Asylum Armature

A fragment dated 31/08/03 - 21/10/03

He would wander the halls. Not sure if the humming he was producing was for himself or some audience he would find beyond the pair of doors that would swing outwards into the light of another hall running perpendicular to the one along which his feet now shuffled. He felt as if he would never come to the T. And yet the humming matched the white noise of the fluorescent and he knew he would bend the puppet.

He had shuffled the long hum of fluorescent hall to come upon that phrase. the wrist bends. Puppets bow. To bend the puppet: to fold the sock cloth, pocket it, and shuffle.

He wanted to have blue nails.

And so for day 596
31.07.2008

Kneading

From How to Cook a Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher

Kneading bread means pressing it rhythmically with the heel and fingers of each hand, in a gentle rocking movement, turning the dough over on itself with each push, folding it lightly, pushing, pressing. It is a calming, musical rhythm. In eight or ten minutes, when the dough looks and feels as smooth as silk, you can stop.

And start again later.

And so for day 595
30.07.2008

Consolation and Displacement

Susan Sontag, "Unextinguished: The Case for Victor Serge" collected in At The Same Time

The truth of fiction depicts that for which one can never be consoled and displaces it with a healing openness to everything finite and cosmic.

This is not something easy to do but remarkably within reach. It requires a training of attention.

And so for day 594
29.07.2008

Mind Works

A quotation from a quotation. Vika Zafrin posting to Humanist and asking about references to "associative thinking". She quotes from Vannevar Bush "As We May Think"

With one item in its grasp, [the mind] snaps instantly to the next that is
suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate
web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other
characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are
prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the
speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is
awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature.

Humanist 16.312 (November 2002)

And so for day 593
28.07.2008

Who Profits?

Always ask "Cui bono?"

Style is mighty pleasant for those who benefit from it, but not always rewarding for those who make and live by its necessarily strict rules.

Lillian Hellman from Pentimento

And so for day 592
27.07.2008

Adage

Snatched in a moment of mania... still pondering its possibilities

Skill may be the capacity to manipulate perceptions of knowledge.
Magic is.

And so for day 591
26.07.2008

Creeping Past

Years apart and somehow tied to the same topos.

Don't let the past remind us of what we are not now.

from lyrics to Suite: Judy Blue Eyes by Stephen Stills.

He befouled where he was with where he had been.

from description of the character called Cutter in The Iron Council by China Miéville.

And so for day 590
25.07.2008

When a dog is a cur

The joys of celebrating the petty criminal. John M. Ford. A Star Trek novel #36 How much for just the planet? (Simon and Schuster, 1987)

"What is he?"

"What am I?" the shopkeeper said, a dangerous edge in his voice.

"He's a fence. Everything here is stolen."

"Oh, thank goodness," the shopkeeper said. "For a moment I thought you were going to accuse me of being a pawnbroker."

Barks and bites.

And so for day 589
24.07.2008

Disabilities of the Mind

This description of Jip from Richard Frost's Brain and Body is marked by keen observation of being unable to find "the here and now embedded in and explained by what immediately preceded it".

The more I learn about him, the more I think this was his biggest problem, the inability to build up experience. As Suzanne said, he could pick things up, but it took endless repetition and aeons of time. As long as a situation lasted things were all right, the here and now embedded in and explained by what immediately preceded it. But gaps of more than ten minutes his malfunctioning memory couldn't bridge. It prevented him from perceiving any continuity besides that offered by continuous time itself. Likewise, if he had learned something, he couldn't transfer it to a different context. If he wanted to make tea, he went to the kitchen, which by definition meant his kitchen. He couldn't make tea in Kasper's kitchen, unable as he was to apply the original skill taught to by his ergotherapist as a more general level. The same went for events. If they didn't form part of the routine they were merely incidents to him, snapshots, which in his mind were not connected and in most cases didn't endure. to put it another way: there was no flow. Imagine seeing your days in a strobe light with a low frequency, and you'll get the idea.

What disrupts the flow here is the lack of connections. What disrupts the flow in other cases is an overabundance of connections. No flow and overflow can both reduce the chances of forming meaningful experience.

And so for day 588
23.07.2008

RTFM

Just as "laughing out loud" got reprocessed as "lots of love", RTFM when transmuted by the euphemism machine gives "Remember to Find Manual"

Find it before you read it!

And so for day 587
22.07.2008