rates of change of rates of change of rates of change are what makes up the rhythm that governs the neurons in the upper reaches of your brain, and so now we can take a look at a little bit of calculus to get us to where we might finally have something to say about this whole my red your red problem.

[short short version: derivatives are degenerate functions and so integrals aren't really functions at all. If that sounds like English, feel free to skip this part.]

[first your basic graph stuff, if you know about slope, feel free to jump ahead]

Way back when we're learning about linear functions and equations on the Cartesian coordinate system, if we're paying attention and havn't fallen asleep on our textbook (they make great pillows), we learn about slope. Change in y over change in x, or how steep the line is. A flat, horizontal line has a slope of zero: if x is your horizontal axis and y is your vertical axis, then for a horizontal line, whatever x is, y stays the same. The slope of zero represents zero change. A straight line at 45 degree angle pointing southwest to northeast is the graph of the equation y = x. It has a slope of 1. If x increases by 1, y increases by one. Similarly, for y = 2x you'll have a steeper line, for a slope of two: if x increases by 1, y increases by 2. For 2y = x or y = x/2 you'll have a shallower line with a slope of 1/2: x has to increase by two in order for y to increase by 1. A vertical line has an infinite slope. x doesn't change at all, and y hits every value there is. So that's slope for linear functions.

And just to be sure, a line that is pointing northwest/southeast is going to have a negative slope, such as y = -x

The refresher: for any function of x that fits the form f(x) = mx + b where m and b are
any number, m will be your slope.

[now for parabolas, and introducing Derivatives!]

When we look at a function that is a curve, things get a little trickier. The thing is, the slope changes depending on where we look. Take your classic parabola, y = x^2. Right at the middle, we have the vertex, a horizontal point, and so our intuition is that the slope there is zero. We could say that if you pick to x values that are on either side of zero, say + 1 and - 1, your slope between them is going to be zero, because when you square the numbers the negatives cancel out and you end up with the same number squared every time. But to say that the slope is zero all the way across the curve seems kind of strange. While the parabola does go through each y value twice (once on the left side where x is negative and once on the right side where x is positive) it would seem strange to say that the parabola had the same slope as a horizontal line. And of course, if we shift our frame of view, the slope is going to change: if we only pay attention to the right side of the graph, we can have a slope as high as we want (though never quite exactly vertical) and on the left side we can make things as negative as we want if we ignore all that positive business. The thing with curves is: the slope is different in different places. Now, since we've got a nice function here, if you give me two values of x I can go ahead and find out what values of y they pair up with, and then I can figure out the slope between them. If I divide the difference between the x's by the difference between the y's (so long as I keep them in the same order) then I'll find the slope in that area. But what if I wanted to know the slope at a single point?

Well: either you've got to find the limit as the difference between your two x's and your two y's shrinks to zero (limits are neat, but they'll only tell you the slope at a single point) or you can take the derivative. I'll save the proofs for those things for another day, but what they're give you is the slope at a given point. For y = x^2, the derivative happens to be y = x/2. Which means that at any point along the parabola, the slope will be equal to one half of your x value. Or more simply, if x is really negative, the slope will be really negative (pointed NW/SE) and if your x value is really positive, then your slope will be really positive (NE/SW).

So taking the derivative (I'm just asking you to trust me on this one) gives you the slope at a point, or if you want, the rate of change at a point.

[now we'll define degenerate functions! Hooray!]

Now: y = x is what's called a proper function, which is to say for every y there is one and only one xand for every x there is one and only one y.

This means that y = x can pass two tests: the vertical line test and the horizontal line test.
The vertical line test is: for any given vertical line (for an given x value) there will be exactly one intersection with the graph of the equation. For each x, one and only one y.
If the equation passes the vertical line test, then it's a function. The square root fails this test: any given square root (except zero) has two possible outputs, one positive and one negative. So y = sqrt x is not a function of x.
The horizontal line test is: For any given horizontal line (for any give y value) there will be exactly one intersection with the graph of the equation. For each y, one and only one x.
If the equation passes the horizontal line test, and it's a function, it's a proper function. y = x is one of those.
If it fails the horizontal line test, then it's a degenerate function, our parabola is one of those.

Degenerate functions are the case where we can get a given output by more than one input. They're functions, so if we've got the input, we can find the output, but if we try and go back, we find that we've got options to choose from.

Now: if we think of taking the derivative of a function as a function of functions (it takes a function as input, say y = x ^2 and gives a function as output, in that case y = x/2) then it's going to turn out to be a degenerate function. For our derivative y = x/2, any function of the form y = x^2 + C is going to produce the same derivative. So the derivative tells us the rate of change, but if we try and get back from the rate of change to the original graph, we're going to find a whole field of possibilities rather than an exact picture of what produced the rate of change we knew about.

For a derivitive like x/2, this isn't too much of a big worry: we know we're looking at a parabola, we just dont know if its shiftet up or down away from the origin at all. No big deal. But for more complex derivitives, we get much more complex fields of possible functions that could produce the same derivitive, and the field of differential equations is just the study of those fields of possibility. Things get particulary hairy when we throw in more than a single variable that we're worried about.

[now to bring it all together!]

So then: If what your nerves do is change their rates of fire, which in turn changes the rates of fire of other nerves down the line, and if all your brain has to work with are these cascading pulses of changing rates of changing rates, it looks like your brain has been presented with and elaborate differentail field from which it must attempt to make some sort of sense out of. If all it were concerned with were rates of change, there would be nthing strange at all about the lukewarm bowl that feels hot and cold at the same time, and the afterimage that you see after someone takes your picure with a bright flash would be nothing to think about. But the lukewarm bowl of water has a single temperature, and the afterimage you see is an illusion. Why? Because there's a real world out there that you're engaged in and you've got to deal with it as governed by some sort of stability or you're going to foget about the tiger chasing you or where the bananas are or how to build a fire. Doing high level processing on the rates of change your nerves detect is really, really useful for survival, and we've spent an awful lot of lekking making sure that we've got some fantastic brains in our heads to do that processing.

And so the kicker: Your color red is the result of an anti-derivitive, it is a projected guess picked from a field of possibilities as a stable cause for the rates of change detected by your optic nerve when you look at something red. Because the detection of rates of change is not a direct detection of the color (its just changes in the rods and cones in your eye, nothing like actualy picking out frequencies of light really, though your eardrums do some fancy stuff with frequencies for sure) but instead a detection f rates of change, your color red is a single choice from the field of possible causes for that rate of change. Given a different set of inputs (say we take out the rods you've got that detect light in the red range) you would have a different set of rates of change to deal with, and so the predictive model would differ. You would have a different red, or no red at all. Given slight changes in the chemical makeup of your particular rods, slight differences in their reactivity to given wavelengths of light (hey, we're not all perfect you know) there would be different rates of change taking place in your eye, and so the color red would indeed look different to you.

Also it is possible (clearly) for someone to detect light outside the normal visual spectrum and have a greater range of color than normal people have, just as much as it is possible to have a narrower range of color. It is not impossible to concieve of higher dimensional color as well.

Now: Looking into a given brain we are not going to be able to pull out and look at the color red that is experienced. Of course. It may be possible to look at differences in brain reaction to the same input (hey could you both stare at the wall for a second thanks) but to get at the subjective experience of the matter is another deal entirely.

But then: how do we know that my red and your red are the same? Well, they probably arn't, is the thing, but then we're dealing with things in a similar enough way to get along and communicate. My purple and a colorblind persons purple are not going to be the same, though we might behave in perfectly similar ways towards purples, organize them in similar fashions, etc. But as my experience of is the result of a choice (whether free or otherwise, I'm going to say its a choice determined by certain structural features of the brain, but the sort that vary far more than fingerprints and in similar fashion) from a field of possibility, it is unlikely that anyone else experiences my red or my purple or my blue or my green or my yellow, and it is not nonsense to speak of such things, and it is not a miracle that even with these variations within people we can all still get along and talk for hours about whether we should paint the room this or that shade of off-off white. Though this might have everything to do with variations in our synesthetic assosiations for given colors and our feelings thereof.

This also has some really interesting implications for the scientific worldview, as the insturments we use to measure the world are not so different in function from our various nerve based sense organs and so some paradoxes of the very large and very small may have a decent explination given this framework. As far as the understanding of what our models based on experimental data really ammount to (anti-derivitives of a sort, and so choices from a field of unknown complexity).

What I really want to say here is that given what we're given (changes in rates of change) we have to do some imaginitive work in order to have a world to live in. We have to make up the things that would be causing the things that we feel, to some extent, because there is always a plurality of possibile causes for the rates of change we experience. Is the water warm or cold?

This is the solipsists conundrum, and if we stop here (as I'm about to for the night) we're left wondering just what we have in common with other people if we're trapped in this world of imaginary things that our brain has built to explain the various sensations that we have. But any worry we have here is misguided, as it requies a number of questionable assumptions:
1) that your own understanding of yourself is singular
2) that there is a hard and fast division between yourself and other people
3) that every sense works like vision

That last assumption is a pretty big one, and thinking about the tactile world and your continuity within it with other people and other things is a good way to remind yourself that not everything is like vision.
It may be useful to think about what it feels like to drag a stick through sand, or across some rocks, or to poke a tree or sword fight with the stick. Our sense of touch seems to extend through the stick right to the point, and theres good reason for saying that this situation is no more illusory than your feeling extending throughoutyour body. These are differences of degree, not kind.

But more on that next time. For now, enjoy your red, and I will enjoy mine.

Babel Tower

2009-03-02T22:50:00.004-07:00

Something I've been thinking a lot about lately is the state of academia as a microcosm for the state of culture at large. A big part of whats going on is the explosion of possible material to be studied. There has been an exponential curve of works published and research done and keeping up with it has been a rise in the complexity and extension of bibliographies and works cited portions of works published.
What his means is that it becomes a bigger and bigger task to figure out just what is going on with a given work. If I were a monk in the middle ages, academia consisted of Aristotle and commentaries on Aristotle, and later, Plato and commentaries on Plato. I am over-simplifying some, but not much. The entire compendium of Greek literature prior to Plato (that survived and was available to study) as well as everything in Latin from the same period (again, that survived and was available) was possible to consume (via reading) over the course of a lifetime. It was in fact possible to read everything that there was to talk about. And if you kept up with what was being published, you could probably ready every academic work that was making the rounds. It helped that only a tiny percentage of the population was involved in the academic structure (which was pretty much just the monasteries) and a even smaller portion of those folks were actually bothering to create new works. And again, over-simplifying for sure, but you can still go about reading every Greek tragedy and comedy and if you are serious about it, it shouldn't take you more than a year to get through all of them (the list really isn't all that long).
In any case (as what I'm saying above is a sort of idealization/exaggeration) the real point is that whatever the case was then, with the Renaissance you get a much bigger community producing a lot more material in every branch of culture. Mostly just because there were more people involved. And as populations expand, so do the numbers of painters, sculptors, playwrights, musicians, poets, philosophers, mathematicians, biologists, physicists, geologists, astronomers, architects, politicians, historians, and on and on, and this in turn gives rise to The Academic, whose job it is is to make sense of all of this outpouring of culture in one field or another, to organize and arrange it so that it can be taught. Canons are developed. This critical and meta-historical process in turn gives rise to new sciences, sociology, anthropology and psychology that had no place in the old system but grow up out of the academic world, parasitic of the critical and meta-historical work being done, these new sciences are studies of the movement of symbols, abstracting completely from anything encountered directly in the world.
Many of these fields begin to turn their interest both inward, onto themselves, and laterally, onto the other fields. Of course while all of them could never have been completely disentangled, this concentrated effort to put the tools of one field to use on another makes the tangles themselves apparent.
Somewhere along the line (a while back I suppose) the printing press gets set up all over the place, and the libraries explode. The cost to produce a record of a work drops considerably, and so copies and copies and copies are made. Transfer of information is facilitated, and recursion is encouraged.
The turn inward, the use of tools on the tools themselves, the recursive mode, produces strange effects. It starts small of course. Shakespeare has plays-within-plays. There are countless portraits of portrait painters. Philosophy questions its own questioning. This reaches a sort of fevered pitch near the end of the 19th century, as the recursive understanding that each academic field has of itself begins to look like the picture of the world is complete, or at least completable.
But no system with a causal connection to a system which it models can ever fully predict the behavior of the system modeled without infinite fractal recursion, which is impossible to produce via causation (I won't preclude entirely the possibility of such recursion just happening, but even to speculate there is to take a trip to crazy town).

Translation: just when you think you've got everything figured out, it explodes.

And so it did: the 20th century opens with a bang, or two, and a great mirror is held up: humanity gazes itself in the eye, and is both horrified and amazed. Electronic communication begins. Bright minds see already the potential of electronic storage and movement of information. The potential for broadcast. The potential for automation. The potential for abuse, and the potential for use.
Just as the printing press made production of copies cheaper, typewriters and fax machines and telephones and television and photography and on and on and on; the means of production and storage of information explode right along with the atom bomb.

And so does the academic/cultural world: the explosion of media is an explosion of possibility. There are new ways to create works, and so there are new ways to analyze, synthesize, critique, lampoon, parody, reference, allude to, echo.
Where it was once the case that allusions were a witty aside, meant to be caught by nearly all of the audience due to a shared culture (everybody's read or seen the main works of Shakespeare, etc) they become a game of reference and obscurity. We enter the post-modern period with a series of works that are announced as half-finished, but never to be completed. Contemporaries critique their mentors alongside the ancients, and alongside those other contemporaries also critiquing either the mentors or the ancients. The reaction to a given work overwhelms the work itself. Duchamp places a urinal in an art show and starts a revolution. Heidegger publishes the first half of the first half of Being & Time and then promptly abandons the project to go into poetry and stand up comedy. Wittgenstein publishes a single work as his PhD thesis, then goes into hiding to teach math to elementary school students, returns to academia to mount assaults on his previous work and dies without finishing anything else. His students publish his notes and errata. Freud inspires legions of academics of one sort or another to either worship or assault, and the quasi-religious cult of psychoanalysis becomes entangled with every academic field: it proposes to explain and undermine them all. The art world becomes ever increasingly self involved, each work reacting against other works: not, perhaps, in the mind of the artists themselves who remain for the most part inscrutable, but in the eyes of the increasingly impossible to follow world of art criticism, which goes to great lengths to legitimate itself by being increasingly convoluted, technical, and obscure.
Derrida publishes Glas, a work reacting to Hegel and conceived in such a way as to avoid being an antithesis or synthesis to any Hegelian thesis. Deleuze and Guattari engage in Chaosophy and Misosphy, building off of Deleuze's career of imaginary history of philosophy and Guattari's activism, born of the rebellions of May of '68. More television programs are produced than could be watched in a lifetime. More films are produced than could be watched in a lifetime. More books are published ever year, every month, every day, than could be read in a lifetime.

The internet is born.

[If you're keeping score, I'm not keeping things in strict chronological order, the point is the state we're in much more than just how we got here.]

Globalism and global culture rise as the boundaries between physical locations melt from the heat of information flowing freely through time and space.

More information is produced and recorded at least semi-permanently every hour than could be consumed by any individual in their lifetime.

The fields of research expand at exponential rates not completely understood by anyone involved in fueling the growth.

The cost of creating new work drops close to zero.

More than half of the world's considerable population come into possession of a cell phone (4 billion of them and counting).

Following a given academic work requires not just participating in the field from which it is grown, but being a member of the generation from which it is produced, and a follower of the movement it takes part in.

McSweeney's publishes All Known Metal Bands, a 300 page list of band names, with no further information or comment. It gets rave reviews, and sells like crazy. Many bookstore employees write recommendations for it and give it prominent shelf space.

Livejournal. Myspace. Blogger. Facebook. Twitter.

The Daily show is taken more seriously than most main stream televised news, paper newspapers decline, but internet based news and NPR thrive.

This is white noise, culturally. Every frequency sounded to the limit. No chorus. Constant change. United by a single language, English, the world is divided by a lexicon that includes over 1,000,000 living words. And far more dead ones. [Most living languages have vocabularies in the 100,000 range or less, though these are statistics I've seen in places and may not be entirely accurate, but the point remains.] A greater and greater percentage of our memory is taken up by advertisements, logos, catchphrases, and jingles designed to stick to the human mind like glue. Memeology is all the rage, as we watch ideas wage war on one another for possession of the most sought after real estate in a world where every inc of solid ground is owned by someone: the inside of your skull.

This is bad. This is good.
There is more culture now than there has ever been. You could do nothing but watch opera from now until you die, and you would never have to watch the same opera twice. The fields of cultural research are vast. The amount of raw inspiration, if sunrises and sunsets and clouds and bees and dandelions and raindrops and snowflakes and beaches and the moon's phases and the stars and all the rest of the world that has always been there and just can't be forgotten about wasn't enough for you, is functionally infinite.

But then we can't go about talking about it like we used to. We can't rely on allusion and reference to get us by. A 20 page bibliography is cute, but it's a wall that won't be broken all that often.

We have to find ways of communicating simply and directly.

We must look to each other as human beings, and speak and write and create and move in ways that are not echos for the sake of showing that we are part of a clique that has consumed some common culture, but instead echos for the sake of communicating what is beautiful or haunting or joyful or terrifying or moving in whatever way of what we are echoing.

We must learn to echo what is meaningful.

For too long it has been enough to echo in such a way that it was possible to find the source of your echo. To hunt down the original (or better, to remember) to understand what was meant by the particular reference or allusion.
"To be or not to be"
"I think therefore I am"
"The Eternal Return"
"I'm MELTING"
But such echoing can no longer take the place of meaningful communication, for the rising tide of cultural creation has made it insane to think that any serious number of humans will have read all of the same books that you have.

This is a cultural Babel Tower: we have the potential to continue to create and imagine and play with more freedom and crazier toys than anyone ever before. But if we don't stop playing like we have for the last few millennia, we're not going to be able to communicate at all, and down the tower will fall.

But really: it's as easy as taking responsibility for what you do. If you're going to echo, echo in your own voice. Stop mimicking and start doing. Authenticity is the only way out. It's that or cultural solipsism from here.

I think we can do it.

I think we should try.

On color as self-identity

2009-02-24T18:14:00.001-07:00

I went to an "how to be an illustrator" workshop at the IPRC back in November. It was essentially about nine people sitting around a table, listening to Keegan Wenkman talk about the ins and outs of the industry from his perspective. I wish I had recorded the lecture, it was tremendously inspiring. Every few days still I take out that sketchbook and flip through my notes. What was the name of that creative staffing agency?

Of course, (and this approach is, I think, rather encouraged at all the IPRC workshops,) all advice is stuff you can either do or not. I feel very strongly that gut reaction trumps all established rules when it comes to things. If ultimately what you want to do is stuff that interests you, particularly in the creative world, why would you sacrifice that just to get yourself a little "safer"? Right? I love hints and advice and schedules; these things are shaping devices, a basic shape.

From there you can fill it in, or give it a pattern, or do whatever your heart desires.

But it's nice to have that basic shape in the first place. A good reference that you can choose to ignore if need be.

So when it was suggested that whilst honing in on a style you limit your color pallet -- this to a girl who had not long ago finished something like that elephant -- I basically snorted to myself, stuck it in parentheticals, and kept taking notes.

I think the idea was that there are so many factors in a finished piece that if you are bogged down with What Your Style Should Be, color is just going to be this gratuitous layer resting on an unstable foundation. And I get that, but at the same time I feel like if you are me and suddenly you are going from these brilliant colors (painstakingly selected mind you -- I am vibrant but I don't want things to look busy or accidental,) to a monochromatic color scheme for everything, well. You're doing something wrong.

Tons of previous examples notwithstanding.

And then of course I started getting a little poorer. And my pencils got a little shorter. And I started that new marker + pencil + paper approach to drawing I've been so excited about, which was indeed very colorful. But then I got poorer. And I wanted to start playing with paint, particularly for Take Your Medicine, which I'd envisioned much bigger, and in acrylic. And in conjunction with this I was compelled by how great a simple marker-on-cardboard could look, and started doing sketches around town armed with only a dark grey marker, cardboard and a white pencil. This really dictated the final look of Take Your Medicine, really. Then the zine project started, which really forced me to look strictly at black and white. Then the t-shirt and the zine symposium entry, both of which were fairly calm color-wise.

While doing this I learning a lot. It's wonderful to let color take the front stage because I think it doesn't always get enough good press, and (again) I dig being very color-focused because I feel like I do it without it being overkill. (Ahem. If I do say so myself). That said, these projects reunited me with my long lost love, the line. "The Line" in terms of elements and principles of design. I love using lines, I love their expressiveness and how unassuming a line can be. The nature of these projects forced me to be a little less messy and really focus on a line that could hold its own, something that could reach out and grab you all on its own. Something that was bold enough to copy again and again. A much cleaner line. A simpler line.

My next few projects are back into the colorful realm, but interestingly I'm mostly focusing on a few colors. There are several reasons for this. Initially it was because these were my latest paint and marker purchases, and so it's to be expected, but these colors are very particular and specific. A pale yellow, a dark teal, a darker purple. A hint of light green, or maybe a regular yellow. There's variation within that, but for the most part that's where I'm at right now. And then too: I helped repaint Reading Frenzy when they remodeled, which got me thinking about blue and yellow again -- a combination very near and dear to me that goes back to grade school. I had a piece of fabric that (almost) matched the scheme they were going for, which I tacked up on my board for a while. So this also might be why I'm delving into these colors rather than that great pale purple or pinky orange I got at the same time.

Earlier this afternoon I was standing at the sink washing some brushes and I noticed, oh. The apples are definitely right in this scheme.

And now that I think about it, so is my business card.

Really I get into color moods all the time. When I first got into painting it was all purple all the time, sneak purple into everything. (Particularly polar bears. Trust me.) Then while I was working at Pier One I got really into this peach-mulberry-lime combination I'd seen in an old handbook/catalog we'd kept in a drawer up at the cash stand. And now it's this. But it's neat to think about in relation to what Keegan had said.

Yes we can

2009-02-23T15:01:00.001-07:00

I can't.
That is what people love to say.
I can't.
It's never true.

Whenever I talk about drawing with people, I tend to get some sort of self-deprecating statement. "I can't draw" people confess, and I just shake my head because that attitude is half the problem.

I've been thinking about this lately because of some of the illustration I've been seeing. Most of the hand-done stuff I've seen lately isn't particularly exquisite or refined technically, but what it is is expressive. Sure of itself. You can tell the artist went the extra mile to fill in the whole background, or choose those colors.

Rainbirds by Jill Calder, photo from flickr.

Illustration by Calef Brown, from this illustrated version of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The thing is: everybody can draw. (Or paint, as the case is here). Everybody can pick up a pencil, or pen, or crayon, and make marks on a paper. And everybody can do this when moved to do so when they see something. Drawing in and of itself does not need to meet any standard, nor is it even required to look like anything. It's just drawing. Marks on paper. Quality does not beget the action. Crosshatches and scribbles is drawing.

And people are like this about dancing, and singing. Or acting (i.e., playing pretend.) (Although, I suppose one could argue people become VERY good at pretending, particularly in customer service.) Many natural urges of human expression get restrained because of this weird expectation of perfection. Which is strange because if there's ever a place where non-perfection is key, it would be in the arts.

Which is why, a few nights ago when I handed you the leftovers and a pen and asked, "Would you label those?" I was delighted to see this.

You never claim to be very good, or very bad; quality has nothing to do with it. You just draw, when the mood strikes you, and it's wonderful. I wish everyone did.

epigraph from "Das Energi".

Nature and Sight

2009-02-17T20:54:00.006-07:00

For a long time on this planet, everything was dark.

The sun shone in the day, and the moon was full every 28 days or so and the stars were out when either the sun or the moon wasn't there. Lava glowed, and sometimes when a rock fell down a hill at night or when something in the water bumped something else just right, there might be a spark here or there.
But there were no eyes to see it.
There were hills and valleys, oceans and rivers and mountains and plains, mesas and fjords and deltas and islands and beaches and rainstorms and hurricanes and tornadoes and tsunamis and tides and geysers and stones and pebbles and rocks of all shapes and sizes.
But everything was invisible, because nothing was there to see.
After a while, things started to be alive. A little at first, but after not too long there were lots and lots of things that were alive. Little by little, some of these living things began to care about whether there was light or not. There was light and there was dark. And then it was whoever could tel the difference the best did the best, found the most food, or just grew in the right direction even (plants keep track of the light too, they just dont have lenses). And so it came to be that a world that was invisible became visible.
But there was still a lot that was not seen. What was doing the seeing was eyes. And eyes have gotten better and better as time goes on (though of course some eyes have gotten worse sometimes, and sometimes rather than getting better or worse they just got different. Evolution means all kinds of things happen, and not always what makes sense) but eyes can only see so much. Eyes could not see things that were very very small for instance. Or things very very far away. Eyes could not, for a long long while, see earth as a sphere gliding through space, or see the insides of things that had eyes.
More than that, eyes could not see the past, and could not see the future.
Brains though, brains could lead to some of that.
And as brains got better, more and more was seen. Slowly but surely, ore and more of the world was becoming visible.
And so here we are. Living in a world where we can see far more than has ever been seen. We see visions of the past (photographs and films and paintings and sculptures etc etc) and visions of the future. We see big things and small things and insides and outsides.
We see the way things happen.
And we see how we see.
And we make seeing better.
And slowly but surely, we can make lots of things better.
And as Nature comes to see, she uses her sight. She acts on what she sees.
She has a trillion eyes. And they are getting better every day.
No more must evolution stumble blindly in the night.
Hey that lekking seemed like a good idea at the time I'm sure, but it's just a way to inch on down the hall.
We can run now.
We can look ahead and decide what we want to be.
And we can get there if we want to.
Our wants were formed in darkness.
But what we want is light.

To do

2009-02-15T20:19:00.003-07:00

1. I need to read in the evenings. I need to get enough done in the day to warrant taking the evening off. It's a creative-person cliché to work late into the night, particularly if you are in the middle of something. It's less to do with stamina and more to do with lack of self-discipline. Things can whisk you away. And sometimes important things should. But mostly with me I tend to think, oh I can get some stuff done after dinner, and I languish around making a meal, then I clean, and then I goof off at the desk and suddenly it's 10'oclock and a cat is put out because he wants snuggling and I am too tired to do much else. And then I don't sleep well. Routine routine routine. I need an evening one again. One that isn't exclusively "watch a thing".

2. I need to tell you that the blade on the immersion blender is VERY sharp. Very. It means using it is a breeze but cleaning it is very tricky, despite the fact that the whole end comes off. I may actually need to buy a skinny tool to do the job.

3. I need to write an "about me" thing on the art blog, since I'm using it as my website. Weirdly I am utterly stumped every time I give it a try, and am considering a.) bumming the job off on someone else (want to write my about me thing?) b.) writing a completely fanciful, fake bio ("When she squints her eyes slightly she can hover several inches off the ground!"), or c.) not writing one, except one expects to see something like that on an arty website, mostly to figure out where someone lives and where one went to school (which I usually either pointedly do not mention, or list in conjunction with the Maggie Nichols Institute of Art and Design.)

4. A publishing house out of HarperCollins published my illustrated version of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I need to figure out who did the illustrated version of Life of Pi, and get to the bottom of this. I love it! Do other people love it? I want more! I can help!

4a. I need to get to a point where I can illustrate any blog entries lavishly, a bit like Maria Kalman's offerings, which I love passionately. I need to for practice but also because pushing myself that much would be Very Good. Yes indeed.

ALTHOUGH, I don't want to go exclusively writing-on-the-paintings like she has, because while I like the way it looks, it would mean that Iris' page reader would not be able to read the thing. I'm not always wordy over there, but if I am I don't want to exclude.

5. I need to make sure to post to this thing more often.

And now for something completely legitimate

2009-02-10T10:05:00.001-07:00

I've been getting into Micheal Palin's travel documentaries lately, for one because I'm a sucker for BBC documentaries, and also because I'm a sucker for Micheal Palin, being the Python freak that I am.

As often happens these days, I was looking up the series I'm in the middle of (Pole to Pole) on wikipedia for any extra information they might have. A garden path of digression led me to other post-python stuff, one of them being the 30th anniversary special that I'd only barely heard of, featuring Eddie Izzard playing the parts Eric Idle was too indignant to come play himself. And I thought, that's weird. Because I own essentially everything they've ever done, but I've never seen that.

I did another thing that has become pretty common: I went over to youtube to see if some lonely soul had uploaded the thing, or clips.

And let me say: I know this is piracy. I know it's wrong and scary for television like napster was scary for musicians. But I also know youtube has made it possible for me to watch all of the UK version of Whose Line Is It Anyway, which to my knowledge is not available on DVD in the states, certainly not through netflix or my library.

Let me also say that were I in the position to BUY the stuff I would do it in a heartbeat, because at this point I've watched series 5-10 of WLIIA several times over. I am an Extreme Dork when it comes to stuff. I want the funny, and I want ALL of it. But I am not in such position, because I am a broke self-employed illustrator. So what to do?

The Pythons themselves decided to approach the problem in this way:

Which I think is pretty brilliant, along similar lines as the various bands putting their albums up on their own websites, avoiding the labels. I don't know that it will give them any revenue, but I know that once I've seen something enough that I want to see it at weird hours when I can't get internet at my apartment, it's nice to have a hard copy. And hopefully other people will thinks so to.

So hey. Never seen any Monty Python? Maybe you should.

Sort of way off topic

2009-02-07T21:10:00.002-07:00

So:
Back in elementary school I went through D.A.R.E. and got told over and over how drugs are bad and scary and they'll ruin your life and you should take the drugs the doctor gives you because he's just trying to help but you can't take drugs your friends give you because they're already agents of satan and if you do what your friends do then you'll end up a crazy hobo and probably die in a gutter somewhere cold and alone because nobody loves someone who takes drugs that the doctor didn't instruct them to take.

One of the core messages of the anti-drug movement is that winners don't do drugs. They'd have some kid involved in extreme sports or an olympian or a movie star or a scientist come on and say, 'I do great things, and I don't do drugs, because if I did, I couldn't do great things. Be like me, Don't do drugs! Or you'll FAIL!' and it seemed plausible enough.

But every day that message looks more and more insane. First comes the long list of artists and authors and politicians and athletes and philosophers and whoever else that were alcoholics. There are bunches of them, just droves. It's not everybody, sure, but it's damned near impossible to find anybody that doesn't at least like a beer every now and then, or a glass of wine with dinner or whatever. And you know, alcohol: it's a drug. It's legal, sure, so it's different than a lot of drugs, and it causes various problems (we all know an alchie or two, and we know the drinking and driving statistics), but mostly, it's a drug just like any other drug. It is a chemical substance diluted into water and then flavored up in one way or another. It is socially acceptable in some situations and not in others. But first and foremost it is a drug among drugs.

And so is caffeine. And so is nicotine. And so is advil, though people get pretty suspicious pretty quick if you take advil for fun. And goodness gracious you could write a damned encyclopedia of all of the various successful folks and what chemicals they used to regulate themselves and stimulate themselves and relax or excite or whatever else they were doing. And that's even if you just stick to the legal ones.

But now, on the eve of our third (at least that I know about) druggie president in a row (I know Jimmy Carter smoked pot on the roof with Willy Nelson, but I don't know about Regan or Bush 1) and the winningest ever olympic swimmer turning out to be a pot head, not to mention the supposed scandal that some gawdaful number of professional baseball players [*shock!*] failed drug tests over the years, and the continual rotation of various celebrities in and out of rehab for whatever the hell they're doing, and I'm beginning to feel like maybe, just maybe, those D.A.R.E. folks didn't know for a second what the hell they were talking about.

But they've done their damage and we've got our prohibition and we all treat each other like children that can't control themselves and we won't take an ounce of responsibility for anything we do because if I'm not choosing the chemicals that go into me (I'M ADDICTED! SOCIETY MADE ME! I WANTED TO BE COOOOL) then I can always blame them for whatever shit I've gotten myself into and I won't have to actually face up to the fact that maybe I'm just another asshole that doesn't know what the hell he's doing.

In the meantime I'm going to fear my fellow citizens because who knows what sort of shit they've been putting in their mouths and their noses and their veins and wherever else. They're all almost certainly crazed out of their mind either by the drugs they're on or by their uncontrollable need for more drugs. And if I get between them and their substance there's no telling what they might do.

gah. This stuff has bothered me since highschool, long before I got a taste of anything that altered states in any way that was un-kosher and it only bothers me more now that I know that addiction is conquerable and intoxication can be loads of fun. I'm sick of repression. In all its various forms. I don't think that letting people be grownups wil mean the end of society. Lets punish people when they do things that are actually harmful to themselves or others, rather than punishing them for doing things that we think might lead some of them to maybe do something bad to somebody someday. Because if grownups can't take care of themselves, there arn't any super-humans to do it for them. And pretending to be a super human is not cool. You get to decide what's good for you. And you are allowed to make mistakes. It's cool. You can change. You can experiment. Not everything you do has to become a permanent part of who you are. For real.

I'm not even going to go into all of the problems that having a police state and creating black markets and empowering criminals can cause. I think it should all be clear enough if we take a moment to think about it:
If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
If sodomy is outlawed, only outlaws will have sodomy.
If birth control is outlawed, only outlaws will have birth control.
If drugs are outlawed, only outlaws will have drugs.
If X is outlawed, people will find a way to have it.
When someone commits a crime (a real crime, like hurting someone, or stealing a car, or arson) we can find them and let them know in one way or another that what they did was wrong and hurt people.
But when what a person is or does is a crime, loving the sinner is not compatible with hating the sin. When you think that black people are black because Cain killed Abel (which some people do, I'm not just making that up), it causes certain sorts of stress with inter-racial relations. When people are evil for eating some sort of food or doing some sort of dance or whatever, telling them that they can't do that and that they need to stop or we're putting them in a little box, it just doesn't say I Love You like... I don't know, NOT hating them does.

I feel like the propaganda machine (see also: the media) is kind of finally starting to come around to this crazy liberal view of freedom as actually involving some freedoms, and maybe people will warm up to the idea, but I just feel like there never was a war to be fought. Humans: they like stuff. Sometimes too much. But usually they'll figure that out. Especially if you talk to them and treat them like Humans and let them know that, hey, maybe you like that thing too much. People have gotta be allowed to make a mistake here and there without fear of punishment for it. Mistakes punish people enough by being mistakes. We don't need to add injury to insult. I've learned you can only learn the hard way. But that doesn't mean we need to keep people from learning.

Crazy Platonists

2009-01-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

Crazy ass platonists.

( No results found for "crazy platonists")

Head stand

2009-01-22T17:55:00.003-07:00

This morning I asked my yoga instructor to help me with hand stand. She misheard me and showed me head stand.

I hadn't realized there WAS a head stand. I've always done more hand stands (in gymnastics, in random play) but prefer head stands. More stability, more certainty when you are going to need to come back down. And I can find more stamina there. I feel like if I could figure out how to make my eyes feel like they're not drowning, I could head stand for a long time.

Yvonne got really excited about my head stand. She could tell that I felt much better about it than any of the other inversions we'd done, and that I understood it. Evidently my form there was much better than anything else I've done in the class so far. She came up to me later and told me that head stand was my way "in" to the inversions, and maybe to other poses too.

"You don't learn yoga poses in sequence. Everyone learns them at their own pace and finds their own way."

Coping with the blizzard of inches

2008-12-23T12:22:00.001-07:00

Yesterday we hiked over to the Rocking Frog, because I was going a little insane from news feeds, the snow, the radio and the general immobilization of the city. On the way we saw the 15 bus stuck on 25th.

It was taking up the entire right lane, just hanging out with its hazards blinking. We sat by the window so we could keep an eye on it.

We were there for about two hours, drinking tea and having soup and stewing over What Next. For the entire two hours people kept coming up to the bus doors and peering inside, waving to the driver (who remained in the bus at his seat the entire time) and generally looking like they wanted to board a broken bus.

The bus was stuck in fairly busy area; at 25th Belmont becomes a one way street and people need to move over to Morrison in order to continue west. About every 8 minutes or so a cars would come shimmying around the bus so that they could continue on to Morrison bridge. Some trucks and lighter things had considerable difficulty doing this, and needed a few attempts. All the while, the bus did not move.

As we were leaving we saw another bus creeping along towards Stuck Bus. It had passed 26th already, and was not small enough to continue on Belmont into oncoming traffic, so we weren't sure what it was going to do. It slowed, stopped. The driver got out to go talk to the other driver. Five minutes later, the driver came back and inexplicably proceeded to attempt a climb of 25th. To pass Stuck Bus the way the other cars had been. About 20 seconds after it had begun, Second Bus became stuck like Stuck Bus, although it had the courtesy to slide further backwards, thereby blocking thoroughfare for all vehicles.

Snow: 2
City Buses: 0

Place

2008-12-07T12:44:00.000-07:00

It's interesting what a life does.

I've been struggling with NOCO lately. With Greeley. I keep missing parts of it.

I don't miss the utter vast emptiness of most of the land, or in the heads of so many people I encountered. I don't miss the racism, I don't miss the wealth-gap, the ICE raid, the slaughter house, the poverty. I don't miss the absence of art, the distance between us and more interesting places. I don't miss the need to drive everywhere, the great rolling sidewalks going nowhere in suburbia. I also don't miss winter. Not yet.

But I keep missing the familiarity of it. There are certain places I've been revisiting. Places under trees. Certain drives. The proximity to so many friends and good times.

I'm not sure why I feel this way. I never really felt this about the Springs, or at least I don't recall feeling this about it. I never actually missed it. I ran from there and never looked back, and while there's a certain calm about knowing a place inside out, there is no sort of correctness I feel in going back there.

I will not need to test this with Greeley, since even Dani has left. And I'm okay with that. Because I really did not like living there.

Which makes me wonder why I'm still thinking about it.

Really I knit together all the good places. Estas Park. That little italian place in Boulder. Most of our favorite Denver-places. Pikes Perk. Manitou. The park and all of Missy's neighborhood, the bike ride to the Trib on 7th next to all those houses and all those kids playing with soccer balls and all that wonderful mariachi music. The burritos from that place on 8th. What being at Margie's felt like. In my mind it is all part of one place. And sometimes when I'm tired and insomniatic and too broke to take a bus ride into the city, too sleepy to walk, too worried I'll want to walk when I get there to drive, I think of these places and I wonder. I think of these places as if they were one place, romanticizing what was really not exactly the best time.

And now, I also wonder about the land I see. Because the lushness and the life I see here pulses in a deep, urgent way, in a way I could have never understood without seeing it. And I love where I live more than I have ever loved being anywhere.

I wonder if I am not actually a city person.

I love living here. Every time I leave my neighborhood I still think to myself, I live in the best neighborhood in Portland, and why would I want to live in any other section of town?

But I do not love it with the raw intensity that I love, say, the Willamette valley. Or the land around 99W.

I've been thinking this since July.
Cheryl noticed.
So that's something.

It is time for me to live here. That is certain. Because I am here now, so that means I should be. I also do not know how I would get art started at all if I did not live here, if I did not have the IPRC and billions of tiny galleries and small presses at my fingertips. I have to get started here.

And if I left I could see myself returning. Portland has been very good to me and it feels correct in a way that no place ever has.

Mostly this means I think: I will be able to leave.
I wasn't sure I would be able to, before. All these Germany? India? Migrant middle American farmhand? ideas were with the worry in the back of my mind that leaving Portland would be impossible, once here.

But I think what this means is that is not the case.
I will want to return.
Again and again.
This is home.
What I wonder now: where else is there?

Slowing down

2008-12-07T11:48:00.004-07:00

Lately the ideas have been coming so fast I can hardly stand it. I can hardly catch them. I've taken to jotting them down in a Google Doc -- just sentences or two to capture what I'm thinking -- and then doing tiny thumbnails on the art-trading-card paper I was suckered into buying at the art store on Hawthorne.

I just started a new sketchbook, and the first four pages are about India. The next two are just regurgitations, an attempt to get some self-promotion lit done and out of the way.

I am hesitant to draw these thumbnail ideas in the sketchbook, because I want to force myself to get serious about projects. Somehow I need to see an idea through start-to-finish, and maybe this will help. To finish what I start. To follow all paths all the way to their end. To slow down despite the frenzied pace my brain sets. I need to somehow resist the breathless chase from one fleeting idea to the next. To slow down.

And maybe this isn't right, maybe any and all things need to go into the sketchbook. But that's how I've been doing it and instead of using every little thing ideas get buried and never happen. The sketchbook simply because an urping-bucket, and once something was drawn to a certain point, I grew tired of the idea and moved on to new ones. I've read (though I forget where) that Picasso had this problem. Tiring of ideas sometimes before he even got started.

Some of these old ideas I've come back to. Recently I had to dig five sketchbooks back to find some original camera-angles (which turned out to be far more engaging than what I had been doing). But more often things are buried and are never heard from again. Whilst digging I found so many interesting concepts that were never explored further.

(So remind me: if I ever come up dry, tell me to go back and look at what I haven't done.)

So, if I do thumbnails on separate pieces of paper I can put it up on my bulletin board. I will see them and I will go back to them. They will be very crude, half-drawn, gestures rather than forms, with color ideas scribbled right on top if there are any. These will not resemble the end-result enough for me to want to let it exist on its own. And in the meantime I can walk though the idea in the sketchbook; all the way through. Quickly capture and then slowly execute. That's the plan.

Mostly: I'm tired of running around breathlessly, I'm tired of hurrying. Towards the end of my law-office job I started telling myself hurry hurry ruins curry, which is something I think I picked up from either the laughter club website or on Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw's chai pilgrimage website. It wasn't particularly helpful -- the idea was there, but my heart was not in it. How could it be? I had a job that was faster paced than anything I'd ever done, and I had an energy level that was not matching up, more and more. Day after day I was all but running for the bus, telling myself as I glanced up Belmont at the sunset that sometime soon I would be able to greet the dawn slowly, dressed in a sweater and my hat, not at a sprint dressed in a black rectangle.

Since then I've been trying to focus on slowing down while still maintaining the same pace in terms of work flow. I want it to be a constant moving machine of productivity, but not so fact that I start to lose fingers. So it's finding how to slow down, and where. It's making a point to stop work at 6 and make dinner, wash the dishes, and read for an hour. It's making a point to play fishing with the cat every day. It's making sure I go for the early morning amble yet make sure to start work promptly at 8. It's also about not being too bent out of shape when this doesn't happen. A schedule is a structure, it's not a law. I adhere enough to it most of the time to not need to bind myself to it.

It's still a bit clunky. I still miss library due dates, I've been forgetting to make it to the store in time for the good milk, I can't seem to get Spike fed at the same time every day. I still find myself racing for the bus or to make it to an outing when I said I would. There is still a lot of hurry, where with better planning there might not be a need.

But maybe not. Yoga class last Saturday was a good example of slowing down. And not what you'd think.

I was running late, yet hungry. I thought, I could go to Safeway and get yogurt bars. That's nice and quick, and I'll still make it, just barely. But it was 7:47am when I got there. Class starts at 8.

I thought, no way will I get there in time. No way.

So instead I sauntered. I had a conversation with the stock person. I picked up some sausage and a can of white beans. I answered the cashier's questions about the yogurt bars. It all ended in smiles and a wonderful feeling.

When I got back to the car, it was 7:57. I still made it to yoga.

If I had hurried, I would have worked myself up, felt angry, maybe snapped at the cashier, probably would have caught different lights and would have been just as late, or MORE.

I've been thinking about slowing down. Wanting to, asking myself to, and Saturday I spent some time learning about it.

How about that?

2008-12-06T00:34:00.001-07:00

Q:How do you do sir?
A:By fiat, mostly.

Q:How are you?
A:By the will of god I suppose. It still sounds a bit queer, but the alternatives, by inertia, by the spontaneity of consciousness, etc, strike me as even more queer, so I will just have to allow the traditional responce to stand.

Q:How are you feeling?
A:After impact with an external force elctro chemichal signals are sent through my nervous system and into my brain where by a heiarchial system....etc

And how about that?

2008-12-02T10:56:00.005-07:00

I was out paying close attention, or was I lost inside my thoughts?
These days it's hard to tell what's outside from what's in my mind.
But, oh God, it's beautiful and insatiable the way our chemicals collide.

I was out catching up to tomorrow, or was I caught up in the past?
These days it's hard to tell what's out in front from what's behind.
But, oh God, it's unforgettable and unpredictable the way our chemicals collide.

"I was sleeping in the lilies, or was I up all night?
These days it's hard to tell what's half asleep from fully alive.

We were loving like a landslide, or were we in a fight?
These days it's hard to tell what's right from wrong and wrong from right.
And oh God, it's beautiful and insatiable the way our chemicals collide
And oh God, it's unforgettable and unpredictable the way our chemicals collide.

(lyrics from Cloud Cult's Chemicals Collide)

Sunrise

2008-11-21T08:06:00.001-07:00

Sometimes these things happen

2008-11-12T00:58:00.001-07:00

I talk online with Ray a lot.
And the conversations are often good. We have made some real breakthroughs now and then I think.
But nothing like this had happened before.
And it was real cool.
So I figured I would put it here.

Enjoy:

7:17 PM Ray: So the issues of philosophy, the philosophers job, doesn't go away regardless of the improvment of the world

me: no: the world changes, and so the way the world understands itself changes

7:18 PM its our job to speak the understanding

to make the self-understanding of the world into something that can be looked at, listened to, experienced

Ray: speak.. seek etymology online HO!

5 minutes

7:24 PM Ray: no connection

me: oh too bad

Ray: speak the understanding.

me: mmhmm

we play homunculous

7:25 PM Ray: We are like doctors some times.

Or with the family of metaphors you are using today

landscapers

me: gardeners

Ray: Or maybe...

right

zen

me: archetects

Ray: rock gardens

me: right

7:26 PM Ray: or banzai gardeners.

me: model makers

Ray: But with our fellow humanbeings, or not with them.

me: scientists, poets, etc

Ray: creative children

7:27 PM singers

me: indeed

the role of the philosopher is hard to nail down

because it is hallucinogenic

Ray: riiiight

me: the philosopher changes the way the world sees itself

by showing the world its self

7:28 PM Ray: we are a focal point

me: a hinge

Ray: a mirror

a pool

a cave

me: a baited hook

Ray: a candle

7:29 PM me: a lens

Ray: a snare

an eddie

me: a force

Ray: transparent

poetic

7:30 PM me: tragic

rediculous

Ray: comidic

silent

loud

me: vigelent

Ray: a paradox

passive

me: affective

7:31 PM effected

Ray: aware

blinded

me: wonder-full

Ray: surgery

7:32 PM me: we all taste different

sugery

sour

bitter

bland

7:33 PM sugary*

we build things up, we knock them down

7:34 PM Ray: we watch things get built up and knocked down

we laugh

me: we kill

7:35 PM we birth we nurture

Ray: we die

me: we die

we live

we ask

7:36 PM Ray: we answer

we seek

me: we find

we forget

Ray: we understand

we impose

we trust

7:37 PM me: we doubt

we affirm and deny

Ray: we sing

7:38 PM me: we dance

we are humans being humans

we sit

we breathe

we think

we sleep and wake

7:39 PM Ray: eat and hunger

me: we consume

we burn

we grow

Ray: we wilt

me: we flourish

Ray: a plant

a flower

me: a wallflower

7:40 PM a flower in the field

Ray: we are rich with nectar

or heavy with it

me: we call to the bees

we lure them in

we love them

we need them

they love us

they need us

7:41 PM we feed them

they teach us

we change, they change

Ray: pollinate us

7:43 PM may the hive go on

me: and may there be a myriad of blooms

Ray: fruit and honey

and all that is sweet

7:44 PM me: crystallized air and sun

water and earth

7:46 PM Ray: crystallization.

7:47 PM me: to be metabolized, burned slowly

careful smoke

6 minutes

7:54 PM me: what is going on here?

Ray: internet glitch

me: that is a good answer

Dancing

2008-11-12T00:13:00.003-07:00

I was without dancing for a long time. Real dancing I mean -- dancing that expressed rather than proclaimed, advertised, or was a means to a different end. It wasn't until I met you that dancing came to me in a way that wasn't scripted.

I was in dance classes from about ages 3 - 6. Ballet, tap and later jazz. I don't remember anything about it, save for four things:

1. That we had to have imaginary friends to look at while we learned spins in ballet, and we had to announce their names to the class. Apropos of nothing, just like that. I remember being a bit annoyed at this. Rather reluctantly, mine was Jessica -- a tallish long-haired femme -- and she kind of stayed with me for longer time than I cared to admit after that.

2. We had to learn to "count-off" on our own. There were ten groups and we had to count, in our heads, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8...2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8...3, 2, 3, 4, ..." etc., and I remember it being terribly difficult to keep track of these groups of numbers when we actually did this to music. I remember being glad I wasn't in the front to start off the line. I was always at the end on these cross-stage lines, because the smallest person always got to wave at the audience as she left the stage at the tail end of the line. (Yes. Even then I was the smallest. One year my friend Tanya was in the same class. She was also tiny and during rehearsal we would switch off as end-of-the-line-cherub. But the one day one of the instructors measured us and said, "sorry Maggie it looks like you're the smallest now". I've been the smallest ever since.)

I should mention that I really liked being the end-girl, because you got to be the one to do something different. I did always hope though that nobody thought I was actually breaking any rules by doing that. I wanted them to know that it was not a spontaneous act of self-absorbed cuteness, but something I was instructed to do and did dutifully to give our dance a finish and alert the audience when it was time to applaud. I was the punctuation mark. I went into this at great length in the car on the way to one of my first recitals, so at least my parents knew.

3. The make-up took FOREVER to do, though it always seemed to take longer during dress rehearsal rather than on recital day. I was very uncomfortable with the eye make-up in particular -- the application was tedious and it was a bit frightening to have someone pushing on your eyelids like that.

4. Our tap sessions immediately followed ballet, and at the halfway mark everyone got to change into their loud shoes. I remember being terribly amazed by one other girls toe-heal-toe walking rather quickly back to her spot in the middle of the room. It was something I knew how to do -- we all did -- but for some reason I was in awe of it. It couldn't have been the seeing of it, because we danced in front of a mirror the whole time. Though I don't remember watching myself dance, nor my classmates for that matter. Maybe I was too busy concentrating.

These things I remember about dance are all meta-details. Tiny moments in between the actual rehearsals and performances. They are interesting vignettes that are buried fairly deeply into my psyche and will most likely never leave me. But they have nothing to do with the dancing itself -- I don't remember the moves or how they all strung together. You'd think I'd remember, we usually memorized the entire sequences. Maybe we were so bogged down with counting and remembering steps that muscle memory simply didn't kick in. Maybe I was too young for muscle memory. For whatever reason nothing seemed to stick. I don't even remember wearing the costumes, though (of course!) we kept them for the dress-up box. (Best. Dress up clothes. Ever.)

I also don't remember feeling anything about it. One way or another. When we moved to Colorado there was a combination dance/gymnastics studio near our house, and I opted I opted to only do gymnastics not because I disliked the actual dancing per say, but because there wasn't an ultimate Final Recital where you have to wear make-up or wear itchy sequins. (Not at that age, anyway.) It's just goofing off and doing dangerous stuff under careful supervision. But you can't recreationally tumble for very long, so when we people in my group started to advance and actual competitions were taking place I lost interest.

After that, there were suddenly Dances. To attend. Dark gymnasiums filled with people, sexual tension, and music I wasn't familiar with. The only thing I liked about it was darting around in the darkness trying to find people. I knew how to do but one acceptable dance: a "slow-dance" -- that grasping sway you revisit for weeks after the fact. I would tremble the whole time and think later on how stupid it was that we had to pay money to stand in a dark gymnasium and listen to loud music in order to feel butterflies. I felt perfectly capable of attaining butterflies all on my own, and therefore stopped going to dances.

This was a pretty vocal choice. It had to be, my best friend was a Dancing Fiend. She loved dances, but she also loved boys and boy-drama, and for the most part I just wasn't interested. I was pestered to attend every single dance, and I had to refuse every single one, eventually by saying, "I don't dance." Which was practically the case. I could act like I was carrying an invisible box across our crowded courtyard at lunch time, I could paint a picture about an indignation and hang it on the wall at school (where the Guilty Parties would see them), and I had no problem with performing a skit in almost every single French class. But I could not bring myself to move my body to music. I would scarcely snap in time to a beat.

It was partly this no-dancing identity I had constructed, and partly because I didn't really see the point. It seemed to me that dancing was primarily some sort of sad little mating dance -- we press our stomachs together longingly during a pop song instead of do what we actually want. This idea was reinforced by the dancing one saw on television. The high school dances that in no way resembled actual high school dances. The MTV exhibitionist type of thing. Pure sex. Dancing meant to entice.

Happily, you have dissolved this misconception. Ever since you danced those two weeks away listening to Head Automatica, it became clear that dancing was meant to express, not represent.

Just as singing or screaming connects a clearer path from the mind to the outside world, so too does dance. The body's emotions. And the body can have a lot to say, if you let it.

I have come full circle. The woman who refused to dance in high school now goes out dancing with friends. I hear the slightest beat and I can't sit still. It's taken awhile and I'm certainly no one you could take lessons from, but isn't that the point? You can't take lessons to dance in earnest. - not in an honest way. Instead you have to experience. You have to know what it feels like to achieve something, or fall in love, or smell rain for the first time in months. The joints bend, the ear hears. The mind commands. Apart from that, all there is to do is to remove the inhibitions.

I was thinking about this at work a month ago, when I walked into the workroom to find a legal assistant dancing to the sounds the copy machine makes.

That is where it's at.

I thought about it again when I watched this video.

Ellen DeGeneres said that Americans don't dance enough, which is why there is that dance session just before her show. I think she's right. I also think we have to be careful and draw the line between real dancing and something like this.

You can be as sexy as you want to. Just as long as you actually have something to say.

HAPPY THINGS

2008-11-11T23:39:00.002-07:00

-Banjos

-Skipping

-Baby Laughter

Another Incarnation

2008-11-11T18:05:00.003-07:00

So I'm reading Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and I've been thinking about the Dalai Lama, and the two things in my headspace have produced some interesting ideas about reincarnation.

The thing about the Dalai Lama is that reincarnation is a project that is accomplished through years of study. After being picked as the new incarnation, a Lama goes through years of study of the lives of the previous Lamas, learning just what it is he's been up to all these generations (14 now, which is quite a lot of years of history and memories to absorb while also living your own life). Whatever the case is for the infant chosen, the Dalai Lama becomes the Dalai Lama by reading his history as his own history. By appropriating the lives of those who have come before as his own previous lives, the Dalai Lama actually becomes a part of that liniage, and is in fact a continuation of a single entity. If a nation can exist for thousands of years through the lives of many generations, if a nation is a real entity, and hey, if you can exist for decades though the lives of many generations of your own cells, which exist through generations of various molocules, the Dalai Lama is a person that has lived for 14 generations now. In this sense, he is really re-incarnated. Which is knd of neat, really.

Where Joyce comes in is that his novels are such rich pictures of Joyce himself that reading them seems to me to be a little like studying up on the previous Dalai Lama. By reading his novels, we become, bit by bit, a re-incarnation of Joyce. He lives on through our absorption of his thoughts into our own. But this isn't true of just Joyce, he's just what got me thinking about it. It's true of everyone we read, and the music we listen to, and the movies we watch, and the people we interact with, and (Joyce illustrates this wonderfully) this is true for those things as well: they are conglomoratrions, tapestries woven from so many lives that came before them, intermingled with the lives that directly motivated their creation, intermingled with the lives of their viewers and listeners.

The mad man who believes himself to be Napolean Bonaparte is only mad because he thinks that he is more Napolean than anyone else. We are interpenetrated by thousands of lives of other people, living and dead, who were in turn blended with so many lives themselves. We are made of other people and we make up other people.

This also got me thinking that our creations really are our children in a similar way. What we make takes on a life of its own (as a re-incarnation of us, seperate but not seperate as the case might be) as it moves through one mind and into another, bouncing through so many heads as it changes and grows and echos again.

We are the things we create, we are the things we consume, we are the people we know, we are the places we go, we are the movements and the gestures, we are the raindrops on our face and the stars and the ocean and so many sunrises and sunsets, we are our dreams and we are the stories we tell, we are a history, we are a world.

We are another incarnation of so many things.
And so many things are another incarnation of us.

mmhmm.

This is what we thought of

2008-11-05T08:10:00.000-07:00

Hell Yes.

2008-11-04T22:50:00.003-07:00

God Bless America.

You Betcha.

Thank Goodness, Thanks Everyone.

I'm just glad I get to see it happen.

I'm just glad I was involved, in whatever little way.
This is a new world folks.

Welcome to it.
And again, thanks.

What now

2008-11-04T07:11:00.001-07:00

People ask me what I'm doing, since I don't have a job.

I'm doing the dishes I haven't got to all week.

I'm listening to the rain as I write emails to my loved ones and sit with my cat.

But mostly I am painting and drawing.

Post script

2008-11-01T11:56:00.003-06:00

I feel it necessary to mention that despite all the set-up for Ms. B (of the law firm I recently left) to be an unholy beast filled with tumultuous rage, I never had many problems with her. In our quiet avoident sort of way we got on quite well.

I wronged her a few times, but I did the only thing a sensible person can do. Which is to immediately fess up, take the WELL THAT DOESN'T DO ME ANY GOOD DOES IT, and then go about my day.

At first I didn't see her much. No one really saw her that much aside from her assistants and some of the senior shareholders. But then I started nightly dish-collection rounds, and when she was not in a meeting or on the phone, it was my job to rap softly on her door and ask her if she had any dishes for me. The second time I did this she looked at me and suddenly said, "you look cute today!" I thanked her.

The penultimate time I collected her dishes, she gave me her water glass and told me she'd like another cup of coffee. I said of course and asked her if she took cream or sugar. She told me she took it black, and then said "but I'm disappointed you're leaving! I like you."

"Oh! Thank you."
"But...but that's good...you just do what you need to do."

On Monday I had to pick her up after she gave a speech downtown. Her personal assistant was with her. It was the first time I had heard her really thank someone. She thanked her personal assistant for being there with her, for being moral support. And she said "Ladies. Ladies listen. Someday when you two own your own businesses..." she paused knowingly, we obliged her with a chuckle. Oh you. "...just remember it is so good to just...to have someone there with you."

Then as I drove she began asking me about what I was doing afterward, if I had money (everyone is concerned about me having health care in this economy / current government) and I got into the story a little bit, adding gently "so I'm not just rushing out into the darkness..."

"Oh no I wouldn't think you would...because you are smart...and listen if you ever needed a letter of recommendation you just let me know, because you have made me a believer. You are always well dressed (thank you), very polite, and you have matured well (?) (thank you)."

In its own way this meant a lot to me. It is not because of where she stands socially or how much money she has, but it's because of who she is personally. Seeing other people is not a quality I would have ascribed to her. And while if I had seen her in a supermarket struggling with something I would have (of course) walked up to her and helped her out, it would have been because we were colleagues, not because of any warm feelings. But I think that has changed, and I like that it changed. I made her a believer and she made me one too.

Artistic Differences

2008-11-01T11:13:00.001-06:00

Good things came out of my job. Despite everything.

I learned very small yet helpful tricks. The easiest way to remove seeds from a lemon slice. Being unsure instead of not knowing. The beauty of setting active screen corners on a Mac.

I re-learned how important it is to remember the people behind the curtain. The people pulling strings, making calls, cutting paper, scrubbing crevices, moving furniture, picking a single paperclip off the floor; working elbow deep in filth to make something (or someone) appear wonderful. And how important it is, when confronted with something perfect, to remember all the chaos it must have taken to make that perfection possible. And I was reminded that this is the wrong kind of simplicity.

I learned that I have a much higher tolerance for indignation than I'd previously thought, and that probably I could do just about anything. There was a moment yesterday when I felt I could walk out into a street, stretch out my hand, and actually stop a train if I'd been asked to.I am both validated and unsettled by this.

I learned the small tragedy of doing a good job without knowing it.

One of my exit-interview questions asked if there was something that could have been done to make me stay. It was scripted, but the question had been asked to me in earnest earlier that week. Things had been offered to me. No one begged, but in hindsight I did have a lot of power. I have learned that I don't want that kind of power. I don't want to bend things to fit me, I never want to scream, cause a scene, I never want to force people to look behind the curtain. I want them to have the humanity to do it on their own. When they don't it makes me sad. Not angry. Not self-righteous. Just quiet and subdued.

I see. I say to myself.

I have been reminded of class. Both sorts: "class" in the caste-system sense and in the behavioral sense. I am reminded to my dismay that both are real, alive and well. And they are certainly not the same.

I struggle with feeling epic.

I know I'm supposed to feel epic, but I just don't. For now we could blame it on the tired, the mental fatigue, the sore back and the blisters and the relief that I'm done. My mind wanting only to be right here, focusing only on the simplest things. The correct kind of simple.

You expanded

2008-10-31T00:53:00.003-06:00

some. This is my first run through you, theres a LOT more work to be done here.
Incidentally I have made some improvements to IT as well, but I'm not sure if it's substantial enough to post yet.
I'll think about it.

in the meantime:

you

YOU is Mind encountering mind. Intra-mind in that this will always be A mind as defined, and inter as we have plurality of minds.

Conversation
every interaction between 2 minds is first and foremost conversation
give and take of signals/symbols
exchange
is impossible to avoid:
each makes up part of the environment for the other, and each is a system of effects/affects of the environment
effect/affect
minds are effects of effects, are affected by their environment
active affect, being-towards, is an effect first.
the reciprocal passive effect is still conversation, but without a you-symbol
So much magic in the active affect
the impossibility of predicting outcome
underlying trust (impossible to avoid, effect/affectwise)
the active affect is an attempt to effect: it always involves a you-model which is always incomplete
good conversation increases the complexity of the you model (and then also the self model if its any good)
(negative possibility of mistaking the you-model for you
(only with fairly complex you-model, little interaction, or very controlled circumstances) )
conversation is building a new mind
the exchange is the working of the mind
environment becomes shared
a we symbol (self symbol for that mind) forms
from interplay of you symbol and self symbol
initially
but interaction of we symbols and you symbols and self symbols results in central, unowned we
GOSH side notes: Beeees! and flowers! polination and also Fruit bearing and equilibrium of all sorts. (at symbol level anyway)
[[symbol level equilibrium is love (the bee loves the flower and vice versa)]]
/Confrontation
is a not just a side note
as a form of conversation
is active affect (in order to be true confrontation, otherwise its competition)
(which is happenstance/result of trust/mistrust)
parrallel with mistrust, just as conversation is parallel with trust
though all conversation is a complex of trust & mistrust
No Value Judgments Here.
arms race, though now its a symbol race rather than signal race (which is what trust/mistrust is)
so it involves a reversal & possibility of destruction
but also creation (through arms race, and as confrontation, as conversation means the building o a new mind)
(especially if neither is wholly destroyed)
[[so: why not just side note?
Sex: starts as a virus. Or the appropriation of a virus.
which would start at signal level (as the primary is environment)
but when a primary makes use of the virus, then its a symbol (complex of signals)
So (and of course) sex is a result of the trust/mistrust arms race.
which makes it confrontation which is conversation
a child is a we-self-symbol here. flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood.
SO WE START AS WE (which is still, of course, unique and NOT a sum)
We/you/I

Question here is: how specific to humans should I be? what claims am I making? what is going on here?
[something neat]

As the product of conversation circumscribed by two, a baby starts as we
at conception it is evenly divided (informationwise) but it tilts more towards mother in mammels in womb
Maybe look at different kinds of birth/parent situations?
as soon as born though often earlier (if read stories, talked to etc), the baby is a you.
no self-symbol yet
but parents (normally) encourage it
the conversation continues with the child. There is love (hopefully)
At some point, we notice ourselves (our symbolset gets complicated enough to have a self symbol)
Now we are have an I
but it is alienated
mirror view, etc
the I shows up. There is a self. But it is always incomplete.
Self as object
Self as relation to others and/or relation to the world (by the nature of the self-symbol) (as a you for I)
[[language gets fucking rediculously tricky here. "I as you for I" means something, but there will need to be
careful, careful navigation of these waters]]
Then self as body
Then self as mind
id/ego/id-ego
id IS first, and so first self symbol is a bundle of desires and fears and impressions
not a project of any sort
self-symbol without self-consciousness
the freedom of children to be what they are (not acting yet)
Soon though (very soon more often than not) we begin to understand how other people see us
so ego. the self that we see through others eyes
which fairly quickly takes over the whole self symbol (because of its complexity)
The id-ego struckture
If id is unselfconscious and the ego is selfconscious, the id becomes unconscious
what escapes the ego symbol we think of as id
everything that we are that is not part of our (publicly defined) self model
so but then we can know that the ego is incomplete and add an id symbol
which makes for a bigger self model, the id-ego struckture
which still (necessarily) leaves things out
self understanding limits
because our model is always simpler than we are, it cannot predict what we will do
and so we are in conversation with ourselves. This is why the self symbol is You.
and so the self symbol, and self consciousness, is NOT I.
strange loop/wolfram
This is mathematically true, etc
conditions of self - > structure of self
this self symbol is given by the environment (usu. parents)
is historically structured then
is the result of a conversation
is an active part of that conversation
which has a VAST range (the homonculous is you)
derrida's trace: differing differed, universality of that
So but symbols
and that's not what we are

so then, what am I?

You are

2008-10-21T21:04:00.001-06:00

a plant
a hedonist an addict a materialist a schizophrenic
happies an artist a helper young and old
a beeper a bzzer a burper
an anchor the magic the real
adventures afternoons sunsets the moon
a reason a driver a blanket a bug
a brar beast a small feast delicious
welcome

I am

2008-10-21T21:03:00.001-06:00

an event and environment
a hallucinogen a parasite a satellite
a bodhi a body a beeing a hive
an echo reflecting a dreaming alive
a signal a symbol a reading a lie
a bear a sheep
a movement asleep

more it plan

2008-10-21T01:08:00.001-06:00

which would seem ungrammatical. But really.
Here's more of the planning for It (the first third)

it

What is?

Pitfalls:
**None/Some** Thing Thing Being Is fuckall.
right: lets not got too far there, differance and all that

WE"RE MODEL MAKING HERE, NO NEED TO WORRY ABOUT WHAT REALLY IS THE CASE THANKS!
Also: There is a science o the human mind specifically, and there are lots of people making models of it of various sorts. Their work is all well and good and I'm not out to say they're wrong. This is about figuring out what a mind can be. What are the elements required for a self to emerge. We must keep our eye on that

Simple/Complex
-the single simple
(parmenides)
LETS NOT THINK THESE THINGS: But: the single is really Some rather than None
And: The impossibility of simples (from the but: the simple is a complex of none and some)
LETS JUST NOTE: IT CANNOT BE A MIND
why:
Change. The end.
So we have two options:
-plural simples: complex of simples
(still one, sort of)
we have to get at least somewhat away from the simples themselves to have anything we're going to call a mind here
AND, we only technically have bottom plurality:
complexes are impossible to concretely distinguish
so they arn't really things-plural, though we can make arbitrary distinctions that work to some degree
-the single complex: complex of complex
(only sort of single, as its divisible)
And specifically a fractal one, something we can get a grip on. Normally this will imply elements, but they might never show up at any level of zoom (we can have infinite complexity down and up, just for arguments sake) Otherwise we've got mush.
every level of zoom is the same, sort of.
from any level we see simpler below (as here is composed of those) and more complex above

Only with simples do we start with many.
We don't start with simples
We don't start with many
We start with much

Much/One/Many/One
what's much? (why is that not one yet?)
So then one of much
then many one
which can be one

((We play this game here so to know what we are playing with))

{{Chaos/Order}}
[at the lowest level of zoom (at our pixels) we will have mystery as there will be no detail, hense random at that level, but order will emerge from there: random random random means pattern pattern pattern]
Unstable/Stable
this is assuming time. but we're in third person land so we get to do that.
if stable then no change
Oh! unstable then
if no stable, then just constant, ABSOLUTE (otherwise we have a gauge) change, which is ridiculous.
we need grey to make this interesting
So balance of stable from unstable
Evolution!
every system with this balance of stable and unstable (which is no archemedian point) will evolve.
simple(r) stables interact to make complexer things, etc
Village - > child
we need a lot of the same sort of simple(r)s in the same place to get complexs of them
Environment tends towards complexity
The vast proliferation of mind.
MIND: a kind of semi-stable structure (complex in nature)
that: reacts to environment
by: signals (not quite symbols, but close)
basically if-then structure of sufficient complexity to warrant treating it as such (my threshold is low, but it needent be for there to be fireworks)
any two minds that interact are a mind (by this deffinition of mind)
Symbols as complexes of signals
structure strcture makes it go
The Self-symbol is the complex of signals that react directly to the mind in which it is a symbol
so a model of the mind
so some brief implications about simplicity/complexity thereof
The rise/myth of individuals
Minds with parts that take care of themselves (and are minds too) Succeed!
individuals plural, not the topmost level, minds that deal with minds
all interactions thereof are of a bigger mind
/are signals
/are parts of symbols
yay evolve go (implications of all kinds)
As mind evolves its parts become more mindlike (towards complexity)
Culture/individual
the signal-set and hense symbol set comes from enviroment
when enviroment is a mind, the symbol set then is a gift of the enviroment and of that mind
as in, is given by it as a whole
any part of a mind is also a signal/symbol
The self symbol can be generated spontaneously, but it can be encouraged to
or prepared for
The nature/nurture debate is silly: the nurture has been determined by the nature has been determined by the
to see the way its silly is to know what I mean here
Public/Private
witt arguments about language
how deep that goes?
everything is interaction with the mind that you are made by
so. Deep.

The Voice

2008-10-15T23:37:00.002-06:00

Spike really likes singing.

He hasn't shown a particular dislike to any music I've played, but he will curl up with his eyes and ears heavy with contentment when I play, say, "It's a Big World". The soundtrack to "Once" is having a similar effect.

He likes acoustic guitar and simple voices. He likes clear harmonies -- thirds, not seconds. He particularly likes live singing. Mom's old songs as I sing them when I do dishes sometimes in the late evening. I sing Mom's songs and I sing what I know of Grandpa's songs and then I switch to God's songs -- hymns I've known since before I could read from when I would sit under folding tables during choir practice -- and now I sing "It's a Big World" and whatever that first song is. It's nice to have an actual being to ask.

Are you a beach? Are you the sand? Are you the wave that washes up upon the land?

He also has been enjoying the audiobooks at night. During the Drawing Hour I sit and listen to 90ish minutes of "The Hummingbird's Daughter," (which is read by the author and very good -- it helps to have someone who knows how to pronounce the Spanish and say it as it should be said,) and he will lay on the bed or sit with me sometimes on the stool and listen.

Something must resonate in the voice, in a cross-species sort of way. There is something about hearing auralizations that is somehow correct. At first I thought that it may just be that his first house had far more ruckus than he gets here, but it isn't just noise. He doesn't really respond to movies -- pictures or scripted words set to music. But bare-voiced singing and talking in long unbroken strips seem to captivate him in a very interesting way. So there must be something there. Something deep and True.

And all this is really interesting, since figures in my art have suddenly started to have things to say.

Pieces always SAY something. But the literal world bubble has been a relatively new development. Which sort of will culminate in the silent shout piece I am trying to work out. The unsayable murk and colorful mess of how I've been feeling.

Some mood lighting

2008-10-13T23:58:00.002-06:00

So here is a little bit of what I have been throwing together.
It is the messiest of messes right now, but that's how these things start, or that's how this thing has started, or something.
I kind of got carried away a little, more than once, and I am fairly certain that a lot of the wrestling with this project will be in getting high flying ideas to come down to earth in one way or another.

This is nowhere on the outline, btw. This is a sort of introduction to an introduction. A prelude to an explanation of purpose. A prologue of sorts.

mmmhmm
(What is calling itself to be here?)

So: a funny thing happened to me on my way into the 21st century. A maxim was echoed, time and again, from every corner, from the newspapers and newscasts, from movies and magazines, from saturday morning cartoons and road-trip radio broadcasts, from novels and picture books and classrooms and pulpits and thousands and thousands of commercials, it resounded in the air and it colored the walls. Be Yourself. It was a message the world seemed desperate to convey. It was impossible to avoid, ubiquitous, omnipresent, but also inescapable in form. One wanted to scream: I am being myself. It was all one could do. With all the repetition though, one could come to have some doubts. Are you being yourself? Have you even found out who you are? How can you know if you are being yourself if you don't know who you are? Who are you anyway? And how can you be yourself, or fail to be yourself for that matter? What the hell was going on?
It's that last question that's most nagging. What the hell was going on? "Be Yourself" was being called, but from whence? by who? Was this some tug of conscience?
To confront this call is utterly destabilizing, everything starts to shift and tilt as the words come into focus. Be,Yourself. We no longer know anymore what it is to be, what form our self might take. We no longer have any idea how to follow the command, or what is even being commanded, we have only a raw force. What at first seemed simple and friendly takes on a bizarre, if not unplayful appearance. And it is not unplayful. In its mysteriousness the call to be yourself can invite us to explore and experiment, to find out how to find out, if we are the sort attracted by the mysterious rather than repelled.
But I've wandered a bit afield already. Be yourself. As a call so many of us have heard, it stands as a prime example of a kind of weirdness that has yet to be unpacked in any full way, and this particular instance hinges on the Self. Selves, it seems, abound. They are the most everyday of things. And yet it is nigh impossible to get a good explanation of just what a self is. The simple reasoning seems to be that since you have a self, and you'd be crazy to deny that you do, you must know what it is. Just look at it if you don't. You're the best judge of your own self. And quit with this philosophical nonsense, I was only trying to be helpful.
But sometimes philosophical nonsense can take on a life of its own, and an investigation of just what a self is is exactly the sort of thing that feeds off of itself. It is no simple task however, it has in one way or another been taken on in a myriad of ways, and every last attempt has fallen short of the mark. Many claim to have been to the peak, to have conquered once and for all the self, but every flag that flies on that mountain only serves to suggest more to climb. Some time ago it came into vogue to attempt to map out the self, but to leave room about the edges for shadow and mystery. 'Here there be dragons'. This was announced with the same sort of finality as every previous trek up the mountain, as a flag at the peak, with a dire warning not to traverse any farther. More recently there have been those that want to deny anything hidden beyond such impenetrable fog. Only what can be seen, they maintain, exists, and where there is no sight there is no mountain to climb. There are marks along the trail though, of some who wandered far out into the fog long ago, and their accounts have been slowly spreading through the west, mingling with our own tales of intrepid explorers of the self, tempting some to wander off into that mist, perhaps never to bee seen again.
I do not wish to make any claim of finality. I do not wish to put up flags. Many of the roads I have traversed have been well marked by those that came before me, and I believe it is clear that whatever else might be true, there is a lot more exploring to be done.

Preliminary stab

2008-10-11T13:40:00.003-06:00

So: Some of you may have noticed that I've been thinking about things.
Some of these things are related to one another. Slowly I have been solidifying an understanding of what we are. And more and more it looks like there are some fundamental differences between what is starting to show up for me and what the standard understanding is. So. I'm staring to think that I should organize all this and structure it into some sort of work. As I am doing that my plan is to put my notes and drafts and things here. I have been wanting for there to be DVD-extras type work for a number of things that I have read, and I feel like it will generally enhance the possibility of understanding what I'm up to in the end if I am as transparent as possible. There may be a danger of putting all my cards on the table, but really in the end I'm pretty sure that the only thing that can come of that is more conversation which can only help things along. We are all involved in the project, and I am just a locus of its activity. As it will come to show. I hope.
This is perhaps the first official step of a thousand mile journey that I have been on for a while, and it has a lot in common with my journey west: it is an exploration, and I am in some ways alone, and in other ways more connected than I have ever been. I kind of feel like an astronaut; I am far far away from where most people are residing, and communication with the general population has become difficult. But I have a radio link to a few of you, and that bond is stronger for it being my only tie back to the planet where most people live. And maybe we all feel like that. Maybe some times more than others.
In any case, here is the initial outline I threw up this morning. It is the sketchiest of sketches. A shadow of a shadow. But it's something. Here we go:

it

Chaos/Order
Much/One/Many/One
Unstable/Stable
Evolution!
The vast proliferation of mind.
The rise/myth of individuals
Culture/individual
Public/Private

you

Conversation
/Confrontation
We/you/I
Self as object
id/ego/id-ego
self understanding limits
strange loop/wolfram
conditions of self - > structure of self
derrida's trace: differing differed, universality of that

I

my life is this moment
my life
this moment
is this
moment
my
life is this moment

So we have this spiral inward, from the initial, scientific, mathematical understanding, to a psychological, symbolic, personal, to finally a breakdown of the phenomenal world and its showing itself in the enlightening moment. A lot of what this aims to be is a study of enlightenment as a concrete possibility of any self understanding. And how that appears, and what it shows itself as, what it shows us about what we are.
This will, inevitably, result in more you change than I change (as far as this thing is structured. You as self-object, I as this moment), as any understanding of the self that enters the general consciousness will become part of the self symbol (and is already preconditioned by that symbol), altering how we talk about selves, and in turn how we experience the self. But I think I'm shooting at some of the roots of the normal structure, even as I am using that structure to get there. We've been headed in this direction for a while.

And so that it's clear: This may be a systematic approach, but it is about the impossibility of any system (or systems) ever being adequate. This is not in any way an attempt to capture the world in a net made from a part of the world. This is an attempt to describe the weaving of such nets, and their becoming tangled up in themselves as they are stretched to capture a world that includes the net they are.

My next objective is to write an initial attempt at an introduction, which I hope to have up here sometime this week. I will keep you all posted as that happens.

(here we go)

A rough sketch

2008-10-03T15:35:00.003-06:00

Here is a kind of sketch of Descartes' world as I understand his thought. We have these nice crystal clear distinctions, and there at the center we have our mind, our indivisible soul which suffers no change and houses all Rational Truth, the light of reason shines from there and lets us know that God exists and guarantees the truth of what we perceive to be true if we're careful enough. (God doesn't show up in the model, btw, because of the infinite and incomprehensible nature of said God, which is revealed in our thinking as incomprehensible, but also as perfect and existing. For Descartes anyway.) We are cut off from the world as a whole, the unbridgeable gulf you see is located precisely in the pineal gland, which is the place where our soul interacts with the world. Somehow. The objects of perception, the will and the emotions are all things that affect our thinking soul, and they are closer or further from the center depending on how directly they are related to the world or to the soul.

This model has pervaded modern thought in a lot of ways.

Here is a kind of picture of what comes out of phenomenology if we were to try and make the same kind of diagram, which might just be a bad idea in this case (trying to throw a net over the whole world, as it were). But here we go anyway.

So what we're looking at is the key differences here, as a true diagram may just be an impossibility. The first thing I am indicating here is that there are no hard lines really. We can kind of organize these various symbols into a kind of inner/outer order if we want to follow Descartes as much as we can, but everything is too interlinked to really separate one area from another. "MIND" on this diagram refers both to the minds of other individual people as well as collective minds that one is a part of or witness too, as well as the mind one is. We also have a kind of Klein bottle structure in which the absolute inside and the outside collapse. Both are mysterious, and everything revealed, all objects of consciousness, show up between them, never wholly inner or outer altogether. This is in stark contrast with the Cartesian model, in which thoughts are purely inner, and wholly independent of any possible world. Rational truths, like those of mathematics and logic, are for Descartes indubitable because of this distinction. In the phenomenological model, however, mathematical and logical truths are only indubitable from within their own systems of presuppositions, and there are no indubitable axioms whatsoever.
The place of the body is also wholly different here, as it blurs with the self as the self is revealed through it and as it. This also means that while the Cartesian model has a hard and fast line between the physical and the mental, there is no such line here.

I'm not entirely sure if these models make things more or less clear, but my goal here is to set them out as a first draft for consideration. I have strong suspicions that any such model will be at least partially misleading in the phenomenological case, but as a window into the contrast with the Cartesian worldview I think it might accomplish something. Maybe.

Someone else

2008-09-23T23:43:00.003-06:00

I kind of feel like I've been saying this stuff for a while now.
But apparently so has Kevin Kelly.
And I read WIRED and he edits it so maybe that has something to do with it and maybe not.
But either way, the guy knows what's up.

And he's worth a look:

Here I am

2008-09-23T23:37:00.003-06:00

So. That's me, yes?
A wish on a walk, pulling along this mechanism behind me.
But it's also that mechanism that makes me move.
It animates the wish I am.
And it just whirls along, and on I go.
But that mechanism is a wish too.
And its animation is motivated too.
And the gears only get larger as we zoom out.
And the wishes, they too must grow.
So. That's me yes?

2008-09-10T07:50:00.001-06:00

When we're together it's hard to remember to update a post. Instead we get all busy with living life.

2008-08-31T22:24:00.001-06:00

The sketch of you at work reminded me of this scene:

Draw every day

2008-08-31T12:19:00.002-06:00

Part of going it alone -- that is, trying to do this without the benefits of a design degree and professors stroking my hair and calling me their precious savant -- is reading stuff in magazines and trying to figure out ways to actually do this. There's the complicated number-crunching aspects which I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of, there's the self-promotion and the dogged perseverance that goes alone with that, and there's the simple How In The World Can I Do This, No One Ever Looks At My Stuff, Oh What's The Point anguish you have to conquer. You'd think when your soul is naturally rejuvenated and revved up by drawing in the first place this would never come up, but you'd be surprised. Thankfully there are places you can go when your brain is completely bare. One of them is the art museum of course, and you can also sit outside and force yourself to do something. But when nothing feels right, there's always the periodicals section at the library.

I've been reading HOW, ID, and print off and on for years now. It started with a bored evening at Barns and Noble when I was in high school. I forget exactly why I had been poking around in the art&design magazines, but probably Lori had something to do with it -- she had to do with SO MUCH in those days. She had been talking up International Artist, which sometimes had some good stuff so presumably I started there. But then I picked up How's design annual (2003) which featured a teal illustration from Anja Kroencke on the cover. It wasn't something I would do, particularly, but was inspiring to me in a completely new way. New parts of my brain opened up to this image. I looked at it and thought, that's a really good use of a magazine cover. So much better than the gaudy fashion magazine stuff, yet it recalls it somehow (it was just a lone female figure in the center with words all around her). I logged the color away to use later on in something (prismacolor-ly speaking: parrot blue softly under aquamarine, light aqua and maaybe a hint of deco blue. Maybe). I noted how the shirt was striped yet there was no actual outline, remembering what I was learning from Hen at the time in Drawing 3 at school. Negative space. Though later I would realize this is also something the cubists were into: defining a shape by other shapes. The figure took up most of the page yet the face was not visible, which was counter to what Lori had been telling kids who drew Warner Brothers cartoons from her stash of cards in the tackle box. Start with the head -- people will notice is you cut off the head, but they won't notice if you cut off the feat.

When I looked inside at the work from the various firms from that year my mind simply boiled over.

I still have that magazine, although now the pages are ragged and feature gaps where I have taken things out for reference or collage. The cover is scarcely attached. But I like to remembered where it started, too. Up until that point, my design world had essentially consisted of the Allergic Child books and vague ideas about doing that forever. Nebulous ideas outline in a Black 0.3mm Zig Millennium inkpen. But this broke the art world wide open. New words like self-promotion and corporate identity. New concepts like art-inspiration.

This is effectively when I left the world of fashion magazines behind forever. I never read them for myself, necessarily, but something within the colors and shapes triggered something helpful deep in my mind that got my sketchbook out when I was running a little dry. The discovery of actual creative publications got me actually painting and thinking in utterly new ways. And there's no need to stop at the big official publications -- once you're in the section it's easy to spill over to the "culture" category and pick things up like Swindle and Anthem, the latter where I found my boy Jim Houser and the former featured him in an article not long after.

Back in July I was at the library, doing just this, and I came across an article in How by a certain Danny Gregory. He said many things in the article, but it boiled down to: draw every day.

Draw anything. Draw a bagel. Draw your lunch. Draw your hands. Draw your sofa. Draw the people waiting outside for the bus. Draw a book. Draw a tree. Draw that weird feeling you have. Draw an egg. Draw anything, but for heaven's sakes draw. Draw every single day.

I try and do this anyway but making it a point, it's an unwavering assignment, intrigued me. Okay, I thought. Let's draw every day. That afternoon I came home and drew part of my workstation:

I haven't been posting accordingly, but I have been trying to make sure I draw every day, even if it's just scribbles out in front of the library on my lunch hour. Work has been very difficult for me for the past week or so -- so much so I haven't wanted to post about it.

Before last week though, the streets had a lot to say.

Slowly but surely the scribbles begin to have more of a life, angles come easier to me, and the rest of the day feels nicer knowing I've spent some time doing what it is I really want to be doing. There's no greater motive here -- I don't usually use this time to sketch out something for a big final project -- it's simply the pleasure of drawing.

Rekindling the fire within is what this is.

Quitting

2008-08-24T21:00:00.003-06:00

So this past Friday I quit my job. Many people were surprised that I showed up for my last day. Some people were surprised that I would show up for work in general. It was pretty clear I did not enjoy my employment. The thing was, I didn't mind the specifics of the thing all that much. The people were nice, the job was easy, we had air conditioning. Customers were almost always a bundle of insane nerves, but they were mostly willing to work with me and make things run smoothly. I mean, I was basically walking them through something that would just as easily have been done with a form online. So I was just the input devise. The keyboard. A keyboard with a voice maybe, but not much more than that. But I did hate my job.
I hated that it turned people into keyboards. I hated that there are people that have been there for seven years. I hated that the economics of the situation demanded that the time employees spent working was more valuable than employees were paid. I hated that this is the modern world. I hated the system I was a part of. I hate AT&T. I hated helping people to feel entitled. I hated the needless team building for a job that is performed without any kind of teamwork whatsoever.
I was supposed to hate these things. The hate was built into the situation. It was the lens through which the job was shown.
They don't do that on purpose. I know that. But the situation slowly reveals itself as more and more ludicrous and less and less worthwhile. There was no reason for this job to exist. The customers don't want it to exist. The company doesn't want it to exist.The employees only want it to exist so that they can pay rent. It is a job that wants to disappear. It wants to be automated. It wants to be an online form. We're just not there yet. But the needlessness of it shows through. There's just so little positive about it.
The thing is, I helped people as much as I could, because I still thought of them as people. And I didn't want to do anything crazy on the last day, because I knew who would have to clean up after me.
I was just glad to be done.
And I still am.

Insurance is a racket. Sometimes. It's gambling against yourself. And so you only win by losing. And otherwise the house makes bank. Insurance should not be for-profit. Ever. The end.
I understand that it makes sense to pool our resources together in case something bad happens. I just don't think anyone deserves to be made fabulously wealthy by the process. It takes people to run it. And they need to make a living. But it should not be publicly traded (Asurion is owned by CNA which is owned by Loews, which is sort of a super-corporation that is owned mostly by one guy, Bob Tisch, and then by his three sons (from what I can tell). It's stock symbol is the single letter L and it is traded on the NYSE). Its goal should not be profit. It is a public good, where we get together and say to ourselves, 'hey, it costs a lot to pay for medical bills, but I don't have them all that often. Also getting in a car crash is expensive, and while I hope to not have one, I don't even think I could pay for one at all if it happened. How about we all put a little bit of money in a box and then if something happens to one of us, we'll be able to pay for it?" On that level it makes a ton of sense. But as soon as there is a house making money on the deal, it's Vegas without any of the fun. For the people betting. For the house it's just as much fun. With a good understanding of statistics, some good starting capital, and creatively written contracts, a person can make some serious bank in the insurance biz. Especially since it makes so much sense to people. But basically the insurance companies rob people blind, and do it with a smile. And make billions of dollars sitting back and watching the money roll in and trickle out. Without doing anything really useful. Because if it's automated, if there's no one at the top collecting, if it's not trying to squeeze every dime out of people that it can, it's easy. We do the same thing as the insurance companies do, but without trying to turn a profit by doing it. And it helps us out when we need it.
Ah but that would be socialism.
Like the roads.
Or the schools.
Or the MILITARY. (This one drives me bonkers. That it's the one thing the most Ayn Randian of capitalists will be all for socializing and keeping socialized. It's the one they won't let go of. And it's the first one I'd want dismantled.)
Or the libraries.
Or the parks.
Or just about anything in this country. Half of the corporations are socialized with goverment subsidies anyway. So lets drop the sheen of capitalism guys. And stop robbing each other blind. Maybe that would be nice?
At least with insurance. And banks.
Let's start with those.
I think it would be a good start.
And hey, making health insurance not-for-profit and state run has worked in places, and we're looking at doing that here.
I'm just saying let's apply that logic to all insurance. I think that would be just dandy.

In any case. I am no longer part of that business. And hopefully never will be again.

Moving

2008-08-24T19:14:00.003-06:00

Hey internet,
I've been really distracted lately, because I am moving from Colorado to Oregon, and I just bought a car, and I just found a place to rent, and I have been cleaning and packing and quitting my job and feeling anxious and exhausted and just not quite right, but also excited as all hell, and the skies have been lovely and I've had some good times and I don't have to work for a few weeks which is just fantastic.

I have read some books:
I read DFW's Infinite Jest, which is like watching an explosion in reverse motion slowing down and slowing down as it goes. It's maybe a little self indulgent, but it is nothing short of incredible. If you have a month or so with absolutely nothing to do, like if you're trapped in a hospital bed or something, or if you want to just amble through a book over the course of a few years (which is also a enjoyable way to read it, I hear), it's a good one to pick up. Mr. Wallace does his research, and it shows. And I agree with Dave Egger's introduction to my edition: as much of a mountain as this book is to climb, it is friendly in its own way, the language itself flowing easily over you. This is not Finnegan's Wake by any means. It's not even House of Leaves. It's just big mostly. And fairly convoluted. There's a lot going on in a very short amount of (chronological) time, considering the size of the thing. And it's kind of always just on the verge of chaos, with only a few little bursts of outright madness, and even those seem to happen in a kind of slow-mo ballet of discord sort of way. Nothing rushes by. We take our time with details. And there are a lot of them. Details. So many. Minutia of every stripe and color. It makes me want there to be a "Making Of" feature to watch (or read) after I'm through with it. To see the sorts of planning and structuring that went into it. To see more deleted scenes (it has a few that sort of are. Deleted scenes. They show up as footnotes here and there. Not quite the novel proper, but a sort of side quest for the inquisitive.) and casting and whatever else. It would be fun I think. It also has an infectious language; I find myself wanting to say 'howling fantods' and any time anyone uses the word 'chortle' in the future I'm going to at least think, if not say, 'Chortles. Chortles are good. We like chortles.' The book is absolutely fascinating in all sorts of ways, and it's the sort of thing you have to see to believe. Gold Star for Mr. Wallace. Recommended.
I read Homer's two books. The first one is a bit overblown. Anything that involves Achilles directly is wonderful, he is by far the most interesting character, and the chapter about his shield is fantastic. But overall it got tiring just hearing who killed who for pages and pages with nothing much else going on. The gods have some fun scenes, but mostly in the service of getting us to yet longer lists of the newly dead.
The Odyssey on the other hand is fantastic. Odysseus is no Superman, and while he is bigger and stronger and smarter than your average Greek, he gets his share of knocks on the head before making it home. He is not a modern hero. Those who have committed crimes against him are killed without mercy even though they beg forgiveness and promise to repay the debt tenfold. These days if a villain begs forgiveness and the hero kills him anyway, something twisted is going on. We can only have that happen if we do not believe that the villain is really sorry, and only if they've done some pretty terrible stuff. These guys thought Odysseus was dead. So they were trying to marry his wife. Who let them live in his/her house and eat his/her livestock. (Sidenote: it'd be crazy for the Greeks to think of any of it as belonging to the wife, but really. She was there for 20 years on her own. It's her stuff.) And refused to either kick them out or marry them. So she was just as much to blame as any of them were. And as soon as people realized that Odysseus was alive they realized that they had made a mistake. And it was an understandable mistake, the man had been gone 20 years. Plenty of time to declare him deceased. So when he showed up they apologized and said they'd make it up to them. And he said, "Nope, I'm gonna kill every last one of you." And so he did. Our present morality makes Odysseus into a monster. So that's interesting. The other really interesting thing is that The Odyssey has an addressee. The Loyal Swineherd, a servant of Odysseus, is referred to by the poet in the second person. You. In the Odyssey, 'You' is the loyal swineherd. That was something I didn't know before reading it. And so the direct address coupled with the swineherd's story of remaining loyal to his long gone lord and being rewarded for welcoming in a broken stranger (the lord in disguise) and taking care of him and praying for the unlikely return of the lord just sent my brain spiraling into new-testament land, thinking about waiting for the second coming and all that, and I may have just been being crazy but it started to seem like the second coming of Jesus stuff is some kind of metaphorical projection of Odysseus onto Jesus and it started seeming like that made the horrific violence of Revelations make more sense, but then I had to go and start thinking about Jung and whether this sort of thing is just archetypal symbols in the collective unconscious or if I'm just way out of my depth and need to come back to land.
So then I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower, to kind of come back to earth a bit. Because of juxtaposition I found it paralleling Infinite Jest in a number of ways. They are both books that happen in the wake of a suicide, with main characters that are precarious, gifted, substance abusing adolescents and a mood that is both happy and sad at the same time. It may just be that the list of leitmotifs in Infinite Jest is big enough to include just about anything, but The Perks felt like a book written in a sub-set of Infinite Jest themes. It was no where near as encompassing. But it was beautiful. I did have a Bad Ending! reaction, but I guess that happens sometimes. Can't win every time.
I don't think I've mentioned Chip Kidd's The Learners on here, or Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. Both of those were pretty great. Chip Kidd is just wonderful. Awesome guy. I want to have pizza and a soda with him. Siddhartha was a bit unbalanced, but the parts that were spot on were spot on, and it had a nice arc to it. Overall a good time.

So that's sort of where I've been.
More on various other things soon.
There's more cleaning and packing to do.
Have a nice weekend Internet.
Be sure and enjoy whats left of the Olympics.
I'll be back real soon.

ho ho ha ha ha

2008-08-21T20:24:00.001-06:00

This is it.
This is exactly what I was talking about.

Back in high school I had a "media matters" class. It was one of my last classes senior year, a fantastic class, the class where I was asked by the teacher to stand up as an example of how people need not follow the current mandate about fashion to look good. (The same class with "Crystal Beth," if I've mentioned that at all.) (If not ask me to.)

It was one of those multi-grade-level elective classes that was very open with itself, so that by the end of it we had definite personalities throughout the room. They varied. Mine was, ultimately, happiness.

It was a good year -- I had finally conquered some of the larger demons floating around in my mind, the end of school was coming, I had about 5 art classes that semester, I wasn't working at the juice shop anymore, I knew for certain I was graduating. I had returned to center, and that center has always been pretty positive. One day we were asked to bring in a CD and play our favorite song for the class. Well, the first minute or two of our favorite song. Someone played Evanescence's "Haunted", which I learned that day to be, out of context, one of the darkest and most sinister intros ever recorded. Immediately following this I played my choice -- Bela Fleck's "Aimum," from Outbound. Quite a different soul-story.

Once we had a discussion about trends in "cool". We had just watched a video clip lining up goth > tattoos/piercings in younger and younger people > insane clown posse in a linear time-lapsed progression, suggesting that cool is a pursuit of youth, and that the youth are trying to say "I am more extreme and dark than you are". Dark/violent/extreme = cool, thus spake the video.

Some people totally bought into this, some people getting passionately upset at the idea yet felt we were powerless to stop this inevitable path to Bad Bad Bad. (To what end, oh video?) I disagreed. "There's no way the 'more extreme' thing can progress much farther. When it comes down to actually hacking off your own limbs, people will start to realize that to be REALLY different is to be happy."

This was scorned by several people outright -- you can't combat all this darkness with a little happiness!

Oh, can't you?

In truth, trends went on to emo; sadness, not happiness. But a more honest picture of teen angst, maybe.

But since then I've seen a lot more pushing for the positive, I note somewhat smugly. I don't think it's just my age and life-place either. The Culture is into living green and eating healthier, and those are two steps in the right direction for sure. The buzz word is not 'consumerism' so much as 'sustainability'. People are trying to eat less processed mush and more Actual Food. Yoga is becoming a little more widespread. Actual studies are going into the pseudo-sciencey holistic medicine type facilities, meaning we are giving more serious thought to our mental well-being, which is a good step towards living life full -- not just focusing on SAT score type statistics on how smart we are or how much money we are making. Groups like Kaiser Permanente have those wonderful ad campaigns on just doing great things -- "Thrive".

Thrive. It's like seeing billboards for apples. Like seeing great big banners on buses that encourage you to go for long walks, or take naps. It warms your heart.

(Yes, this line of thinking was the original inspiration for my Crocs).

So. A few days ago I watched the first episode of the BBC's "The Human Face," hosted by John Cleese. I was completely delighted by this segment:

It isn't political, it isn't a push for the culture to be one thing or another, there's no motive. It's just a bunch of people laughing and enjoying one another's company. Their website outlines the laughter meetings in greater depth, lists all their findings and suggestions at length, and includes ample information for one to start their own club. So this can spread to anyone across the globe, for free.

This is where it's at, people. This is it. This is exactly what I've been saying all along. It's about people, it's about enjoying life, it's about being happy.

So let's tell everyone.

Viva la vida

2008-08-17T12:16:00.003-06:00

"Both 'happiness' and 'inspirations' are the words of amateurs." -- Diego Rivera

I borrowed "Diego Rivera: I Paint What I See" from the library last week. I watched it late before I went to bed on Wednesday.

I was saddened by this assertation about happiness. It isn't the first time I've heard that, I've actually heard this a lot, sometimes even from people I admire. "If you're happy you aren't paying attention." Which just renews this thought: yes, happiness is indeed the thesis of our lives, you and me. We need to figure out how to get the message out. I think it goes like this:

- Childhood/first: natural wonder resides in the mind. Excitement for discovery, openness and delight burn with a raw intensity.

- Sometime after: bad stuff happens and you feel betrayed. Equally pure feelings of cynicisim and doubt set in.

From there it's up to you to find the wonder and openness again. It is not regressing to a childish state of denial and naïveté, it's what happens when you overcome sophomoric angst and the self-loathing aspects of a certain kind of disappointment. When you stop pouting and rejoin the play. When you recognize that there are good things in the world if only you can just see them.

This is not to say there aren't good and bad moments within that spectrum, but the thing about this sort-of enlightenment is that you return to it after the emotional twinge into a different place. I think you could argue the initial 'bad stuff' episode is merely an intense version of this, intense because it is the First.

OTHER THINGS ABOUT DIEGO

1. I was happy at his insatiable painting, his claim that it was his biological obligation to paint.

2. Many of the smallish things from the movie Frida were true, including, verbatim, the moment they met. We have diary accounts.

"I have something important I want to discuss with you."

3. I want to do an American tour -- North, Central and South -- of his murals. It seems like many of them were on big time public buildings, and while we are a bit foolish here, it seems that at least in Central and South America these would remain. It would be amazing to see as many as one could I think. Important for us to do, as American thinkers/artists, since he was very politically involved and would often refuse big commissions if he was asked to compromise his vision. Yes indeed.

4. It was from Frida's watermelons: viva la vida.

Friday, Aug 15

2008-08-16T14:08:00.004-06:00

I only own four shirts that are appropriate for work, and only two of those are cool enough to wear when it is hot outside. Last night I walked to the vintage store that keeps strange hours and bought a frumpy number for three dollars because it a.) was short sleeved, b.) was made a very thin floaty material, and, c.) was light blue. I am still unsure what constitutes appropriate attire as far as shirts. HR wears sleeveless shirts from Ross made of a stretchy poly that are loudly patterned, but she wears them with a pants suit everyday and gets away with it. Downstairs in filing the women wear cardigans and no tights, but I have to go upstairs occasionally and feel under-dressed as it is.

//

This morning I saw A walking up Washington St. towards work. It was well ahead of me for me to be anywhere, so I got off the bus and walked over to the fabric store to peak at some prints. We walked together, talking about public transit, crying at Pixar movies, having no air conditioning, and siting around with our cats. I was wearing a black skirt with a blazer, black tights, the frumpy blouse and carrying my rectangle "briefcase" bag. She was wearing a swishier skirt with a grey pocketed cardigan, no tights, and some loafers.

//

There is no men's room. There is a women's, and there is a co-ed single stall bathroom with a latching "vacant / occupied" door.

There are two stalls in the women's bathroom, and the non-handicapped one features a creaking floorboard underneath (for me) the right foot. There is a small basket of pads and tampons underneath the shared stall wall, which I find very comforting.

//

I spent the morning helping HR set up the big Partner Meeting in the conference room. Only two student interns showed up today. I'm not sure how many interns we normally have, but judging by the level of dismay, it must be close to 50. We have one upstairs helping Ms. B, and the other cooking lunch for us and the attorneys. I wandered into the kitchen after set-up was done to help out however I could. I opened a bag of salad, cubed some chicken, moved plates. We'd set up for lunch at a 11:00 am, but after the attorneys filed into the room they came back out carrying the food, saying "no we're eating at noon".

Apparently even when there are numerous emails, memos, and an updated live company calender in the database that proclaims PARTNER MTG: LUNCH AT 11 in big red letters, the partners can decide to move it back if they want.

The intern was beside himself -- it was sauce on noodles, so there was no way to save what we'd just dished out. We put the salads in the freezer to keep them crisp, and placed the noodles in the still-warm ovens...the student interns would have to eat the resulting mush after everyone else in the building had lunch.

//

Mr. MD came up to me. Polite happiness. "I don't think I've met you yet, I'm MD."
"Hi! I'm Maggie." Perfect handshake.
"I guess they didn't give you the tour? Normally they show new people around!"
"Ah..I think they meant to, but mine was cut short. Something Happened."
"Ah well. Well, that's my office over there. Nice to meet you, Maggie!"

No quiet rage. He must be a good lion tamer.

//

At 2 I was paged to the conference room. L popped out of the conference room and said, "We need a runner. Can you do something for me?"
"Yes."
"Go upstairs into Ms. B's office. She's run off something that has something to do with 'managing difficult people'. Go find it and bring it here. Knock softly."

Had this 'something' been sitting in the printer, or sitting on top of her keyboard, no problem. But there were tons of print-offs laying around, and non of them looked right. An article about bio-chemists at the University of Oregon. A pamphlet about custody laws. A copy of an Oregonian article. And so on. Had I been told whether it was printed, or copied, or faxed would have helped. Length of the document would have helped. Was it still on her computer, not printed? Was it in a binder? Was it accidentally in the recycle bin? I asked Jane, a student intern to help, and she handed me a giant binder of financial records, probably because it wasn't usually on her desk. "This could be it maybe?"

I knew it wasn't. I went down with it and asked.

L was very annoyed. This is not it.
"I know. Tell me what it is, I need more details."
She essentially repeated when she'd told me before. "Get Jane to help you."
"She did. She handed me this."
Then she went back into the meeting.

Case closed? Not closed? Do I keep looking? What do I do?

At this point A was walking by with a cart of supplies. What was going on? I was kind of freaking out because I wasn't sure what to do.

"Well, I don't know what it is either, but maybe two sets of eyes will be better than one." So instead of taking the supplies to the basement, she pushed "1" in the elevator and we went, with her cart, upstairs to search. Eventually it was me, her, C (the admin who's in charge of the interns,) and two legal assistants scouring the office and the assistant's office for anything that could possibly be "managing difficult people." Eventually C found something.

"Is that it?" I asked.
"We're going to pretend it is. If it isn't I will take the heat."

I felt bad. I didn't want to get yelled at, but I certainly didn't want to get him in trouble.

This process was repeated about six times for me this afternoon. Someone would come out and say, "Go search [object] for [words]". R would page me and say, "ready for another impossible assignment?" Sometimes it was to the point where R would iChat, saying "okay, now when you get yelled at by Ms. B, just make sure you stand up straight and speak clearly..."

I was reminded of the story problem from math class. After reading the paragraph filled with logical holes that could not possibly add up, you were able to select "d.) not enough information to answer the question".

Later I vented a little to A who was very comforting. She was an admin for a year before going down to filing, and she's been here three years. I get the impression that hers is an unusually long tenure for this office. She told me to let it roll off, and it's hard but venting keeps you sane, and you just are thankful that you go home at night and get to leave it behind. I was very grateful to her, and wanted to say, "cool - now let's talk craft!" but shied away from actually asking for her cell number. According to the website she's into knitting and I'd like to know where she shops. Maybe next week.

//

We leave at 5 on Fridays instead of 5:30. HR poked her head out out of the meeting and advised C to leave early and avoid the verbal abuse from Ms. B. I left promptly at 5, leaving R at the reception desk even though his walk home passes my bus stop along the way. He's nice but kind of stiffly formal at work. I understand, but he's only been there a month and I view us as peers. I have already been told I do intake better than he does, and I've only been doing it a day and a half.

When he finally came out and walked past, he told me he's being moved up to a legal assistant after next week when P gets back from vacation, since another one just quit. I'm sad because he helps me out a lot and it's nice to sit next to someone when he isn't on reception. But I'm also not very broken up about it, as he hasn't expressly tried to be friendly like K from IT, or A. So what can you do. What I did was stand out in black tights and my paint-splattered under shirt for a bus. It was 103*F. I didn't know it got this hot here. I don't think the native Portlanders knew it either.

Thursday, Aug. 14

2008-08-16T12:59:00.005-06:00

At about 11:40 a mystifying young guy came in. He was dressed in a ratty polo shirt, American Eagle checked shorts, and plastic flip flops. Had sunglasses. He burst right into Mr. MD's office and bellowed, "whaat's up?". He had the air of a jaunty sophomore from Sigma Tau.

I have not met Mr. MD yet, but as Ms. B's husband, I expect he is either well versed in the art of wrestling wounded dangerous animals or is rather ferocious himself. He is very quiet and dignified, a retired business tycoon who sits in that office for reasons that have not been adequately explained to me. His mouth is a hard line. I cannot yet tell if it is from the quiet dignity, or from a rage simmering just below the surface. To listen to this kid walk right through the threshold without so much as a knock, to me, seemed akin to throwing a lit match into the gas tank.

Mr. M welcomed him in and asked him how he'd been. They spoke jauntily for a while. Then the guy walked into HR's office, looked around. He was heading to P's office when he turned to me.

"I don't think I've met you?"
"Nope. I'm Maggie. I just started."
"Cool! Are you a student intern?"
(What? In this suit?) "No..I'm an admin.."
He cuts me off. "Oh okay so you work for the people upstairs. That's cool." He wanders into P's office, picking things up off the desk and turning them testingly in his hands, as though he's about to hurl them out the window.

He sits at R's desk, closes the database window, and starts to surf the web. We talk a little, he asks me if he knows me because I look so familiar. I think must have an air of Portland about me, as this is the second time someone has asked me this. I say no, he asks if I've been to Eugene, I say barely. Someone comes by, high fives him and asks what he's been up to and they talk. He mentions that he will be turning 21 soon. A student intern comes up and tells him that Ms. B is ready to see him upstairs, and he leaves with her.

I iChat R, who is up at reception.

Me: (Who is that guy that just went upstairs?)
R: [name]
R: His dad owns the building and like another quarter of Portland
Me: Deal. I was really thrown by him just sort of waltzing into MD's office and being all, "what's uup!", as if he owned the place. I guess, well, he does.

//

Yesterday I was sent down to filing to find a bottle of Pinot Grigio. It was my first time down there, and I'd had to ask almost every person down there to help me. After this, A had come upstairs to get her afternoon coffee and came by my desk to ask me how it'd gone. I'd had to cut her off to ask someone about the Chocolate Thing. Today I iChatted to apologize, and she waved it off as No Big Thing. According to the website I've been asked to memorize, she and I seem to have the most in common here. She is also, judging by the photos, that absolute happiest person currently working for the firm.

//

Every day after I eat lunch, I go outside for the remainder of my lunch hour. I usually walk to the benches out by the library and to sit in the shade and draw in my sketchbook. All the benches were taken today so I sat instead on a ledge on the west side of the building, facing a new building I hadn't drawn yet. I started on the contours. The sheriffs I saw yesterday, (elderly, balding) were coming up to me in my peripheral, and one said gently, well, I have to bother the nice girl.

"Oh! Am I not supposed to be sitting here?" I jump down.
"No, I'm sorry...I think you would be fine but other...bigger people sit here and the library would rather they didn't."
"Oh no no it's no problem ...ah, see there's a bench open now. I was going to sit here earlier but they were full."
"Oh we saw someone there and chased them away just for you!" Joking. I think.

//

Dad (sent from his Blackberry): You doing ok?

Me: Yes .. today and yesterday were much better than my first day, because I'm actually getting started on tasks rather than just sitting around getting acclimated and occasionally running errands.

My supervisor is very keen on forcing me to learn stuff by relying on the fact that I have a brain. I can call this phone number and order this part, because if his instructions aren't exactly correct, I'll still manage to get the part ordered. Some of that is intimidating:

"Go down to the craft room.."
"We have a craft room?"
"Have you been down to the basement?"
"No"
"Do you have the door codes?"
"No"
"Have you met YN?"
"No" (Me, to myself: Dude I just started here yesterday, and you left me at my desk alone all day while everyone else dealt with a day-long crisis.)
"Okay. Here's the door code. YN's in filing. Go down the stairs, then turn left and left again, and then go get that thing and bring it up here."

And I did it, eventually, even though I had to ask just about everyone in filing where the thing was and what it was. They were all pretty supportive and helpful.

Other supervisors aren't that gung-ho...they offer help, or say "oh I can show you that later, a student intern can do that right now," but P's approach is GO NOW, which is frustrating when you get it wrong, because he only says, "Yeah. That's not right at all. Go to your desk." But when you get it right he says, "Want to go on another walk?" "Sure." "Good answer!"

Dad: You have a great attitude!

Wednesday, Aug 13

2008-08-16T11:29:00.004-06:00

This morning I read the company website, delighting in the enjoyably baffling way things are worded. Tense is a problem -- the staff profiles are written by the staff themselves, and meant to be in the third person -- however it is fun to note that everything else seems to be a problem as well.

Q: Do I have to make my children go on visits if they don't want to go?

A: Yes, the children need to go on visits that a Court has ordered, even if they don't want to go. You should try to find out why the children do not want to visit the other parent and work out any problems together or through counseling. Only in rare cases does the Court limit time spent with the other parent.

This, to me, is very sad. It is also linguistically dizzying.

//

I met Ms. B today.

When we had just sit down for lunch, she burst in on the high school interns and asked them WHAT THE FOUL FILTH AND IF YOU WANT THE FOUL CHAIRS AT ALL WHY THE FILTH AREN'T THEY IN THE FOUL FILTHY FOUL? I missed many of the key details. Things got rather hushed in the lunchroom.

To my dismay she and two other partners came in to have lunch with us. She looked at the salad. ARE THESE WALNUTS? No, a legal assistant said, they are pecans. BECAUSE I AM FOUL ALLERGIC TO FOUL-FILTH WALNUTS. She burst into the kitchen again to ask the remains of the interns to identify the nuts. K leaned forward and murmured to me, "They're pecans. If they were walnuts, I would be wheezing and breaking out. I'm allergic too."

After seeing the package of nuts from Costco, with the words PECANS scrawled across the top, she asked for an entire new salad made for her, sans nuts.

As she sat down -- at the table behind me, facing my back -- talk quietly began to cautiously resume. But it silenced when she asked the assistant on her left, WHO'S THAT.

Dead silence in the lunchroom.

The assistant says sweetly, "oh, she's a new admin...I forgot your name?"

I turn to her (the assistant .. not all the way to Ms. B) and hold up my hand while smiling and shrugging...I'd just had the biggest bite of potato one could possible have. D was like "oh of course I'll let you finish your bite..." and on and on, and in a way I was grateful for the slight moment of..oh big breath here it comes. "Maggie" I said eventually.

The assistant smiles saying 'oh right!'
Ms. B says WHAT.
I turn all the way to look her in the eyes .. which is the first time I'd really seen her. And thought in my head, wow B was right she does look like a man. My face had the most effervescent sheen of pleasantness. I said, "Maggie. Nice to meet you."

She grunted.

I turned back to my place as Mr. J, sitting next to her, added quickly, "Welcome!"

Talk resumed in the lunchroom.

//

People kind of look at me differently on the streets when I walk around in my Power Suit. I forget this, so it weirds me out not to be panhandled or looked at by the 20-30 somethings in normal clothes; to instead be looked at by the other Suits, and to be smiled at in a different way than normal from the elderly. On my way back from lunch, a black man (mid-40's?) with a cap and a backpack said to me, "you look very nice." Not said in any way other than sincere, and it made me smile. Ah shucks.

//

The first real thing I was asked to do was to go into the kitchen, get a small creamer and bring it back up to the front desk. I did not know the key factors: where the creamer was, where the dishes are, how full, and so forth. I was told to ask C, another admin, to help me out with this.

My Supervisor, P, had used his finger and thumb to give me the size of about two inches when telling me what size receptical. C used a rather large creamer thing, and filled it up full. I did not say anything. I brought it back to P who said, "Yeah. That's about six times too big." He brought it back later and told me to have it back, and turned on his heel. Alone in the hallway, I couldn't ask if it was kosher to pour the remaining unused cream back into the carton, so instead I poured it down the sink and rinsed the sink.

//

I went both up and downstairs today. I have the passkeys to the doors now. I have seen the overwrought finery of upstairs (attorneys, shareholders, and legal assistants) and I have seen the unkempt filing rooms downstairs where actual music and laughter could be heard. The smiling-est people are down there. Too bad they don't need assistance.

//

At about 3:30 I was asked to walk Ms. B's laundry down to the cleaners, on behalf of her assistant. I wasn't given many details, but I'm good with finding stuff here, and my bus passes the cleaners I figured they meant. My instructions were fairly concise. "Go there, tell them who sent you, and say this is her bedspread. Get a receipt or a piece of paper or something that says a.) how much it is, and b.) when we will get it back." As I was getting ready to go, I was told, "one more thing...bring your phone!"

Immediately after this I walked for 20 minutes (one way) to go take pictures of chocolate displays at a shop, because they didn't have a catalog and their website was down. I didn't particularly mind. I will be paid salary to walk, and despite the strangely hot weather, that is fine in my book. It did feel very strange -- I kept apologizing to the salesclerk on the phone and she waved it off as though it were perfectly normal for some pampered woman-child to send a clueless assistant to do some Rather Extravagant Thing.

Anne, the clerk at the chocolate shop, was awesome. She gave me all sorts of little print-offs and some samples to take back to win the heart and mind of Ms. B. She even offered me a little something off the sample tray "for my trouble," which felt outlandish and decadent, but was also appreciated. What I really wanted was some water -- it was 98* out and I was in a coat and tights -- and I got that too.

I was on the phone finishing the chocolate details -- trying to figure out the dimensions of some of the gift boxes -- when P walked by and told me to go home. He said Ms. B's assistant would just have to finish it off himself, and that my job was to be here from exactly 8:30 - 5:30. He thanked me for my work that day, telling me I'd done well.

Earlier, at 5:03, P told R: "oh man...go downstairs and get me a Corona". HR yelled from her office, "MAKE THAT FIVE." R, P and HR all sipped coronas during the last 20 minutes of their workday. Had I not been wrestling with iPhoto and the Chocolate thing, I probably would have been offered the same.

//

Of everything, I'm most excited that I have not been asked not to wear my rings. The ear cuff hasn't come up (after the confusion I've opted to go without), but I've worn all six rings every day and the only comment they have elicited was from my bus seat mate this morning, who gushed, "oh! Your rings are wonderful! I love silver!"

Dispatch from downtown - part one of many

2008-08-15T19:44:00.002-06:00

I've decided to post my notes from work. I cannot, for legal reasons, mention the actual law firm, any clients, my coworker's names, nor its location exactly. But that leaves a lot of room for me since I think the most interesting things, sociologically, do not rely on these details anyway.

August 12.

From the bohemian neighborhood I emerged wearing a suit. Black pants, black blazer, white shirt (tucked in). I am twenty two years old and dressed as a stern, sexless black box. The only traces of humanity can be found in my silk scarf, which I now realize comes off as snobbish and aristocratic, not artsy. Most of the people on this bus are going to work, but they work in business-casual type places, with polo shirts and ruddy brown sports coats. They are bespectacled and have travel mugs with a handle that is modeled after a carabiner, so that it can be clipped onto the straps of their colorful messenger bags. I carry a black rectangle that is large enough to carry my sketchbook and various other things I may need throughout the day. I look and feel completely unlike myself. I can feel sweat dripping down my back, but do not dare take my jacket off, as I remember how badly my shirt is ironed.

//

This morning I stood out in front of the building for a few minutes before I tried to get inside. The stairs, which I preferred on principal, featured doors entirely closed off with key-pad type locks. I tried the elevator in the lobby, which did not aknowledge my finger. I pressed 2 again, and then again. No light, no door close, no movement. No sign of life. I pressed the "door close" and "door open" buttons a few times, and pressed 1 to make sure that the pressure of my finger was correct. I pressed softer. I pressed harder. I pressed like I didn't mean it.

By this point I was getting strange looks from the receptionist at the office across the foyer. She was speaking with someone and they both kept glancing up at me. I gave them a non-committal smile and walked back outside. It occurred to me that, stupidly, I didn't actually have anyone's number plugged into my phone. I tried a few local numbers I'd received in the last few days to listen to their answering machines...the barber shop, the pizza place...finally I got through to the office's, but of course no one answered. Rolled over immediately to voicemail, because they weren't open.

I tried the elevator again, and then had to speak with the people eyeing me warily.

"Hi...I'm sorry, but...this is my first day upstairs, and I can't seem to make it up there! All the doors are locked?"
"Oh!" said the standing woman, "the door on the second floor is not actually locked! They unlock it at about 8:10. Here, I'll come show you."

Very relieved at this. Not necessary, I knew where the door was, but it was nice to have the "oh don't worry about it, I did the same thing on my first day." This woman was an attorney, but I didn't catch if she was with us or with the non-profit.

//

I do have a desk. I wasn't sure if I would. After paperwork I was shown around my computer by a very nice guy from IT. We sat for a good forty minutes outlining things. He made polite joky comments and essentially put forth the "I will be friends with you" subtext that office people do. At the end of this, he said "if you have any questions, ask K, because this is my last day here."

//

THINGS I HAVE BEEN TOLD ABOUT MS. B, DISSOLUTION ATTORNEY, THE SENIOR SHAREHOLDER OF THE FIRM

- She will try and make me cry.
- She is rude to everyone.
- When you meet her stand up straight, speak clearly, and give both your first and last name. Be prepared for degradation.
- When she first met J, she told him the way he put on his blazer upset her.
- When she first met L, she turned her hand and examined her fingernails and grunted disapprovingly.
- When she first met X, he only said his first name. Hello, my name is X. WELL DO YOU HAVE A LAST NAME? She asked.
- She screams at everyone.
- She is very good at her job.

//

My office tour was cut short when someone came down and said, "I have an emergency." She spouted off a good many things I did not understand, and I went back to my desk. For the rest of the day, my only instruction was to read the online database and memorize names. I was to do this for the remaining six hours, while all around me people made a seen and were yelled at, were yelled for, were sworn at, and broke into runs with large precarious files.

Apparently this 'acclimation' period for new hires is not unusual. I am told most last nearly a week. But I was pulled into my supervisor's office with two hours to go and told I was to be secret assistant to Ms. B's assistant. I don't know how secret. Can I tell R, the admin who sits next to me? I do not ask. Instead I wait patiently by the phone, and within an hour I am asked to obtain a phone number. It is not a normal phone number, but the direct line to a frequent flier miles direct number, which they don't want to give you, they want you to go through customer care. I wrestled with it for a moment, had a very helpless chat with the CSR, who kept pressing me for more info.

"But...this is customer care?"
"I know...but my employer wants the direct number for the MVP club."
"...do they..want to modify their account?"
"I'm not sure."
"Do you have their account number?"
"No."
"So...what do you need?"

I was very polite and apologetic, oh ho ho you know how these things are, I'm just a helpless newbiw stuck in the middle don't you know. My CSR was also polite, and eventually interuppted herself by saying..oh okay here's the number." The process felt illicit, I felt as though I'd broken into something. I didn't wait to confirm the number, I just sent it upstairs and didn't here from anyone after that.

//

HR came by and gave me a stack of binders. The old revised pages had to be taken out and the new revised pages had to be put in. Exactly the sort of thing I like to do. It was mostly color-coded and fairly easy once I parsed the instruction sheet.

//

The last few jobs I've had were Much Better than the job-situation I was leaving. So it was always a focus on that relief, and less on what I was actually doing at the job. Working at Pier One was pretty great because I got away from my manic boss and got to work somewhere where I didn't have to peel dried strawberries from the floor or bleach out sinks. When I started with classifieds, I no longer had to talk people into buying opulent junk they didn't need, and I got away from a power-struggle going on in New Management. I was offered the legal assistant position because they needed one, but also because I had told Ali that classified sales were two abstract for me to 'sell,' and that I hated being a sales person -- it made me actually depressed to come into work.

(This may sound overly focused on the negative, but it's for good reason: I leave the bad situations. Other situations become good by default, and I stay until they become bad.)

This job is different because what I was doing before was preferable, in two ways. I loved my old job (though the ship was sinking fast, and I was abstractly happy to Get Out). But more to the point: for the last few months I've been sitting at home drawing or visiting city parks. I've done plenty of worrying, but I've also done a lot of fun stuff.

So this day of strife from everyone else, dissonant against my general boredom, was psychologically trying. I couldn't help thinking, as I waited for the bus...

I don't really like it.

Another moment

2008-08-13T07:13:00.004-06:00

I wanted to document:

Driving north on highway 85, late night. I think we were coming from from Leanne's. Or Denver. Either way, festivities done, we were heading home.

Ahead, we saw a shooting star.
It was big.
We watched as it broke up in the atmosphere, and the resulting 6 or 7 littler stars fell slower, in an arc.

Meta-Art #1

2008-07-29T18:49:00.003-06:00

Ingrediants:
Reese's Penunt Buttur Cups
Klodike Bars
Contact with Big Name Living Artists

Directions:
1) Ask the question: "How would you eat a Reese's?"
2) Ask: "What would you do for a Klondike Bar?"
3) Record Responses/Results

Surely someone will play along?
(I think it helps that I'm not associated with either candy company. This wouldn't be advertisement so much as exploration of the implications of advertisement. Could turn out interesting. Maybe? Suggested respondants include but are in no way limited to: Zhang Huan, Damien Hirst, Banksy, etc. A sort of post-warholism maybe.)

Zen and the art of web-presence

2008-07-24T11:34:00.002-06:00

Jasinski, I was surprised to find, no longer updates his killer flash-website. He has instead moved shop to a blogspot blog.

This is really interesting to me. Anybody who's anybody in this Brave New (Illustration) World has a website, so that when you Google people like "Tim Biskup" and "S. Britt" you will be able to figure out who they are, what they do, and what they're up to. All the advice I've read anywhere says You Must Have A Website. A Proper Website. Not A Myspace Page* But A Right And Proper Mushtache And Hair-Slicked-Back With A Monocle Website If You Are At All Serious About This.

*Which is a bit of a no-brainer since myspace is a bit sophomoric. It would be like posting your big CEO plans on a livejournal. It's strange that certain web-places themselves garner a certain age depending on the patrons, but there we are. I guess that happens with real-world establishments too.

I can't afford to have my own website, and really at this point I am too lazy to commandeer webspace from my techie friends and build something anyway. Instead I've been using a blog, (which is now here,) assuming that once I had enough stuff there I would make a static "portfolio" page and give that out to prospective clients. This was my lame fix-it. This was me making do with what I had. So I was surprised to learn that one of my super-star idols had done this too.

So will this be a new trend? I hardly think everyone will be keen to drop their professionalism and let design firms root around in their sketchbooks so nakedly. But maybe. Maybe this is the New Way.

Edit: also. I would like this.

Fantastic

2008-07-22T09:35:00.000-06:00

This makes me so unbelievably happy.

from "Oh the Places You'll Go", by Dr. Suess

2008-07-21T12:57:00.000-06:00

And when you're in a Slump,
you're not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done.

You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place...

...for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a sting of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.

NO!
That's not for you!

Somehow you'll escape
all that waiting and staying.
You'll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing.

Crazy Expensive Art #2

2008-07-17T15:41:00.002-06:00

Ingredients:
24 hours Imax Film
Imax Camera
Supersonic Jet capable of 1700 km/hr Flight (could do it with slightly slower plane at a higher or lower latitude)
24 hours of Fuel for said Jet.

Directions:
1. Mount Camera on Jet.
2. Chase The Sun.

24 Hours of Sunset.

Variant:
2. Flee The Sun.

24 Hours of Sunrise.

Expensive: Yes.
Awesome: So much.

I put some new shoes on

2008-07-13T19:14:00.004-06:00

Socially speaking, this is about this time that people my age try to pair off and settle down. Particularly in the sect of humans – the large majority, don’t you find – who are participating in what I’ve called the video-game style of life (which is a title I stole from her, (scroll down) but not really the idea, since I came to it independently.) I’ve had friends having babies and friends getting married for the last couple years now, but as yet never thought much of this in terms of “next stage in the video-game life”. The babies were often happy accidents (or otherwise), and most of the young marriages I had seen did not end well, ended not a moment too soon, or the people were older than me, enough that I already considered them in that murky realm of no-longer-traditional-college-age “adults”. Whatever that means.

But now we are slightly older, and now it’s starting to happen a bit more. And it’s happening not in these strange one-side-of-the-bell-curve kind of ways, but with intentional bravado.

Two friends, a couple we know, just Settled Down. Bought a condo in a brand new development, the male half is off doing his big-money dream job, the female half is doing take-up-time temp work and presumably doing a lot of waiting for something. Then there’s another friend who gave Law School the old college try, didn’t do so well, and decided to come back home. With her husband. She has told us many times her “clock is ticking” (on whose time, honey?) so one would imagine they are doing the lower-tax bracket version of what our other friends are doing.

As I watch this happening I muse to myself about it in the same way you would if everyone around you began sprouting bat’s wings, or turning a purplish color. I am down with it for them; it would be foolish to attempt to do anything else. That’s a loud noise to try to yell into. What I’m curious about though is where this will go in a few years, and about the baby question.

All my life I have denied the existence of ‘maternal instinct’. I have always been open to the possibility of the Wanting To Parent phenomena that presumably happens to 20-30 somethings, but have not gone as far as structure my life around that possibility like people I know. I have not cooed over children nor said anything grotesque and covetous like ‘I want one’ as my female brethren have, and my man friends have been socialized not to even speak of fatherhood even if they wanted it. I don’t think it’s a wrong thing to want, I just think people go about it the wrong way: thoughtlessly, automatically, joylessly.

I’ve never really given children much serious thought I guess is what it comes down to. I’ve never said never, but for the most part I couldn’t adequately answer the question why. Why make babies. Why raise children. Why bother. If you say biologic destiny, I will get angry with you.

I was reading on a transatlantic flight recently and came across this passage:

The death of an infinite player is dramatic...for that reason they do not play for their own life; they live for their own play. But since that play is always with others, it is evident that infinite players both live and die for the continuing life of others.

- Carse, James P., Finite and Infinite Games

Weirdly, at the EXACT SAME moment I was thanking Jesus and the Easter Bunny that I was not in possession of the wailing toddler kicking my seat for the entire nine hours, I read this passage and thought, (for a split second, for the very first time in my life,) Oh. I should parent a child.

I blame Oregon for this. Not my age, not my gender. Oregon, as I have mentioned, is happier, lusher, greener, (economically speaking and just scenery-wise,) than where I came from, so I was ready for my soul to emerge from it’s dormant state under the dry frozen ground and for its tendrils to curl up and out from my center, popping out flowers and making fruit for creatures. (Uh, really, it started doing this in a new/different way when you came into my world.) But I was not expecting this intense appreciation for children/parent units I see toddling around in the streets. I have seen people talking with their children, not at them or down to them. I have seen people give options, not barking orders. I have heard mommies and daddies say, “that sounds like fun!” and also “that might be dangerous, what if we do this instead?” I have watched happy parents experiencing the world with their happy children, and it makes my heart sing. And it makes me think in different terms.

It also doesn’t change anything: I will not suddenly go running after people’s strollers to coo, nor will I be doing incredibly dangerous, selfish and irresponsible things like not mentioning a lack of birth control or anything like that. I still maintain there is no “Maternal Instinct”. This makes no change to my existing plans, which are scant: make a life here, make art, make happiness. Eventually make a life happen near you. Mostly it has been interesting, sociologically, to me. I have seen things and have started to think, “this would be a perfect moment to teach something.” To whom? Not to a child really. To a child audience? That is where I want some of my energy to go: in books. And I guess not necessarily kid’s books, adults are as deficit in simple things like being happy as anyone is. I am basically using this new soul as a new lens, a more focused lens. Hopefully something interesting will happen.

Some people doodle at work

2008-07-13T17:26:00.003-06:00

I think about the fate of the universe.
There's a lot going on here, but it started with me just writing down the question, "Is Happiness the Good?" as in Plato's Good, the thing we ought to aim for. Lately I've been thinking it is. The more I see depression everywhere, the more I think I have a moral duty to be happy, and to let that happiness flow outward, hopefully spreading the joy. All that stuff about Bodhis from earlier.

To get at the question of whether or not I've really hit on something, the rest of the page is a sort of meditation on the way people usually think of things, that the Good results in Happiness. In Plato's Republic, this is because the Good is Good in itself, and that's what we want, and so by partaking in the Good we are Good and it's all a big party and we can all say to each other, "Good times." I wasn't thinking out loud to myself about Plato, but the section at the top right is where the awareness of the issues from the Republic show up. "Can we see it any other way?" In a sort of emotional/logical way, it seems impossible to think that the Good will not result in Happiness of some sort, and while the way it works for Plato (the Good is Good in itself, right now) makes a ton of sense (and feels a lot like bodhi, in my mind), the rewards for whatever is presented as the Good have been presented through the millennia as happening in all sorts of ways, from simple success and well being (which happens over time) to a better re-birth or heaven or nirvana or what have you, or through rewards of whatever sort (winning the lottery or whatever) doled out by a judging god, or sometimes just fewer punishments.

The various ways of expecting rewards result in different demeanours, and different ways of thinking about what the Good really is. An overrunning theme though is that the Good is presented as Good for YOU personally, so long as you behave properly, you get the rewards. Your behaving properly might benefit other people, but yours are the real rewards. But I'm pretty conscious of the fact the people are mislead by all sorts of things, and maybe sometimes what you're being told is good isn't good for you at all, even if it is good for other people, and maybe even the most people. A lot of punishment follows this sot of logic, especially the extreme forms of punishment. Some people might be deluded into thinking that prison is actually good for the prisoners (ProTip: it's not.) but almost no one thinks that the death penalty is good for those who get it, unless they can perform a heroic amount of doublethink.

So then we get the question of who the Good is for, this thing that results in happiness, whose happiness does it result in? So I listed out some options, and it struck me that it is when the happiness of WE is aimed at, WE is preserved and thus stability is maintained for the most part. By WE here I mean whatever community an individual (and the Heidegger in me wants to make it clear that I'm dealing with any possible Being-Here (Dasein) as the sort f individual I'm thinking of) is a part of. Like your body is a community of organs which are in turn communities of cells. Your body operates on a WE should be happy moral/ethical system, if it makes any sense to talk that way at all (it might not...). Cells that are not playing along are destroyed. Muscles are used til they are straining or damaged in times of danger to preserve the good of the whole. Sacrificing one part for the sake of the whole is always, always preferable to letting the body die (at least from a sort of tunnel vision, My-body-is-all-there-is kid of perspective).

So, in a parallel way to your body, I think successful cultures are the ones that best manage to create that sort of behaviour in their members that benefits the whole rather than the parts, which is obvious of course, but since morality and ethics are in most cases what defines a given culture, and those ethics and morals are always presented as being good in whatever way for those that follow the rules, it's important to take any of those promises of reward with more than a few grains of salt. Because WE will sacrifice a part in a heartbeat if it means preserving the whole. So that's sort of disturbing if you think that there's some core of truth to the rewards promised by your culture for abiding by it's rules.

I do point out at the bottom that we do reward dedication to a cause because rewards encourage that dedication, and so sometimes there are indeed as real rewards as WE can come up with for whoever plays by the rules the best. But it is not good in and for itself (which I miswrote "iaois" with 'of' instead of 'for') to play by the rules. Not much is good in and for itself, except within some context, like say your life in which happiness is good in and for itself, just because we all want to be happy and feel good. That happiness might be bad for other things sure, we are all different and it takes different conditions to create happiness for us, and if nothing else we've got to eat to live.

But that brings me to the stuff going down the right side of the page: there is a sort of deadly dance between Division and Synthesis, where Division means promoting the well being of ME and therefore making copies of myself (usually) or just spreading in whatever way, and Synthesis means becoming a part of some WE of whatever sort, by friendship or absorption or whatever. Competition vs Cooperation. Animal life (and anything that reproduces sexually) is pretty interesting because it requires being part of some WE in order to procreate at all, which is pretty neat if you ask me.

Then there's some futurism there, just a guess by me that before we start communicating with life on other planets that did not originate on Earth, there will be life on other planets that did originate on Earth. Or we will communicate with life that has already colonized multiple planets. Just because evolution runs in parallel. Which is pretty far afield o where we started of course. But the lesson there might be that thinking that the Good results in Happiness in anything but the most direct of ways (in which Happiness is the Good) means spiraling out of control, ever upward and ever outward, without ever reaching the carrot on the stick. Which is the sort of thing that leads people to think that if people we happy and content the world would stop getting better, and oh how horrible that would be. Which is insane of course. Panic and fear and pain are powerful motivators for sure, but they are by no means the only possible ones.

The last little bit at the bottom is hard to read even on the original. It says: 'the solution of course is in the dissolution of the dichotomy but FEELING that is difficult'. If it's about ME vs. WE things are going to be a mess. The happiness itself just has to be, and we've just got to let it, and encourage it, and help it grow.

And I think that's a pretty good tour of what was going on in my head that day.
Hooray work?

This is a true story

2008-07-13T13:40:00.002-06:00

I saw a piece of fabric on the ground. Folded over. Some sort of twill/tweed/lightweight suiting, blackish browns. It was cut in an oblong sort of shape, probably initially intended for a patch. I have no need for that shape at the moment, but beggars can't be choosers, so I picked it up. No obvious defects. I gave it a shake to get all the seeds and pollen off.

On the first downward motion of my hand, a butterfly appeared.

One of those little white ones that my Grandpa was probably reincarnated into. I hadn't seen it before this moment, and have this affinity towards them so that I would have. You see.

Monkey See

2008-07-10T01:21:00.002-06:00

Monkey Do.

[[seriously, watch as many videos from TED as possible, get a feel for what the intelligista are thinking about. then either think with them or against them, I figure it would be hard not to think at all]]

Musings from Ireland

2008-07-03T11:12:00.001-06:00

I forgot to mention that we also grabbed some sheep's wool from our walk on the shores of Dingle today. There were lots of sheep around, as I think I mentioned, and almost at every barbed wire fence or at every blackberry patch or thistle, you'd see tufts of wool. Sometimes it would be tiny amounts, and sometimes it would be great clumps swaying in the breeze. We grabbed some of that too, and I put it in my pocket with all the stones. So, while I do have two really awesome scarves and a hat (a checkered cap) and a Guinness shirt, I also have stones and sheep's wool from the shores of Ireland itself, which to me is much more meaningful. And photographs. And a brain full of images that I wasn't quick enough to take pictures of.

That's the other trouble with rushing around the pace we are. Even when we are not getting around under our own power, when we are being whisked off by a bus driver or something (which we are about 80% of our time here) we are seeing things so quickly. They rush past the window too soon. By the time I see it and say, oh! that's really strange/interesting/beautiful/something I'd like to paint/something that makes me laugh or would make Anthony laugh, it's gone. The things I did catch from the buses or even while on foot is a miracle that I got them, since sometimes even the time it takes to get the camera ready (turned on and un-lens-capped, if its out, and dug out of the bag, turned on and un-lens-capped if its stowed away) seems too long. There are things -- like graffiti, facial expressions, the man reading his newspaper with a magnifying glass in the bus station this morning, the wooden fish peddler stand, the cattle blocking our exit today on the shore -- that I couldn't take a photo of for whatever reason, which is fine but also not fine at the same time. I need to list these all in one massive notepad, and paint/draw them when I get home. Or as time goes on. I should any way, but it is easier to do so when one has a snapshot for reference. You always worry that the quality of your memory won't do the actual moment justice, that you won't quite ever capture the way that light was shining through the wineglass, or the way the moon looked from the window of the airplane as it shone out over the Atlantic ocean, or the precise color of the sunlight passing through the underside of those leaves.

But I suppose photos don't really do that either. We get stuck in this trap of thinking that they do, but everyone knows that even the most expensive lens with the sharpest focus taken with the greatest care will still never do it justice. Not like being there on that cliff, in that airplane, underneath that tree. And really every artist knows this -- when you draw, paint, or write about something though people may look at it and say oh wow you got it, that nails the idea right on the head, you know in your heart that you haven't quite got there. It was more. It was richer, sharper, more intense than this pale replication ever could hope to be. But you relent that this will suffice, that this gesture, thumbnail sketch, is enough to get you back to the way you felt at that time, and that maybe it will nudge someone in that direction. Maybe it will inspire them to experience whatever it was for themselves. Maybe. And if not, at least you have a tangible memory of it, here in this notebook. At least it can be something beautiful/strange/thought provoking for someone else to look at. The moment-of-inspiration, the thing that struck you silent, the thing that you experienced that touched you in a more profound way than something else, can begin to stand on it's own, take on its own life as it moves in its own direction. And this is very good.

Hey Internet Long Time No See

2008-06-26T01:24:00.003-06:00

I've been running around and seeing things and doing stuff, but you'd never know it Internet, because I haven't made you part of the adventure. Sure I've checked in on how you're doing, read my comics and whatnot, but I haven't put my bits into the ever growing flow.

So here's a little something.

I saw Iron Man the other night. It got me thinking about Morality and Civil Disobedience again. A lot of superhero stories involve an individual taking the law into his own hands, often in a way that violates the law, for the cause of greater good. That's cool and all (see also: Gandhi) but it also made me think about the way that America behaves in the international community. America presents itself as a sort of superhero, outside of the laws of other nations, rushing in to save the day. And, you know, maybe make a buck or two while doing it. And while our intentions may be good (there are a lot of people convinced that our intentions are good, even if I'm not one of them), we end up rubbing a Lot of people the wrong way, and become outlaws in the process. Many of our superheros reflect that sort of good guy/outlaw image (think of Spiderman and how Jameson is always trying to spin him in the paper as a menace to society). The other thing that superheros do is breed supervillains, (btw, firefox recognizes the word 'superhero' but not the word 'supervillain'. Weird.) which was a point brought up at the very end of Batman Begins (by Commissioner Gordan) and I'm sure will be explored further in the next Batman. And so by that logic it seems obvious that our very heroish self-image is the sort of thing that creates villains like Osama Bin Laden. It's also our superhero self-image that makes us have to think of people like Osama as supervillains, and never as human beings to be confronted in a human way, convinced of our principles, engaged in lively debate. No no, blowing things up is debate enough for us, thanks very much.
The real hero's way should never involve violence.
Turn the other cheek kids.