Seek and Ye Shall Find:

On the Mystical Properties
of the Number 162

On this date in history:

May 22, 1942:  Unabomber Theodore John Kaczynski is born in the Chicago suburb of Evergreen Park, Ill., to Wanda Kaczynski and her husband Theodore R. Kaczynski, a sausage maker. His mother brings him up reading Scientific American.

From the June 2003 Scientific American:

"Seek and ye shall find." - Michael Shermer

Here is a connection to runes:

Mayer, R.M., "Runenstudien," Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 21 (1896): pp. 162 - 184.

Here is a connection to Athenian bastions from a UN article on Communist educational theorist Dimitri Glinos:

"Educational problems cannot be scientifically solved by theory and reason alone...." (D. Glinos (1882-1943), Dead but not Buried, Athens, Athina, 1925, p. 162)

"Schools are.... not the first but the last bastion to be taken by... reform...."

"...the University of Athens, a bastion of conservatism and counter-reform...."

I offer the above with tongue in cheek as a demonstration that mystical numerology may have a certain heuristic value overlooked by fanatics of the religion of Scientism such as Shermer.

For a more serious discussion of runes at the Acropolis, see the photo on page 16 of the May 15, 2003, New York Review of Books, illustrating the article "Athens in Wartime," by Brady Kiesling.

Mental Health Month:
Springtime for Wagner

"And now what you've all been waiting for...

 Wagner!"

-- Colin Hay as Zac in the film "Cosi"

"When I sought those who would sympathize with my plans, I had only you, the friends of my particular art, my most personal work and creation, to turn to."

-- Wagner's address at the ceremony for the laying of the foundation stone of the Festival Theater in Bayreuth, May 22 (Wagner's birthday), 1872

"The new computer package DISCRETA which was created in Bayreuth is in the process of permanent development."

-- "A Computer Approach to the Enumeration of Block Designs Which Are Invariant With Respect to a Prescribed Permutation Group"

The above is a preprint from Dresden.

See, too, the work of Bierbrauer, who received his doctorate at Mainz in 1977 and taught at Heidelberg from 1977 to 1994.  Bierbrauer's lecture notes give a particularly good background for the concepts involved in my Diamond Theory, in the tradition of Witt and Artin.  See

Introduction to Group Theory
and Applications,

by Jürgen Bierbrauer, 138 pp., PostScript

The 401 Club: Commentary on
yesterday's "The Lottery Covenant"
and Monday's "A Mighty Wind"

 "There are dark comedies. There are screwball comedies. But there aren't many dark screwball comedies. And if Nora Ephron's Lucky Numbers is any indication, there's a good reason for that."
-- Todd Anthony, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

See also the dark screwball comedy starring Pat Robertson and Michael Eisner,

Bizarre Marriage.
  

Mental Health Month:
The Lottery Covenant

Here are the evening lottery numbers for Pennsylvania, the Keystone state, drawn on Monday, May 19, 2003:

401 and 1993.

This, by the sort of logic beloved of theologians, suggests we find out the significance of the divine date 4/01/1993.

It turns out that April 1, 1993, was the date of the New York opening of the Stephen Sondheim retrospective "Putting It Together."

For material related to puzzles, games, Sondheim, and Mental Health Month, see

Notes on
Literary and Philosophical Puzzles. 

The figures below illustrate some recurrent themes in these notes.

“Not games. Puzzles. Big difference. That’s a whole other matter. All art — symphonies, architecture, novels — it’s all puzzles. The fitting together of notes, the fitting together of words have by their very nature a puzzle aspect. It’s the creation of form out of chaos. And I believe in form.”

— Stephen Sondheim, in Stephen Schiff,
    “Deconstructing Sondheim,” 
    The New Yorker, March 8, 1993, p. 76
 

Raiders of the Lost Matrix

"In general, a matrix... is something that provides support or structure, especially in the sense of surrounding and/or shaping. It comes from the Latin word for 'womb,' itself derived from the Latin word for 'mother,' which is mater [as in alma mater]." -- Wikipedia

For a mystical interpretation of the above matrix as it relates to the Hebrew words at the center of the official Yale seal, see Talmud. 

DAY OF THE MOTHER SHIP
Part II: A Mighty Wind

I just saw the John Travolta film "Phenomenon" for the first time.  (It was on the ABC Family Channel from 8 to 11.)

Why is it that tellers of uplifting stories (like Zenna Henderson, in "Day of the Mother Ship, Part I," or the authors of "Phenomenon" or the Bible) always feel they have to throw in some cockamamie and obviously false miracles to hold people's attention?

On May 11 (Mother's Day), Mother Nature got my attention with a mighty wind waving the branches of nearby trees, just before a tornado watch was issued for the area I was in.  This made me recall a Biblical reference I had come across in researching references to "Our Lady of the Woods" for my Beltane (May 1) entry. 

Isaiah 7:2

...And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind.

This is what I thought of on May 11 watching branches swaying in the wind on Mother's Day -- which some might regard as a festival of Our Lady of the Woods.  John Travolta in "Phenomenon" sees a very similar scene partway through the picture; then, at the end, explains to his girlfriend how the swaying branches made him feel -- without mentioning the branches -- by asking her to describe how she would cradle and rock a child in her arms.  At the very end of the film, she herself is reminded of his question by the swaying branches of another tree.

Events like these are miracle enough for me.

Phaedrus Lives!

Fans of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance may recall that it is a sort of elegy for an earlier self named Phaedrus who vanished with the recovery of mental health.  Since this is Mental Health Month, the following observations seem relevant.

Reading another weblog's comments today, I found the following remark:

"...the mind is an amazing thing and it can create patterns and interconnections among things all day it you let it, regardless of whether they are real connections."
 - sejanus

This, of course, prompted me to look for patterns and interconnections.   The first thing I thought of was the fictional mathematician in "A Beautiful Mind" establishing an amazing -- and, within the fiction, real -- connection between the pattern on a colleague's tie and the reflections from a glass.  A web search led to a really real connection.... i.e., to a lengthy listserver letter from an author named Christopher Locke, whose work is new to me but also strangely familiar.... I recognize in his writing both some of my own less-than-mentally-healthy preoccupations and also what might be called the spirit of Phaedrus, from Zen and the Art.

Here is a link to a cache I made of the Locke letter and a follow-up he wrote detailing his sources:

Christopher Locke as Phaedrus

One part of Locke's letter seems particularly relevant in light of yesterday's entries related to the death of June Carter Cash:

"Will the circle be unbroken?
  As if some southern congregation
  is praying we will come to understand."

                            Amen.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript

from Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch ("Q"), quoting Socrates's remarks to the original Phaedrus:

‘By Hera,’ says Socrates, ‘a fair resting-place, full of summer sounds and scents! This clearing, with the agnus castus in high bloom and fragrant, and the stream beneath the tree so gratefully cool to our feet! Judging from the ornaments and statues, I think this spot must be sacred to Acheloüs and the Nymphs. 

This quotation illustrates a connection between Jesus (College) -- from my entry of 3:33 PM Thursday -- and a Nymph -- from my entry of 11:44 PM Friday.  See, too, Q's quoting of Socrates's prayer to Pan, as well as the cover of the May 19, 2003, New Yorker:

For a discussion of the music
that Pan is playing (today's site music),
see my entry of Sept. 10, 2002,
"The Sound of Hanging Rock."

Highballs

"If you can bounce high,
bounce for her too...."
 – F. Scott Fitzgerald, epigraph to
The Great Gatsby

Magazine purchased at
newsstand May 14, 2003:

A Whiff of Camelot
as 'West Wing'
Ends an Era

– New York Times,
 May 14, 2003

Song title from the
June Carter Cash album "Press On":

"Gatsby's Restaurant"

From The Great Gatsby, Chapter Four:

"Highballs?" asked the head waiter.
"This is a nice restaurant here,"
said Mr. Wolfsheim, looking at the
Presbyterian nymphs on the ceiling.

Presbyterian Nymph:

Mimi Beardsley, JFK playmate,
in the news on May 15, 2003 

On JFK's plane trips:
"Whenever the President traveled,
members of the press staff traveled as well.
You always have a press secretary
and a couple of girls traveling....
 Mimi, who obviously couldn't perform
 any function at all, made all the trips!"

Apparently there was some function....

"Don't forget the coffee!"
– Punchline from the film
  "Good Will Hunting."

Enough

Commentary on the May 15 death of
June Carter Cash, which I learned of
at the New York Times site
at about 2:10 AM today:

Jesus College

In light of yesterday's Jesus College entry
("The Only Pretty Ring Time," May 15),
the following song lyrics seem relevant.

While walking out one evening
                 not knowing where to go
Just to pass the time away      
                 before we held our show
 I heard a little mission band     
             playing with all their might
I gave my soul to Jesus           
             and left the show that night.

The day will soon be over         
                  and evening will begun;
No more gems to be gathered  
                     so let us all press on.
When Jesus comes to claim us  
                    and says it is enough
 The diamonds will be shining,    
                   no longer in the rough.

The Only Pretty Ring Time

On May 14 five years ago, the night Sinatra died, the Pennsylvania (State of Grace) lottery evening number was 256:  see my note, Symmetries, of April 2, 2003.

On May 14 this year, the Pennsylvania lottery evening number was 147.  Having, through meditation, perhaps established some sort of minor covenant with whatever supernatural lottery powers may exist, this afternoon I sought the significance of this number in Q's 1939 edition of the Oxford Book of English Verse.  It is the number of "It was a Lover and his Lass," a song lyric by William Shakespeare.  The song includes the following lines:

In the spring time,
    the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing,
    Hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.

For the Sinatra connection, see
Metaphysics for Tina.

The selection of Q's book for consultation was suggested by the home page of Simon Nickerson at Jesus College, Cambridge University, and by the dedication page of Q's 1925 Oxford Book of English Prose, which names Nickerson's school.

Ian Lee on the communion of saints and the association of ideas:

"The association is the idea."

For translation of the Greek phrase in Q's 1925 dedication, see

Greek and Roman Grammarians
on Motion Verbs and Place Adverbials

Malcolm D. Hyman
Harvard University
January 4, 2003