taking a break

This should provides plenty of entertainment as you sit in front of your computer with Word in the background, your paper still unwritten.

I'm presently listening to a debate between the The Economist and The Nation. The topic is globalization and both sides are making the arguments you'd expect. Thus far, I'd say The Economist is kicking ass in an English way, but I expected nothing different. I tend not to read The Nation, though curiosity does lead me to peruse its website every few weeks. I'm rarely impressed by the content, and when it's presented in printed form, The Nation is an even greater bore. Its aesthetic falls somewhere between Wired magazine and a locally available weekly (such as The Georgia Straight or The Portland Mercury). This is to say that I don't like the way it looks. Perhaps not the best criteria on which to judge a newspaper, but considering how much I read the news, I don't think it unimportant. That The Nation has been around since the mid-nineteenth century should be only a further embarassment to its editors. If they were to hire a new layout department, and rid themselves of their tiresomely colloquial tone (perhaps the most pernicious trend in journalism over the last decade), I'd certainly read their pages more often. Until then, The Guardian and Le Monde will remain my preffered sources of left-leaning news coverage. Anyway, I'm off to bed and so all I'm going to say about the debate is that it's worth a listen:

What's Good for Wall Street is Good for America

and I also came across this debate between Naomi Klein and a business writer for The Economist (though I've not yet listened to it):

No Logo vs. Pro Logo

Just put some bacon the pan and put The Tipping Point on. I'm not sure how the first cut is going to grow on me. I like it less this time than previously. We'll see.

You may see some crazed and insane late night posting this weekend. I'm starting (and hopefully finishing) my qual this weekend. Back to the bacon. Hope everyone is well.

Ev

glassy shimmer, the surface of my bourbon,
ice cube floats amongst the oily swirls;
Harsh gentle river down my throat
soothing warmth, aromas of pear, coffee and persimmon;
the marvels of man passing through my hand—hands,
glasses raised with a friend, a long night on the back porch,
it's cold out here, the sky is dark and we are shivering,
commotion inside, thoughts escape and smiles are exchanged,
another glass, the laughter swells;

Prologue

to what? more of the same. A few nights ago, I began a post entitled "Thoughts while sipping bourbon". Surprisingly, I had a great deal to say, and though I continued tapping away during my shift the next day, it still isn't finished. Until then, I have "More thoughts while sipping bourbon", though all of you have yet to see previous thoughts, hence the title "prologue", though I think I prefer "Prelude". I'm listening to Soul One, a rather unfortunate name for a song I very much like. I've mentioned it before, in post about rediscovering old music. So, here I am listening to anguished music (the best kind) and sipping bourbon. I should be studying the Kinetic Molecular Theory, but my head is exhausted from the expedition I undertook last night. Last week, being the keener nerd that I am—and perhaps a little presumptious—I stupidly volunteered to explicate Paul de Man's musings on Reading (Proust) to my class. Yesterday arrived, and I still hadn't read the article. Today arrived and I'd read it twice, taken copious notes, but slept little. The presentation went well, perhaps very well, though I'm not sure how much was understood. I decided to follow de Man and attempted to insist on meaning's indecidability in a performative manner somewhat similiar to his. I toned it down, I don't think I was convoluted, but then I knew what I was talking about, I think. Others may not have. They were probably left in an aporia similar to that de Man describes the reader as in when faced with one of Proust's logically incoherent metaphors, or not. They may have simply felt confused. I, on the other hand, had a wondrous moment of revelation this morning, very much like the moment where "life" becomes writing, which occurs in a process similar to reading and critical understanding. You see? Not so much, eh? Well, perhaps when I don't have other things I need to rush off to, I will attempt a proper set of musings on de Man. Look for Thoughts while sipping ether.

There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge.
— HST

[somehow, R.I.P. just doesn't seem to fit]

I must be off. Hope you all are well.

Evening thoughts while sipping bourbon

It's a rare moment when I find that some of my disparate but related thoughts come together into a coherent understanding of an idea or aspect of life. I've been reading articles on the relationship between images and text. The first was a chapter from Roland Barthe's Image-Music-Text, and the second, which I've only just begun, a chapter from Norman Bryson's Word and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Regime. Bryson's subject is religious images and the way in which they are determined by the words to which they refer. At least for the moment (as I haven't finished the article), he asserts that religious images lack independance. I'm not sure that any image really ever has independance, but I know what he's getting at and there's no need to nit pick, not yet at least. But all of this is only of tangential relation to what I started off writing about. While reading Bryson's article, at some point after the first paragraph, I drifted off into thought.

My thoughts jumped back to about seven years ago when I was sixteen. I have a very distinct recollection of a conversation in a kitchen with a man about thirty-five years my senior. It was not so much a conversation as it was an exchange of information and opinion—there was no rapport established. Somehow old man came to know that I was buddhist (I may have mentioned it, though I'm not sure) and he responded something like this, "You know, when I was in Laos (or Vietnam, or...insert some south east Asian country), I encountered a lot of buddhist monks. They weren't very good people. I remember they used to just show up at people's houses and expect to be fed. The people hardly had enough to eat themselves, and the monks would just sort of extort food out of them by a tacit appeal to religious duty." I've made the remarks more explicit. For example, I don't think old man actually said "they weren't very good people", but I'm quite sure that's what was being communicated. I don't recall how I responded (I think I said little at all), but I've been thinking about it ever since, albeit not very often. Yes, I have been carrying this with me for seven years, but I've done so with good reason. Ill-conceived though it may have been, the criticism was not unfounded. At the level of denotation, it was perfectly valid, but it's connotation that buddhism is bankrupt and its followers silly was not, and it struck not only at my own beliefs—which were but nascent at the time—but at my family as well. Now, my own beliefs are a fickle thing. I will proclaim non-attachment, but in truth, I frequently experience an attack on my beliefs as on attack on me, because—understanding "beliefs" in the broadest possible sense—I am nothing other than the aggregate of my beliefs . "I" is simply the signifier to which the group of signs (or signifieds, depending how you want to think about this) that make up "me" is attached. Now I really can't remember what I was going to write about. Oh yeah, so, what have I finally, after seven years, decided might be the proper response?

People are not saved by religion, but by religious practice. Why, because at the heart of most religious practice (of all that I am aware) is some kind of discipline. Religious belief is important because it is what makes the practice of this disicpline enjoyable. Without belief, the practices of religion are simply an empty set of rules (which they may be anyways, but that's a different discussion), an orthodoxy that is as foreign and perhaps non-sensical as it is old. But religious practice—or discipline—coupled with genuine belief engenders a generally happy and productive life. Simple really, but important. It is really the discipline part that I think important. Because if the decline of the American empire is anything, it is the decline of discipline (I sound remarkably like Cato here). I'm going to keep talking about this, because, well, I will.

Some may remember a post I made a long while back about an essay competition for which entrants were to compose a piece on the "Power of Purpose". I ridiculed the idea at the time. The slogan still brings to mind one of my father's favourite responses, "gag me with a spoon". But it has a kernel of truth, which is to say it came out of a genuine insight into the nature of human experience. The power of purpose is precisely the power of discipline [at least in my world]. Purpose is nothing other than a clear understanding of and belief in what one is doing [I'm not sure about the belief part]. Maintaining this view, and the actions it requires (the hypothetical imperatives), is discipline. In this sense, discipline need not be religious. One could find such an approach to life and human experience in other ways. Science is an obvious example. Really, any sort of analytic self-reflexion that yields a sense of ideals, standards, beliefs, what have you, is probably what's important.

So why did this take me seven years? Well, it took me a long time to realise the discipline part. I could have said the part about religious practice seven years ago, but it wouldn't have meant all that much. I had yet to grasp the ngedong (tib. for, roughly "meaning beyond words" or "ultimate wisdom") of religious practice. I'm not saying I fully understand it now, but I've some inkling of insight that wasn't there before.

One last thought: "On belief" Strickly speaking, at an absolute level (as opposed relative) a buddhist of my type (some buddhists believe in mind, and I assume there are others who believe in other things) does not believe in anything, precisely because to believe is to make that thingexist, to enter into an artificial subject/object relationship. I'm inclined to say that belief is a useful tool, but ultimately empty....now I'm feeling confused again.

A beginning

I just purchased a Moleskin® notebook for myself. It is the "legendary notebook of Hemingway, Picasso, and Chatwin." I don't know who Chatwin is, perhaps I should.

[few minutes later]

I just googled (1) "Chatwin" and the only likely candidate I turned up was Bruce Chatwin, a travel writer of the late 20th century whose best known works, In Patagonia and The Songlines, I've never read. Anyways, I'm now going to unwrap my Moleskine® notebook. I've now unwrapped my Moleskine®, nothing much has changed. It came with nine stickers, each with the word "writing" at the top, in letters that gradually shrink in size as if I were looking at an eye testing chart in the doctor's office. There is apparently a history of Molesking® on the inner flap.

I've read the history. So, for about two hundred years, many (at least a handful) of western civilization's greatest artists and intellectuals have jotted down their "sketches and notes, ideas and emotions,...in this trustworthy...blah blah blah". Chatwin (who is/was indeed the travel writer I figured) continued this tradition, buying one hundred of the little notebooks before heading off on a great adventure. But Bruce Chatwin was not enough, the Moleskine® was in danger, demand was simply too weak. And so, in 1987, production—at the time consisting of a small family-run firm in Tours—was discontinued. "Le vrai moleskine n'est plus" said the owner a stationary shop to Chatwin as he attempted to replenish his stock for his next adventure. Today, thanks to Modo & Modo of Italy, the Moleskine® has returned. It even has an events section on the website. I think the Frenchman was almost right: In 1987 the moleskine was no more, but in 1998 it died.

I'm off to write a few sonnets with my Moleskine® as my muse. I'll let you know how they go, but don't hold your breath, I only have till Thursday to write them.

[This is a footnote, I don't know how to make superscript letters on the internet] 1. How long till to google makes it into the Oxford English Dictionary? I figure it will happen when the word ceases to refer to the act of performing an internet search using Google's search engine, and is generalised to refer to any internet search with the object of the to google being the item/person/idea searched for. The question is then, how long will this take? I say six years, if it is to happen at all. By the way, I no longer consider the Oxford English Dictionary the ultimate arbiter of English that I once did. I am now the ultimate arbiter of English. And you. And Winston Churchill.