Month: October 2005

  • Halloween
    Meditations

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    “They don’t understand
    what it is to be awake,
    To be living
    on several planes at once

    Though one cannot speak
    with several voices at once.”

    – T. S. Eliot,
    The Family Reunion

    “Multispeech is
    a mode of communication…
    which facilitates
    direct idea transference
    at high speed
    and with
    ‘multiple channels’
    like a kind of
     multidimensional speech -
    described
    in contrast to
    normal language
    which is, of course, strictly
    linear and
    one-dimensional.”

    langmaker.com on
    The Gameplayers of Zan

    “Examples are the
    stained-glass windows
    of knowledge.”

    Vladimir Nabokov

    “necess yet again from bridge of brainbow oyotecraven stare
    decesis on landaway necessity timeslast the arnings ent and tided turn
    yet beastfall nor mindstorms neither in their canceling sarved cut the
    line that binds ecessity towarn and findaway twill open pandorapack
    wishdearth amen amenusensis opend the mand of min apend the pain of
    durthwursht vernichtung desiree tolight and eadly dth cessity sesame

    We are the key.”

    – Roger Zelazny,
    Eye of Cat

    See also Finnegans Wake.

  • Balance

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    “An asymmetrical balance is sought since it possesses more movement.
    This is achieved by the imaginary plotting of the character upon a
    nine-fold square, invented by some ingenious writer of the Tang
    dynasty. If the square were divided in half or in four, the result
    would be symmetrical, but the nine-fold square permits balanced
    asymmetry.”

    – Chiang Yee, Chinese Calligraphy,
       
    quoted in Aspen no. 10, item 8

    “‘Burnt Norton’ opens as a meditation on time. Many comparable and contrasting views are
    introduced. The lines are drenched with reminiscences of Heraclitus’ fragments on flux and
    movement….  the chief
    contrast around which Eliot constructs this poem is that between the view of time as a
    mere continuum, and the difficult paradoxical Christian view of how man lives both ‘in and
    out of time,’ how he is immersed in the flux and yet can penetrate to the eternal by
    apprehending timeless existence within time and above it. But even for the Christian the
    moments of release from the pressures of the flux are rare, though they alone redeem the
    sad wastage of otherwise unillumined existence. Eliot recalls one such moment of peculiar
    poignance, a childhood moment in the rose-garden– a symbol he has previously used, in
    many variants, for the birth of desire. Its implications are intricate and even ambiguous,
    since they raise the whole problem of how to discriminate between supernatural vision and
    mere illusion. Other variations here on the theme of how time is conquered are more
    directly apprehensible. In dwelling on the extension of time into movement, Eliot takes up
    an image he had used in ‘Triumphal March’: ‘at the still point of the turning world.’ This
    notion of ‘a mathematically pure point’ (as Philip Wheelwright has called it) seems to be
    Eliot’s poetic equivalent in our cosmology for Dante’s ‘unmoved Mover,’ another way of
    symbolising a timeless release from the ‘outer compulsions’ of the world. Still
    another variation is the passage on the Chinese jar in the final section. Here Eliot, in a
    conception comparable to Wallace Stevens’ ‘Anecdote of the Jar,’ has suggested how art
    conquers time:

           Only by the form,
    the pattern,
    Can words or music reach
    The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
    Moves perpetually in its stillness.”

    — F. O. Matthiessen,
       The Achievement of T.S. Eliot,
       Oxford University Press, 1958,
       as quoted in On “Burnt Norton”

  • Recommended Reading
    for
    Hogwarts Students
    on Devil’s Night:



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    Click on the above for details.

  • Aquarius Jazz

    Adapted from Matisse
    Adapted from Matisse

    “The Jazz Age spirit flared
    in the Age of Aquarius.”

    – Maureen Dowd, essay
    for Devil’s Night, 2005:

        What’s a Modern Girl to Do?

    “I hope she’ll be a fool –
    that’s the best thing a girl can be
    in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
    – Daisy Buchanan in Chapter I
    of The Great Gatsby

    “Thanks for the tip,
    American Dream.”

    Spider-Girl, in
    Vol. 1, No. 30, March 2001

    (Excerpts from
    Random Thoughts
    for St. Patrick’s Eve)

  • Aion

    From AP’s “Today in History” for October 29:

    On this date:
    In 1967, the counter-culture musical “Hair” opened off-Broadway.

    Related material:

    Jung on Pisces and Aquarius in Aion

    The Da Vinci Code and Symbology at Harvard

    “This is the turning point
    Funny
    But by the end
    Bitter and serious and deadly”

    – Jill O’Hara singing “The Climax
        in “Hair”
        (original cast recording)

  • For Kate Jackson on her birthday:
     
    Drop-Dead Gorgeous

    I need a photo-opportunity
    I want a shot at redemption

    Don’t want to end up a cartoon
    In a cartoon graveyard

    – Paul Simon

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    “The idea that this Sad Geezer may fancy a cartoon character is, of course, ludicrous (even if she is drop-dead gorgeous…).”

    Aeon Flux – An Introduction

    “Dr. Cameron was also interested in how chemical elements are formed inside stars, a field known as nucleosynthesis.”

    Today’s New York Times.

    We are stardust

        (billion year-old carbon)

    We are golden

        (caught in the Devil’s bargain)

    Joni Mitchell,

    lyrics on the album

    “Ladies of the Canyon


    Related material:

    The upcoming film

    of Aeon Flux

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    and

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    as well as…

    Dark Ladies

    and

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    Kate Jackson in
    Satan’s School
    for Girls
    .

    The association

    is the idea.

    The Third Word War

  • Flux Redux

    “I remember how the darkness doubled
    I recall lightning struck itself
    I was listening, listening to the rain
    I was hearing, hearing something else

    Life in the hive puckered up my night
    The kiss of death, the embrace of life
    There I stand neath the Marquee Moon
    Just waiting”

    Tom Verlaine, “Marquee Moon”

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    In memory of Michael Gill,

    producer and director of the

    1969 TV series “Civilisation,”

    who died on October 20:

    Two descriptions of “Aeon Flux,”

    a story featured in the Log24 entry

     on the day that Gill died –

    “The title character is a tall, sexy, scantily-clad secret agent
    from the country of Monica….
    Her mission is to infiltrate the strongholds of the neighboring country
    of Bregna, which is led by her sworn enemy, and sometimes lover, Trevor
    Goodchild.  Monica represents a dynamic anarchist society while
    Bregna embodies a centralized scientific planned state.”

    Wikipedia

    “After Aeon is done, Trevor decides that she knows too much,
    so he has a underling propose a plan to kill her. The plan, quite
    strangely, is to implant a bunch of nanites (microscopic robots)
    in Trevors seminal duct so he has sex with Aeon and the nanites
    tear her apart from the inside.  But Aeon was prepared because she had some weird, mean, spiky,
    device in her uterus(!?!!) that eats the nanites (that part is
    kinda weak), she blows up a wall then and escapes leaving Trevor
    standing there naked and confused.”

    The Sad Geezers Guide
        to Aeon Flux Cultures

    In memory of Richard Smalley,

    advocate of nanotechnology,

    who died yesterday at 62:

    The Incredible Shrinking Man

    (Wired Magazine, October 2004)

    See also yesterday’s entry on Scientism.

    In memory of
    Thomas Wootton Masland,
    brother of
    Richard Harry Masland, Harvard ’64,
    the Log24 entries of October 25.

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    Tom Masland

    Funeral services for Masland will be held Sunday, Oct. 30, at 5
    p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 113 Engle Street, Englewood, N.J.
    The family asks that in lieu of flowers, a donation be made to the Jazz
    Foundation of America, 322 West 48th Street, New York, N.Y. 10036. The
    group helps elderly and ailing jazz and blues musicians with medical
    care, housing and other services.

  • Skeptics’ Anniversary

    From AP’s “Today in History” for Oct. 28:

    “On this date:
    In 1636, Harvard College was founded in Massachusetts.”

    In the spring of 1960, Harvard sent to all
    incoming freshmen a reading list consisting, as I recall, of two books:

    1.  Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, by Martin Gardner (Dover, 1957), and

    2.  A book on evolution, whose title I do not recall.  Perhaps it was Apes, Angels, and Victorians, by William Irvine (McGraw-Hill, 1955).

    I found in later years that Gardner was not to be trusted (certainly
    not on the subject of mathematics– he never had even one college
    course in the subject). Darwin, however, still seems eminently
    reasonable.

    For my own views on the religion of Scientism advocated by many at Harvard and by those who admire Gardner, see

    For a musical version of some related views, see

    For an update on the religion of Scientism, see yesterday’s Newsday:

    Skeptics converge to take on religion and morality

    “The congress coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Council for
    Secular Humanism, the arm of the center dedicated to promoting a
    nonreligious philosophy.”

    The word “nonreligious” here should,  since Scientism itself
    amounts to a religion, be viewed with a great deal of skepticism.

  • Human Conflict
    Number Five

    (Album title, 10,000 Maniacs)

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    This album contains

    Planned Obsolescence
    :


    science
    is truth for life
    watch religion fall obsolete
    science
    will be truth for life
    technology as nature
    science
    truth for life
    in fortran tongue the
    answer

    with
    wealth and prominence
    man so near perfection
    possession
    it’s an absence of interim
    secure no demurrer
    defense against divine
    defense against his true
    image
    human conflict number five
    discovery
    dissolved all illusion
    mystery
    destroyed with conclusion
    and illusion never restored

    any
    modern man can see
    that religion is
    obsolete

    piety

    obsolete
    ritual
    obsolete
    martyrdom
    obsolete
    prophetic vision
    obsolete
    mysticism
    obsolete
    commitment
    obsolete
    sacrament
    obsolete
    revelation
    obsolete

    Secrets of the I Ching

    (Album title, 10,000 Maniacs)

    Time of this entry: 2:56:37

    Question suggested by the
    lottery in the state of Grace
    (Kelly) on the night Sinatra died:


    What is 256 about?

    Answer: 37.

    In other words…

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    37. The Family (The Clan)

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    For details, see Log24,
    11 AM Sunday, October 16:

    Philadelphia Stories.

  • Today’s Birthday:
    Natalie Merchant

    From Wikipedia:


    Hope Chest:
    The Fredonia Recordings 1982-1983

    is a 1990 album by 10,000 Maniacs.
    It compiles tracks from their early releases
    Human Conflict Number Five and
    Secrets of the I Ching.”

    For Natalie,
    a new web page summing up the
    benefits of a Fredonia education:
    Certified Crank