...upon a globe of possibility
Saturday, May 31, 2003
Meditations based on phrases (can one word be a phrase? perhaps if we consider invisible connotations and associations, then we travel further into organized texts...) and new ones for the day: form and content, a priori, death of a childhood companion, sulky clouds and sulkier jazz music). Well, I am wrestling with html coding techniques while simultaneously experiencing server issues. Frustrating to say the least. Before I walk away from the terminal with that feeling of defeat, I will sow a few more ideas. After all, I journey the blog to write or to unfold the words which percolate within and seek the light of day.
Syntax difficulties aside, I am struck by the contrast between what we end-users and programmers consider the difference between form and content. Check out the source code for this (or any other page). Now try to locate the precious metal we call textual content. There, ensconced between mighty pillars of code, strung out like a single sentence is the core of your thought. Dwarfed really by the complex apparatus which brings it to life. Retaining less of the visual form of the paragraph in which it is conceived and later represented. To the computer, infinitely precise and conditioned and cold, these words, your thoughts, are just so many more characters, data. They do not stir emotions or reveries, do not inspire the circuitry within the machine. Or do they? How shall we ever know? How do we even know any other human being hosts the same kind of consciousness?
Well, I will not speak for the pineal gland of the computer, nor for its soul for that matter. More later, including the sudden death of someone I haven't seen in years. He has disappeared. Though we were not ever really close, we had been acquainted since childhood. The loss is somehow still profound, think John Donne's famous quote. I seek to honor him with my time and my own words. I am not sure how I go about this. I shall reflect further...
Syntax difficulties aside, I am struck by the contrast between what we end-users and programmers consider the difference between form and content. Check out the source code for this (or any other page). Now try to locate the precious metal we call textual content. There, ensconced between mighty pillars of code, strung out like a single sentence is the core of your thought. Dwarfed really by the complex apparatus which brings it to life. Retaining less of the visual form of the paragraph in which it is conceived and later represented. To the computer, infinitely precise and conditioned and cold, these words, your thoughts, are just so many more characters, data. They do not stir emotions or reveries, do not inspire the circuitry within the machine. Or do they? How shall we ever know? How do we even know any other human being hosts the same kind of consciousness?
Well, I will not speak for the pineal gland of the computer, nor for its soul for that matter. More later, including the sudden death of someone I haven't seen in years. He has disappeared. Though we were not ever really close, we had been acquainted since childhood. The loss is somehow still profound, think John Donne's famous quote. I seek to honor him with my time and my own words. I am not sure how I go about this. I shall reflect further...
Friday, May 30, 2003
My meditation begins with a concactenation of certain names, ideas, sensations. They are Don Byrd, Philip Glass, Manuel De Landa, Karl Popper, Immanuel Kant, common knowledge, recursion, minimalism, pscyophysics, poetry holes, the vault of the heavens, the stars beyond the vast, blue bubble, the anticipation of a chord change.
Wow! What a mouthful. Opaque, I imagine, to most passersby. That list above builds. The longer my string becomes, the greater the concactenation, the smaller the possibility of a verb, of flight or transport. I am weighted down by nouns and proper names, references and allusions (maybe some illusions) which few understand or care for. Not as ends in themselves, though, but means toward richer experience, some delicate but profound concactenation of the inner and outer worlds.
Let me try to light some of these words from within. Don Byrd is a poet and philosopher who works out of Albany, NY. He has had a profound influence on my vision of life, though I suspect he considers me a Romantic, not a good word in his lexicon. See a review of his great theoretical essay, The Poetics of the Common Knowledge to get a flavor of his critical concerns as well as constructive enterprise. Don foresaw the communal potential of the Internet over (10) years ago, long before AOL had become a household name. Typing away at our terminals connected to a small network, we students, friends, and admirers of the Bard would exchange more than thoughts and feelings in the virtual reality of hypertext. We shared this space, separate and united at once, an energy of immediacy and intimacy. We humans with our "poetry holes" which just do not want to be sealed were part of a great project to restore Being to our existences.
I have lost connection with most of those participants, including Don himself, in interactive poesis, proto web-page design. There was a quality of academic life which did not abide well in me at the time. I sought experience and self-study outside the hallowed walls. I was particularly interested in a knowledge of people and the material and spiritual underpinnings of our society. Some ten years after my departure, my ambitions are not so grand, nor my propensity to generalize. Reality is complex, so complex that I hesitate to express much confidence in even the simple observation of a cardinal hopping about the branches of tree. Though my recurrent interests in ideas has now led me back toward full-fledged intellectual pursuits, I return chastened and humbled. Less global are my concerns, more local.
The philosopher Manuel De Landa speaks of "psychophysics", and a "...quasi-causal operator... this is the entity that builds the plane of consistency out of multiplicities." In plainer English I think he is affirming something like a Self or Soul which has at least some power and even responsibility to shape and influence its reality. Are these, too, not quasi-metaphysical entities (more bad words) which forever haunt our thoughts and intrude into our writing. Which leads me to Kant. The starry skies above and moral laws within were somehow profoundly resonant to this grand philosopher. They are with me, as well. But more later. I am having some technical difficulties and should address those first.
Wow! What a mouthful. Opaque, I imagine, to most passersby. That list above builds. The longer my string becomes, the greater the concactenation, the smaller the possibility of a verb, of flight or transport. I am weighted down by nouns and proper names, references and allusions (maybe some illusions) which few understand or care for. Not as ends in themselves, though, but means toward richer experience, some delicate but profound concactenation of the inner and outer worlds.
Let me try to light some of these words from within. Don Byrd is a poet and philosopher who works out of Albany, NY. He has had a profound influence on my vision of life, though I suspect he considers me a Romantic, not a good word in his lexicon. See a review of his great theoretical essay, The Poetics of the Common Knowledge to get a flavor of his critical concerns as well as constructive enterprise. Don foresaw the communal potential of the Internet over (10) years ago, long before AOL had become a household name. Typing away at our terminals connected to a small network, we students, friends, and admirers of the Bard would exchange more than thoughts and feelings in the virtual reality of hypertext. We shared this space, separate and united at once, an energy of immediacy and intimacy. We humans with our "poetry holes" which just do not want to be sealed were part of a great project to restore Being to our existences.
I have lost connection with most of those participants, including Don himself, in interactive poesis, proto web-page design. There was a quality of academic life which did not abide well in me at the time. I sought experience and self-study outside the hallowed walls. I was particularly interested in a knowledge of people and the material and spiritual underpinnings of our society. Some ten years after my departure, my ambitions are not so grand, nor my propensity to generalize. Reality is complex, so complex that I hesitate to express much confidence in even the simple observation of a cardinal hopping about the branches of tree. Though my recurrent interests in ideas has now led me back toward full-fledged intellectual pursuits, I return chastened and humbled. Less global are my concerns, more local.
The philosopher Manuel De Landa speaks of "psychophysics", and a "...quasi-causal operator... this is the entity that builds the plane of consistency out of multiplicities." In plainer English I think he is affirming something like a Self or Soul which has at least some power and even responsibility to shape and influence its reality. Are these, too, not quasi-metaphysical entities (more bad words) which forever haunt our thoughts and intrude into our writing. Which leads me to Kant. The starry skies above and moral laws within were somehow profoundly resonant to this grand philosopher. They are with me, as well. But more later. I am having some technical difficulties and should address those first.
Thursday, May 29, 2003
A brand new glorious day. Grammarians out there, please tell me whether I need a comma in my first sentence. Then I shall reflect upon your wisdom and guidance. My instinct was to exclude the comma, rather uniting the adjectives "brand", "new", and "glorious" (there I go inserting a comma) into one harmonious whole day (there I go again excluding the comma). It seems that I opt for comma when I seek to explicate, rationalize, analyze and then omit the comma when I want to build, grow, layer (what does that say about this sentence).
Oh, Bertrand, you and your set of sets have confounded me again-, sentences folding in on themselves, spreading wings, expanding to encompass themselves. I am getting dizzy in this logarithmic spiraling of my thoughts, looking for a place to perch. Still point you still elude me, I chase and chase "Round the corner. Through the first gate,/Into our first world". Dandelion seeds, the song of the thrush, sunshine, starfish, and blue skies dwell there, hanging like ripe melons from some Tree of Life.
Well, reverie, you have had your flight. Rest your sated, weary self upon this small site.
Oh, Bertrand, you and your set of sets have confounded me again-, sentences folding in on themselves, spreading wings, expanding to encompass themselves. I am getting dizzy in this logarithmic spiraling of my thoughts, looking for a place to perch. Still point you still elude me, I chase and chase "Round the corner. Through the first gate,/Into our first world". Dandelion seeds, the song of the thrush, sunshine, starfish, and blue skies dwell there, hanging like ripe melons from some Tree of Life.
Well, reverie, you have had your flight. Rest your sated, weary self upon this small site.
Wednesday, May 28, 2003
Prayer Walking. Interesting phrase that I delved into a few hours ago. I think of the title of an Emerson Essay, "Pray Without Ceasing". What substance or thing does the supplicant seek? Inspiration? Joy? Meaning? Answers to Questions? Communion with an Intelligence without yet somehow within? I have my rapturous moments walking under the moonlight, by the ocean, through the woods after a fresh rain. More often than not, though, I am swept away by words, torrents of words, whirlwinds. Conversations, exchanges with phantom beings remove me from the world of sense. Control, I suppose, lies within the impulse to bounce these words roundabout my mind. Is not control also a part of the impulse to pray? This leap of faith to God, leap we must for the bridge never seems to materialize, moves us into the arms of plenty, a psychic fullness. I will not include myself, though, in the company of the "we". Not for me a simple faith in the unseen, the non-evidentary, though I draw great sustenance from the coherence which resides in ideas stretching across the deeps of time.
I am fatigued, having little slept the past few days. But within me beat words awaiting their day in the sun, or blogosphere, if you will. I let them have their way, permitted them play in this sandbox, this curved cyberspace. And as spherical geometry tells us, these words will again come back to me.
Night asks me to slip between her silken covers, slumber deep there. The dream tunnel beckons.
Good night.
I am fatigued, having little slept the past few days. But within me beat words awaiting their day in the sun, or blogosphere, if you will. I let them have their way, permitted them play in this sandbox, this curved cyberspace. And as spherical geometry tells us, these words will again come back to me.
Night asks me to slip between her silken covers, slumber deep there. The dream tunnel beckons.
Good night.
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
A multitude of words gather in my mind, portals to moments past, present, future. Which ones should I choose? What should I select? Charlemagne? The Golden Mean? The curvature of the Universe? The play of sun and cloud upon the notes of the Gymnopedie No. 1?
Who will walk with me down this corridor? Gaze with me. The tapestries woven with infinite care adorn cold, stone walls, themselves the labor of countless generations. Beyond the static scene of the hunt-a desperate fox and dedicated hound dancing around a tree-, the hills recede in blue mists, mountain hawks utter a plaintive cry. The rain will soon fall, augured well by a mist thickening now to a drizzle.
Background merges with foreground, three-dimensional space folds into two, five senses into one, a roving eye. Behind this hyper-sense, a super eye, and yet a super-super eye behind this. Somewhere lurks that homunculus who will not decompose, the indivisible, the atom. Archimedes, where is your lever? Where was your lever while you were drawing in the sand, writing famous formulae not yet discovered? Through the still-point of your dreaming, a Roman soldier thrust his sword. What were you thinking? Where have you gone?
Who will walk with me down this corridor? Gaze with me. The tapestries woven with infinite care adorn cold, stone walls, themselves the labor of countless generations. Beyond the static scene of the hunt-a desperate fox and dedicated hound dancing around a tree-, the hills recede in blue mists, mountain hawks utter a plaintive cry. The rain will soon fall, augured well by a mist thickening now to a drizzle.
Background merges with foreground, three-dimensional space folds into two, five senses into one, a roving eye. Behind this hyper-sense, a super eye, and yet a super-super eye behind this. Somewhere lurks that homunculus who will not decompose, the indivisible, the atom. Archimedes, where is your lever? Where was your lever while you were drawing in the sand, writing famous formulae not yet discovered? Through the still-point of your dreaming, a Roman soldier thrust his sword. What were you thinking? Where have you gone?
