Black Sun

And in my heart it feels like the end of the world. I want to and do not want to go to a different land. You know me? I was born old; wrinkled and mournful for lost time. 

At night, when all is quiet, and your heart is still, you walk in a strange light. Like a dream of some form of life that I can't name. The birds stare at me even though not awake at this hour. The moon is clear and broken. And I danced in circles one day, all those years ago...

Walk close to the flowers in this dark hour. What distance the stars travel! Everything I have wears thin and it's a beautiful-sad feeling to think how short lived all we hold is against them. I know the sun is out there, so far and high- and yet its heat is here on my hand, now. It is moving closer, I can feel the black sun in my bones. No-one sees my face at this moment. Daylight will come and the shadows will fall on my raven heart. And then I will draw a line to your heartful mind.  

End of term blues

Yachchideralum, putzele, mutzele __
who will remember and who will forget?
Twirling down time's corridors i see your shadow dancing..

My father danced and then he died and his name
is a long time gone..

Yachchideralum, putzele, mutzele
Now if I couldezele I'd speak to you true:
but your dance is ended and all tears expended __
so sleep on and take your rest, my father, my Jew.

--Olga Levertoff.

End of term blues

The term has come to an abrupt end. Look back not in anger but in bewilderment. Was that time passing, not passing? Enter the marks. Do the needful, as they say around here, and be gone. You weren't really here anyway.  

I don't know, each year of your life becomes more unreal. 

Vanishing Heart

The central dream

Love, morning, stars
blue now in the 
continuing lighting
of the heavens.

--J. Ceravolo.

The angels to your side, recording life with a blunt pencil. You stand on the steps, midway, as always, and give thanks; the warmth and light on your back, this old and ancient light falling, as it always has, before the mountains before the pollen.

Where you recall, this central dream of yours, just as it opens into daylight.  

The curling soft yellow petals by the roadside all small questions. Each tree grows at its own angle to the earth. Walk under their generous shade. The soft grass has nothing to say. You feel the intense stare of two crows on your back; they relax and retreat when you bow your head, recognizing one of their own. 

You could count the words you speak in a day. Less real than the words spoken in dreams. The black sun flows through your veins, tilting your head, shaping your gait. You wait with it, as time turns in broken circles. With old eyes you look at how fresh everything looks. If you could name this song you'd be somewhere else. Distances hold the memory of love, and of love lost.  

Love, morning, stars
blue now.    

Fall

Fall [
..
][
[.

[why.

[don't

..]

[you]

If this is May, it must..

There is no doubt now, at least to my mind.

There is no doubt now, at least to my mind, that something weird is happening. The seasons are out of time, Spring dancing into Summer and vice versa. It never rains in May; it has rained in May. 

Still, the yellow petals at your feet remind you that there are still some familiar signs. How will we get on when we can't read? Agamben: the end of human gestures. Were the silent films a last reminder of the stylized ways in which the hands represent the soul? And now, as I type this, my hands move in the dark.

~~~

Methane, over a 20 year period, traps 86 times more heat than carbon dioxide. Levels of methane have increased from 1650 (ppb) to 1850 (ppb) over the last thirty years. There are feedback loops: the more methane released, the warmer the climate; the warmer the climate, the more methane released (from wetlands, permafrost). But no-one is quite sure why the increase has been so rapid over the last ten years. It may be the growth in farming; it may that the atmosphere's ability to 'cleanse' it is diminishing.  

~~~

Out grave old planet still shines, still holds the memory of stone and star for now. So, here we are, here we are now, looking for something to love, with blood on our hands, the sun having darkened our faces.What goes around comes around, the only law left on this land. When all else falls away, all the things we built to divert and entertain ourselves, what will remain in the time that remains? Perhaps only this, our age-old quest for love and meaning, down in the bones, the flickering of an eyelid, somehow dimly understood despite it all. 

~ ~

We, the modern-day Eloi, glutted on the fat of the land, drowned in a sea of information, are not even sure of what to hold on to. Formed by so many years of sun-and-wheat consciousness, we carry on as if our life will never be interrupted. The books will be closed, full of dust and deeply buried thoughts. The body, finally, free of guilt, the hands signifying nothing. A man will look into his wife's eyes and say, this is not my beautiful wife.       

Last Word

A strange sort of meeting with a Yale professor. Think I was out of sorts because of the fast and in the absence of tea or coffee it's not easy to have a civilized conversation. But something else..you can't quite put your finger on it. Of course, the overriding sense that we're intellectual pygmies here. A sense of embarrassment, I suppose, at being shown up (no-one here would really count as an academic or intellectual outside the land of the pure). But it's not that either since what's left of your ego has been deflated a long time ago. 

Not, it should be added, out of a genuine sense of humility -which at least would have been something-but more as a  result of a listlessness, a stupefying indifference to (academic) success. In the final analysis you can't be bothered with a final analysis. Dress that up as a holier-than-thou turning away from institutional determination but, no, it's more like plain old incompetence and laziness. A self that doesn't strive for movement and that simultaneously cannot rest in itself. Out of sorts, sort of. 

Okay, since therapy here is so expensive Herr Roxana I'm going to carry on with a bit of more self analysis (apologies to long-suffering readers).

For a civilized conversation one shouldn't care too much about having a civilized conversation. Your lack of humour bothered you more than anything. Nothing worse than a clown who can't make people laugh. And so we were stuck in this humourless conversation for over an hour with no cultural affinity between us (I read that as a fundamental difference between British and American humour). But more than that it's that academics always have to show off, demonstrate their intelligence, have the last word. As opposed to intellectuals who can have their cake and espresso and not say anything (yeah, you can see where the real problem lies here!). 

You do wonder if things would have been different if the professor had been a woman. Maybe.  

Increasingly you're of the opinion - see the false notes here?- that universities produce dour specialists when what you enjoy most is intelligent banter. Daniel Bell, when asked what he specializes in responded: "in generalizations". 

So, there I was, reeling off names of authors and books. Not that I could remember a bleedin' word of them if pressed. The artificiality of the conversation reached breaking point. "Where are you from? Who are you?". The kind of personal questions that cannot be admitted (we're back to Turing again). No, just blank ideas, opinions, posturing. 

What really got my goat was that he kept on saying things like "we __" or "Ah, now this is where __ would say..".  A bit like me saying, "As an economist I'd say...". Know what I mean, anton? Don't blame him to be honest. That's all part of what being a professional academic is. And you ain't one so get over it, already. But there's nothing ventured here. Same old, same old. 

"Why are you interested in this topic?". I find that kind of question much more revealing. "What drew you to it?" 

The first time I met N, now deceased (may God grant him peace), he said to me, "What's your story, then?" Typical bluster and showmanship from a northerner.  Most people when they ask that- if they ask that- really mean, listen to my story. [He says writing to himself on his own blog!].

~~~

Later today a meeting with an old friend who I haven't seen for ten years. Bound to be a bit awkward since the last time we met he threatened me with physical violence. But maybe that's par for the course since "as a mathematician..       

The Turing Test

What is it to think like a human? Presumably the Turing test would only work if it could answer that question and if it could then be shown that the computer not only understands what that thinking process is but that it can also replicate it.

How do you know, for example, that this post hasn't been automatically generated by a computer programme ("I wish it was", I hear some of you say).  

But the actual test seems to be slightly different and therefore altogether bizarre. A(man) and B (woman) behind a screen. C (the interrogator) is on the other side of the screen. A must convince C he is a woman. C "wins" if he/she can tell if A is in fact a man. In stage two of the game, A is replaced by a  computer/machine that must now convince C that it is a woman. If C is more successful in stage one than in stage two then the computer hasn't passed the test. 

I think that's it. But wow! So much to unravel here.

Is thinking just a logical set of procedures? The whole set-up is weird (not just because it is phrased as a competition). Is C a man or a woman? Do contexts, bodies and histories count in explaining how we think? Would A have the same chances of convincing C-woman that he's a woman as he would have of convincing C-man? What kind of interaction has A had with women in the past that might make him successful? He might, a la Adam Smith, be able to sympathetically imagine what a woman undergoes in childbirth but would he really be able to describe it? 

'Description' and understanding and sympathy here is surely beyond the application of formal rules and facts. 

Would C-man or C-woman have a better chance of guessing? Would their questions be different? What is the picture here? The isolated, bodiless notion of the mechanical or computational mind. "The brain is a computer".

The computer is supposed to understand humour, I suppose. But how would it do that if it's culturally specific? 

Who is B, this great, passive and innocent truth-teller? Why can't she win anything? If she could, might not she try and distinguish her answers from A's -assuming she knows them- to win the game?   

      

Incompetent men

We habitually interpret traits such as overconfidence and self-absorption as signs of high ability, though in fact they’re negatively correlated with it. They “should be seen as red flags”, but “instead, they prompt us to say, ‘Ah, there’s a charismatic fellow! He’s probably leadership material.’” Men come to dominate the upper echelons because they’re more likely to manifest such traits.

---O. Burkeman.

It's always struck you that some people can get away with a lot of things. As soon as someone rich or powerful opens their mouth you can literally see the deference on the faces of the people in the vicinity; in fact, I've even seen the body posture of the people in the latter group change as they lap up and smile at the leader's words. People will be ready to laugh at even their slightest attempt at a joke. 

Here's the thing: I don't think it's simply a cynical response that aims to further one's own self-interest. It's much much less self-conscious than that. Similar to the way in which a person's reaction almost instinctively changes in the presence of a beautiful person of the opposite sex, or in front of a famous writer, say. The body is pre-shaped, the face and eyes are made warmer, less hostile, in anticipation of the words and gestures of the one with some kind of power. It doesn't even really matter what the person is saying. Just nod along in admiration. Where does that deference come from, you wonder?

[With me it's the complete opposite. Always being an outsider of sorts has meant me sticking two fingers up at authority more often than not..for the plain reason that I' profoundly sceptical of the very concept of authority.] 

Is it part of some age-old bending-of-the-back trait inherited from our agricultural past? Or does it go back further than that..the way monkeys grin and put their hands up in the face of danger. What is this constant need to look to some dazzling personality to affirm your own life?     

The story of the end of the story

Without mystery, without curiosity and without the form imposed by a partial answer, there can be no stories—only confessions, communiqués, memories and fragments of autobiographical fantasy which for the moment pass as novels.

---J.Berger.

~~~

“I found it unwatchable and false, boring and self-referential, a world of ideal people who don’t behave as humans but more like machines.”

 The plots let them defer responsibility for the fate of the world to demigods; the way they are shot – lots of signposting, everything carefully controlled – offers a false sense of omniscience.

"Superhero movies take away mystery because there’s nothing in the shadows. All is revealed. And that’s not how our relationship to the world is.."

"Likewise the incredible amount of imagery we’re producing and the fact so much is virtual. We are building a sort of narcissistic image of ourselves through social media that means we perceive people as potential angels."

--Laszlo Nemes, The Guardian.

~~~

"My guess is that the kind of thinking we are, at last, beginning to do about how to change the goals of human domination and unlimited growth to those of human adaptability and long term
survival is a shift from yang to yin, and so involves acceptance of impermanence and imperfection, a patience with uncertainty and the makeshift, a friendship with water, darkness, and the earth."

--Ursula le Guin.

No poetry

Earth withdraws her riches, sinks back into the shadows. For tens of thousands of years gentle sun and slanting rain and ferocious winds were moments in the silent life of the mountain. And now we've managed to tear it all up, gorged ourselves until our senses have given way to narcissistic fantasies and then finally exhaustion, nullity.

There's no poetry left in our words, only the utilitarian calculus of planners and revolutionaries. They tell us we have twenty years to act, to slow it down, reverse it. Why not just let things be? There is no time for poetry, no time at all. We head down, head held up high, dragging the rest of creation with us.      

Here there's no stage; here there is no royalty.

N: N-W

The heat arrives, layer after layer. Search out the few feet of shade left. By 9 o'clock a breaking point has been reached; the sweeper's arms move like a mechanical pendulum. The light holds everything in perfect stillness.

Everything at this time of the year is run down, panting for breath, or some kind of relief from the fierceness of the days. There are smudged footprints on the wall and loose soil scattered on the floor. Doors manage to slimly hang on to their hinges. Mud is splattered on the side of the car. The earth is baked and won't budge an inch. A carton of milk lies abandoned next to a pile of pebbles. When you kick it it moves with a thud, some of its contents spilling on to the grass. Inside, a red toy light gets lost and found as the alternating light and shade from a curtain filters shards of light onto the floor. Our own lives flickering into and out of visibility in an ebb and flow that is as old as time itself.

The house has been turned upside down and inside out. Nothing is worth saving. A postcard, a sad and grey Japanese frog in watercolour, lies on the floor, creased, out of sorts. A model tram from San Francisco, unwatched dvds, unread books- their pages like dry hands.

The term has ended. I don't want to hear about it or talk about it. No looking back. Put on your Puritan hat and recall your sober heart. Love is north by north-west.       

The Transparent Society

The German-Korean philosopher continues to impress.
Made me think of the veil and the western/English fascination with it. Part of that fascination is no doubt down to the grumpiness of middle aged men who feel they have to comment on what women wear and how women wear clothes. But I think a larger part of it is really that it just comes across as mighty odd. I think the English sensibility is quite happy with a bit if difference-as long as you don't stand out and as long as you don't draw attention to yourself. It's a form of tolerance- or at least humility- I suppose. Wearing strange headgear might be passed off as simply coming across as a bit silly. But the covering of the face is way off the scale.

Then there's the question of autonomy. Some people (rightly) claim that this is sometimes a case of the imposition of male ideas of purity and not about women's free choice at all. Perhaps it's also about male fears of sexuality. 



All that can readily be granted. But I wonder if it isn't in part also about the horror of the fact that something remains secretive, hidden, in a world where everything must be exposed, brought out into the light. A world, that is, of bright surfaces and complete transparency. 

That desire for openness is itself not, you think, merely a product of the more fundamental desire to do away with all mystery, superstition. It's got more to do-at least in its current manifestation-with capitalism's need for smooth surface and friction-less places where the movement of capital cannot be interrupted. Show business. Show me the money. 

In a transparent society there can be no distances (including the distances of time). Immediate wants (not even desires). The constantly moving happiness machine. Just go with the flow. Just do it. In a pornographic society there is no desire or eroticism. In fact, there is no Other (whence the narcissism of the modern age).   

The Second Mountain

I've been reading this book by D. Brooks. Does read a bit like pop psychology at times and kinda self-helpishy or new agey at others. But for all the cheesiness I'm actually finding it surprisingly interesting.

"There is trouble in your soul, and it keeps you awake."

The idea is that the first mountain is worldly success, narrow versions of a good life that we simply grow into, unreflectively endorsing the scripts that keep the ego satisfied with itself. Linear progress, individual rationality, stages in life to be ticked off: move on up: freedom, control, and work are the 'big swim to nowhere'.  But really they're just a mask for boredom, or the indifference that stems from not being deeply interested in things (or other people) or the lack of courage to ask the big questions (Augustine: "I have become a question to myself"). 

In other words: Acedia: sluggishness of the soul, indifference, drift. Keep it neutral, keep it light, dude. Keep it anything but real. But out of the corner of your eye you sometimes glimpse the leopard on the high mountain, the second mountain. You know that leopard somehow, you sense you've seen him before or know him or would know him if..And then one day he comes down to you, stands in the open doorway and asks you: who do you really think you are?