At this point I was convinced he wanted something from me, but I looked up from my book, and into his eyes for the first time, and we began to talk. It went very nearly like this.

I said, “Well, it’s actually not my normal fare. I mean, it’s good writing, but the story—”
“What’s your normal stuff, then? What you usually read.”
“Science fiction. Lots and lots of science fiction.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that? Like, what kind of books? Which ones?”
“Well, have you ever read the Dune series, by Frank Herbert?”
“I’m not sure. Yeah, I think so. I think I did.” (Here I could not quell my smile.)
“Check it out. I guarantee it’ll treat you well.”

We were above ground by this point, and discovered to our mutual pleasure that we were serendipitously walking in the same direction. (West on Girard Ave from Broad St., for those interested.) Something else was said, and I asked him where he went to school. He lifted up his jacket, which he wore unzipped, and showed me the emblem on his shirt.

“HOPE. It’s a charter school.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of it.”
“Man, it sucks there. It’s a terrible school. I got all As and Bs, but it’s not hard. I’m in the highest grade—well, not the highest grade—I’m in ten—but they just go over the same stuff all the time. For everybody else, it’s like they don’t get it or something. Maybe it’s because most of them smoke weed.”

Yes, there’s likely an association there, I said. I told him to stick to his studies. I started in talking about work—I’m that person, all of a sudden—and gave him some stories about adults I know who have spent too much time with drugs and regretted it, and are only now going back to get a GED, at 35 or 45. That seemed to validate his perspective, and he smiled at me.

I said, “Don’t ever stop learning. When I was little, I read a lot. My mom worked a lot when I was little, so I would read. She’d come home, pretty tired, of course, and I’d ask her about some words. I wanted to know what they meant. Every time, she told me the same thing: ‘Look it up!’ Every time!”
“She wouldn’t tell you? Really?”
“Yeah. But she was right, because now I feel like the only mistake I haven’t made is being sure that everything—that thing over there, or this, whatever—is learnable. I can learn that. I can learn this. You know?”
“Yeah. Sometimes, like if I’m at the library or something, I like to sit there and just think. I don’t always read, sometimes I just listen to music and think.”
“It seems to me that very many people are terrified of situations where all they can do is think. Sometimes people structure their life in activities so that they don’t have to think, and when they’re confronted with a situation where thinking is all they can do, they get scared. No one personality flaw hinders a person more than this, but everybody has it! It’s just a matter of when you shed it. I don’t know, but it seems to me like maybe you shed it a while ago.”

It was around this time that we’d reached an intersection where he needed to turn, and he asked for my “card.” I laughed and said that I had none, but that I’d happily share my email address with him. I did so, and he thanked me. He said he knew someone with my name who went to another high school in Philadelphia. I said I thought that was cool.

Learning is something I’ve never figured out. I am a laggard, a loafer, and an idiot.

I want to be dragged across life like a messy paintbrush. Knowing you, you might scoff or smile at my using passive voice there, but I don’t think stars or quarks worry about where they are going in life, and from what I can tell, they’re having a hell of a time.

Some day I’ll have children, and I’ll pray. My hope is that my son will hold an ear of corn all afternoon, turning it over and over in his hands, deciding with every breath to wonder more.

This evening I harbor the suspicion that there are wanderers, and wonderers, and wandering wonders: the widening gyre. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll wake at dawn to discover the first midden heap, the anchor, the memory. But I doubt it.

My mind is open, my lips are parted, but my heart is lost in some deep wood.

Someday I might know why rain makes me feel old. Now, I hide from the knowledge.

The day we understand is the day we die.

“Well, you brought some magic into that little life,” said Albert, as the next child was hurried away.
It’s the expression on their little faces I like, said [Death].
“You mean sort of fear and awe and not knowing whether to laugh or cry or wet their pants?”
Yes. Now that is what I call belief.

Indeed!

And yes, this meme is the ultimate meme just like 2010 will be the YoLD. Mark my words.

via Linux Hater’s Blog

Laptop:

ragnarok@DragonBoat:~$ vrms

Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

White people! White people have all kinds of ridiculous gadgets and toys in their kitchen. They’ve got 16 different knives, an eggbeater, a slicer, a dicer, a cheese grater, and all kinds of other wacky shit. My dad has one (1) big fuckoff cleaver, and chopsticks.

What can white people make in their kitchens that my dad can’t? Grits?

I found this both incredibly humorous—particularly because it was in my apartment a few weeks ago that he pointed to the Ikea knives in the Ikea knife holder on the Ikea butcher’s block and said, essentially, that he wasn’t in Kansas anymore—and quite accurate.

In Taiwan, every form of food I ingested was cooked with nothing more than:

1. A bowl
2. A wooden stick
3. A metal cutter

How is this possible? Obviously the paradox of choice and maximization of individual freedom so intrinsic to American consumer culture play a big role in this, but maybe also it’s that Chinese culinary accoutrements have merely been refined over millennia. There’s an efficiency implicit in the—excuse the misnomer—Spartan, function-over-form aesthetic of the Chinese kitchen.

Clearly, then, while both Chinese and Americans might be said to place great weight in the skill of a chef, the former would almost certainly define “skill” as a learned ability, whereas the latter might pay more attention to the pomp and circumstance around the person.

Perhaps I’m making drastic leaps of logic, but stay with me. Entertain the possibility that the above is correct, if only because it’s so contradictory to certain research that claims Chinese pay more attention to context than Americans.

When you look at the picture on the computer screen at right, where do your eyes linger longest? Surprisingly, the answer to that question might differ depending upon where you were raised. Americans stare more fixedly at the train in the center, while Chinese let their eyes roam more around the entire picture, according to research by psychologist Richard Nisbett, PhD.

Interesting, no?

The etymology of “redemption”

I can’t help but look at a word’s older meanings when trying to understand the concept it represents. Without cultural (i.e. sociohistorical) context, any word is flat and drab. In this particular case, I’m tempted to think of coupons, rather than souls or minds, if I don’t bother to think etymologically. Picking apart the Latin construction, we get two basic parts:

1. re(d)-, an extremely common Latin prefix meaning essentially “again” or “back to the original place”
2. emere, a Latin verb meaning “to buy,” itself consisting of the prefix e(x)-, meaning “out of,” and merere, “to deserve” (cf. English “merit”).¹ Together, then, as emere, it means “that which is earned.”

It seems, then, that redemption is a later purchase, the delayed derivation of value. And this makes a hell of a lot of sense.²

The philosophy of “redemption”

My latest realization in this line of thought, by which I mean the understanding of suffering, is that I’ve been searching for a Grand Unified Theory of Belief. Much like how comparative mythology fascinates me by pointing out isomorphisms in folklore across significant cultural boundaries, theology is interesting to me only in the singleness of its various forms. It sounds obtuse, irreverent far beyond the point of atheism, to say of the multiplicity of religious belief in the world, “It’s all the same.” But often, that’s precisely how I feel.

One of the most important themes in understanding redemption, in my mind, is that of return. There is progress, yes—much like the “If you can get through it. If you can endure it all the way” philosophy³—a progress that implies deviation and therefore growth. But more important than that, there is an eventual homecoming, a point at which the wayfarer returns to the point of departure, and discovers in the process that home is everywhere. (At the risk of sounding didactic, please remember that Daoism’s 道 means “way” or “path”.)

Circles, arcs, bends, and loops

It seems to me that this discussion of redemption, while certainly encompassing broad swaths of philosophy and theology, is mostly a messy stew of linguistics and numerology, of geometry and divination. This is unfortunate in terms of ease of understanding, but fortunate in terms of fun.

All the curvatures listed above (viz. circles, arcs, bends, and loops) can be understood in different ways, specifically as referring to space (e.g. arc) or time (e.g. loop). This is an expected byproduct of the spatiotemporalization so common in Western cultures, and consequently seen throughout the English language. For the sake of clarity, I’ll define each curvature according to its use in the present argument.⁴

1. circle: A process or concept exhibiting unity, whether spatial or temporal, in form or function
2. arc: Progress whose path indicates transverse velocity (i.e. the presence of any vector both nonidentical to, and acting upon, the initial trajectory)
3. bend: Permutation to an otherwise straight trajectory which introduces curvature, thereby increasing the distance traveled (i.e. path) in a discrete but nonlinear fashion
4. loop: A reiterating process exhibiting a constant semantic structure which varies only in its temporal displacement

The confluence of these shapes and concepts forms the path to redemption.

The circle, as an entity both spatial and temporal, is the recognition of the illusion of difference. The presence of infinity in the recursive symmetry of the circle is a mark of divinity. The absolute oneness of the circle approaches nonness, yet cannot reach it in its silence.

The arc is often the straightest path possible. It represents the presence of plural forces in the structuring of the path, the eternal inertia of past direction, even after the future path has been chosen. A well crafted arc is beautiful and efficient, a joyous yet purposed teleological ride.

The bend is a change in the path. It can turn a line into an arc, or a circle into an ellipse. It is the purposeful modification of real elements in order to arrive at a finite future. Over time, a bend can be thought of as periodicity or oscillation in a waveform.

The loop is a careful reconsideration of an attempt, amounting essentially to “How about now?” The attempt must work at some point. Given the constant restructuring of the path, the loop constitutes stored memory. It can reattach to the past, and thereby affect the future.

Spirals, helices, vortices, and circles

Now, further spatialization of the already temporal concepts discussed here yields new concepts ripe for our understanding. If 道 is to be understood as a 1-dimensional component to redemption, i.e. the path (or line), then the previous section detailed the 2-dimensional constructs of the system. This section deals with the 3-dimensional concepts of redemption.

Of course, 道 differs substantially from a mere 1-dimensional line; its quality of a path mandates consideration in terms of at least two dimensions, to include time with direction, resulting in progress and perspective. And certainly at least “loop” from the 2-dimensional category above demands time, and therefore that list can be understood as consisting of 3-dimensional objects. By the same logic, the concepts discussed in this section could be seen as either 3- or 4-dimensional paths. (This will be the last time this dimensional transformation is carried out.)

Enter the definitions.

1. spiral: Curve  originating at a central point, around which it revolves and from which it grows progressively more distant; notably passes through same radii again and again, but at different and discrete points each time
2. helix: A 3-dimensional curve congruent with a corresponding circle on two axes; essentially a circle with an “activated” third (z-) axis
3. vortex: A 3-dimensional curve congruent with a corresponding spiral on two axes; essentially a spiral with an “activated” third (z-) axis
4. circle: A 3-dimensional progression functionally constant on two axes; the most constant of all shapes and thoughts, even more so than a line, given that the circle revisits space in displaced time

And the expanded discussion.

The spiral remembers but diverges. Its progress in difference is fueled by fear of the past, by the yearning to change. In its excellence in a single plane, it is blind to, and therefore bound by, infinitely more.

The helix remembers and honors. Even in its adherence to tradition, however, it cannot help but evolve: it continually remakes itself in its own image, or in the image of the thought which preceded it. Nevertheless, it excels in only a single dimension, and remains bound in two.

The vortex, for all its striving, is trapped in its aspiration. It is defined by the nature of the progress it once made, and perpetuates the sins of its father, which it long ago became.

The circle in three dimensions contains the potential to rewrite itself.⁵ It exhibits loyalty and purpose, fidelity to the ineffable cause of self without context: Monism.⁶

The spiral remembers and wanders. Wandering can be ordered.

The helix remembers honor. It is resolute, like a crystal lattice. Its strength and eternity allows for change outside itself: within.

The vortex cannot consume its origin.

Shapes, lines, times, and rhymes. The indivisible is invisible. The effort serves; having made it through, we are both younger and older.

We cannot go back. Nevertheless, we must try.

1. See entry for “exempt” at EtymOnline.
2. Interestingly enough, Exodus 21:8 uses the word to refer to the buying back of slaves!
3. See the previous post, an excerpt from Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed.
4. There is nothing remotely mathematical about these definitions. They were made up and hammered into shape specifically for the sake of this discussion. As such, they might differ considerably from their more traditional forms.
5. Cf. death code, Oroborus.
6. Cf. Einheit, zⁿ = 1, ت(وحيد), 一神教.

Kéri examined a gene involved in brain development called neuregulin 1, which previous studies have linked to a slightly increased risk of schizophrenia. Moreover, a single DNA letter mutation that affects how much of the neuregulin 1 protein is made in the brain has been linked to psychosis, poor memory and sensitivity to criticism.

[...]

People with two copies of the neuregulin 1 mutation – about 12 per cent of the study participants – tended to score notably higher on these measures of creativity, compared with other volunteers with one or no copy of the mutation. Those with one copy were also judged to be more creative, on average, than volunteers without the mutation.

Now, this is obviously a very new study, and as such shouldn’t be taken to confirm or refute anything yet. But its findings are so in line with what I’ve naively believed for years that I can’t help but jump on board.

Lately I’ve been reading a gross amount of Terry Pratchett books, as a feel-good kind of escape from the jobhunt, as a retreat from academic reading, and as a study in how to structure a novel. If you’ve ever read a Terry Pratchett book, then you probably see my point already. For those who haven’t, his books are so disjointed, with artful hairpin turns to crack a joke, and so off-the-wall with the subject matter, that the only reasonable reaction for a reader to have is: “This man’s brain is not right.” It simply must be broken somehow.

I believe that.

If you’re a Terry Pratchett fan, it also won’t come as news to you that he was recently diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. From his speech to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust Conference:

I’d like a chance to die like my father did—of cancer, at 86. Remember, I’m speaking as a man with Alzheimer’s, which strips away your living self a bit at a time. Before he went to spend his last two weeks in a hospice he was bustling around the house, fixing things. He talked to us right up to the last few days, knowing who we were and who he was. Right now, I envy him.

It’s a very moving speech, and I recommend reading it in full. But I find this tragic news intriguing because to me it confirms what I’ve always wondered about the man: that his brain operates fundamentally so differently that it could be called pathological.

Now, although I have no scientific background whatsoever, I do have Google Fu, and so I should say that it appears that at present the academic consensus is that there is no link in cause between schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s. From one such paper (available in full!):

This study provides evidence that elderly patients with schizophrenia showing Alzheimer’s disease neuropathology in the brain have increased levels of Aß0. Thus, cognitive impairment in these patients could be related to the dementia-associated amyloid ß-peptide pathogenicity in the brain. However, the larger group of elderly patients with schizophrenia, who were comparably demented but did not evidence Alzheimer’s-related histopathology, did not show significantly elevated levels of amyloid ß-peptide. Analysis of the total brain amyloid ß-peptide content in the present patient cohort showed that the occurrence of cognitive decline in the course of schizophrenia is distinct from the neuropathologic or molecular processes linked to amyloid ß-peptide in Alzheimer’s disease.

From what I’ve read, that basically means that schizophrenia is not considered to be related to Alzheimer’s in terms of cognitive impairment because different factors seem to be causing the impairment in each disease. It helps to read the Wikipedia entry on amyloid ß, which explains:

Amyloid beta (Aβ or Abeta) is a peptide of 39–43 amino acids that appear to be the main constituent of amyloid plaques in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients. Similar plaques appear in some variants of Lewy body dementia and in inclusion body myositis, a muscle disease. Aβ also forms aggregates coating cerebral blood vessels in cerebral amyloid angiopathy. These plaques are composed of a tangle of regularly ordered fibrillar aggregates called amyloid fibers, a protein fold shared by other peptides such as prions associated with protein misfolding diseases. Research on laboratory rats suggest that the two-molecule, soluble form of the peptide is a causative agent in the development of Alzheimer’s and that the two-molecule form is the smallest synaptotoxic species of soluble amyloid beta oligomer.

That’s about all I know so far, and I wanted to share. I realize like it might sound like I crudely accept the trade-off of having brilliant people suffer, as long as they keep making pretty things for me to passively enjoy. I don’t want to sign off on anyone else’s pain, but I would like to encourage a mindset of critically assessing what is called bad and what good, at least when it comes to brain function.

I don’t know how all this stuff works, but I guess that’s my point. I don’t even know if I want to understand it one day. At this point I feel I’d be better off just closing my eyes and gritting my teeth when I’m drawing the straw of reincarnation—or of aging, if there’s any difference.

In the time leading up to my recent graduation, I’ve been doing landscaping work on weekends in order to pay the bills. I took a few weekends off to graduate, but I’ll be picking it back up this weekend to keep myself afloat economically, until something bigger and better comes along.

There is something unreal about this type of work. Work of the hands. Moving earth. Touching all different types of life and telling them where to go, where they can best be provided for. Although all of this stuff is unquestionably grounded in the real, it goes—for me—beyond the physical form and instills meaning. There is a reason that the gardener is, as a character, a literary device unto itself, and I’m just beginning to understand that.

A few weeks ago, while working in a housing development, mulching beds, an old man came outside to make some special requests. I obliged, and he came out again and tipped me $20. Later, he yet again came outside, and sat down to watch our crew working. He asked me how long I’ve been doing this type of work. I said, oh, I don’t know, that it’s seasonal work and altogether maybe ten years, just over the summers.

He told me a story about how, when he was “my age,” whatever he took that to be, he had a job working a combine harvester. Made a dollar an hour, I’m pretty sure he claimed. He loved that job. But eventually he found a better job in a glass factory, making three times the money, with benefits, too. He took it without hesitation. He worked the new job for three days, then quit and went back to manning the combine.

“So, I understand why you do the work you do.”

He seemed to think there was great wisdom in there somewhere.

I don’t yet pretend to appreciate the depth of what that man was trying to communicate to me, but flavor of the message is still with me. It’s as though I entered the room during the dying fall, and while I don’t have a prayer of knowing on what chord the piece ended, the overtones haunt me. In the old man’s words I heard the memory of still older words:

My words have ancient beginnings.

This was translated from 言有宗, literally “words have ancestors.” I’ve found myself over the past year or two becoming so open-minded and philosophically promiscuous that I think I’ve crossed back over into conservative territory. I seem to believe that at some remote point in history or prehistory, some person, whether mystic or shaman or prophet or scholar, did indeed figure out the nature of reality, or at least came damn close. The odds that I’ll encounter such an individual in my lifetime, face-to-face, are rather slim, though, so I’ve turned to exegesis.

And landscaping.

In spe (και ημέρες)

The title of this post comes from a short essay by Denise Levertov, in which she discusses the process of nurturing belief through the carrying out of good deeds. At least, that’s what I think it’s about—I only read the first page of it. It was enough to inspire me. I suppose you could say I believed it.

What speaks to me about this philosophy is that I genuinely believe that certain types of work will sustain and satisfy, and others will not. Others can even lead one far astray.

Where I’m at right now is the first time I’ve ever really had to decide how I can best interface with the world. Is it wrong that I don’t really care whether Verizon uses Twitter to provide better customer service? Is it illogical that I’d sooner work for a major marketing firm than canvass for Greenpeace? I have substantial misgivings about even the Peace Corps.

It seems the only option left open to me is graduate study. I want to be a professor. To put it quite simply, I can’t imagine any other job allowing me to keep up the ritual of reading and writing I’ve envisioned for myself as necessary for cultivating a healthy soul. So I’ll spend the next year or so piecing together journal articles with the sundry professors who will hire me a month at a time to edit their work.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll even get my hands dirty one of these days.

It had just started to rain, or was just about to, but I don’t think that’s why I got so confused.

I ended up turning around and walking back home, where I found my pens, and suddenly wanted notebooks to scribble in.

Instead I ate cheese.

At least I’ve graduated now. I have the summer to figure where to live and what to work. The time will be spent fixing what used to function just fine, and building new things when necessary.

That’s probably the crux of it right there: building new things when necessary. Somehow I still wish I had those notebooks, though.

your praises are better than nicotine. if i ever feel a dire need to quit
I’ll just ask you to send me a haiku whenever I want a cigarette

Singularity
Running from the painted cave
To shellac the soul

Tea reminds us of
Bitter sacrifice. And how
Grass is more humble
More than we will ever be
Ah, the taste of memories!

Art thou that thou art?
Maybe thou art that art thou.
You, synthesize me.

func(identity)
global values don’t exist
know thyself through me

OK, the second example is really a tanka, but that’s awesome. Does seem a little like bringing a gun to a knife fight, though.

I recently learned that one of my role models, upon waking, every single day—or so he claims—writes a sonnet. And these sonnets are often pure gold, from what I’ve read. So maybe I’ll make a habit out of fighting in haiku.

I’ll wake in sonnets, dream in ghazals, hunger in villanelle.

Careful what you wish for.

I decided to create a piece that could travel to these schools and would also be of the highest quality. This led to the current one-hour adaptation of the script with three actors.

It is a thrilling distillation of the play and allows for an intense psychological excavation of Macbeths’ consciousness. It is like placing a spotlight on the essential elements of the story, thereby revealing the essence of the play.

No thanks.

In the excerpt below, the character Shevek talks with his hosts on the planet Urras. The twin planets Urras and Anarres have had no communication with each other for more than a century, since the Urrasti insurrectionists were exiled to Anarres. Shevek is the first visitor from Anarres since the exile.

Shevek felt extremely uncomfortable. He got up and went over to the windows. “Your world is very beautiful,” he said. “I wish I could see more. While I must stay inside, will you give me books?”

“Of course, sir! What sort?”

“History, pictures, stories, anything. Maybe they should be books for children. You see, I know very little. We learn about Urras, but mostly about Odo’s times. Before that was eight and one half thousand years! And then since the Settlement of Anarres is a century and a half; since the last ship brought the last settlers—ignorance. We ignore you; you ignore us. You are our history. We are perhaps your future. I want to learn, not to ignore. It is the reason I came. We must know each other. We are not primitive men. Our morality is no longer tribal, it cannot be. Such ignorance is a wrong, from which wrong will arise. So I come to learn.”

That says rather succinctly what I was trying to convey about feeling culturally challenged.

Somehow, I have nothing more to say on the matter right now.

This is pretty much the only course I’ve ever taken where the class size is too large to have an active discussion. It’s in a lecture hall with stadium-style seating, and class participation (and attendance) is measured by clicking a button on an RF remote which is linked to one’s student ID number. The prof periodically throws out questions in his presentation, and by submitting an answer with your remote, you verify that you attended the class. Not exactly foolproof, right? But that’s not the subject of this post.

Let me stress that I know very little about the hard sciences. It’s just something I never really cracked a book on, and it’s a hit to my pride that I’m so weak in this area. Nonetheless, I have skills to avail me!

Today, the professor tossed up this question on the presentation, and we had to vote for what we thought the correct answer:

When an air bag deploys, what actually happens?

1. Air is pushed into the bag from the outside of the car.
2. It’s not actually air, but a liquid that fills the bag.
3. A chemical reaction forms a gas.
4. Gas is already present and expands in the bag.

Now, knowing absolutely nothing about the subject matter, but knowing on pretty solid ground that I’m attending a chemistry class, which answer am I likely to pick? Probably the one that says chemical reaction in it!

This is particularly surprising to me, because the prof’s questions aren’t always so remedial. Take, for example, this answer set to a prompt about why an unopened soda can expands on a hot day:

1. The expansion is due to the decreased solubility of CO₂ (g) in water at higher temp, so the dissolution of CO₂ (g) is exothermic.
2. Energy is always required to dissolve a solute molecule in water, because to do so requires the breaking of hydrogen bonds within the water.
3. The dissolution of a gas into a liquid corresponds to an isothermal compression of the gas.

Not the most taxing exercise, but it’s also not insultingly obvious: all the options have very chemistryish jargon in them.

I’ll add that I’m well aware that the choices in the first example all somehow relate to chemistry, but I’m focused much more here on the reasonableness in the design of the answer choices. I wonder whether being a professor myself will give me more insight on this matter, or just numb me to being disinterested in it myself.

I had my first class of the day cancelled, so I lay out on the grass, in the sun, and examined the veins inside my eyelids. There was a breeze, and big tree near me, and irritating dance music blaring from the quad.

After an hour and a half of lolling, I convinced myself to get up and spend some time in the library.

The chemistry textbook I needed was checked out, so I read for pleasure. And it was grand.

Recalling times when I have been culturally challenged in Taiwan, there is a single very vivid memory which stands out among all the rest. I was hanging out with a friend late at night, just the two of us, and in the midst of our deep ruminations on life and personality and our respective futures, some oblique statement tipped me off to a potential religiosity in my friend. So I asked, “Do you believe in God?” I thought it a reasonable question, one which did not overstep any boundaries in terms of what I may or may not ask.

She suddenly looked very confused, and asked, “Well, which god?” Fortunately I was not so oblivious to her mindset that I thought she was referring to differing conceptions of the Judeo-Christian God. I realized—although I had already known this on some intellectual level, of course—that her religious heritage was such that there are a myriad of gods, and myriad expectations are attached to them. A person might believe in any number of gods, and eschew belief in others, thereby delineating a very individual, albeit substantially contextualized, set of rules for what constitutes acceptable behavior.

How insensitive it was of me to ask! Fortunately she was not at all offended. She reacted similarly yet oppositely to what I might expect from a peer in the U.S. An American college student in the Northeast, when met with a positive answer from “the God question,” might respond with polite disdain, with patronization, like an evolutionist discovering a Creationist. Standard “my god is bigger than your god” fare. I think the motivation for such a reaction, while utterly indefensible, is that the disdaining individual feels more educated. It is difficult to believe that one can subscribe to beliefs of Creationism, when evolutionism and its daughter theories have populated the academic world so completely. In a sense, this person is saying: “Oh, that. You still believe that?”

My friend’s reaction was not too distant from this. She smiled and laughed a bit when she realized where I was coming from with my question. She began to explain, humiliatingly for me, that the Chinese tradition holds many gods, unlike my Western tradition, which has been predominantly monotheistic for a good two millennia now. The disdain, the patting on the head, came from a vector I still believe I perceived in how she presented this knowledge to me: I am a Westerner, come to Taiwan to study—and I still believe in that monotheism stuff?

This incident, so planted in my mind for all my days, took root and spread outwards to touch memories of similar happenings. I was outside, talking to a friend, discussing the learning of languages and how much that brings, how much understanding of humans, both others and the self, it affords one. My memory of the conversation is hazy now, but I believe we were talking in English. My friend asked me whether I knew any websites where he could find free books in English to read. Of course I did! I would link him to Gutenberg.org, so named because of Gutenberg, the German, the man who invented—he built—“he, hundreds of years ago, in the past, he makes a big machine to make—produce—many books.” No, the machine did not write them. Oh, yes, OK, it did write them, but it did not author them. Nevermind. (I would make the same mistakes! But would he?)

I warned my friend that while the works on this website would indeed be free, and in English, they would be quite old. “Why?” Well, because—how on Earth to explain, using rudimentary vocabulary, copyright law and the golem that is the culture of ownership grasping its leash? I knew this was a test I had to pass if I ever wanted to be a teacher, so I tried my best. “And so, most books there, only before 1920 or so.” My friend was still very confused. “Tell me about the old books.” Egg on my face. English was never painted on cloth and hauled across deserts to foreign kingdoms. Its writers were never compelled, at behest of the emperor and under penalty of death, to write, just write, lest the world never know their perfect philosophies.

I know nothing of age nor progress. I am an American, a puling infant amid cultures and worlds thoroughly adolescent. What can I do for you, that you haven’t already tried? What can I say to you, that you haven’t already heard?

I want to rediscover each and every one of you and tell you why you are still great. Long ago, just this morning, America tried to become the archive, the library of Alexandria, for all cultures willing to come. Tell us. We are listening. We may be rapt within our own ignorance, but we are blessed with youth and vigor, too. All our hands are stained with blood; I was just trying to be like you. So invite me to the table tell me a tale. Let’s forget our differences, which never really existed anyway, and have a meal.

So I decided to find out.

On Wednesday evening, shortly before 8pm, there was a meeting scheduled to discuss William Q. Judge’s The Ocean of Theosophy. Naturally I knew nothing of this work and intended to do no research beforehand, so as not to ruin whatever surprise awaited me. Surprised I was, and surprisingly frustrated that I hadn’t taken the time to find the book and read it before attending the meeting.

Here’s an excerpt from the portion of the text under discussion at the meeting I attended.

This is the state of Devachan, a Sanskrit word meaning literally “the place of the gods,” where the soul enjoys felicity; but as the gods have no such bodies as ours, the Self in devachan is devoid of a mortal body. In the ancient books it is said that this state lasts “for years of infinite number,” or “for a period proportionate to the merit of the being”; and when the mental forces peculiar to the state are exhausted, “the being is drawn down again to be reborn in the world of mortals.” Devachan is therefore an interlude between births in the world.

So that’s the kind of stuff we’re dealing with here.

My initial take on the philosophical outlook expounded by the text—and consequently, by theosophy in general—was that it was a snobbish mishmash of cultures foreign to the white man, ostentatiously veiled in the raiment of calculated sophistication. One of those books that seeks to make the reader feel utterly gauche. Almost as unbearable as the Generation Xers pruning their bonsai trees.

But this soon changed. Those in attendance were oftentimes quite critical of the material, and asked questions whose profundity made the excerpt above look like Simple English Wikipedia. There was a wonderful unspoken linguistic practice of forbidding the word “I”; attendees and chairperson alike would always use the first person plural, e.g. “Actually, the question we asked was…” or “As we understand it, it seems that….”

The meeting was such an intense rush of intellectual nourishment that I didn’t say a word the whole way through. I was at times struggling to follow the discussion of the room, so lost was I in weird cerebral meanderings certain comments had led me to.

I was recently asked about my personal religious beliefs, about my spirituality, if any. I said that I’ve taken to explaining the matter so: “I believe equally in the truth of all religions, up to and including the point at which each might exclude others.” To some people, it’s a cop-out answer. To others, it’s honest and maybe even deep.

The declaration of the United Lodge of Theosophists closes with a similar sentiment, known as the Eclectic Maxim of H. P. Blavatsky:

The true Theosophist belongs to no cult or sect, yet belongs to each and all.

Now that’s something I can believe in.

Oh, NeoOffice, how you disappoint me. Anyone running standard.dic on OpenOffice 2.4 or 3.0 want to test this word and see whether it’s wrong there, too?

If anyone else can confirm, then a bug report is in order. As of right now, Googling for OpenOffice and/or NeoOffice and “unchraismatically” yields no hits, so maybe it’s a custom word I somehow mistakenly added in the four days I’ve been using this computer. (I installed NeoOffice within this period.)

And Googling for it just made things more interesting.

Clicking on the suggested spelling, of course, yields:

The mystery deepens.

I just wrote the two best papers I’ve ever written. One was a critical take on postmodernism and the future of critical theory. The next was a simple rundown of sociological concepts of my own choosing. A delectable excerpt from the latter paper follows.

Repressive desublimation

Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man made for an interesting read. As I understand it, the perspective Marcuse has crafted is an approximate (read: critical) synthesis of Marxism and Freudianism, a rather timely theory for the age in which it was conceived. (Look, I like Hegel, OK?) The specific concept of repressive desublimation refers to the conflation of freedom and indulgence so rampant in post-war America, and likely even more so today.

The sociological implications of such a theory are the waning prospects of revolution, or, in more contemporary jargon, an erosion of the expressive capacities of the average American. Steeped in stupefying entertainment for all our waking hours, we lucky few in the post-industrialist societies of the world have little hope of breaking out of the mold crafted for us and donning the gauntlets of critical theory to duke it out with the capitalist system—particularly its prize-winning fighting cock, the military-industrial complex. We become dumb mouths above genitals numb with monotonous, unending stimulation, existing only to feed and mutely perpetuate our feeding. Repressive desublimation is the method by which the tyrant constructs delicious complicity. It is the plastic bag we place over our heads to masturbate.

Take that, BDSM imagery of Foucauldian power dynamics!

I daresay it’s never been said better.

So, I’m seated at the tables outside a coffeeshop here, working on a 13″ MacBook I borrowed from an awesome friend. While here, the wonderful girl I’m seeing found me and decided that she might as well write her papers here, too, and pulled out her own laptop, an aging 17″ Dell XPS. The size disparity between these two machines is absolutely absurd. Knowing full well what might or might not have been on my mind, this delightful girl quickly commented on how small my penis must appear to any passersby, as her laptop was so much larger than mine.

I laughed a lot, but I didn’t really think she’d be right.

The tables in this area are becoming more crowded as the morning wears away, and several girls have sat down near our table, looked at the computers, and laughed. Apparently, they really are looking at me as a wuss for having a laptop so much smaller than the girl beside me. How can this possibly be?

Naturally it’s got me thinking about what might be an adequate equivalent for if the genders were reversed. In other words, what conceivable scenario would lead me, as a heterosexual male, to size up a girl and think, “Due to x quality of her apparent boyfriend, I will not hit on her.” I really can’t imagine anything like that affecting my decision.

My lady friend has counseled me that that’s natural, as that women tend to evaluate men based on interpretations of the symbols found in the context in which they’re situated. I find that sexist—but not entirely inaccurate.

So, in lieu of writing papers, I IM’d some friends, asking what they thought might be an adequate equivalent. One friend said “fashion,” which to me doesn’t really compute: if I saw a girl whose boyfriend was better dressed than her, I might be initially turned off that she’s evidently into guys who are into fashion, but I wouldn’t at all be put off by her own lack of fashion sense. I mean, how could I guy like me possibly afford to be?

Every other friend I asked agreed that there is no equivalent, and such comparative analyses can only happen by females sizing up males in the context of other females (assuming heterosexualiy across the board).

My favorite moment in the brief surveys I administered was the following exchange:

12:46:24 PM Dude: maybe
12:46:38 PM Dude: like the dude has a club foot that she can’t stop footsying under the table
12:46:52 PM Dude: honestly though, fuck gender correlation to computers
12:46:54 PM I: ok. ok, yeah, I’ll put that in my dataset
12:47:00 PM Dude: that 13″ macbook is by far the superior machine
12:47:07 PM I: ok, that’s going in the dataset too
12:47:08 PM I: but
12:47:18 PM I: the fact is, it’s 13″ and clearly I have a small dick
12:47:24 PM I: and my girlfriend dominates me in this relationship
12:47:24 PM Dude: 17″ screen is nice thoughj
12:47:27 PM Dude: though*
12:47:29 PM I: oh man i love you
12:48:03 PM Dude: just grow a beard and feel better
12:51:00 PM I: yeah, I can’t.
12:51:17 PM Dude: …oh.
12:51:54 PM I: yeah, I don’t wanna talk about this anymore
12:52:06 PM Dude: hah
12:52:15 PM Dude: so, how bout them [insert sports team here]

I feel like I learned something today.

Last night, while training home with some friends after watching an incredible performance of classical guitar at a coffee shop in a suburb, it was somehow decided that it would be interesting to hang out with friends while not using verbal communication. I believe this was inspired by Jordan’s comment, “Man, I wish you guys didn’t speak English.” He seemed to feel that our not speaking the same language would help him achieve insanity, which is definitely one of his most solid goals in life.

We discussed the terms of the experiment while walking to get something to eat. We pledged that once we’d procured 40s and ‘za, the experiment would commence. (While we naturally wanted to start it as early as possible, we thought it’d be inexcusably rude to try to order food without using words.) It was decided that sounds were legal, but referencing any phonemes already existing in any established language (of which any of us had knowledge) was not.

There was much debate surrounding the use of gesticulations. Ultimately it was agreed that while nearly every physical gesture is culturally constructed and therefore constitutive of language, a high degree of abstraction of which would imply associations with verbal communication, certain gesticulates should be made legal, as we did not trust ourselves to avoid them: squinting to convey lack of comprehension; a widening of the eyes to mean surprise; and of course nodding of the head to mean “yes” and shaking to mean “no.”

What surprised me about the experiment is how fluidly we four were able to communicate with each other. I made a your-mom joke, and everyone got it—and we were all stunned at how that was possible. A few hours into the evening, I expressed to one friend that our rapidly codifying system of grunts and gestures was for all intents and purposes identical to our regular spoken language. In other words, it didn’t end up feeling much like an experiment at all, once we got into it. We realized that the next step was to attempt to hang out with no verbal communication, and no nonverbal communication.

Naturally that’s a concept we can approach only asymptotically at best, but I’m intrigued at the chance to try. Somehow I’d expected that the language experiment we ran last night would test my motives to hang out with my friends; for example, if we can’t talk to each other, what else is there? What do we do? But talk we could, because, as it turns out, most of the meaning we have of each other is assumed and might reside within ourselves.

We even renamed each other.

So, I feel I’ve learned a lot about how languages evolve. It was like a crash course in memetics. I highly recommend the experiment to anyone at all curious about communication theory, or merely who’s introspective. Maybe someday I can impose it on a class during a 3-hour session. That would be fun.

1. Machine Head – None But My Own (#4, Burn My Eyes, 1994)
2. Enslaved – Ansuz Astral (#4, Blodhemn, 1998)
3. Linkin Park – By Myself (#7, Hybrid Theory, 2000)
4. Muddy Waters – I Can’t Be Satisfied (#5, Hard Again, 1977)
5. In Flames – Jotun (#3, The Tokyo Showdown, 2001)
6. Andrew Lloyd Webber – Overture (#1, Jesus Christ Superstar, 2000)
7. Bobby Prince – un42 (JunkHead) (#34, Doom OST, 1993)
8. Novembers Doom – Dreams To Follow (#9, To Welcome The Fade, 2005)
9. David Bowie – Cygnet Committee (#5, Space Oddity, 1969)
10. Suffocation – Prelude To Repulsion (#5, Breeding The Spawn, 1993)

There’s something for everyone in there, I daresay.

I realize now that I somehow failed to notice that Philadelphia was in Fahrenheit, while all the others showed Celsius, but the important thing is that Taipei and Munich are 17 °C and -17 °C, respectively. Isn’t that wild?

And for the record, I did not boot into OS X specifically to snap a screenshot of pretty weather widgets. I was actually there to fsck a troublesome HFS+ drive which for some reason refuses to respond to the fsck.hfsplus packages I currently have configured in Linux.