Country Seat

I have been communing with nature. Never one to neglect exercise I went outside an hour ago to sit on a bench and vigorously absorb vitamin D. I also took my New York Times crossword puzzle. Opposite of nocturnal. Yes, well, Twain said we are not quite sane at night, but it was daytime and the mind races from whatever night did to it. Then nature arrived.

An orange tomcat slunk under the gate. I didn't know him. He didn't know me. He looked freaked, wide-eyed and wary. He cowered, then sat. He was showing himself, trying to make friends. It is, after all, suddenly November and even California gets chilly at night. This cat was a creature of nature saying he'd decided against nightlife. Opposite of nocturnal. We shared a quest.

"Hello kitty," I said. "You seem troubled. Perhaps I can help."

"Help?" He replied,"What can you know about it? You're human, a silly bag of thoughts enslaved by the products of its own reasoning!"

"Well, that's quite an accusation. Is that what nature really thinks?"

"Cat's don't think, we arrive at that estimate instinctively. But yes, it reflects natural consensus."

"Nature hates us?"

"Nature is indifferent, but we cats hate you like anything..."

"I'm getting a beer. Would you like some cream?"

"Cats love you."

I went in to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of stout and bowl of cream. The cat was asleep on the bench but woke at my approach.

"Humans are noisy." He said.

"I know. And you hate and love us."

"Really? Why would I do that?"

"You don't remember our conversation before the cream."

"No need. Understand, you humans live incredibly long needy lives that are full of consequences. For us cats, life is short and full of hairballs. We may have had memory once but we're well now."

"You chose amnesia? That's insane!"

"I'm not the one talking with a cat."

He had me there. I decided to return to the crossword.

"Seven letters." I said.

"What's seven?"

"A mathematical term for the amount of letters in the opposite of nocturnal."

"Mathematics, like memories, are unneccessary. Can mathematics tell you how to vault something twenty times your height and land uninjured?"

"No, but it informs our vocabulary by allowing us to calculate what time it is. That's how we identify nocturnal animals."

"Some are nocturnal," he said. "Some are not. Scientifically speaking, it depends on when they get up."

He finished his cream in silence, and I my beer. I had hoped nature would communicate some more useful truths than those contained in this cat, so I waited. When he rose, I spoke.

"I've enjoyed our drink together, and our conversation. Did you?"

"I forget," said the cat as he slunk toward the gate. "But, just for winter, I've decided to become diurnal."

"Diurnal?" I cried, "That's it! Damned ugly word though."

"Now you're catching on, silly thoughtbag," he said, and was gone.

Word List 2

BRETON,ANDRE:
"Existence is elsewhere."— André Breton, The Surrealist Manifesto.

When my wife and I are shopping, I will go off and get chips, beer, coffee, select a dinner wine and thumb magazines while she remains in the dreary grain aisle. I'll go back and try to help.

"I'm looking for brown (something-something) basmati," she'll say, and I look too, then give up after ten seconds.

"There's no such thing." I tell her, "It does not exist."

I do not say, "existence is elsewhere", because that means another grocery store, another search, one that somehow becomes even more futile because she's added "jasmine" to the name of what is not.

Pretending to know an unknown allows me to go home, read my new magazine, refresh myself with man-groceries in a way Andre Breton could not.

M. Breton was married three times.


CAVEPEOPLE: Definitely, predators were a factor in our ancestors' shorter lifespans, but more numerous than predators were ecological competitors. Recently in South America, remains were found of a rat the size of a modern cow. You get one of those in your attic and it will eventually fall thru the sheetrock and crush you.

With every new expedition it seems we learn of some new monster. Our ancestors couldn't even send their kids into a petting zoo with any certainty they'd survive, which brings us to recreation --essential to quality of life. We know there was a shortage of reading matter but what hobbies did they have?

Probably some excellent rock collections, but anyone collecting anything else was doomed to lifelong disappointment. I wouldn't rule out support groups, but there were no solutions. Even those, if they were conducted by psychiatric doctors, couldn't have been much help. So little was known about anything a doctorate seldom consumed more than 15 minutes of college.

I think people just stood around saying, "Gee this is a long time ago!"

RELIGIOUS RIGHT: If a tree modifies somebody's house or car during a storm the court usually rules it an act of God. If judges collectively accepted the proposition that the religious right represents the Almighty's will, and held them financially responsible for His legal offenses, the religious right would disappear in an instant. Is anybody working on this?

TIME WAVE: The teleological attractor, best explained by Terrence McKenna in reference to a final purpose for all that exists, is currently getting much use by advocates of the 2012 singularity. In physics, a singularity is an irreducible field in which the laws of nature break down. This event is foretold by the Mayan Calendar. What remains unclear is, if time ends it means ALL time is gone, not just the future but the past as well. Time is a dimension and simply cannot exist without itself. What puzzles me about time ending in 2012 is why it is now two years ago.

Ballet

When my kids were young I piled them into the bus --71 VW I still drive-- and went to a warehouse where we became volunteer assistants to our local community ballet company. We helped build and paint sets in return for comps, and we did good. Our work was acceptable --a great compliment-- and I drank nearly as much beer as the paid craftspersons. The kids loved the show and I was happy with our seats. Unfortunately, our effort and involvement failed to help me with a fundamental dysfunction where dance is involved. I appreciate dancers' grace and agility. I marvel at their beauty and skill. I have no idea what they are trying to express. Although fairly responsive to most art forms I have always had trouble interpreting ballet, then came Youtube.

I have repeatedly combed this medium for some clue, some inroad of understanding, usually without success. Then I found the attached clip. In this evening's endeavor to educate myself I think I've cracked this one. It's about an unwanted half-frisbee child, raised by pirates, who finally gets the right dress and nails the routine. At the end, we see the unsung hero in black trunks who threw her. I'd like to think he got his name on the program, but more likely he was a volunteer assistant.

Word List

This entry is devoted to those words that haunt conversation, correspondence and thought with clouds of virtual meanings. A cloud forms around denotations that can either enhance or impede communication. Indeed, many words and comments in the following list --which will be augmented via the editing function of this site-- are drawn from letters and discussions and will, for simplicity's sake, retain address form of "I" and "you". "You", where it appears, originally meant one or another specific person, but for our purposes now addresses anyone reading this blog. "I" remains a relatively unchanged quotient. In these textual divisions I is me. The idea is, meaning goes well beyond definition and I encourage you to pursue it too. In this sort of project, comments are especially useful and welcome.

ALIENS: Society in general has got so bad I consider good people and aliens as one thing. Those whose psyches subscribe to the extragalactic belt are our true relatives and seldom, if ever, number among our immediate kin. We are scattered across the universe! How do we find each other? Where are the aliens?

One good guess is ESL classes. ETs would go there to reconnoiter, plan the takeover of Earth and learn useful English phrases. Random audit is advisable. Special interest goes to students who give answers like "each thought is a prediction of itself" and "it's never been this late before". Real aliens are studious but do poorly on formalized exams. Also, we doodle a lot.

ADVANCEMENT: On a subjective level, progress is a nebulous term. We may think we are advancing as a society but are sometimes proven wrong by a broader review of evidence. A case in point: political scientists have, since the late 1990s, been summarily replaced by primatologists.


DEATH: I think there is, in my original construction, a line of peel towers --like those in England when folks feared marauding Scots-- that marks the borders of what I can know. They are used for other things now, but could, I suppose --because it's miserable not knowing answers-- be quickly pressed back into service. What smolders in their iron baskets is a thought I had long ago and have accepted as axiomatic: we take from each moment the future that best includes us. Death is a moment, an exceptional moment, but no more exceptional than the life from which the axiom came. I have much to learn about quantum navigation, but if you see the fires brighten in my direction, it means the process doesn't end and I have seen the answer --or the Scots are marauding again.

INVISIBILITY: Invisibility is one of those things I won't believe until I see it. Consult illustration here:


LIFE: I am always relieved to hear a live-food enthusiast is a vegetarian. Aren't you?

NETWORKING: I've never understood networking, which seems to be an entrepreneurial term mainly. I mean, when I had jobs, I'd do favors and call them in --or not-- later, which was useful but not really networking because the exchange was neither immediate nor implicit. Favors were governed by a very loose, flexible social contract, with no need for further mediation. I do remember friends over the years asking me in on some "networking" enterprise or other --usually concerning investment or diapers in bulk. I'd say no and they'd disappear into manipulative churches with basements full of Dinty Moore. So what's the term for people outside the give-me-what-I-want-for-crap-you-don't-want continuum?

OBSERVATION: Most people would not think there is much to be learned from a hen's muddy tracks on a pile of sugar, but those who did developed the use of moistened clay for whitening sugar in refineries.

PARTICI GRIDS: They compare favorably with fundamentals of Yoga, Tai-Chi and Qigong --all of which have adapted to modern medical discourse and so survived the occasional totalitarian government. Tyrannies tend to shut off religion with other utilities in an ongoing mission to improve humanity by making life really miserable. However, I see some problems with Partici grids being described as smaller than photons. We receive no direct information about reality smaller than a photon. So, even the most impressive technical description of how these grids behave must be deputed to faith, not science. Lesser obstacle is peoples' difficulty learning new things and further difficulty seeing their beauty. Until an embarrassingly short time ago I thought Feng Shui was a martial art, a misconception reinforced by the way I keep house in the absence of stern supervision.


VON NEUMANN PROBES: An electric field is a cloud of virtual photons. Energy propagation depends on virtual photons passing between charges --chicken or egg. Photons become real when shaken or stirred. This creates an imbalance, a little violation of energy-conservation law, which is tolerated only briefly if the kick is strong or, if the kick is weak, quite a long time. This is why the energy level of info coming to us from distant sources is always very low. What we learn from it depends on our ability to perceive and reason in new ways.

So I have a big problem with von Neumann probes. Despite the wonderful idea of probes that can set up anywhere and reproduce, they still couldn't detect anything outside their original programming. This serves only to compound the unknown of unknown regions. Also, after they take their million years to explore our one little galaxy, it would consume at least that time to complete their reports --and again that long for us to receive them.

Our expansion into distance is unlikely to depend on a big gas-fired gadgets shouting imbecilities from deep space. We need to evolve, to do more with less and weaker, subtler, forms of information. When we see light, we detect massless particles, things that aren't actually things --particles that don't exist in the way we define our own existence. Ghosts. That's got to change before we can explore much beyond our solar system.

The Secret Symbolism Of Chimneys

When I checked my Cirlot (Diccionario De Simbolos Traditionales) for chimneys there was a conspicuous absence between Chimaera and Choice. This will not do. It is a problem. As usual, we must rely on our own resources, minds and memories to solve it. We can thumb through the book to related things, things that have chimneys, like ovens. Cirlot includes Athanor --the alchemists' oven-- but its chimney is really a combined distillery and refinery, therefore another sort of thing.

Yet, we can't entirely dismiss Athanor. The gross tar from its lower regions has much to do with the mind. However much of mind is machine, you can't gum it up with shoddy ideas and expect it to work properly. Joel Chandler Harris showed how selfish, contentious characters can imprison themselves by attacking tarballs. British Petroleum and the US government are currently demonstrating this principle on our Gulf Coast. Certainly, to settle for something less than optimal mental function, when truth is available, is morbid self-betrayal.

Let us examine regular chimneys. Santa Claus comes down them and leaves some gifts, unless I am naughty --in which case he leaves a lump of coal. Coal is fuel for further combustion, symbolizing Santy's hope that next year I shall have been good. The Ifrit, of "1001 Nights", is summoned by writing God's name in Hebrew, and, like Santy, implies judgement. Mostly, these Genies rise from lamp chimneys to trick us if we're too selfish with our wishes. So there's some danger involved.

The greatest danger has to do with wicked demons like succubi. The succubus is a pretty girl-demon who has sex with guys and steals their immortal souls. Although guys don't usually mind, the church frowns on it. In fact, it's churches that promulgated the superstition that chimneys, unlike doors and windows that close, are particularly vulnerable to evil. Gargoyles and scary sculpture at cathedral chimneys are intended as apotropaic magic to keep succubi and other moogies out. Complete absence of sexual temptation in the church is unimpeachable evidence that these wards have held.

Apotropaic --Greek for evil-averting-- magic needn't be architectural. The Nazar, or evil-eye, stone is common in Greece and Turkey, which brings us closer to the geographical origin of magical chimney infestations. Earliest written record being in Sumerian cuneiform dating back to 4000 B.C. I refer, of course, to the legend of De-dal Nita, "The Soot-Husband".

Unlike succubi, the Soot-Husband would come down the chimney into the dreams of unappreciated women, not to steal their souls but to praise them, massage them, and do for them in every kind and gentle way (Sum.:Gisdu-hili). There was, however, a judgement involved. At the end of these attentions, the Soot-Husband would curl up at the foot of the bed with the cheerful words, "Good-night, just kick me in the head if you need me!"

If the woman woke wanting more from the Soot-Husband and did indeed kick him in the head, she would be judged selfish and unworthy. The spirit would evacuate its base carbon body and the all the woman got was Salamu-sepu, or "sooty-footy". The story spread quickly through Sumeria and, because it reflected their shortcomings, men got upset about it. They created the story of Akhkaru, "Vampire", to defame Soot-Husband, but strangely, women sort of liked that one too.

The Snow-Job, Realism And Perception

Although this will hopefully be a philosophical essay, I will begin with some remarks on punctuation. Quotation marks serve what are taught and thought to be dual and separate functions. They are often used to introduce an illegitimate concept --one that the reader is asked to accept for the moment. Quote marks also signify something said or written and reproduced on good authority. For the wily student, these functions are neither dual nor separate.

When I was a schoolboy I often used this interpretation in essays. I would write a sentence in quotes, in favor of my argument, and add "Hume" after it. No teacher ever questioned it. Any absurdity would do --observe: "Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of passion." --Hume. Let us proceed.

In physics and poetry we observe the world strictly through its effects on us. We abandon naive realism. Naive realism is things are what they seem to be --a belief upon which we rely for survival. So it must be connected more securely to passion, to instinct, than to thought and reason (upon which we also rely for survival). Perception is tricky business.

Since naive realism leads to all art and science, which in turn fundamentally dispute it, it can be considered both true and false --or neither. It is simply necessary. It can also lead to bad things --abusive political and economic systems and some rather nasty religions-- so it definitely wants some ethical guidance. It's a stage we go through, a climacteric from which we emerge as blustering bullies and cowering idiots or as enlightened reasoners. It's really a toss-up.

This brings us to chance. Chance alone is not a reliable mechanism for personal advancement. Only in the presence of thought does it approach biased probability-- but without it there is no proof that thought furnishes any special advantage. From randomness, what chance furnishes, we compose for ourselves new possibilities of existence --or we lapse into a succession of irritable mental gestures induced by our senses.

We must ask who or what is qualified to guide us into rational thought. Because any recommendation amounts to presumption, I suspect this agent already exists but has somehow got suppressed in us --perhaps by anxiety expressed as original sin. It is a stage of development confounded in fear. There should be enough joy-oriented religions, benevolent governments, stable economies and life-affirming philosophies to shed light on this bugaboo and evaporate it, but it persists.

Personally, I blame Hume.

Man and Machine

When man is sent to clean up his shed, he will easily find the following items within seconds: cowl from an 1890s Holmes stereoscope; two matching 1940s Kodak lens assemblies; copper carb float from Briggs & Stratton engine; old Bell and Howell Super-8 camera-grip; trombone bits; poem written a few years ago about dogs and stuff; brass parts off an irrigation control box.

Suddenly, the items link up in man's mind and his tidying chore changes. Where he expected junk, was determined and ruthless against junk and dedicated to its abolition, man is now awed and hypnotized by possibility, by collocation. Collocation is junk that assumes character and purpose in the presence of man --cool junk.

Oddments emerge from three centuries to combine on a bench. Man builds a machine. He names it Hoots. It will do cool stuff: function (function is things man is no good at) will follow form. In this case, the machine is a demonstrably remarkable public speaker.

Hoots recites its little poem with all the finesse of its maker: delayed, jerky gestures and sporadic mouth-paralysis. It has equalled man and relieved him of suffering the focus of these particulars in public. But, most importantly, it has distracted man from any further silly ideas about cleaning his shed.