Q: Where am I not?

A: In front of an oven, piling in loaves faster than a coal-shoveling wretch coal in a Victorian-era locomotive. I have come home for Christmas. Yesterday was my birthday and the last day of my employment at the Great Harvest Bread Company. I am typing this on the tiny keyboard of my brother's laptop, as the network adapter in our family computer seems to have broken the moment I walked in the door.

Now I begin the great intellectual tasks which will someday put me on the same page as Plato, Einstein, Lewis Black: designing a syllabus for my RC course next semester, catching up on my research, and making my Mom sit through episodes of Twin Peaks as a kind of forced parent-child bonding experience (ah, how the tables have turned). I should also start brushing up on my Japanese, on the chance that the Powers will have mercy on me and deliver me unto that shining isle sometime next year, with money. I will try to post insightful comments about my progress as these tasks develop. Fortunately for you, dear readers, distractions in Newton are few.

Q:What am I going to do now?
A: Make another cup of tea.

Not Dead

Just getting through finals. More shortly.

Link

Christoph Niemann on Coffee [found on Digg]

Birthday

We celebrated my birthday today. It is not, in fact, my birthday, but we sure did celebrate it.

Thanks

Home, stuffed, warm, and well rested. I like dark meat, particularly when drenched in gravy. This is a much needed break after a nearly catastrophic Monday trying to get my JET application in on time, baking 600 loaves of bread from 5:00 AM to 3:30 PM on Tuesday, and another marathon pre-Thanksgiving bakery clusterfrack on Wednesday. I am looking forward to further recuperation.

Given my current level of output, I decided not to try to maintain two blogs right now after all, and the link to my planned "serious" blog has been removed. In its place is a list of what I'm currently reading. This is an idea I stole from Susie, but did not feel bad about taking once I realized that she'd abandoned it. Thank you Susie.

Tomorrow we (my family) will schlep up to the mountains to cut down a Christmas tree. We will then eat at Our Daily Bread in Boone, and stop at an outlet mall on our way back. I will get some new clothes at the GAP outlet, despite having moral reservations about shopping there, and we will spend tomorrow evening decorating our Christmas tree and eating today's leftovers. I don't know how long we have been doing this, but it is my favorite family tradition. As we get older, such traditions can die out, lose their charm, or become routine; they may be necessarily altered because of changing roles within the family, or because family members no longer live within a convenient distance of one another. Next year I may be living in Japan; if so, I won't be able to return to the US to help pick out our Christmas tree. This bothers me because tomorrow is one tradition that I would keep just as it is for as long as I'm alive to enjoy it. Knowing that this won't be so makes tomorrow, and all the days-after-Thanksgiving that have preceded it, infinitely more precious. So although it's trite, and although I did not (I promise!) sit down to write about anything more poignant than the food I ate too much of, I guess this is what I'm thankful for.

Wednesday/ 3 Lists/ Hyperintertextuality

So it's been a little while since I announced that I would resume posting, but I have yet (as I'm sure you're aware) to post anything more substantial than a link or two. This may be attributed to three causes:

1. I'm busy.
2. I don't have a lot to say.
3. That which I would like to say is difficult to articulate, and would seem to require something like an essay which would then need to be edited, a lengthy process more or less prohibited by (1) above.

However, in the interest of trying not to come across as completely uninteresting, here are a few concise thoughts that may or may not merit your attention.

1. Radiohead's In Rainbows shipped with a disc of extra tracks for those who bought the super-deluxe $70.00 special edition box. I didn't (guess why), but I have obtained the tracks and I wanted to express my particular admiration for the song "Last Flowers to the Hospital." It's pretty for a b-side.

2. I hope that enough people sign up for my class in RC next semester so that I can actually teach it. I understand that this not happening is a distinct possibility, but I already have several wonderful lessons planned including, but not limited two, a conversation about what "meaning" means, an illustration of Richard Dawkins's ideas via YouTube, and a philosophical exploration of Ghost in the Shell 2. If the class ends up not happening, I'll try to compensate by making time to host meetings of the Kinbote Literary Salon throughout the semester. [UPDATE: a sufficient number of students have signed up, thank goodness]

3. I have begun thinking about the concept of "hyperintertextuality" (a word which, Google tells me, has been coined in at least 48 other places, though probably not in the sense that I intend here). As I see it, this might be a useful word to designate the kinds of linkages we're currently seeing among media objects like the YouTube video linked to in my last post, and the two videos that preceded it (here and here). Or, to take another favorite of mine, among The Combine Interview and its two preceding texts (the leaked Tom Cruise interview and the game Half Life 2). Unlike typical intertextuality, the texts linked via hyperintertextuality do not simply enrich the primary text, they are its conditions of possibility. The hyperintertextual text is a response to its preceding texts, but it responds to them in their own vocabulary. [Note: YTMND used to do something like this, but ever since it began allowing longer animated pictures and extended audio files, this creativity seems to have drained off.]

I know you might be thinking "big deal, so this is what nerds do when they want to laugh." On the one hand, yes, most of the examples of hyperintertextuality I could cite right now are banal in the sense of having little "substance" and lots of "absurdity." On the other hand--going back to the two videos I just cited--both do carry political messages in spite of their puns, messages that emerge as a property of textual juxtaposition (and in the case of McCain getting BarackRoll'd, this political message has been built onto an initial premise of pure absurdity). So to conclude: I think that these media objects, whatever we want to call them and whatever word we eventually designate to denote the intertextual linkages between them, are:

1. A fundamentally new kind of cultural unit.
2. Made possible only through technology.
3. A characteristic of "internet culture."
4. Immediately intelligible only to those familiar with the conventions and source knowledge that make up this culture.

And therefore I think they are worth further study.

[Edited 11/27/08 for style, clarity, brevity, and to insert links; I'd also like to make clear that I think "hyperintertextuality" is a bad term and should ultimately be replaced by something with fewer syllables.]

Absurd

John McCain Gets BarackRoll'd

I lol'd.

Messages for Obama

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2008/nov/08/barack-obama-messages-gallery?picture=339480618

Announcement

I'm going to try to start posting again. Also, the links on the sidebar have been updated for maximum satisfaction. I particularly enjoy the manwithoutqualities blog and the PhillyTea blog.

New Definition

Aesthetic (n): a visual discourse

This is a great day

Conservatives for Change

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBLnwMbYmUw (from here)

Still Alive

Sorry about the no-posting. Summer became busier than I anticipated. I'm leaving Newton tomorrow for vacation with the family, followed closely by the start of school. I don't know when I'll be able to resume regular posting... nevertheless, I don't intend to abandon this space, so if anyone is still out there, check back every month or so. I wish you all the best during summer's slow decline.

Link

Requiem for a Day Off

via Digg

--Oh how fine.

Mitosis

A wise man's heart is at his right hand;
but a fool's heart at his left.

Ecclesiastes 10:2

There's a fish in the percolator

The Time Warner folks were supposed to set up the internet at my house yesterday, but this has been delayed until Monday. It's very much an empty house right now. The roomates are still in Europe, and when you've spent four years avoiding socialization because you have studying to do, well, it's hard to find anything to do besides study. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy solitude. Rilke had some very nice things to say about it. But, his poetry is better than mine.

It's hard to be introspective on the internet. I don't want to write anything that I would laugh at if I didn't know it were my own. At the same time, it wouldn't do to devote this space wholly to intellectual piddling and half-hearted stabs at wit. I realize that the creation of a persona with which to present oneself in a specific context is a social convention, perhaps even an expectation, but it's not something that interests me in the slightest. If I'm to maintain a presence on the internet, I want it to represent, as honestly as possible, something like my whole existence (not all of it, but a representative sample). Nevertheless, these personal excursions look very out of place next to literary or philosophical speculations. I could split this into two journals, but my # of posts/ # of readers wouldn't seem to justify that. Then again, if this is mostly for me, that shouldn't matter...

Thinking about [Thinking about Thinking]

As I’ve mentioned, I’m trying this summer to get a basic grasp on cognitive science (the study of how knowledge is represented in the mind, and how processes act upon knowledge to produce cognition). This is in preparation for a project I’ll officially begin next year, in which I explore cognitive science’s potential to inform literary theory. Yesterday, however, as I was walking down the street, I was struck by a sudden fear that the questions I’m asking might be too solipsistic.

Let me explain myself. To my mind, there are Big Questions and little questions (questions being any topic for thought). While there is nothing wrong with the latter (we have to address them to make intellectual progress/ make a living/ function), we should never lose sight of the former*. When it comes to academic inquiry, an especially pernicious class of little questions are those that are self-referential. While most little questions naturally point towards larger ones, these do not (or do so obliquely—see my note to the next sentence). The best example I can offer is that of metafiction**. Don’t get me wrong—I love metafiction. My favorite book is House of Leaves and I have an unnatural fondness for Nabokov’s Ada, both very metafictional. Despite this, fiction’s value lies in its ability to illuminate all aspects of human existence in a multitude of ways, most of which do not rely upon self-referentality. Furthermore, when one considers the amount of metafiction produced today, one sees that writing about writing has become a rather lazy way of finding something to write about (a professor I once had pointed out that in postmodern fiction, we find the hitherto ubiquitous messiah figure replaced by that of an author [or reader]). To cut to my problem, I wondered if the same issues might arise with regard to thinking about thinking. Wouldn’t a better way to address life’s Big Questions be to think about things in the world, rather than thinking itself? I am referring here specifically to the “philosophical” potential of fields like psychology and cognitive science, not their real-world applications—these, to be sure, need no defense. In order to clarify the above and move towards an answer, let me make explicit what I consider to be Big Questions:

1. What is the nature of the universe?
2. What is human nature?
3. What is our relationship to the universe?

It seems to me that the first question demands answers from the domain of natural science; the second from a synthesis of natural science and the humanities; and the third from philosophy (informed, perhaps, by the natural sciences and the humanities).

I consider these to be the three central questions under which one may organize all human inquiry. Like the ever-so-popular Trinity (best known for its appearance in Desert Book the Second), the three may be construed as one, but in this they lose much of their utility (I intend, at some point, to post my thoughts on Truth vs. Utility). This is more or less from-the-hip philosophizing; I freely grant that the selection of these questions requires an explanation and defense far more extensive than anything I’m prepared to offer right now. Nonetheless, they should have an intuitive appeal, and it is on the strength of this that I justify using them to help solve my cognitive science conundrum.

Assertion: cognitive science (and other fields concerned with thinking about thinking) need not be wary of solipsism as long as the ways of thinking that it attempts to illuminate remain general and diverse. This is because cognitive science tends to ask questions that address Big Question No. 2 in a more direct manner than metafiction, the sociology of academia, the free elaboration of mathematical ideas with no known real world or philosophical significance, etc. I don’t wish to imply that such pursuits are worthless, or incapable of leading towards insight about larger questions. Indeed, this happens all the time through serendipity or diligent efforts to bend such work back to the larger picture. I do wish to stress, however—and this is the point of all that has come before—that given a certain set of assumptions about what all intellectual pursuits should or do lead to (my three Big Questions above), thinking about thinking does not need to justify itself in the same way as writing about writing. Now, if cognitive scientists begin en masse to study how cognitive scientists solve problems, we’re in trouble.

Some postmodernists may cry that I am inserting my telos where it doesn’t belong, but if I answered every such critique I wouldn’t have the time to write about anything interesting. I am speaking naturally of implied critiques; I don’t have enough readers to elicit actual ones. In fact, if anyone does go to the trouble of posting an actual critique (question/ comment/ etc.), I can promise you a moderately thought-out reply.

I think that’s it.

Notes:

*A value judgment that I will not defend right now. This is the closest I will ever come to asserting a religious belief (even the comparison makes me uneasy), except in reference to Metal Gear Solid, the godliest series of video games ever to grace our screens.

**Many naive literary scholars attempt to magnify their own importance by positing absurdly that the nature of reality is, at some fundamental level, textual. Thus, writing about writing isn’t just about writing, it’s about everything! While inquiries into how literary texts act upon themselves and interact with one another can help us to understand certain elements of human thought (this is part of my project), they do so obliquely and they do not speak about the natural world as it exists independently of humanity. As in all domains, the conclusions that purveyors of metafiction (or their interpreters) present about the human condition should be contextualized and qualified in the name of intellectual honesty; this is as much my argument here as my assertion of cognitive science’s inherent value.

---------

PS: I am considering posting here a series of reviews of Italian sandwiches from various eateries. Is this something that would interest the reader(s?) of this blog? Please indicate Yes or No.

Lebensraum

G. has departed for Germany and I have a job interview tomorrow. I've been supplementing my academic reading with Woolf's Orlando. Still no fresh tea at the house, but maybe that will change soon.

I've been trying to cultivate what I call (to myself) "philosophical domesticity." Domesticity has a bad reputation as being bourgeoisie and boring--much better to be a 21st century beatnik and not clean up your dirty clothes--but the activities that go into maintaining one's living space have tremendous potential as a space in which to express one's values and draw nearer to attaining self-actualization. Granted, not everyone needs or wants this--good for you if you don't. But a house is the perfect place to implement aesthetic ideals or sustainable practices if these things are important to you. They are often impossible to fully realize in a space shared with more than one or two roommates. Of course, domesticity should always be a means, not an end. Space should serve a purpose, not exist for its own sake. That said, I think that many people could benefit from closer attention to their material existence, and its alignment (or non-alignment) with one's social identity.

If that was too stuffy, let me counter it by saying I'll be having a party in the near future if I get this job. Beer! I'll Facebook if it's a go.

Now-Titled Post

The past few weeks have been eventful. Finals, over. I moved into a house, started my summer job, quit it, and quite recently went to a party from which I'm still trying to recover. Three cups of yerba mate while sitting in bed reading didn't do it. Coffee next. I may be waking up all day.

We don't have internet at the house. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it enforce a different lifestyle than the one to which I've grown accustomed. I don't waste as much time looking at dumb things, going to digg, playing, God forbid, flash games--but I'm used to being plugged in. My social life is also inhibited, but the compensatory effect of having one's own place more than makes up for it. If anything, it might improve the blog; I'm thinking of drafting things at home, correcting them, then bringing them to the library to post [edit: yeah right]. That would be easier than just sitting here, trying to think of sentences like I'm doing right now.

Two novels: Murakami's After Dark and The Echo Maker by Richard Powers. I recommend both. In After Dark, Murakami works out of his usual POV. The protagonist (if there is one) isn't another variant on Toru Okada (which I guess was true for Kafka by the Shore as well, so maybe this marks a new trend). I didn't mind the similarities between characters in his earlier novels, but I think he handles the new territory well. I also found After Dark to be a lot more thematically coherent than his other books, though I'm a different reader than I was last year. Maybe being an English major has made me even better at seeing connections where there are none. Oh well: After Dark seems to be an extended meditation on the borders of the self, and on one's ever-renegotiated position within the various networks of power and influence that shape society. Darkness is the condition in which borders become permeable, in which we can grow closer to others or drift away, suffused with nothingness.

This idea of identity, its mutability and dependence on/ existence within others (reminiscent of Hofstadter's view in Le ton beau de Marot and, I hear, I am a Strange Loop) is also present in The Echo Maker, in which neurological disorders are portrayed as explicit manifestations of processes and structures that are already present in normal consciousness. I wonder if Powers's book might be a little longer than it needs to be, and I still haven't fully grasped the significance of his ecological theme (or maybe I have, and forgotten), but I still think it's worth the time. And the cover art is great.

I need to eat lunch now. I'll come back to this later and fix typos. If anyone wants to hang out while I'm still unemployed, please let me know. On the other hand, if you know anywhere that's hiring, feel free to pass that along as well.

[edited 5/29/08; title added, some adverbs eliminated, other changes]

Finals

I don't ever want to have to think again. And I'm not half done.

Interview

Tonight I had a hankering to look up two authors whose names have been knocking around in my head lately: Richard Powers and Claire Messud. Amazon has been insistent in recommending both to me, and a few weeks ago by someone whose opinion I respect also pointed me to Powers. Some searching on Bookslut for reviews led me to this wonderful interview with him. His take on the relationship between science and literature has convinced me to pick up The Echo Maker as soon as possible (6-12 months?).

Bookslut also had a tepid review of Messud's The Hunters, in keeping with the mixed notices on Amazon. I haven't given up the idea of checking her out, but it's on the back burner for now.

While listening to Kid A, windows open, one shoe off

Spring's in full swing and summer's just around the corner. This bit of digital space has remained static as of late (admittedly it's not my first priority), but perhaps the ensuing relent of academic obligations will offer me both (1) thoughts worth sharing and (2) the time to share them. I suppose it's presumptuous of me to deign whether or not my own thoughts are worth sharing... and yet, we do demand a kind of quality control from any purveyor of information. If my judgments about my own thoughts are not taken to be the universal standard by which they are measured (and I am advocating no such thing), they are at least a useful tool for limiting the flow of information. See, was that digression even necessary? I leave it in as an example.

To continue--I have to say that the prospect of this summer, the idea of it, is tremendously exciting. I would say more exciting than anything in recent memory, but there was that trip last year. I'll be moving into a house (a house!) in a few weeks, with such an abundance of light and warmth as you wouldn't believe. Lots of places to read. My plans for the coming months are similar to the plans I make for every amorphous, as-yet-unfilled space of time that has ever loomed over or shimmered just out of reach of the present; cook more, read more, write more. A programme rarely carried out to completion, though I now have the consolation (?) that cooking will no longer be quite optional. This aspirational troika is matched by three other related but more specific targets: bake more, play more chess, get outside. Is this too much for one person to handle? Will my quest for self-actualization lead inevitably to disappointment? Tune in next month to find out! (Anyone looking for a baking/ chessing/ biking partner, etc, feel at liberty to contact me. I also know of a burgeoning summer book-club that promises to mix exclusivity with Greensboro-hipster aspirations. Scintillating! Inquire for details.)

[I was hungry last night. Really hungry. I started flipping through Paul Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice and I almost gnawed through the pages, I almost threw it or myself across the room. The bread looked so GOOD. No, it didn't just look good. That implies culinary desire, carnal desire, simple appetite. It looked beautiful. That bread looked beautiful. I want to bake, NOW.]

It has begun to rain.

Link

Super memory [wired.com]

The Most Absurd YouTube Video

I was looking on YouTube because I wanted Gloria to hear the song D.S.W.G. (Dark Skinned White Girl) by Murs and I couldn't find anywhere else that would play it. This is what I found.

Meh

I guess the charade is over. There was no way I was going to be able to maintain a blog regularly during the latter part of the semester. Academic/ life demands have taken precedence, and I must (shamefully) admit that a copy of TES: Oblivion has also somehow found its way into my computer, filling up my free hours like cancer and ruthlessly proliferating its effects to my once-free, once-pure Gloria. It's not all woe and darkness--I'm reading some great stuff (Consciousness Explained, by Dennet, for myself, and Atwood's Oryx and Crake for a class)--but I feel like I'm juggling babies trying to line up housing for next year, student loans, homework, academic projects, etc. I guess I also have a job? I'll get back to regularly posting here as soon as things quiet down; maybe as soon as two weeks from now (after the SSS conference), maybe later. On a positive note, things are blooming.

A Double Dose of Amazingness (secular humanist edition)

One and two.

Quick Plug: Battlestar Galactica

Anyone who has talked to me in the past couple weeks has probably heard of my newfound love for Battlestar Galactica. I remember hearing good things about it every so often, but being as busy as I am, I never bothered to sit down and watch it. Then I saw on Digg, in succession, this neato interview with the show's creators about the legal, economic, and moral issues that the show deals with (spoilers), and this amazing picture of the cast. Now I'm a sucker for good sci-fi; anything beautiful and thought-provoking. The Fountain, The Matrix and both Ghost in the Shell films make me happier than almost anything else on screen. Having, finally, some free time, I started watching season one of BSG online via streaming video. I got reeled in, but not blown away. Then I watched season two. Midway through the episode "Pegasus," it hit me. There was no going back. I finished the rest of the series over spring break, and am now, like a giddy schoolgirl, awaiting the start of its fourth and final season April 4th. I'm writing this post in the hope that some of you might be inclined to check it out for yourselves. Good TV is rare, and good TV shows need all the support they can get; they're too often clubbed to death by evil network executives and stupid fans. BSG is as entertaining as anything I've ever seen, and it explores societal issues in a way that doesn't make you feel like a 6th grader. Oh America.

P.S. - If you want to watch season four with me, let me know. I'll make popcorn.

Link

Shrine of the Mall Ninja
[from William Gibson's blog]

Internet Justice

I love internet justice. This is what happens: somebody does something reprehensible and word of it gets out. It gets made popular on the internet. Internet people then find the guilty party's personal information and post it everywhere, while flooding said person's social network account(s) with hostile messages and comments and contacting said person or their family directly and communicating their displeasure. Today I call your attention to David Motari, a US Soldier in Iraq who appears in a video throwing a puppy off a cliff. Here's the Digg article. The actual link to the video is down. Check out the comments (sort by most diggs) for a mirror if you actually want to see it, or just go straight to his Bebo site [now private] to enjoy the justice.

See also: Lori Drew

[Perhaps at some other time I'll attempt a more level-headed discussion of the ethical implications of this kind of punishment. It seems like there's a lot here to talk about.]

Another Tea Link

Tea Logic has beautiful pictures.

Blogger is lonely

If you live where I do, so I decided to link to some people on LiveJournal. I don't like LiveJournal but its quite popular here, so, well, compromises.

Incidentally, The Satanic Verses is a very good book.

"This war on terrorism is bogus"

From The Guardian:

The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the "global war on terrorism" has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project.

New Tea Links

I've updated the link rotation on the sidebar with a couple of neat-o tea blogs: Tea Guy Speaks and The Green Tea Review. Also looking amazing are Ancient Tea Horse Road (an entire blog devoted to Pu-erh!) and Tea Nerd. I would have linked to them as well, but I don't want a single interest to dominate things. Next up: baking blogs.

2008

I Refuse to Buy into the Obama Hype (now a supporter)

One woman's comparison of the Senate voting records for Obama and Clinton. This is the sort of thing I've heard echoed elsewhere, so I assume it's an accurate analysis.

Re: Memory

[To be edited at a later date. I didn't want to wait until posting.]

This is a response to Susie's two posts on memory. I want to share my thoughts on the subject as well as reply to some of the things she said. I'm making a post instead of a comment because I feel like this might get lengthy.

I wish I had my Nabokov quotes ready, but my library is in Newton.

I suppose the main question that Susie raises is "Why do people suffer from unwanted memories?" I'm sure that one could spend a large portion of one's life tracking down the various answers to this, given by a parade of authorities in various fields. The psychoanalysts would be the most vocal group, insisting that the involuntary return to unpleasant memories is indeed a symptom of your mind's desire to confront or correct something about itself, to find, if not wisdom, peace. The religious would probably agree that some kind of confrontation leading to peace is the purpose, though they might claim God's intervention, rather than the inner dynamics of the mind, as the motivating factor. An artist might maintain that painful memories are meant to be turned into art, a humanist that they keep us in touch with our humanity, but an elephant, I am almost sure, would assert that memory simply is. And, at the risk of being boring, so would I.

I take a scientific perspective of things. It's a good way to keep oneself honest, even if the conclusions are unpleasant. I don't believe that a reason (in the teleological sense) exists for anything in nature--memory included--except perhaps to be for its own sake. And I don't think that counts. I'm not against people creating reasons, finding meaning in what is given, but I think it's dangerous not to recognize the provisional quality these. I feel compensated for this existential state of affairs, or divine silence, by the endless mystery and beauty in the world. Perhaps I shouldn't have said that I don't believe in any reason for nature; I don't deny the possibility of one, but I don't think that we, as we currently exist, are capable of grasping it.

Which is all a lot of preface to my saying that I think memory is just a product of natural selection, bequeathed to our ancestors to help them deal with life in the jungle, possessed to a lesser degree by other living creatures, and ultimately ill-suited, in a manner of speaking, to war and other modern miracles. That is to say, I don't believe that the mind "is not completely controlled by chemicals and electrical impulses." It is, and this is why we have problems.

Nothing. Just the breeze cooling her face as she rushed toward water. And then sopping the chamomile away with pump water and rags, her mind fixed on getting every last bit of sap off--on her carelessness in taking a shortcut across the field just to save a half mile, and not noticing how high the weeds had grown until the itching was all the way to her knees. Then something. The plash of water, the sight of her shoes and stockings awry on the path where she had flung them; or Here Boy lapping in the puddle near her feet, and suddenly there was Sweet Home rolling, rolling, rolling out before here eyes, and although there was not a leaf on that farm that did not make her want to scream, it rolled itself out before her in shameless beauty. It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too. Fire and brimstone all right, but hidden in lacy groves. Boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamores in the world. It shamed her--remembering the wonderful soughing trees rather than the boys. Try as she might to make it otherwise, the sycamores beat out the children every time and she could not forgive her memory for that. (1)

Susie says that "Some are able to repress their memories, but in the end often have psychological problems because of them." This leads to her next paragraph in which she asks why the mind doesn't deal with harmful memories in the same way that the body deals with states of imbalance or harm. It's a good question. I know a little bit about repression (my mom is a psychologist), but I haven't studied it in depth. From what I've heard, repression most typically occurs when someone suffers trauma or abuse at a very young age. This is also when alternate personalities may be created to deal with such situations. Of course, one hears about older people repressing experiences as well. I wonder how often that actually occurs... it's a popular device in movies, but it doesn't seem like it actually occurs that often. And what's the difference between repressing something and simply forgetting something unpleasant? I could be wrong about this, but I do think that Susie is right in implying that repression is a relatively rare occurrence. One reason for this might be that it defeats memory's purpose (in a biological, not teleological, sense). If memory evolved to help us survive, it's greatest utility would be in recalling times when our immediate survival was threatened. These are also likely to be our worst memories. This isn't to say that other kinds of memories aren't more painful--but our brain may be incapable of distinguishing one kind of negativity from the other. To it, pain may equal threat, which may equal something important to remember.

Although considering that the mind is the most complex object in the known universe, that's probably an oversimplification at best.

Susie asks if memory can be controlled. It doesn't seem that it can. When things remind us of other things, our immediate experience is linked to a memory in a totally involuntary fashion. Memories float up out of the depths and settle in our consciousness for no apparent reason. We can, of course, also harness memory to our own purposes--we can try to remember something--but there is no guarantee that it will succeed. Memory is like a mostly obedient pet that does what we tell it to, but nonetheless has a will of its own. It is capable of disobeying. Where does this will come from? I can only say that it arises from the complex interplay of neurons whose functioning remains hidden from us. In this, they are like dreams. To pretend I know any more would be dishonest.

Although we began by discussing memory's problematic aspects, I could not do with leaving it there. For me, memory is too wrapped up with beauty not to pluck at some of the ties between them. And this is where I miss Nabokov. He wrote and spoke profoundly on the subject of memory, as did Proust. And we owe Kundera for naming (but not discovering) the concept of poetic memory:

The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful.

Love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory. (2)

Anyone who has ever had a beautiful experience will immediately recognize what Kundera is speaking about. There are memories that seem qualitatively different from the mass of our recollections. I once read something about the poet's task being to capture the multitude of simultaneous sensations in a single moment and transmute them into a single object of beauty. I don't know how true this is as a statement about poetry in general, but it seems to me to apply equally well as a description of the kind of microcosm that our poetic memory allows us to enter . Nabokov (always Nabokov) spoke of the way that memory changes over time--not deceiving, but like a jewel becoming ever more polished. I am convinced that Nabokov had capacity for poetic memory that far exceeded the average, and that this, more than anything else, is what made him the author he is. Whether this was a quirk of his memory itself, or a certain orientation of the rest of his mind toward it, I can't guess.

I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.(3)

I know that memory can be troubling. Even in a perfect present, it renders the past inescapable. But it is also what gives our experience texture (how thin the world would be if we couldn't latch on to some object in front of us and drift on a chain of associations away from the here and now). I think that the key to happiness lies in developing the ability to perceive the beauty of the moment and to retain that beauty, not just as a souvenir, but as something grows inside of us. Memory is alive. I said earlier that I regard its malfunctioning as an accident of our neurology. For all I know, its poetic qualities are also accidental. But in both the beauty and the suffering that it invokes, memory adds a depth to our existence that allows us to hope that we may one day, in some way, rise above the contingencies of mind and matter. God may be silent, but the past speaks in shouts and whispers--who can say where it will lead if we listen?

----------
(1) Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Vintage, 2004. pp. 6-7
(2) Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. ???
(3) Nabokov, Vladimir. Who knows from where, I had to look it up. This is the end of my memory.

This Week

I haven't done much in the way of comments or new posts in a while, nor am I likely to do any this week . A test is coming up and a few assignments are due, so I'll be handling this and that. Nevertheless, listening to this music and having just watered my plants and had several cups of tea, I feel a profound sense of peace. I'd like to open up a bakery somewhere in the South and work from dawn until the late, late afternoon.

Annotations

I've been thinking about annotating my books recently. For as long as I can remember, I've had an intense desire to keep them pristine. Even though I know that this is not what engaged readers do, the compulsion to preserve their pages tends to override all rational argument. I've made attempts here and there to mark up particularly challenging reads--abusing House of Leaves with a highlighter, jotting definitions in the margins of Le mythe de Sisyphe... yet I was unable to sustain these exercises, and they were ultimately unsatisfying.

Part of the problem came from the fact that I knew I was doing something out of the ordinary, that there was no way I would maintain it as a habit with other books. But a larger portion came as a consequence of the fact that I had no set system of annotating. Whenever I found myself with the wrong implement, underlining stood in for highlighting or vice-versa. This thwarted any attempt to use the two to denote different things, and it made the pages extremely ugly. Nor could I decide, for written notes, whether to use pen or pencil. And finally, what convention was I to use to mark an important passage as opposed to one I didn't fully understand? I went through underlining, highlighting, bracketing, squiggly lining, lines in the margins, and occasionally circling, producing no coherent system and making an even larger mess of my pages. This was, of course, the reason I wanted to avoid marking in my books in the first place.

I now, however, acknowledge that something needs to be done. The revelation came to me a couple days ago when I began reading excerpts of Kant's Critique of Judgment. For me, the difficulty of this text necessitates the marking of key passages and the insertion of comments in the margins. With this resolution to annotate has come an equal resolve to discover an ideal system of annotation--and here we come to the intent of this post. I have developed a few conventions, but I'd like to hear anything that you find useful while annotating. Thus far, I:

1. Use a single vertical line in the outer margin, as close as possible to the body of the text, to mark a significant sentence or passage. Sometimes I add little bracket ends, pointing into the text, to the top and bottom of the line, but this is not strictly necessary. Taken by itself, this denotes that I simply think a passage is important. Written notes may clarify that this is something I disagree with or do not understand, etc., or they may contain an attempt to summarize the passage in my own words.

2. Try to write marginalia at a 45-degree angle, striking a balance between length and ease of access.

3. Underline short passages that seem tremendously important. To be honest, I've only done this a couple times, and I'm not sure that I should continue. The appeal of tactic 1 is that it doesn't disfigure the body of the text and it saves graphite/ ink. What must be decided is whether or not there truly exists such passages whose notability so supersedes that of other important passages that they require their own notation.

I have rejected the highlighter as an appropriate means for dealing with the text, and while I think that I fine-tipped pen (rollerball, or something similar) would be ideal, I am at this point using a pencil. I don't want to commit to ink until my technique is perfected.

It's worth noting that annotating fiction will likely require an added set of conventions. Fiction almost always invites multiple interpretations, and uses a larger repertoire of devices than nonfiction or philosophy to present its material. Hence, I invite you to share your ideas about annotating fiction as well as annotating in general, if you have any.

This may be, by far, the dorkiest post that Blogger has ever known.

[2/16/08 - edited, finally, for style and clarity]

I Don't Care About the Super Bowl

Just putting that out there.

"I am authentic / I'm authenticity..."

Was just discussing music of the 90s with a friend. I wonder what images of the 90s people will retain fifty years from now. I hope it's not the same set of associations that we, having so recently moved on, retain from various decade-in-review lists, the sort that haunt the back sections of high school yearbooks and popular news publications. The worst are those in quiz format under the heading "you know you were a child of the 90s if...", all tracing their lineage back to the half-baked, half-digested body of factoids that will find their way into VH1 specials for years to come. This is not my 90s, but what is? I wonder if it will become harder to produce meaningful history as long as corporate media dominates the cultural landscape.

An apology is in order to anyone who has sent me emails/ Facebook messages/ or blog comments over the past week+. I still haven't had enough time to produce proper replies, but it will happen today or tomorrow. On the reading list for this weekend is Richard III, some Kant, and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. I dropped Sociolinguistics because I didn't want to be in it anymore. That makes this the first semester during which I'm enjoying -all- my classes. No more linguistics major but more time next year to take whatever I want = profit?

Finally, in keeping with my unattenuated loathing of corporate news, I'd like to point you to An Extensive History of Terrible CNN.com Headlines. Laugh or cry, as long as it helps you get through the day.

Dumbing Us Down

Video, via Digg. Problems with education in America. Produced by high school students, but fairly well done. Why we should pay teachers more (among other things).

Update

All the time I spent following Project Chanology on the internet caught up with over the past couple days and I was scrambling to complete various things until last night, when I finally pushed to the end of Aristotle's Politics and went with some friends to a seedy celebration known as "jazz night." It was creepy at first--a house full of silent, sullen 20-somethings sunk into chairs and sipping malt liquor. El Topo was playing on the TV, which was a plus, but not the kind that makes you feel at ease. The music, however, once it started, was excellent. I was sad to rush through the last bits of Aristotle like that because they were about music as well, but we needed to get out.

Now it's 7:41 AM and I have Calculus II in a few minutes. Possible future topics: the beauty of the integral, Obama, my favorite scientology videos, my last favorite object... Let me know if any of those strike your fancy.

...

Hackers vs. Scientology

"Knowledge is free.
We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us."

Student responses to Nabokov's Pale Fire

Recently I reread Nabokov's Pale Fire for my contemporary novel class. Students were required to post responses to the novel on an online discussion board. Nabokov is my favorite author, so I was more than a little excited to read what my classmates had to say. I thought that some of the responses were particularly interesting, and I've decided to share excerpts of them here.

"Overall, this book was very difficult for me. I kept losing interest in the story because Kinbote’s commentary on the poem was completely wrong in my opinion. I felt frustrated at him for never being able to explain the poem as I saw it. I was quite surprised though in the very end (pg. 296) when Kinbote said he saw no mention of his beloved Zembla, which caught me off guard because he still interpreted the whole poem to be talking about his country."

"First of all, I don't like flashbacks. Never have. I like for my plots to move forward with as little time spent looking in the rear view mirror as possible. I read Disgrace in practically one sitting because I NEEDED to know what was going to happen next. In Pale Fire, there was no urgency. Nobody seemed to be in any immediate danger as evidenced by the fact that the protagonist was writing annotations. If there is a less suspenseful way to spend your time, I haven't heard it. [...] The other thing that I could not really get into was the whole Zembla storyline."

"The commentary, which was supposed to, I thought, break down and explain certain parts of the actual poem did the exact opposite for me; it only confused me more."

"Kinbote sexuality is certainly a major theme. His descriptions of Shade seem romantic in nature. "

"I understand the significance of what Nabakov is doing by writing commentary about a poem written by his best friend, Shade. After all Nabakov and Shade shared many stories about Zembla and the kings together, which Nabakov beleives to be highly influential in Shade's poetry. However I think the poems would have been more effective without the commentary. Shade's commentary is extremely drawn out, and flat out boring, which takes away from elements of the poem when I try to revert back to it."

"Was Shade a love interest of Charles?"

"I felt that the commentary did not meet the intended goal of helping to explain the poem, but rather took me to a world of falsehoods, a world of imaginary kingdoms and characters. While that sounds enjoyable, I did not find it so. [...] I hope that the other novels that we read this semester will not lead into a world unlike what is initially presented."

"It was truly a great book."

"Kinbote's not even very likeable; he stalks Shade while he's trying to write, doing anything he can to get a look at Shade's unfinished poem. I don't know how Shade put up with him. I hardly could."

"Kinbote didn't respect the poem nor Nabokov enough to give a commentary that would allow readers, for centuries, to appreciate the complexity of the written word, while still giving it simplicity and understanding. The poem's nine-hundred-ninety-nine line poem may be twenty pages, at most, but the commentary is somewhere between two-fifty and three hundred, yet says nothing as sincere and worthwhile as the nine-hundred-ninety-nine."

"Confused and frustrated while reading Pale Fire, I had to latch on to what little clarity I found. A passage of clarity for me was the passage about line 493: “she took her poor young life.” The explanation on the ‘proper’ modes of suicide and the consequences of attempting (and accomplishing) one’s goal of ending one’s life was strangely clear and poignant. It merges you with God, yet in many religious circles, it is the ultimate unforgivable sin. It’s ultimately a bit frightening when you find yourself re-reading this passage and convincing yourself that yes, it’s all true. You have felt this way and if it’s going to happen to anyone, they should read the “guidelines” that this book provides."

Objects (5/6)

This object I've decided not to photograph. It's book that was given to me under special circumstances; out of everything I own, I value it the most. I deem it more than a piece of media because of the various memories I associate with it, the unlikelihood of my ever finding a similar edition, and its content. Unlike many of the other objects I've listed, the book's value does not lie in its immediate aesthetic or functional appeal (though I do like having it near), but in the fact that it symbolizes a certain set of values and purposes that I find integral to my identity. These things would remain even if the book were gone, but I feel that locating them materially can be a positive thing--of course, one must prepare oneself for loss, accidental or inevitable, but this extends to all things.

Sorry for not posting

Classes started with a b-a-n-g bang, or if not a bang, a reasonably percussive pop. Reading done for various classes after week I: Titus Andronicus, Pale Fire, Aristotle's Poetics and two chapters of the Politics, various parts of Saussure (for the second time), various things in French, various things on tea, and cetera. I'll finish the Objects, I will. I'll do one right now. This blog isn't dead, it's just breathing funny.

Objects (4/6)

These gloves are (unfortunately) the only handmade items on my list (except perhaps for my teapot, whose exact method of manufacture eludes me). They also happen to have been tailored for me specifically. Because of this, and because of their impeccable craftsmanship, they exemplify the economic, philosophical, and psychological principles that I believe we should look for in every object. I had not worn gloves for a long time before this winter, and I forgot how completely effective they are at keeping one's hands warm in cold weather. For some reason, I would look at knitted gloves and have some vague idea about the cold wind blowing through the holes in the knit--indeed, this is not the case at all, and these gloves kept my hands warm even while riding my bike. Their most distinctive feature is of course the openings for the first three fingers on the right glove. According to the pattern that Gloria used, this innovation originally served so that the pattern maker's husband could smoke cigars. Having those fingers exposed, however, turns out to be useful for any number of things, and even as a non-smoker I find the tradeoff between finger temperature and utility to be favorable. As you can see in the photo below, my cat Halloween also really likes them. She enjoys it when I pet her in them, and I appreciate the protection they afford when she decides to bite.

Fast Fast/ Guitar Hero

Today was the first time I rode my new bike in Greensboro. It was exciting. I rode up and down Spring Garden street, and through some neighborhoods. I know that there are parks to be found further out, but I'm not completely used to riding in traffic yet. The cars really whoosh by. Whoosh! Bang! I know three girls who have been hit by cars on bikes, maybe more. They're really tough, these girls. Amazons! They still ride their bikes with passion.

Guitar Hero is a popular game. It seems to have maintained its choke hold on college-age boys since last semester. It never looks fun to me, though if I played it I'd probably change my mind. I did watch that video that was posted on Digg of a small child beating the hardest level, and I knew enough about it to be impressed. I wonder if he could have been a child prodigy at anything else. I wonder if potential chess prodigies walked among the Native Americans, and if so, were there similar Native American games that they excelled at? They say that everyone is good at something, which is obviously a lie, but I wonder how many people are great at things but never get the chance to do them. Maybe I'd be great at making cheese.

Revenant

My first full day back in Greensboro for the spring semester. Classes start next monday. I had to spend most of the day going to required meetings, but I did have enough time to unpack. I also put a photo of myself on my Blogger profile in the hope that people who stumble here will admire my lush beard, my piercing eyes, and be properly motivated to make this a regular read. This plan is surely foolproof.

In the lull between classes and break, I've decided to slip in a book that is neither required reading for the curricula devised by my professors nor for the one I have imposed upon myself. It is Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson, and it is pure enjoyment. I'm a little less than halfway through. The speculative aspect is not particularly original, but that's hard to do. It is pulled off well, however, and the prose is some of the best I've read in science-fiction. I feel like Wilson's knack for description would take him far in literary fiction.

I do plan on finishing the Object posts. I have the photos ready for the next one, so its just a matter of typing it up.

Today

Today I watched Fargo with my mom. Then we had corned beef and cabbage for dinner. It was nice.

I go back to Greensboro tomorrow.

Objects (3/6)

This is my silver iPod Nano, 2G. I realize that there's a certain irony in me posting about my iPod, the very symbol of Western materialism, in a criticism of this ideology. Yet if these posts are to serve as an honest personal document, I have to be honest about the fact that at this point in my life, despite whatever my ideals may be, an assesment of my favorite objects shows that all but one have been mass produced. Whatever relationships I may have developed with them, they were commodities first. And yet with the object for which this is most apparent, I think that the potential to transcend commodity fetishism is also very clear. What I mean is that even though one can't think about an iPod without being aware of the brand's commercial success, neither can one look at the object itself without admiring its design. It is remarkably well built. The main body of my iPod appears to be a single continuous piece of aluminum with no seams visible. There are no pieces that stick out, no parts that look like an afterthought. If it weren't for the unforunate realities of contemporary battery technology, there would be no hint of that ugly specter hanging over all consumer electronics: planned obsolescence. My earplugs have worn down, but this is because of heavy use rather than design error. They are missing the grey rubber lining that I initially thought was for comfort, but now realize was responsible for keeping them snug in my ears. I'll get new earplugs eventually, but I don't look forward to the day when I'll have to replace the iPod itself. Even after the technology has long been surpassed by other models, the aesthetics of its design (both the physical components and the user interface) will exemplify the best that the union of art, science, and industry had to offer at the beginning of the 21st century. I like the fact that one gets to name one's iPod, and I hope that there will be more features like that in future models. The software on the iPod should be at least as customizable as one's desktop. I also hope that as computing devices converge and minituarize (eventually it will be all contact lenses and implants) the architects of our technological world will keep in mind the importance of design, and thus continue the trend that Apple started--the creation of electronic devices that have the potential to be meaningful objects in and of themselves, and not simply tools with human beings tacked on.

Obama won Iowa

While he's not my first choice, neither is he my last. Also coming out on top for the Republicans was Mike Huckabee. I'll never be able to think of Huckabee without recalling the time that Christopher Hitchens called him a "smirking hick." I don't always agree with Hitchens (in this case I do), but he's always a pleasure to read.

Objects (2/6)

This is my green teapot. Those of you who know me know that I'm interested in tea. In my opinion, a night without tea, coffee, or beer is lacking--though I never mix them. However, it's not the taste of tea that appeals to me. I enjoy the process of making it more than I do drinking it. Filling the kettle with water, measuring out the tea leaves, and watching the vapor rise from the pot and cup are tremendously relaxing activites. It's important to be familiar with the teapot and cups that you use to prepare tea because you need to know how much they hold in relation to one another, and how to tell the temperature of the liquid by touching them. It's also important that the aesthetic qualities of the objects contribute to making the preparation of tea an enjoyable experience. If I were to get another teapot, I would have to re-learn all these things. I enjoy the sense of familiarity that I've developed with this teapot, and if I were the type of person to give inanimate objects names, I would call it Lars. I'm not, though.

Objects (1/6)

(This is part of the larger post below entitled "Objects")

So here are my favorite objects. There are in no particular order. I've chosen six of them. I'll update with better photos if I ever take any.

This is my red jacket. Many of you have seen me wearing it. I like it because it goes with just about everything I own. It has also accompanied me everywhere important I've been in the last several years. When it's not on me, I usually keep it draped over the back of my computer chair at school. It's the only piece of clothing I own that gets this privilege--the rest get put away or thrown on the floor. Unfortunately, I've had this jacket for a few years now, longer than everything else on this list, and it's starting to wear away. You can see this the most on its sleeves. Because of this, I feel kind of like a hobo when I wear it. I don't want to give it up just because of that, nonetheless, I feel like I'll have to retire it soon. Gloria offered to make something else out of it, but I don't think that would be a good idea. I'd like to save it as it is, maybe take it out to wear only on special occasions. Or at least keep it as as a souvenir of my years in college.

Objects (essay)

We are spirits in the material world
(Are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world)

--The Police

1: Intro

I'm pretty sure that when Sting wrote the above, he wasn't thinking about the connections we form with everyday objects that go beyond the expectations and requirements of living in a consumer culture. His critique of such a culture is even more pertinent today than when the song was released in 1981, and it will continue to be so until the foundations of our society are radically altered. Nonetheless, I think that there is something reactionary in most of the discourses that work to advance such critiques, from environmentally aware left-leaning political platforms to self-reliance praising libertarians and the doctrines of temporal insubstantiality preached by most religions. Nietzsche took these religions to task for being "despisers of the body," but did not go so far as to write an extended defense of objects. This post won't fill that gap, however, I hope it will help us to think more carefully about the objects in your life. As I see it, transcending our material culture is not a matter of embracing some intangible spirituality practicing extreme self-denial; it hinges instead upon developing more fulfilling relationships with those objects that can substantially improve our life, and refusing to be consumers of those that can't.

Now that you've waded through all that, I should say as soon as possible (so you can skip to the pictures if you want) that the original intention behind this post was to simply make a short list of my favorite objects with pictures and descriptions of each. In that sense, this is a personal document, not a philosophical one. But I hope that by contextualizing this list, I'll make it more meaningful for you, the reader. The idea for something like this has been with me ever since I saw a book called Evocative Objects: Things We Think With on Amazon. I had been thinking about objects since long before then, but it took seeing a book-length philosophical medition on them to make me consider writing something of my own. I haven't read Evocative Objects yet, though I plan on doing so at some point in the future. Maybe it will change some of the thoughts that I set down here.

There is one more idea that I'd like to set down before continuing: the way in which objects contribute to our identity. Identity can mean both our own self-image, and the image that others have of us. Objects do not serve only to enhance our lives in specific material ways; they may also contribute to our ideas about ourselves, whether or not we realize it. Certainly they contribute to the ideas that others have about us. Things evoke emotions, and by associating things with people we complicate our emotional perception of both thing and person. On a purely personal level, they tie us to the places we live, the people we know, and the things that we do. In the story "Man-Eating Cats" by Haruki Murakami, the narrator suffers a crisis after leaving behind all of his posessions to run away with a mistress:

As we were flying over Egypt, I was suddenly gripped by a terrible fear that someone else had taken my bag by mistake. There had to be tens of thousands of identical blue Samsonite bags in the world. Maybe I'd get to Greece, open up the suitcase, and find it stuffed with someone else's posessions. A severe anxiety attack swept over me. If the suitcase got lost, there would be nothing left to link me to my old life--just Izumi. I suddenly felt as if I had vanished.

2: Criteria

What constitutes an object? It's a harder notion to pin down than I originally thought. I think that one can safely rule out living things--hence the phrase "inanimate objects"--but it seems to me that plants are a gray area. They look like objects, but this is only because humans percieve time at a certain rate. To rocks, the blooming and dying of plants must seem just as ephemeral as a fireworks display does to us. And then there are objects that are animate, but not living. Animate in the sense that they move under their own power; robots, for example. For the purposes of my list, I'm going to rule out all living things (plants included) and robots. Anything that moves without being made to. To me there is something distinctly un-objectlike about them, though you may see things differently.

I would also like to rule out media objects. I say "like to" but the truth is (you'll see below) that I can't, not completely. Media objects convey sensory information, but this information is stored in an abstract form. The "point" of them is not not their form, but the data. Of course, before computers, some formal considerations were obligatory. CD booklets or record sleeves would be the most obvious examples. Those are now secondary, and will probably disappear in the next several years. Yet there are cases when media objects take on object-like qualities. Here are three cases that I think apply, the third of which is important for my list:

1. Music as object: I'm referring here specifically to recorded music. Certain compositions lend themselves to being played as background music, either to create ambience or to accompany a certain activity. I'm thinking of something like Getz/ Gilberto, Brian Eno's Ambient 1, or even (this might be pushing it) Massive Attack's Mezzanine. These recordings are fine on their own, but to me they really seem to shine when part of something else. And it is this combination of music and a physical environment/ activity that makes the object-like.

2. Film as object: Andy Warhol thought that we would project films onto walls like paintings, and that they would become part of the room (in much the same way I talk about music above). His early experiment with this was Sleep, a five hour film of a man sleeping. Of course that's asinine if you expect people to watch it like we watch movies today, but I think his film-as-painting idea has some merit. Screen savers (wasteful as they are) essentially embody this concept.

While I'm on the subject of images, I realize that I haven't mentioned static images like paintings or photographs... a pretty serious omission. I think that these can pass as objects, since the information they encode isn't in an abstract form--it's in the object (the paint, the photo-chemicals) itself. So although these are media objects as well, they are also object objects.

3. Books as objects: Obviously the information stored in books is not as abstract as that in CDs, DVDs, or magnetic tapes. Furthermore, the experience of a book more tied to the physical object of the book itself--what it feels like, looks like, even smells like. One can write in a book if one wishes, or even re-bind an old book. Finally, there are publishers (McSweeneys and Chin Music Press are two you should know about) that specialize in creating books that are pleasing objects, rather than just collections of pages. Then there are the reasons for which I included a book in my list which I will discuss...

3: The List

I decided to make the list a series of separate posts. See above.

4: The Future

Although I deliberately excluded objects from my list that exist only as digital information, it doesn't seem too early to discuss the possbility that in the future, the majority of the objects that we interact with will be virtual. There are already a multitude of virtual objects with monetary value (items in MMORPGs or anything in SecondLife), and despite the fact that not seeing objects in terms of their monetary value is part of what I'm trying to encourage (Marx called this habit commodity fetishism), it may be a precursor of other things to come. There is also the question of software-as-objects--most apparent in applications like desktop Post-it notes--but I'll save that for another discussion. Today we are still firmly entrenched in our material world, and until computers are able to simulate all forms of sensory information in a completely realistic manner, material objects will have their place. This also means that the things buy, keep, and use will be subject to obsolescence and decay. As I draw this object lesson to a close, I'd like to point you to the Wikipedia article on the Japanese aesthetic system known as "wabi-sabi." Appreciating our objects even as they age requires an aesthetic sensibility that our cutlure does not readily provide; in Japan, philosophers and poets developed a tradition of seeing beauty in that which is imperfect, old, or fleeting that goes back several hundred years. Those of you who will be taking my tea course this spring will hear more about this then.

5: Conclusion

If you've made it this far, then I encourage you to take a few moments when you get the chance and think about what objects mean the most to you. Where did you get them? Why do you like them? Do you see a place for them in your future? If you make a list, let me know; I'd like to read it.

January 1

I suppose that New Years day is one of the quietest days of the year. In America, at least. Most things are is closed, but there aren't any special traditions to take part in. Sure, there might be family rituals, and if I remember correctly they have some traditions in France, Spain, places like that... for us, it's the day to take down our Christmas tree. I figure that for most people around my age it's first and foremost the morning after a party. Which is fine. Days this quiet are hard to come by.

Of course, most days in Newton are about this quiet throughout the year. I'll be happy to get back into Greensboro, at least until I get tired of it too. It's not like Newton has nothing to offer: I like my neighborhood, the weather here, the cats. I like the huge oak tree that grows in our front yard. It used to lose a huge limb every winter during the ice storms and once one crushed our neighbor's car. I was sure that one year the last of its limbs would drop away, and we'd have to cut it down. But there haven't been any ice storms the last couple winters. Maybe it will be around for a while. I'm 99% sure that the tree doesn't mind staying in our front yard, not going anywhere, just letting the neighborhood birds crawl all around its shoulders and hair. It's different for me. Not being under any kind of pressure makes me feel like I'm wasting away a little bit. There's a sense of helplessness about being in my house and not having anywhere to go. If I can't do useful work, I at least want to be out, making interesting memories or trying something new. Making pottery or something. Maybe that's all available to me, and I've just grown too helpless to see it. Maybe not. It's silly because I'm always so eager to go back home at the end of the semester. I thought I'd go home and bake a lot of bread in our cozy kitchen, with the fire going in the other room. I haven't baked any bread yet, but I still might try... I go back to Greensboro in less than a week now, anyway.

It's funny: I realized that I always start blogs and things like that during December, when I'm locked away at home. I suppose that a pile of books, a blanket, and a grilled cheese sandwich aren't enough to keep me completely satisfied after all. Not to say that they aren't nice. Nice enough that I'll miss them when I go back.