Key as poem

From The Observer's Book of Furniture by John Woodforde, a bit of found poetry. It's the key to the wood grains illustrated on the endpapers.





And so for day 392
09.01.2008

Chain ditty

Frank Zappa "Packard Goose" has a segment sung by the character, Mary from the bus.

Information is not knowledge.
Knowledge is not wisdom.
Wisdom is not truth.
Truth is not beauty.
Beauty is not love.
Love is not music.
Music is the best.

Hits the right note!

And so for day 391
08.01.2008

Counting and recounting

In A Beautiful Mind, the biography of John Forbes Nash Jr. by Sylvia Nasar, one finds the following passage

Margaret Wertheim, author of Pythagoras' Trousers, a history of numerology, has pointed out that "people look to the order of numbers when the world falls apart, suggesting once again that delusions — like "mystical, cultic religious efflorescence" — aren't merely the ravings of madmen but conscious, painstaking, and often desperate attempts to make sense out of chaos.

1,2,3

And a little further on we read

To stay in one place and not to run away, to labor at articulating his delusions in a way that attracted an audience that valued them must be seen as evidence of some progression back to consensual forms of reality and behavior. And, at the same time, to have his delusions seen not just as bizarre and unintelligble, but as having an intrinsic value, was surely one aspect of these "lost years" that paved the way for an eventual remission.

Numerology as a ground for dialogue? It makes sense given its function in this case of constraining of behaviour to make communication possible.

And so for day 390
07.01.2008

Increments of incrimination

Martin Buber Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters translated by Olga Marx

Zusya's account of the "incomplete" angel-accuser that emerges from acts of sin

The Accuser

This is Rabbi Zusya's comment on the pasage in the Sayings of the Fathers: 'He who commits one transgression has gotten himself one accuser.' "Every sin begets an accusing angel. But I have never seen a complete angel spring from the sin of a devout man of Israel. Sometimes he lacks a head; sometimes his body is crippled. For when a man of Israel believes in God, believes in him even while he is sinning, his heart aches, and what he does, he does not do with all his will, and so the angel never emerges complete."

Reminds one of the Buddhist teaching about how the seeds of hate shrivel up while tending with loving kindness to one's affairs in the world, especially as related by Thich Nhat Hanh.

And so for day 389
06.01.2008

Kline on future values

Peter Kline The Everyday Genius (1988)

Relieved of the burden of drill, repetition and boredom, teachers will then be able to help us enter a new age of excitement about learning [...] For when machines handle the presentation of information, providing students with rapid evaluation and feedback, teachers will be free to engage in activities and discussions which help their students humanize what they have learned. [...] Because the interactive video-computer will bring rich new possibilities to the classroom, most people will desire to continue being students, at least on a part time basis, all through life. This will create new job opportunities for teachers, who will also be better paid than they are now. Indeed, education may become the biggest growth industry of the next half century. For there's nothing that can benefit people more, provided it actually works.

I like the ambiguity of "it works". It could be the education system or it could be the course of events predicted. Either way is pleasing to see the utopian bent reined in by a wry comment on contingency.

And so for day 388
05.01.2008

White on ornamentation

Edmund White The Burning Library "The Wanderer: Juan Goytisolo's Border Crossings"

Artistically he has taken the post-modernist technique of intertextuality but given it an Arabic flavor not only through quotations from Arabic and Persian writers but also through the imitation of of esthetic rules behind Muslim music and architecture — repetition, abstraction, fluid variations on fixed themes, improvisation. Whereas Western art subordinates the parts to the whole, demotes decoration and promotes functional or structural clarity, Muslim art dissolves or rejects these hierarchies and prizes ornamentation and spontaneity.

@-->--
how odd that ornamentation would be associated with spontaneity
--<--@

And so for day 387
04.01.2008

Time again for more space

From Elements of Japanese Design by Boyé Lafayette De Mente on "MA Mixing Space and Time"

Ma means space as well as time and refers to the space of time between events. It is space that is sensually as well as intellectually perceived. In the Japanese concept of things, ma gets your attention and directs your mind or thoughts along specific paths that lead to some kind of conclusion or some pleasant event. In art circles, ma also refers to the aesthetic and creative sense of the artist -- in the artist knowing how structure the flow of time.

It is worth spending a while again meditating on the modifications of our perceptions of time.

And so for day 386
03.01.2008

White on time in the novel

Edmund White The Burning Library "Southern Belles Lettres: Cormac McCarthy" Time as a resource...

Since fiction, like music, is primarily a temporal art, any device that inflects the reader's perception of time becomes crucial, not just as a hook for grabbing the reader's attention but as a strategy for modifying the very material out of which this art is composed: time. Plots generate suspense and characters promote a sense of identification, both elements that engender a taut awareness of duration that has little to do with clock time.

It is worth spending a while meditating on the modifications of our perceptions of time.

And so for day 385
02.01.2008

And the moral of the story is

Finished reading His Dark Materials. It's moving in a kind quiet way. It celebrates the everyday goodness of living a humble but engaged life. Its final emphasis is on building the Republic of Heaven in the here and now:

But then we wouldn't have been able to build it. No one could if they put themselves first. We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and patient, and we've got to study and think and work hard, all of us, in all our different worlds, and then we'll build ... [ellipsis in the original]

And so for day 384
01.01.2008

Ghost Days Spectral Hours

Jill Walker Rettberg.
Blogging

To really understand blogs, you need to read them over time. Following a blog is like getting to know someone, or like watching a television series. [...] A blog consists of more than words and images. It cannot be read simply for its writing, but is the sum of writing, layout, connections and links and the pace of publication.

Time Stamp Fiction

In short, it helps to consider timestamps as cueing devices. Timestamps begin to make sense in a series. [...]

The book Kari recommends has some very suggestive divisions. _Revolution in Time_ is divided into three parts : Finding Time, Keeping Time, Making Time. This threesome might also provide an analogy for the psychosocial aspects of those timestamps you are studying in relation to the practice of blogging. Initially they assist the blog writer (and readers) in marking the phases of an intentional practice of recurring composition. Blogging once a day in the morning or in the evening etc. The ritual becomes incorported hence finding time — the hour of the timestamp is key. Keeping Time — the timestamp helps organize the archive and retrieve entries. The day and month of the timestamp are key. Making Time — timestamps become labels for a number of traversals through a blog [...]

Accessions

Blog entries are often time stamped and dated. It is assumed by many readers that the displayed time stamp corresponds to event of composition. However the resourceful author could be publishing from a store of pre-written texts. As well, time stamps can be fudged for a variety of purposes. [...] If accounting is to telling, could collecting be to accessing? In a sense blogging is a redistributive activity. By playing with the partitions, the user, be they writer, reader or viewer, affect the nature of redistributive activity. [...] Gives new expression to the phrase "blogging on borrowed time."

http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance/jardin/html/invertTEIblog.htm#user111

Blog as TARDIS

Any room can become a time machine. A lesson taught to us by reading Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams.

First series of never ending looks future-wards 1, 2, 3, ...
Then as I child I learnt of integers and the doubleness of lines ... -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, ...
And then the numbers between 3.2, 3.3, ... 4.0

Each day then has many more than 24 hours.
It has mine, yours and theirs.
There are days within days.
Series. Work. Series.
Stories.

And so for day 383
31.12.07 23:59
01.01.08 00:01