Thothmuffin
Don't get any crumbs on the scale of judgement.
Sunday, February 29, 2004
For Kenni: A Love Letter
Dearest Kenni,
Nothing is more stressful in my everyday life than dealing with you, Kenni. Now 3.5 years old, you are a very delicate composition of old programs, new patches, and slightly defective hardware that beat and whir together, enabling a set of processes nearly as mystical to me as the workings of organic life. Taking care of you is almost like taking care of a pet--only my pet is also my main form of entertainment, news, communication with my friends, and the repository of nearly all the fruits of my writing, creative and academic.
I don’t understand you, Kenni. I think this relationship is very unhealthy for me. I have given you all my trust, and more hours of my life than I care to count. My tendonitis is yours. My myopia is yours. I have given so much, and still you reveal nothing of yourself to me, wounding me with cryptic messages as I try to detach myself from you, painful reminders of who has all the power.
I sit back and watch your body failing, feel its sickly heat beneath my hands, and can do nothing. And I know that no matter how much I gather to me and try to preserve, when you are gone, I will lose a great many things with you.
I am helpless to defend you from others. Jealous and possessive of what you will betray as you wander, I see infidelity in your every action. I have worn, scratched, and cracked you, sweet Kenni, but it was from my love and my need. I never meant to hurt you, and you must know what pain you have caused me, what pain you inflict on me even now as I worry endlessly at what your smallest noise, your slightest shift in behavior could mean.
I can’t stand to lose you. Not before I’m ready. Even after everything, I still need you. I’m trying to make it better, Kenni, don’t you see? Please, just stay with me. . .just a little while longer, and then you may rest.
--Your Owner
“Cunt Makes You A Nice Person”:
Nothing is more stressful in my everyday life than dealing with you, Kenni. Now 3.5 years old, you are a very delicate composition of old programs, new patches, and slightly defective hardware that beat and whir together, enabling a set of processes nearly as mystical to me as the workings of organic life. Taking care of you is almost like taking care of a pet--only my pet is also my main form of entertainment, news, communication with my friends, and the repository of nearly all the fruits of my writing, creative and academic.
I don’t understand you, Kenni. I think this relationship is very unhealthy for me. I have given you all my trust, and more hours of my life than I care to count. My tendonitis is yours. My myopia is yours. I have given so much, and still you reveal nothing of yourself to me, wounding me with cryptic messages as I try to detach myself from you, painful reminders of who has all the power.
I sit back and watch your body failing, feel its sickly heat beneath my hands, and can do nothing. And I know that no matter how much I gather to me and try to preserve, when you are gone, I will lose a great many things with you.
I am helpless to defend you from others. Jealous and possessive of what you will betray as you wander, I see infidelity in your every action. I have worn, scratched, and cracked you, sweet Kenni, but it was from my love and my need. I never meant to hurt you, and you must know what pain you have caused me, what pain you inflict on me even now as I worry endlessly at what your smallest noise, your slightest shift in behavior could mean.
I can’t stand to lose you. Not before I’m ready. Even after everything, I still need you. I’m trying to make it better, Kenni, don’t you see? Please, just stay with me. . .just a little while longer, and then you may rest.
--Your Owner
Thursday, February 26, 2004
“Cunt Makes You A Nice Person”:
The Problem with Sexed Arguments about Gender, Part I--Translation
First, in order to understand the argument that follows, you should know that I subscribe wholeheartedly to the idea of sex and gender as separate entities. Sex is a biological phenomenon, related to your genotype and its manifestation in your phenotype. Gender is a performance of identity that is heavily influenced by culture. Male/female are sex words; man/woman are gendered words. Although people use masculine/feminine for both sex and gender, in our society I think they are usually terms for gendered behaviors or uses that are mapped onto sexed characteristics. How else could breasts, a dress, and compassion come to have equal status as identifiers of femininity?
This brings me to Beowulf. An abstract of a paper about female translators of Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry was recently brought to my attention in which the author asserted that females were less able to translate such poetry than males in the modern age. Not women and men, mind you, but males and females. The author’s defense of this idea seemed to be that modern males are closer to the violent, barbaric warrior culture than females, simply because they have common loins with the heroes of old. As I understand it, the author asserts that female translators have to take two steps, from female to male and from male to barbarian, and males only have to make one step, automatically making male translators 50% more culturally aligned before they’ve even picked up the epic.
Well, maybe he’d have a point if the separation between male and female minds were as great a disparity as the gap between the sterilized, academic world of a middle-aged professor and an Anglo-Saxon male warrior bent on looting, burning, raping, slaughtering, and however else the ancient heroes disported themselves. But it is not. I would argue that gap between rational, modern masculine and feminine (or male and female!) minds can be made negligible from the point of view of scholarship ability, especially since so much work has been done to analyze gendered styles of thought in feminist studies.
Which brings me to the other problem I have with such an argument. I just don’t think having cock makes you prone to grunting displays of violence any more than pussy makes you need to nurture everything in sight. Maybe a lot of biology disagrees with me. Maybe I think a lot of biology is wrong. Maybe the great thing about humanity is that we can separate sex and gender if we want to.
I think most people with male and female anatomies are trained into their respective masculine and feminine roles and heartily embrace them, sure. But there have always been exceptions, and the wonderful part about separating gender from sex is that we recognize that those exceptions aren’t by any means unnatural, or rather, that the norm isn’t immutably “natural.”
Many female souls may more comfortably locate themselves with the sword than the chalice in Beowulf, and why should they not? I would argue that poems so removed from our time, with such different conceptions of acceptable gendered roles, give modern readers a chance to cast aside their personas and revel in or revile whatever aspects appeal to their real feelings.
Of course, even if I disagree with arguments that conflate sex and gender, I also appreciate the underlying worry, which is that of a revisionist approach to translation. There are those abysmal translators who shame the name of scholarship by deliberately twisting their translations to fit their own critical and social agendas. If such an editor/translator cuts, rearranges, and twists a document to create a meaning more pertinent to its own culture, then the translated work becomes one of more sociological than literary value. It is interesting for later scholars to examine how such a work differs from the original, and to muse on why such changes may have been made, but that makes the original editor more the author of a new work and a robber of authority than a translator devoted to creating bridges between cultures and times. It is the seductive power of the authority of ancient texts that drives good translators to become piratical authors.
But even the best of translators cannot help being influenced in their word choice by what they assume is happening in the text and what they believe is the tone of the work translated. Like it or not, the basic property of a translation is that it is intended for an audience necessarily removed from the original work’s audience. As such, the translator must balance the necessity of preserving the spirit of the original with making the text approachable for the new reader. This is why translation is a never-ending process and old works are, and should be, taken up anew every few generations.
Assuming that males are more suited to translating texts that contain violence and such things more traditionally in the masculine sphere is a misguided project. It essentializes the range of human experience and emotion and conflates gendered categories of behavior with physical sexual characteristics. But more importantly, it dismisses the possible greater objectivity and pertinence that people who feel themselves greatly removed from a culture may bring to the process of translation. A modern mind could be perfectly aware of, and faithful to, abhorrent ideas without the necessity of feeling a sympathetic response to those notions.
Translation is an art, a most difficult act of justice. The good translator preserves even the ideas it finds repellent without letting its own views intrude, either to censor or perversely intensify those ideas it finds repelling. I believe there is much to be gained from this struggle when engaging texts from our own history, and that it might actually harm the cultural work of translation were we to bar the more distant and contrary folk from the efforts.
Translation is a different process when the works come from modern cultures that we still may immerse ourselves in, of course, for then it is more rational and feasible to demand that translators be bicultural and bilingual. But for many ancient cultures, we have little besides their texts and arts remaining. The process of translation then becomes an attempt to present things foreign in such a way that they may be applied to our world and experience, either through agreement or contradiction. The key is to avoid the mistake of trying to force those applications into the text itself, for the discovery of those is, and has always been, the duty of the reader.
Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.
This brings me to Beowulf. An abstract of a paper about female translators of Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry was recently brought to my attention in which the author asserted that females were less able to translate such poetry than males in the modern age. Not women and men, mind you, but males and females. The author’s defense of this idea seemed to be that modern males are closer to the violent, barbaric warrior culture than females, simply because they have common loins with the heroes of old. As I understand it, the author asserts that female translators have to take two steps, from female to male and from male to barbarian, and males only have to make one step, automatically making male translators 50% more culturally aligned before they’ve even picked up the epic.
Well, maybe he’d have a point if the separation between male and female minds were as great a disparity as the gap between the sterilized, academic world of a middle-aged professor and an Anglo-Saxon male warrior bent on looting, burning, raping, slaughtering, and however else the ancient heroes disported themselves. But it is not. I would argue that gap between rational, modern masculine and feminine (or male and female!) minds can be made negligible from the point of view of scholarship ability, especially since so much work has been done to analyze gendered styles of thought in feminist studies.
Which brings me to the other problem I have with such an argument. I just don’t think having cock makes you prone to grunting displays of violence any more than pussy makes you need to nurture everything in sight. Maybe a lot of biology disagrees with me. Maybe I think a lot of biology is wrong. Maybe the great thing about humanity is that we can separate sex and gender if we want to.
I think most people with male and female anatomies are trained into their respective masculine and feminine roles and heartily embrace them, sure. But there have always been exceptions, and the wonderful part about separating gender from sex is that we recognize that those exceptions aren’t by any means unnatural, or rather, that the norm isn’t immutably “natural.”
Many female souls may more comfortably locate themselves with the sword than the chalice in Beowulf, and why should they not? I would argue that poems so removed from our time, with such different conceptions of acceptable gendered roles, give modern readers a chance to cast aside their personas and revel in or revile whatever aspects appeal to their real feelings.
Of course, even if I disagree with arguments that conflate sex and gender, I also appreciate the underlying worry, which is that of a revisionist approach to translation. There are those abysmal translators who shame the name of scholarship by deliberately twisting their translations to fit their own critical and social agendas. If such an editor/translator cuts, rearranges, and twists a document to create a meaning more pertinent to its own culture, then the translated work becomes one of more sociological than literary value. It is interesting for later scholars to examine how such a work differs from the original, and to muse on why such changes may have been made, but that makes the original editor more the author of a new work and a robber of authority than a translator devoted to creating bridges between cultures and times. It is the seductive power of the authority of ancient texts that drives good translators to become piratical authors.
But even the best of translators cannot help being influenced in their word choice by what they assume is happening in the text and what they believe is the tone of the work translated. Like it or not, the basic property of a translation is that it is intended for an audience necessarily removed from the original work’s audience. As such, the translator must balance the necessity of preserving the spirit of the original with making the text approachable for the new reader. This is why translation is a never-ending process and old works are, and should be, taken up anew every few generations.
Assuming that males are more suited to translating texts that contain violence and such things more traditionally in the masculine sphere is a misguided project. It essentializes the range of human experience and emotion and conflates gendered categories of behavior with physical sexual characteristics. But more importantly, it dismisses the possible greater objectivity and pertinence that people who feel themselves greatly removed from a culture may bring to the process of translation. A modern mind could be perfectly aware of, and faithful to, abhorrent ideas without the necessity of feeling a sympathetic response to those notions.
Translation is an art, a most difficult act of justice. The good translator preserves even the ideas it finds repellent without letting its own views intrude, either to censor or perversely intensify those ideas it finds repelling. I believe there is much to be gained from this struggle when engaging texts from our own history, and that it might actually harm the cultural work of translation were we to bar the more distant and contrary folk from the efforts.
Translation is a different process when the works come from modern cultures that we still may immerse ourselves in, of course, for then it is more rational and feasible to demand that translators be bicultural and bilingual. But for many ancient cultures, we have little besides their texts and arts remaining. The process of translation then becomes an attempt to present things foreign in such a way that they may be applied to our world and experience, either through agreement or contradiction. The key is to avoid the mistake of trying to force those applications into the text itself, for the discovery of those is, and has always been, the duty of the reader.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
One step closer to fangirls humping my leg...
Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.
CW: you're so going to be alan rickman someday
TM: haha he's my idol <3
CW: and I'm not saying that because fangirls want to hump your leg
TM: which they do
Monday, February 23, 2004
The Difficulty with Relationships | Kankei no muzukashisa
In a documentary I watched for Japanese class on the Women’s Lib movement in Japan in the 1970s, one of the women had an interesting view on the separate barriers people have to get over in order to form connections. She said that while it is hard to present an honest and complete picture of yourself in Japan, in America everyone is so individualistic that it makes it hard to have relationships with others.
I think the most important point for the Japanese woman who said this was the seeming inability of individuals to communicate with each other. The Japanese language creates a great many tiered boxes in which to place people, and there is a certain comfort in knowing exactly how to address a person according to their appearance or station, and basically what experiences you can expect them to have had. The “family” based model of social relationships, such as people have claimed Japan operates under, is based on the comfort of stereotypes, which greatly lubricate a certain kind of social interaction.
So I suppose I can see how, if everyone weren’t so busy asserting how different they were from everyone else, society might run a bit smoother. Perhaps there would be less awkwardness in talking to new people, and with people who became your close friends, your shared interests and experiences would overwhelm any trivial quirks that might distinguish you from your partner.
Relationships get dangerous and scary when your partners are opaque to you. This opacity comes from individuality. If there is no set of common and appropriate responses, no overwhelming pool of common experience forced on you by a homogenizing society, then every new step down the road of mutual discovery is a potential pitfall. When two individuals meet and attempt to relate, their systems of valuation and experience may be so different that the mere expression of one’s thoughts to one’s partner could be completely alienating.
Given the option of probing into this potentially dangerous morass of individual thought, many people choose instead to keep their relationships to the most mundane and common level allowed. Although not fulfilling, this is safe, and results in a great many acquaintances with whom one can nod, chat about work, and complain about the weather.
For the true individual, friendship is a process of constant risk, a Fortune’s Wheel of alienation, discovery, distancing, and connection. But if you build a connection, a true relationship, based on the meeting and negotiation of individualistic minds, I believe that you form a bond deeper than the easy comfort gained by the unquestioning consensus of a room full of partners who have agreed that similarities are all that matter.
This is not to say, of course, that more conformity-based groups don’t contain people who are just as individualistic or that the people within them don't forge bonds just as deeply and meaningfully as those created among individualists. They just have a different set of barriers to get over in forming relationships, I imagine, not the least of which would be recognizing the false sense of security given by their group’s homogenous face.
By the same token, people in individualist situations need to get over the idea of their own uniqueness, which is probably never so great as they assume. For this, I recommend the Internet. Nothing has been so great a tool of consolation and re-education to the supposedly unique. If you don’t believe me, type your deepest, darkest, and most secret fascination into Google, and just see how many sites come up.
So in the end, I agree with the woman from the documentary that (no matter your country) successful, meaningful relationships are a balancing act between constantly asserting your self and finding ways to connect and communicate without words.
Wordless communication is, for me, one of the standards of family and commonality. In certain groups, there are notions that are just understood. No matter how much the individual in you may personally despise some other individual you may meet who is a member of your same group, those parcels of understanding innate to both of you form a relationship whether you will it or not.
Strong individuals try to deny this relationship, distrusting any connection they haven’t fought for and not liking the thought that someone potentially very different from them could have such access to what they see as part of their unique character. The conformist embraces this innate understanding as a means to connect, in the process discarding difference or dissatisfaction as mere impediments to proper relationships.
As with most things, the real happiness probably lies in liberal application of Rule #4.
I think the most important point for the Japanese woman who said this was the seeming inability of individuals to communicate with each other. The Japanese language creates a great many tiered boxes in which to place people, and there is a certain comfort in knowing exactly how to address a person according to their appearance or station, and basically what experiences you can expect them to have had. The “family” based model of social relationships, such as people have claimed Japan operates under, is based on the comfort of stereotypes, which greatly lubricate a certain kind of social interaction.
So I suppose I can see how, if everyone weren’t so busy asserting how different they were from everyone else, society might run a bit smoother. Perhaps there would be less awkwardness in talking to new people, and with people who became your close friends, your shared interests and experiences would overwhelm any trivial quirks that might distinguish you from your partner.
Relationships get dangerous and scary when your partners are opaque to you. This opacity comes from individuality. If there is no set of common and appropriate responses, no overwhelming pool of common experience forced on you by a homogenizing society, then every new step down the road of mutual discovery is a potential pitfall. When two individuals meet and attempt to relate, their systems of valuation and experience may be so different that the mere expression of one’s thoughts to one’s partner could be completely alienating.
Given the option of probing into this potentially dangerous morass of individual thought, many people choose instead to keep their relationships to the most mundane and common level allowed. Although not fulfilling, this is safe, and results in a great many acquaintances with whom one can nod, chat about work, and complain about the weather.
For the true individual, friendship is a process of constant risk, a Fortune’s Wheel of alienation, discovery, distancing, and connection. But if you build a connection, a true relationship, based on the meeting and negotiation of individualistic minds, I believe that you form a bond deeper than the easy comfort gained by the unquestioning consensus of a room full of partners who have agreed that similarities are all that matter.
This is not to say, of course, that more conformity-based groups don’t contain people who are just as individualistic or that the people within them don't forge bonds just as deeply and meaningfully as those created among individualists. They just have a different set of barriers to get over in forming relationships, I imagine, not the least of which would be recognizing the false sense of security given by their group’s homogenous face.
By the same token, people in individualist situations need to get over the idea of their own uniqueness, which is probably never so great as they assume. For this, I recommend the Internet. Nothing has been so great a tool of consolation and re-education to the supposedly unique. If you don’t believe me, type your deepest, darkest, and most secret fascination into Google, and just see how many sites come up.
So in the end, I agree with the woman from the documentary that (no matter your country) successful, meaningful relationships are a balancing act between constantly asserting your self and finding ways to connect and communicate without words.
Wordless communication is, for me, one of the standards of family and commonality. In certain groups, there are notions that are just understood. No matter how much the individual in you may personally despise some other individual you may meet who is a member of your same group, those parcels of understanding innate to both of you form a relationship whether you will it or not.
Strong individuals try to deny this relationship, distrusting any connection they haven’t fought for and not liking the thought that someone potentially very different from them could have such access to what they see as part of their unique character. The conformist embraces this innate understanding as a means to connect, in the process discarding difference or dissatisfaction as mere impediments to proper relationships.
As with most things, the real happiness probably lies in liberal application of Rule #4.
Sunday, February 22, 2004
If a cup falls in the DC...
Let’s imagine I’m in my college dining center, about to sit down alone at a table in a secluded corner. Inexplicably, as I set my tray down, my glass of water falls over and spills across the empty table. Perhaps the angle of approach was wrong, or my depth perception wasn’t quite up to snuff just after waking up. At any rate, the table’s all wet.
At this point I am, of course, slightly irritated. Not only do I have to mop up my table, I must also obtain a new glass of water, and all because physics is operating a little differently than my typically inoffensive motor skills surmised. Still, my pitiful efforts have their upside. It’s interesting to note how the brown paper napkins deteriorate nearly immediately as I drag them through a quantity of wetness such as they were never intended to sop. The early afternoon sun falls directly on the tabletop, and surprises me with how quickly it warms the shallow pool of water. The liquid ripples ahead of the wad of ineffective napkins, and I experiment by deflecting the bumper of water from different angles as I steadily decrease its volume.
And then it occurs to me that I might have some social obligation to be embarrassed.
Many is the occasion when people attempt to stick trays in the multi-tiered tray return conveyor belt and end up spilling their glasses everywhere. This tends to delight people close by and result in a great deal of catcalling. No one noticed or remarked when I spilled my glass, though I know that a very vague acquaintance of mine who was occupying the only other table in the nook must have noticed. Was I supposed to look up and acknowledge my lapse in motor coordination? Must I look around to see whose feeling of superiority I can validate with my own momentary incompetence? Whence the sudden worry that, were I not to look over at my acquaintance and apologize good-humoredly for intruding upon his breakfast with my gracelessness, I might be committing some social gaffe?
Needless to say, I said nothing, and acknowledged it to no one. I just wasn’t embarrassed.
Embarrassment, I suppose, is a way to atone for public personal failings by giving other people power over you. When normally socialized people forgive your actions and tell you that everything’s fine, the embarrassment fades. Sometimes the less sensitive laugh at you and feel very good about it because they’ve decided to hold on to the little packet of social power you’ve been forced to shell out to pay for your less-than-average or stranger-than-average behavior.
Your good friends you keep around because they don’t take advantage of you when you’re forced to give up power. Really good friends either let your lapses pass without any expectation of apology or establish a norm from which it’s harder for you to deviate. The best of friends will take your embarrassment on as their own, giving up a little of their power and superiority to claim their share in your failing and to help more quickly appease the awkward sense of not quite cutting it as a member of a group.
At this point I am, of course, slightly irritated. Not only do I have to mop up my table, I must also obtain a new glass of water, and all because physics is operating a little differently than my typically inoffensive motor skills surmised. Still, my pitiful efforts have their upside. It’s interesting to note how the brown paper napkins deteriorate nearly immediately as I drag them through a quantity of wetness such as they were never intended to sop. The early afternoon sun falls directly on the tabletop, and surprises me with how quickly it warms the shallow pool of water. The liquid ripples ahead of the wad of ineffective napkins, and I experiment by deflecting the bumper of water from different angles as I steadily decrease its volume.
And then it occurs to me that I might have some social obligation to be embarrassed.
Many is the occasion when people attempt to stick trays in the multi-tiered tray return conveyor belt and end up spilling their glasses everywhere. This tends to delight people close by and result in a great deal of catcalling. No one noticed or remarked when I spilled my glass, though I know that a very vague acquaintance of mine who was occupying the only other table in the nook must have noticed. Was I supposed to look up and acknowledge my lapse in motor coordination? Must I look around to see whose feeling of superiority I can validate with my own momentary incompetence? Whence the sudden worry that, were I not to look over at my acquaintance and apologize good-humoredly for intruding upon his breakfast with my gracelessness, I might be committing some social gaffe?
Needless to say, I said nothing, and acknowledged it to no one. I just wasn’t embarrassed.
Embarrassment, I suppose, is a way to atone for public personal failings by giving other people power over you. When normally socialized people forgive your actions and tell you that everything’s fine, the embarrassment fades. Sometimes the less sensitive laugh at you and feel very good about it because they’ve decided to hold on to the little packet of social power you’ve been forced to shell out to pay for your less-than-average or stranger-than-average behavior.
Your good friends you keep around because they don’t take advantage of you when you’re forced to give up power. Really good friends either let your lapses pass without any expectation of apology or establish a norm from which it’s harder for you to deviate. The best of friends will take your embarrassment on as their own, giving up a little of their power and superiority to claim their share in your failing and to help more quickly appease the awkward sense of not quite cutting it as a member of a group.
Saturday, February 21, 2004
A few rules to live by
So, I have a story idea floating around in my head, and I thought that since I was thinking of trying out sort of an unusual protagonist, I'd write down a list of rules he lives by. Thoughts?
Rules to live by:
1. Know your priorities.
2. Respect spirit over form.
3. Mean what you say.
4. Practice moderation.
5. Fulfill your obligations.
6. Value life.
7. Be true.
8. Take only what is yours.
9. Give what blame or credit is due.
10. Love your own best.
And no, Purin-chan, this doesn't have to do with any two people who might happen to be genetically identical.
Rules to live by:
1. Know your priorities.
2. Respect spirit over form.
3. Mean what you say.
4. Practice moderation.
5. Fulfill your obligations.
6. Value life.
7. Be true.
8. Take only what is yours.
9. Give what blame or credit is due.
10. Love your own best.
And no, Purin-chan, this doesn't have to do with any two people who might happen to be genetically identical.
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Tanka Time
水たまりの太陽と駆けて心配ごとは氷釈のように
mizutamari no taiyou to kakete shinpai goto wa hyoushaku no you ni
I race the puddle-sun and my worries dissolve like melting ice
mizutamari no taiyou to kakete shinpai goto wa hyoushaku no you ni
I race the puddle-sun and my worries dissolve like melting ice
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Confessions of a Promiscuous Reader
“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are.”
“Since therefore, the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely and with less danger scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.”
--John Milton, Areopagitica
Like Milton, I heartily espouse promiscuous reading. Read propaganda, read pornography, read fanfiction, read the Bible, read the lists of ingredients on packages and the small print in ad copy. Yes, dear friends, even read my blog. Because for everything that is written, there is someone who wrote it; text does not spontaneously generate like mice from rags, but is crafted to some purpose by a mind that thinks itself reasonable. Just forcing yourself to read certain texts with that knowledge will do the evolution of your personal wisdom a world of good.
Now, I’m not nearly so invested as Milton in the eradication of personal vice or the affirmation of a great Truth. But I do think that each reasoned mind has its own scattered framework of truth within it, and only by reading diverse subjects & voices may some coherent picture of one’s own identity emerge. I often do not clearly know what I believe until I encounter my belief’s opposite, and do not realize what I know until I have been asked a question. There is a kind of outward synthesis of knowledge that requires a book, a mirror, or a teacher for its realization, and which I suspect is the fundamental element in the process of elevating reasoning.
And I am extraordinarily wary of the second-hand knowledge of texts, for every encounter with a text leads to a necessary degree of separation, and attempting to converse with someone who holds different degrees of separation than yourself from a text is fruitless at best and more likely misleading. If you are going to hate the contents or potential of a book, if you seek to argue against a book, then I believe you have a duty to read it as well as you can and to engage it fully with your reason, rather than listen to how the reason of others has midwifed the spark of life that Milton reminds us lives in all books.
Throughout history and to this very day, people die, suffer, and are punished for the act of writing and reading. How then are books, as Milton claims, so safe? If it is true, as he intimates, that books are not reason but the source of reason, not evil but the source of evil, then paradoxically by getting so close to the cause of evils there is some way in which the thinking reader becomes inviolate.
You become safer because well-read is forewarned. Reading the Marquis de Sade does not make me a sadist any more than reading the back of my lotion bottle makes me smooth and refreshingly scented. It apprises me of a potential, assuredly. But books do more than engage the reason, and this Milton ignores. Text latches onto the emotions; some texts cause feelings of illness, fatigue, rage, and disgust, just as others may affirm, enlighten, arouse, or console.
I am a reader (and I suspect Milton may be, too) for whom these textually produced emotions are just as real in potency as emotions garnered from the actual acts and scenarios that the books describe. Or, even if they are not, when I finally engage a book-encountered emotion in actual life, I find that I am not surprised, that it does not feel new, for the immortal form of that emotion has already touched me through the conduit of a book, directly from its author’s original soul.
Books cannot always replace experience, of course, not should they, but our reactions to the concretized emotions within a book are irreplaceable guideposts for that which we may desire and abhor within our own lives. In this way, we may very well keep ourselves safe, for surely if we find evil and falsity through a book then we may apply that knowledge to our own lives and become more just and reasoned people. And this all without experiencing the hardship of great trials that other writerly souls have suffered, or being lulled into the pleasures and ease that arise from callous disregard and unthinking sacrifice.
Am I, then, so rare a reader, that the world looks familiar to me because I have seen it in books? I am a living and social being, of course, so often I recognize in books an experience or emotion of my own. In the same way that books teach me to anticipate truth, emotion, and experiences, seeing myself in a book comforts and enlightens me, because only then does my emotion seem familiar, only with the help of text read and re-read may it coalesce into part of my rational truth.
You're Lolita!
by Vladimir Nabokov
Considered by most to be depraved and immoral, you are obsessed with sex. What really tantalizes you is that which deviates from societal standards in every way, though you admit that this probably isn't the best and you're not sure what causes this desire. Nonetheless, you've done some pretty nefarious things in your life, and probably gotten caught for them. The names have been changed, but the problems are real. Please stay away from children.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
“Since therefore, the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely and with less danger scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.”
--John Milton, Areopagitica
Like Milton, I heartily espouse promiscuous reading. Read propaganda, read pornography, read fanfiction, read the Bible, read the lists of ingredients on packages and the small print in ad copy. Yes, dear friends, even read my blog. Because for everything that is written, there is someone who wrote it; text does not spontaneously generate like mice from rags, but is crafted to some purpose by a mind that thinks itself reasonable. Just forcing yourself to read certain texts with that knowledge will do the evolution of your personal wisdom a world of good.
Now, I’m not nearly so invested as Milton in the eradication of personal vice or the affirmation of a great Truth. But I do think that each reasoned mind has its own scattered framework of truth within it, and only by reading diverse subjects & voices may some coherent picture of one’s own identity emerge. I often do not clearly know what I believe until I encounter my belief’s opposite, and do not realize what I know until I have been asked a question. There is a kind of outward synthesis of knowledge that requires a book, a mirror, or a teacher for its realization, and which I suspect is the fundamental element in the process of elevating reasoning.
And I am extraordinarily wary of the second-hand knowledge of texts, for every encounter with a text leads to a necessary degree of separation, and attempting to converse with someone who holds different degrees of separation than yourself from a text is fruitless at best and more likely misleading. If you are going to hate the contents or potential of a book, if you seek to argue against a book, then I believe you have a duty to read it as well as you can and to engage it fully with your reason, rather than listen to how the reason of others has midwifed the spark of life that Milton reminds us lives in all books.
Throughout history and to this very day, people die, suffer, and are punished for the act of writing and reading. How then are books, as Milton claims, so safe? If it is true, as he intimates, that books are not reason but the source of reason, not evil but the source of evil, then paradoxically by getting so close to the cause of evils there is some way in which the thinking reader becomes inviolate.
You become safer because well-read is forewarned. Reading the Marquis de Sade does not make me a sadist any more than reading the back of my lotion bottle makes me smooth and refreshingly scented. It apprises me of a potential, assuredly. But books do more than engage the reason, and this Milton ignores. Text latches onto the emotions; some texts cause feelings of illness, fatigue, rage, and disgust, just as others may affirm, enlighten, arouse, or console.
I am a reader (and I suspect Milton may be, too) for whom these textually produced emotions are just as real in potency as emotions garnered from the actual acts and scenarios that the books describe. Or, even if they are not, when I finally engage a book-encountered emotion in actual life, I find that I am not surprised, that it does not feel new, for the immortal form of that emotion has already touched me through the conduit of a book, directly from its author’s original soul.
Books cannot always replace experience, of course, not should they, but our reactions to the concretized emotions within a book are irreplaceable guideposts for that which we may desire and abhor within our own lives. In this way, we may very well keep ourselves safe, for surely if we find evil and falsity through a book then we may apply that knowledge to our own lives and become more just and reasoned people. And this all without experiencing the hardship of great trials that other writerly souls have suffered, or being lulled into the pleasures and ease that arise from callous disregard and unthinking sacrifice.
Am I, then, so rare a reader, that the world looks familiar to me because I have seen it in books? I am a living and social being, of course, so often I recognize in books an experience or emotion of my own. In the same way that books teach me to anticipate truth, emotion, and experiences, seeing myself in a book comforts and enlightens me, because only then does my emotion seem familiar, only with the help of text read and re-read may it coalesce into part of my rational truth.
I never touched that nymphet
You're Lolita!
by Vladimir Nabokov
Considered by most to be depraved and immoral, you are obsessed with sex. What really tantalizes you is that which deviates from societal standards in every way, though you admit that this probably isn't the best and you're not sure what causes this desire. Nonetheless, you've done some pretty nefarious things in your life, and probably gotten caught for them. The names have been changed, but the problems are real. Please stay away from children.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
it's very painful to be a round devil-dog in a square hole
A Thothmuffin Digest Condensed Dialogue:
CW: you're like a devil-dog
TM: black like the despairing love in my soul
TM: so sweet, so rich, so dark!
CW: but such creamy white mush on the inside
CW: and, shaped like a penis
CW: you're like a devil-dog
TM: black like the despairing love in my soul
TM: so sweet, so rich, so dark!
CW: but such creamy white mush on the inside
CW: and, shaped like a penis
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Leeches: it's a metaphor
I inhale and exhale the written word at a furious rate. This goes beyond consumption or production. Half the molecules in my body probably started out as Times New Roman.
Apparently that’s just not good enough for me.
A blog is the apex of textual insatiability. I could just tell you the anecdotes and remarks and whatever else will eventually become blog fodder, and if I ever see you in the flesh, I probably will. But I still want to write it down so I, and others, can read it.
Like a 13-pack-a-day aspartame habit, my addiction for text is giving me cancer. Text builds up, furiously reproduces, forms hard lumps, and generally unzips my DNA and runs crazy with it like a toddler with gymnastic streamers. Luckily, the medicine of my psyche hasn’t evolved past medieval thought, so I can use a little old-fashioned text-letting to draw the cancer out.
Why thothmuffin? I am neither Thoth nor the muffin. Allow me to purge a scenario: Thoth, the Egyptian God of Wisdom, Arbiter and patron of magic, writing, and medicine, looks up from the tablet where he records the worth of eternal souls and contemplates the timeless beauty of a chocolate chip muffin. Imagine how he wants it.
I am that spark of longing.
Apparently that’s just not good enough for me.
A blog is the apex of textual insatiability. I could just tell you the anecdotes and remarks and whatever else will eventually become blog fodder, and if I ever see you in the flesh, I probably will. But I still want to write it down so I, and others, can read it.
Like a 13-pack-a-day aspartame habit, my addiction for text is giving me cancer. Text builds up, furiously reproduces, forms hard lumps, and generally unzips my DNA and runs crazy with it like a toddler with gymnastic streamers. Luckily, the medicine of my psyche hasn’t evolved past medieval thought, so I can use a little old-fashioned text-letting to draw the cancer out.
Why thothmuffin? I am neither Thoth nor the muffin. Allow me to purge a scenario: Thoth, the Egyptian God of Wisdom, Arbiter and patron of magic, writing, and medicine, looks up from the tablet where he records the worth of eternal souls and contemplates the timeless beauty of a chocolate chip muffin. Imagine how he wants it.
I am that spark of longing.
Monday, February 16, 2004
So let it be written--so let it be done.
Welcome to the Book of the Dead.
