Gregory Benford: Still more from Anomalies

More stories from Gregory Benford's latest short story collection: Anomalies


Comes the Evolution"


The characters talk, endlessly, about "revolution," but the title of the story refers to evolution, a gradual change that takes place, when one species slowly becomes another.  Note the names of the characters: Lenin, Trotsky, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Emma Goldman.  She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.

They see themselves as revolutionaries, but their plans show them to be something quite different.  Eventually they all come together to rejuvenate the Cause, but their plans, however, have evolved into 21st century versions whose new focus is not on changing governments but upon finding a safe haven where they can create a utopia.


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"Anomalies"

Another of Benford's short stories that plays with the theme of religion and science.  An amateur astronomer has discovered that the moon is a few minutes ahead of schedule.  It's still in its proper orbit, but it appears to have somehow been transported to an advanced position.  This is impossible, of course.  Later it is discovered that several stars are also not in their proper position and appeared to have suddenly moved within an hour of the time the moon had jumped ahead.  This also was impossible.

One of the characters theorizes that the universe is a computer program and the sudden movements were the result of a bug in the program.  This, of course, brings up the question of the identity of the programmer.  Also, computer programs are normally debugged, here on earth anyway.  Will this program be debugged?  What effect will this possible bug have on earth and how will the debugging take place?  Will it also affect earth?  Eventually a new field of study emerges: one that is a combination of science, philosophy, and religion--the field of Empirical Theology. 

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"Caveat Time Traveler"

This is a short story about time travel and some facts about human nature.  The title says it all:  Let Time Travelers Beware.  Human nature doesn't change.

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"Lazarus Rising"
This is a tale of cryonics.  Carlos Forenza is 87 years old.  He has come in for his medical checkup.  If they find something that can't be cured or is extremely expensive to cure, they would put him into cryonic sleep and let the future decide when it was ready to deal with his problem.  They wouldn't even wake him to inform him of the situation.  But, something has gone wrong for he is awake, with his senses disconnected.  Clearly he has returned to consciousness before the process of putting him into cold sleep has been codmpleted.  Now, he has to regain control of his body and let them know that something had gone wrong.


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"Isaac From The Outside"
This is a poem that brings in a number of  SF writers, one of whom, obviously, is Isaac Asimov.  The theme is simple:  one shouldn't make assumptions about a person from that person's writings.   The poem points out some inconsistencies between what these SF authors write about and how they live their own lives.

One topic covered is cryonics, about which many of these authors have written in various short stories and novels.  But, the poem goes one to ask the following: how many actually went beyond treating cryonics simply as a story element and looked into it as something they might actually consider for themselves? 

The next question should be the reader's question.  I've always considered cryonics simply as a story element.  But today there are companies in existence that will perform this service.  What about you?  Are you interested?

Hmmmm.  .  . I wonder how much it costs.

Thomas Hardy: "A Nightmare, And The Next Thing

A Nightmare, And The Next Thing

On this decline of  Christmas Day
The empty street is fogg4ed and blurred:
The house-fronts all seem backwise turned
As if the outer world were spurned:
Voices and songs within are heard,
Whence red rays gleam when fires are stirred,
Upon this nightmare Christmas Day.

The lamps, just lit, begin to outloom
Like dandelion-globes in the gloom;
The stonework, shop-signs, doors, look bald:
Curious crude details seem installed,
And show themselves in their degrees
As they were personalities
Never discerned when the street was bustling
With vehicles, and farmers hustling.
Three clammy casuals wend their way
To the Union House.  I hear one say:
"Jimmy, this is a treat!  Hay-hay!"

Six laughing mouths, six rows of teeth,
Six  radiant pairs of eyes, beneath
Six yellow hats, looking out at the back
Of a waggonette on its slowed-down track
Up the steep street to some gay dance,
Suddenly interrupt my glance.

They do not see a gray nightmare
Astride the day, or anywhere.

-- Thomas Hardy --
from The Works of Thomas Hardy


Strange juxtaposition here--Christmas and a nightmare.  But, the nightmare seems to be that of someone who is alone.  With no one about, the familiar houses and buildings now suddenly seem strange.  There is no nightmare inside the houses where voices and songs are heard.  The three "casuals," on their way to a free meal are joyful as are the six in the waggonette heading for a dance.  The nightmare seems to be the exclusive property of one who is alone.

Wallace Stevens: The Snow Man

             The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the juniper shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

-- Wallace Stevens --
The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens


One must be a part of nature--"One must have a mind of winter"-- to be able to look upon the winter scene and not invest it with human feelings--"and not to think/Of any misery in the sound of the wind."   This is the pathetic fallacy, investing nature with human emotions, and it appears frequently in literature and in poetry and in common speech--the sullen cloudy sky, the raging storm, and the cheerful little breeze.

And, any who can avoid the pathetic fallacy "beholds/Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is."  In other words, this person sees only what is there and adds nothing to it.

I think this is what Emerson was saying in his essay, "Nature"  --.  .  .  nature is not always tricked  in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs is overspread with melancholy to-day.  Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.  To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire has sadness in it.  Then there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend.  The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.

I think it is a reciprocal relationship in that we are influenced by what is about us and what we perceive is influenced by our feelings and thoughts at that moment.  Perhaps only a snow man can avoid the pathetic fallacy, "one with a mind of winter," one who is "nothing himself."   

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: Second Edition, Quatrain XXVIII

Second Edition: Quatrain XXVIII

Another Voice, when I am sleeping, cries,
"The Flower should open with the Morning skies."
     And a retreating Whisper, as I awake--
"The Flower that once has blown forever dies."


This quatrain is yet another one that FitzGerald added to the Second Edition but then was dropped from the Third Edition.  What is also interesting is that the last line--"The Flower that once has blown forever dies"-- appears in the First Edition in Quatrain XXVI, but with three very different lines:


First Edition:  Quatrain XXVI

Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise
To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;
    One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.


As you can see, the two quatrains have nothing in common, except for the last line.


The opening line refers to "Another Voice."  This refers us back to the previous quatrain in the second edition, Quatrain XXVII, in which a "Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries,/'Fools! your Reward is neither  Here nor There,'";  the Here and the There refers to those who work for present and future rewards.  What seems confusing is the relationship between the two Voices and also the statements by the voices  in Quatrain XXVIII. Are they the same voice, one that "cries" when he is asleep and then again "whispers" when he awakes?
 


              Another Voice, when I am sleeping, cries,
              "The Flower should open with the Morning skies."
                   And a retreating Whisper, as I awake--
              "The Flower that once has blown forever dies."


If he is asleep, then how does he know what this other Voice says?  Quatrain XXIX offers no help here, for it is almost identical to XXV in the First Edition in which this quatrain does not appear.
One point the quatrain seems to make is that, for flowers anyway, there is no reincarnation.  It blossoms and dies and does not return. 

This quatrain seems to have been just inserted, and it is, perhaps, for this reason that FitzGerald dropped it in later editions.

Eric Hoffer: The Passionate State of Mind

No. 10

"The dislocation involved in switching from one passion to another--even its very opposite--is less than one wold expect.  There is a basic similarity in the make-up of all passionate minds.  The sinner who turns saint undergoes no more dramatic transformation than the lecher who turns miser."

-- Eric Hoffer --
from The Passionate State of Mind

Essentially it seems that people who are passionate about something are much the same, be it sports,  politics, religion, music, wine, or anything you can think of.   It's only the object that is significantly different, not the emotion or intensity, for they are quite similar.  Is a fight between the supporters of two athletic teams any different really than a fight between supporters of two political philosophies or two religions?

Or at least that's what it seems to me he's saying. 

Another Dream?

From Life is a Dream

We live, while we see the sun,
Where life and dreams are as one;
And living has taught me this,
Man dreams the life that is his,
Until his living is done.
The king dreams he is king, and he lives
In the deceit of a king,
Commanding and governing;
And all the praise he receives
Is written in wind, and leaves
A little dust on the way
When death ends all with a breath.
Where then is the gain of a throne,
That shall perish and not be known
In the other dream that is death?
Dreams the rich man of riches and fears,
The fears that his riches breed;
The poor man dreams of his need,
And all his sorrows and tears;
Dreams he that prospers with years
Dreams he that feigns and foregoes,
Dreams he that rails on his foes;
And in all the world, I see,
Man dreams whatever he be,
And his own dream no man knows.
And I too dream and behold,
I dream and I am bound with chains,
And I dreamed that these present pains
Were fortunate ways of old.
What is life?  a tale that is told;
What is life?  a frenzy extreme,
A shadow of things that seem;
And the greatest good is but small,
That all life is a dream to all,
And that dreams themselves are a dream.

-- Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681)
from  his play Life is a Dream
trans.  Arthur Symons





And speaking of plays and dreams, one mustn't forget Shakespeare.  Here Prospero refers to the illusions he's created for his daughter's wedding . . .

Prospero:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

      The Tempest. Act 4, scene 1

.  .  . what else could he have in mind? 

Gregory Benford: more from Anomalies

Here are several more stories from Greg Benford's latest short story collection:  Anomalies



"Twenty-Two Centimeters"

This story plays with one of the present theories of the universe-- the membrane theory.  I'll quote from the story itself, as one of the characters expresses her problem with the theory, which is the same as mine.

"She did not really follow the theory; she was an astronaut.  It was hard enough to comprehend the mathematical guys  when they spoke English.  For them, the whole universe was a sheet of space-time, called 'brane' for membrane.  And there were other branes, spaced out along an unseen dimension.  Only gravity penetrated between those sheets.  All other fields, which meant all mass and light, was stuck to the branes."

The "physics guys" discovered another brane just twenty-two centimeters away from our universe, in another dimension, and signals emanating from it.  They developed a portal into the other universe and Julie and Al,  being astronauts, and not having to understand the theory or the mathematics, were chosen to pop through the portal and take a look.  And discover the source of those signals.  This is a first contact tale, rather unique I thought.  It also has a vivid description of the Counter-Earth and its inhabitants. 




"Applied Mathematical Theology"

Benford here plays with an important astronomical discovery that plays an important role in the present theory regarding the formation of the universe.  It is not a story with characters, but a journal article or something similar that gives an account of "(t)he discovery that the Cosmic Microwave Background has a pattern buried within it (which) unsettled the entire world."

     The temperature of this 2.7 K. emission left over from the Big Bang varies across the sky.  Temperature ripples can be broken into angular- co-ordinate Fourier components, and this is where radio astronomers found a curious pattern--a message, or at least, a pattern.  Spread across the microwave sky there was room in the detectable fluctuations for about 10,000 bits, or roughly a thousand words."

Naturally considerable controversy raged about the message, its creator(s) (if one), and implications to be drawn from this.  At first, the most disputed issue was its nature:was it a real message or just a random collection of fluctuations?

"One insight did come from this, however.  Benford's Law (not the author, and a real law), which states that the logarithms of artificial numbers are uniformly distributed, did apply to the tiny fluctuations. This proved that the primordial microwaves were not random, and so had been artificially encoded, perhaps by some even earlier process.  So there was a massage, of sorts."


It's a short article, almost three pages long and possesses a rather tongue-in-cheek resolution, which leaves everybody happy. 




"The Man Who Wasn't There"

This is a high-tech action story set a few decades in the future.  Islamic extremists are trying to reconquer Europe through the use of terrorist tactics and the courts.  Fully aware of the West's ability to intercept electronic communications, they have gone to a low-tech solution--human memory.  All plans and strategies are now committed to memory and communicated by certain Masters.  And, these masters are fully prepared to commit suicide rather than be captured.

The anti-terrorist squad has learned that one of these masters is now living in a compound in one of the suburbs of Paris.  They are preparing to attack the compound and have a few surprises in store for the terrorists.  One is an invisibility suit, comprised of optical fibers which transferred light waves around the suit.  However, it was still dangerous because it affected light only, not an actual object, such as a bullet. They also had one other surprise for the terrorist.

To get in and get the information, they have to be fast and efficient.





"The Final Now"

With a stretch, one might see this tale as a sequel to the earlier story,"Applied Mathematical Theology,"  a story about a message that seemed to be encoded within the Cosmic Microwave Background."  The message's existence had been thoroughly documented, but three questions still remained: who left the message, why was the message left, and what was the message.

The story begins:

He suddenly thought that they had not seen anyone for quite a while.  Amid the vast voyages, adventures, striking vistas--and yes, while basking in symphonies of sensation--they had not needed company.
        Even as twilight closed in.  But now--
        "Do you recall--?"  He asked, turning to Her, and could not recall an ancient name.  Names were unimportant, mere symbols, yes. . .but He did remember that names had existed to distinguish between multitudes.  When?  First task: to name the beasts.  When had He and She said that?

.  .  .
They were, of course, the two who gave tension to this finite, bounded existence.  This universe.  Duality was fundamental, as was helicity itself, which necessarily had to be included in this exponentially expanding space-time.

Creativity seems to require two--male and female.  They had also brought forth the Others, short-lived and limited creatures, but who yet had consciousness and intelligence.  These, however, were not completely separate beings for the Others were, in a sense, part of the He and the She.  They were brought forth to "To summon up insights that lie within the two of us, but that we cannot express overtly. To be vast meant having parts of yourself that you could not readily find.

He and She now realize that the universe is running down.  They call forth one of the Others and tell him that the end time is near.  Upon hearing this, the Other said strongly, "I do not accept this."  At last, the point.  She said with love and deep feeling, "Then strive to alter."

 Perhaps this story provides the answers to the earlier story in the collection as "The Final Now" was published four years after "Applied Mathematical Theology."

Perhaps not.   

 Your thoughts?

Octavio Paz: some short poems

Here

My steps along this street
resound
             in another street
in which
              I hear my steps
passing along this street
in which

Only the mist is real

   -- Octavio Paz --

I have been in a thick fog or mist and there are strange sounds and strange visions immersed in there, along with me.


Pedestrian

He walked among the crowds
on the Boulevard Sebasto',
thinking about things.
A red light stopped him.
He looked up:
                        over
the gray roofs, silver
among the brown birds,
a fish flew.
The light turned green.
As he crossed the street he wondered
what he'd been thinking.

         -- Octavio Paz --

I was not very alert when I first read this poem, but something bothered me about it--just couldn't put my finger on it.  I am ashamed to admit that I didn't find it until the third reading.  Perhaps I did see it the second time but refused to "see it."   Perhaps the colors distracted me as I read along--first red, then gray, followed by silver and then brown, with the silver being the only color that didn't immediately precede the noun it modified.  Who knows?  Maybe I'm just an inattentive reader at times (only at times I hope.)




Exclamation

Stillness
              not on the branch
in the air
               Not in the air
in the moment
                       hummingbird     

                  -- Octavio Paz --

A hummingbird--it's here, and then somewhere else, and then gone.

This one is very much like a haiku, or so it struck me.  I remembered it when I came across the following poem:



Basho An                                                 Basho An

The whole world fits in-                          El mundo cabe                       
to seventeen syllables,                             en diecisiete silabas:
and you in this hut.                                  tu en esta choza.

Straw thatch and tree trunks:                   Troncos y paja:
they come in through the crannies:          por las rendijas entran
Buddhas and insects.                                Budas e insectos.

Made out of thin air,                                 Hecho de aire
between the pines and the rocks               entre pinos y rocas
the poem sprouts up.                                 brota el poema.

An interweaving                                        Entretejidas  
of vowels and the consonants:                   vocales, consonantes:
the house of the world.                              casa del mundo.

Centuries of bones,                                    Heusos de siglos,
mountains: sorrow turned to stone:           penas ya pen~as, montes:
here they are weightless.                           aqui no pesan.

What I am saying                                      Esto quie digo
barely fills up the three lines:                    son apenas tres lineas:
hut of syllables.                                          choza de silabas. 


                                     -- Octavio Paz --


The first and third lines consist of five syllables while the second line has seven--the seventeen syllables of a class haiku.  In the fifth stanza, the second "penas" should have a tilde over the "n."

Basho, of course, is the most famous haiku poet in Japan.  I once purchased a book titled The Haiku Masters and was surprised to find that Basho was not included among them.  The editor in the Introduction explained that the Masters are those superior haiku poets who are second to Basho, who is not a haiku master, but the Haiku Poet.


Example

A butterfly flew between the cars,
Marie Jose said:  it must be Chuang Tzu,
on a tour of New York.
                                       But the butterfly
didn't know it was a butterfly
dreaming it was Chuang Tzu
                                                or Chuang Tzu
dreaming he was a butterfly.
The butterfly never wondered:
                                                  it flew.

                  --  Octavio Paz --


This, of course, refers to a famous saying by Chuang Tzu, some thousands of years ago, in which he supposedly comments on the nature of reality--that one can't tell the difference between reality and a dream.  He said that once he dreamt he was a butterfly and then awoke, and couldn't decide whether he was a butterfly dreaming that he was Chuang Tzu or Chuang Tzu dreaming that he was a butterfly.  I always believed he was satirizing those pompous sages whose wise utterances consisted of obscure formulations.  They always reminded me of the following:
 
Seek clarity--        and you gain wisdom.
Seek wisdom--      and you gain obscurity.
Seek obscurity--    and you gain followers.





Octavio, of course, has many long poems, but those are for another day.

Which, if any, are the most interesting to you, and why?

All poems come from The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, edited by Eliot Weinberger and published as a New Directions Paperback in 1991.  Most translations are by Eliot Weinberger.

My Dinner With Andre, a film

My Dinner with Andre

Last year I watched a remarkable film, The Man from Earth, an SF film without BEMs, spaceships, ray guns, space battles, etc.  The film consisted solely of a man who had just told a group of his friends that he was something like 12,000 years old and their reaction to this announcement.  There were three possibilities: he has lost his mind, he was lying, he was telling the truth.  The conversation that followed centered on the first two possibilities for they immediately ruled out the third.  The fascination of the film, for me anyway, depended on the skill of the actors and the dialogue, something which I seldom see nowadays in which films are mostly dependent upon special effects and rapid action so that one doesn't realize how weak the story really is.

I mentioned this film to some friends and relatives, and one of them suggested that I watch My Dinner With Andre, for it was similar in one respect.  The film depicted two friend who hadn't seen each other in several years and their conversation over dinner.  Again, this film depended upon the skill of the actors and the dialogue. 

Wally is the POV character (he's played by Wallace Shawn), and he reluctantly agrees to meet Andre (he's played by Andre Gregory) for dinner, after having lost touch with each other for a number of years.  He had heard some strange stories about Andre.  The characters in the film have the same names as the actors who play them, which leads me to wonder if there is some truth to the film.  According to the notes, they are real life friends and wrote the dialogue and were "More or less playing themselves. . ."

The conversation ranges from the New York theater to strange and bizarre trips to India, the Sahara, and Poland that Andre made.   However, there is a theme running through this, which might be best exemplified by the concept of mindfulness.  I first encountered this in some contemporary Buddhist writings, which focuses on being aware and awake to one's present.  According to this concept, too many people are trapped either by the past or by the future and therefore go through life without being aware of the present, which is the only reality we can know..  They are either overcome by grief or anger or remorse over past events or spend their time planning for and worrying about the future. In both situations people are like robots, preprogrammed by the past or the future and not awake to the present and therefore oblivious to reality: it is though they are in a trance.

Andre's experiences all seem to be directed towards getting him and the other participants to focus on themselves as individuals, to break free of their programming in some way.  Most of the events in the workshops or on his trips  appear to be unplanned or unscripted and depend on the spontaneity of those taking part.  However, we are never shown these events, for we learn about them solely through Andre's description of them. We can experience Andre's past only through his conversation.

Wally, however, is resistant to Andre's theme and sees no reason to change, for he's happy the way he is.  In fact, the thought of just "being" and not doing anything frightens him.  For if he is doing nothing, then he must be aware of himself and this he says he cannot do.     




SPOILER:

Wally is however, is not completely immune to Andre's message.  The film opens and closes on Wally.  In the beginning we see Wally running errands and mentally complaining about his bills and lack of income and inability to get his plays produced or even not being able to get any jobs as an actor.  He is almost run down as he crosses the street.  He clearly is not paying attention to his surroundings but is concerned with the errands he must run and his financial status.

There is a subtle difference though at the ending of the film.  We again follow Wally as he leaves the restaurant and this time he decides to take a taxi.  While in the taxi he looks out the window and realizes that many of the buildings that he goes by have some meaning for him, a longtime New York resident.  He now is far more aware of his present surroundings than he was prior to his dinner with Andre.

This film is on my short list of films I will see again.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: 2nd Edition, Quatrain XX

Second Edition:  Quatrain XX

The Palace that to Heav'n his pillars threw,
And Kings the forehead on his threshold drew--
   I saw the solitary Ringdove there,
And "Coo, coo, coo,"  she cried; "Coo, coo, coo."


This is another quatrain that first appeared in the Second Edition and was then dropped from subsequent editions.  Perhaps FitzGerald felt this was repetitive as the previous quatrain also referred to ancient cities that are now abandoned and occupied only by other creatures.

The first line made me think of the Tower of Babel which also stretched toward heaven, but was abandoned.  The third and fourth lines according to the Note refers to another literary work, The Conference of the Birds, by Abu Hamid bin Abu Bakr Ibrhim (1145-c1221) , a Persian who was better known by his pen-names Farīd ud-Dīn and ʿAṭṭār "the perfumer."  Attar was an influential Sufi mystic and poet, and FitzGerald had published an abridged translation of this work.

In Attar's Conference of Birds, the ringdove "is reproved by the Leader of the Birds for sitting still, and for ever harping on the one note of lamentation for her lost Yusuf."   In addition, "The Ringdove's  ancient Pehlevi Coo, Coo, Coo, signifies also in Persian 'Where? Where?  Where?"  (Wikipedia entry on Attar the poet)

The cry of the Ringdove in the abandoned city has a double meaning therefore.  It is a lament for a loved one who has been lost and also asks at the same time, "Where has he (the glory of the city also) gone,"  an echo of the French poet Francois Villon's lament, 'Where are the snows of yesteryear?' from "The Ballade of Ladies of Times Past."

Quatrain XX really doesn't add anything new to the Rubaiyat, for its theme of the transitory nature of human endeavors had been brought up earlier and will be referred to again in later quatrains.  I doubt that it was missed in later editions.

John Banister Tabb: "Evolution"--a short poem

Evolution

Out of the dark, a shadow,
  Then, a spark;
Out of the cloud a silence,
  Then, a lark;
Out of the heart a rapture,
  Then, a pain;
Out of the dead, cold ashes,
  Life again. 

-- John Banister Tabb --
 (March 22, 1845--November 19, 1909)

A Poem A Day: editors:  Karen McCosker and Nicholas Albery


Notes:
"Tabb was a convert to Roman Catholicism, and ordained in 1884 two years after his first book of poetry was brought out through private publication.  Born in Virginia and a blockade runner for the Confederacy, Tabb called himself an 'unreconstructed Rebel,' though he taught English at St. Charles College in Maryland until he was made to retire in1907, probably due to the loss of his eyesight."



I can see this as being the story of a person emerging from some deep personal sorrow, perhaps the loss of a loved one--especially the last two lines: Out of the dead, cold ashes,/ Life again.  He has now reached the point where he can, once again, feel pain, for the numbness of grief is gone.  This one grows on me.  I think I shall do a bit of digging about John Banister Tabb.


Let there be light,
Let there be sound,
Let there be feelings,
Let there be life.

Carl Sagan: A Pale Blue Dot

  PALE BLUE DOT: A VISION OF THE HUMAN FUTURE IN SPACE:  CARL SAGAN

  

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

                     -- Carl Sagan --

Born: November 9, 1934, Brooklyn, New York

Died: December 20, 1996, Seattle, Washington

Loren Eiseley: "Fly Falcon"

Fly Falcon

All of the falcon kind, the hard travelling
                                 talon-clawed ones
that for so many years I have seen
go over Hawk Mountain on thousand-mile journeys--
at heart I go with them, but I also travel
with the fluttering Monarch butterflies,   
toss on gales lost at sea, or cross the Gulf
                                      with humming birds.
You think this impossible? not with the mind's eye
                                                        my friend
                                           the ever widening eye
of the living world, the eye that someday
will see all as one, the eye of the hurricane,
                                                         the eye
at the heart of the galaxy with the spinning
                                        arms of the suns about it.
Fly falcon, fly Monarch, fly gull
                               and you in the invisible night-tiger's eye
going somewhere in reed grass.  I am there
padding softly with you, fly albatross
that sleeps on the Cape Horn  winds.  We are all
the terrible eye that sees the galaxy,
                                  we make it real.
Without us multiplied, what really exists?
Fly falcon, stare tiger in the night grass,
stare that the universe may find itself living
beyond the immortal fires.

-- Loren Eiseley --
from Another Kind of Autumn




I think this is the core or heart of the poem--the eye of the imagination or the mind's eye.

You think this impossible? not with the mind's eye
                                                        my friend
                                           the ever widening eye
of the living world, the eye that someday
will see all as one, the eye of the hurricane,
                                                         the eye
at the heart of the galaxy with the spinning
                                        arms of the suns about it.


But it suggests also something more--"   the ever widening eye/of the living world, the eye that someday/will see all as one." I think this goes beyond a reference to the imagination.  In the Upanishads, correct me if I'm wrong, Brahman is the unchanging reality both in the midst of and beyond reality.  Brahman is all, it looks out of the tiger's eye and out of the eye of that tiger's prey.




And how can one understand the very last part of the poem?


We are all
the terrible eye that sees the galaxy,
                                  we make it real.
 Without us multiplied, what really exists?
Fly falcon, stare tiger in the night grass,
stare that the universe may find itself living
beyond the immortal fires.



The "us"?  All living beings perhaps?   Again, there is that eye that sees the galaxy--that makes it real.  And somehow this eye must
 
stare that the universe may find itself living
beyond the immortal fires.

Living beyond the immortal fires?

It's a poem to puzzle over.  Eiseley hints in his prose works a belief in something more than the material world, but he only hints at it, points at things that seem strange once one looks closely at them.  I don't read Eiseley for answers, but for questions and perhaps a rattling of my cage when I begin to think I really know what's going on.

I suspect that after reading this poem,  I will see Dusky, my cat whom I have shared my quarters with for almost seventeen years now, and wonder how much I really know about her.   What does she see that I don't?

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: Quatrain XIV, Second Edition

This quatrain provides warning about planning for the future when we really don't know what might happen from one minute to the next.


Second Edition:  Quatrain XIV

Were it not Folly, Spider-like to spin
The Thread of  present Life away to win--
    What? for ourselves, who know not if we shall
Breathe out the very Breath we now breathe in!


Apparently,  FitzGerald was dissatisfied with this quatrain for it appears only in the Second Edition and was dropped from all succeeding editions.

FitzGerald employs an interesting analogy here, that of the spider.  The spider spins the strands of its web from its own body, and FitzGerald suggests that our efforts to gain glory or wealth or even life in paradise consume our life in the same way.  He then asks why we should spend our lives doing this for some future gain when we don't know whether we will live long enough to expel the breath we just took in.

Enjoy the Now seems to be his point here, as it is in so many of the other quatrains.

Anthony Powell: A Dance to the Music of Time: Vol 1, Spring

Anthony Powell
A Dance to the Music of Time
Vol. 1,  Spring
A Question of Upbringing
A Buyer's Market
The Acceptance World


One of the most common adjectives applied to this work is "monumental."   It's also been used to describe other works, but this is one of the few times when it is applicable and fitting.  A Dance to the Music of Time is now published as a set of four novels:  Vol. 1 or Spring, Vol. 2 or Summer, Vol. 3 or Autumn, and Vol. 4 or Winter. Each volume consists of three novels, for example the three listed make up Vol. 1.  In all there are twelve novels, one for each month of the year.

When I get around to rereading the set,  I shall begin on the first day of Spring of whatever year that happens to be and then cover one novel a month.  Perhaps then I shall do a more in-depth look at the work.  For now, the best I can do is a brief overview of each of the volumes.

Rather than stumble about trying to describe the overall theme of the work, I'll let Powell do it.  Jenkins musing is brought about when he gazes at Poussin's painting, A Dance to the Music of Time.
(click on the painting for a larger image)


                                                           


     The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure: stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: on breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.
 

The first novel begins shortly after the end of WWI,  with four young boys:  Nick Jenkins, Kenneth Widmerpool, Charles Stringham, and Peter Templer.  They are finishing schooling, preparatory to entering the university.   At the university, Nick Jenkins, the POV character, meets other students and faculty members who will play a role in his future.  At the same time, his close association with the other three begins to weaken.

The second and third novels provide a picture of university life and the decade after leaving the university as they attempt to establish themselves in the larger world: to find their own places in the social world as well as developing their careers, in the world of the arts, business, and government.  The world they live in is the world of the English middle class. The third novel ends with the four characters in their early thirties and in the early 1930's as well.

Jenkins encounters at varying stages the other three young men as they struggle to establish themselves, as well as some of the faculty from the university.  The various encounters he has with those from his past also bring forward others who will play a role in his future.   He is frequently surprised to find that his earlier judgements of people prove wrong or incomplete as he sees them succeeding in their ventures or slowly disintegrating as the struggle for existence takes its toll on them.

This is a complex work and will require time to fully appreciate it.  It's not a work to be picked up now and then for 15 or 20 minutes at a time.  Perhaps one novel a month might be the wisest schedule.   

Ray Bradbury: The Kilimanjaro Device

Ray Bradbury's "The Kilimanjaro Device"
a short story found in the collection  I Sing the Body Electric


Did the title jog your memory a bit?  Perhaps remind you of another story by an American writer?  Who does the following quotation from the story suggest?

     "Oh, he had readers all right, all kinds of readers.  Even me.  I don't touch books from one autumn to the next.  But I touched his.  I think I liked the Michigan stories best.  About the fishing. I think the  stories about the fishing are good.  I don't think anybody ever wrote about fishing that way and maybe won't ever again.  Of course, the bullfight stuff is good, too.   But that's a little far off.  Some of the cowpokes like them;  they been around the animals all their life.  A  bull here or a bull there, I guess it's the same.  I know one cowpoke has read just the bull stuff in the Spanish stories of the old man's forty times.  He could go over there and fight, I swear."

One last clue:  The narrator refers to "the old man" as "Papa."  Of course, the style Bradbury adopts in this story is also a clue:  short declarative sentences, usually the straightforward subject-verb-object form.  Everything is concrete and definite.

But the point of the story is rather unusual, which isn't surprising since it's a tale by Ray Bradbury.  The narrator is on a mission, which is why he has come to this small town where the "old man" is buried.  He reveals his mission to a local hunter, the one who was quoted above.



     "'You  been up to the grave yet?'  asked; the hunter, as if he knew I would answer yes.
     'No,' I said.
     'Why not?'
     ' Because it's the wrong grave.,' I said.
     'All graves are wrong graves when you come down to it,' he said.
     'No,' I said. 'There are right graves and wrong ones, just as there are good times to die and bad times.'
     He nodded at this.  I had come back to something he knew, or at least smelled was right.
     'Sure, I knew men.' he said, 'died just perfect.  You always felt, yes, that was good.  One man I knew, sitting at the table waiting for supper, his wife in the kitchen, when she came in with a big bowl of soup, there he was sitting dead and neat at the table.  Bad for her, but, I mean, wasn't that a good way for him?  No sickness. No nothing but sitting there waiting for supper to come and never knowing if it came or not.'"



As you can see, the story is going in a strange direction.  What does this have to do with the grave on the hill that is the wrong grave?  The grave is that of Ernest Hemingway, although it is never stated.  However, the clues given above clearly suggest it is Papa Hemingway, who committed suicide in 1961 and was buried in Ketchum, Idaho.  There's also  a time machine involved, sort of a "psychic time machine" that is.

Time machine stories generally fall into two broad categories.  There's type in which the time travelers go solely as observers, fearing to do something, anything  which would change history and perhaps eliminate them.  Frequently though, they end up doing exactly what they feared.  Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of  Thunder" is a variation of that type of story.  The travelers go back, intending to hunt dinosaurs, but they kill only those dinosaurs that will die within a few minutes anyway, thereby reducing the risk of changing the future.  But.  .  .

The second type of time traveler is the one who goes back intending to change history.  There generally two types of these.  One type involves those who go back to kill someone who had a major and deleterious effect (in their minds anyway) on history--I have read several stories in which someone goes back in order to kill Adolf Hitler, thereby reducing the possibility of WWII and the holocaust.   A second type depicts the efforts of those who attempt to save someone from being killed--Abraham Lincoln or John F. Kennedy, for example.

But, neither of these is exactly what the narrator has in mind.




SPOILER:  The following reveals the story and the narrator's mission.  











The focus in the story is on dying at the right time.  As I mentioned above,  Hemingway committed suicide after living several years in pain and ill health, the result of an hereditary disease that affected several members of his family, some of whom either died from the disease or committed suicide.  Another contributing factor was the injuries he suffered in two plane crashes.  He and his wife had flown to Africa, but the plane crashed on landing.   He and his wife survived, but with some broken bones and tissue damage.  They attempted to fly out to get medical treatment on the next day, but that plane's engine exploded at takeoff.  Again they survived.  Eventually they did get the needed medical help, but Hemingway suffered health problems after that.

The narrator has a time machine, but he doesn't intend to use it to stop Hemingway from killing himself, nor does he intend to prevent the two plane crashes.  Instead, he goes back in time and meets "the old man." 

The narrator explains that the truck can possibly go back to 1954 (the date of the two plane crashes) and possibly can turn into plane.   The old man then asks him if he could land the plane a little bit differently, a little bit harder and that he "be thrown out but the rest of you okay?"
The narrator answers, "I'll see what I can do."

The old man "gazed back down the road at the mountains and the sea that could not be seen beyond the mountains and a continent beyond the sea. 'That's a good day you're talking about.' 
      'The best.'
      ' And a good hour and a good second.'
      'Really, nothing better.'"

Death is inevitable, but there are good deaths and bad deaths.

Gregory Benford: Anomalies

Gregory Benford
Anomalies
a collection of short stories (1975-2012)

The following are three of the short stories found in Gregory Benford's latest short story collection, Anomalies.  The stories focus on a wide variety of topics, from wormholes to AIs to string theory.  I will post brief reviews of the other stories in the collection over the next few weeks.


"A Worm in the Well"


Claire, the pilot/owner of an independent freighter,  is deep in debt, so much so that she about to lose the freighter to her creditors.  She more or less controls the ship with the aid of Erma, a wisecracking AI.  Erma knows that she really runs the ship.

Claire takes on a high-paying but dangerous job--dropping down into the sun's corona to take photos of a wormhole that has suddenly appeared.  The scientific community is seriously bothered by the appearance of a wormhole so close to the sun and need the photos and other data gathered by her close encounter by the sun in order to determine what the dangers are.

Once there, however, she decides to do a career change from "nature photographer" to a "bring 'em back alive" hunter.  The photos and data still won't bring in enough money to pay off all of her debts, but capturing and bringing back a wormhole, something that has never been done before, will give the scientists an unparalleled opportunity to study and even experiment with a wormhole.  Claire figures that she can negotiate a much bigger fee.  Erma, of course, has her doubts.

The story naturally is heavy on the science, but the information is handled very nicely in the arguments (discussions) between Claire and Erma.



"The Worm Turns"
It's several years later and Claire and Erma are still broke and about to lose the ship again.   This time they are forced to take on a hazardous job: it's either that or lose the ship.  Since Claire transported the wormhole away from the sun, earth scientists have meddled with it and enlarged it.  It now is more likely to be dangerous to anything in the neighborhood, the solar system for example.

Claire's task is now to fly through the wormhole, check out the other side, and then report back.   However, life (or a wormhole)  is never that simple, so life gets exciting again.  And, what she finds at the other end is something neither she nor Erma nor the scientists expected. 


"The Semisent"
In literary criticism, a Bildungsroman,[a] novel of formation, novel of education, or coming-of-age story is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood, and in which, therefore, character change is extremely important (from the Wikipedia entry on Bildungsroman).

What's unusual about this short story is that it's a bildungsrom or coming-of-age story, not about a human being but an AI.  The AI begins as a small box and by the end of the story it has evolved into a tall distinguished gentleman with sorrowful blue eyes.  And there's also a human involved.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: Quatrain VIII, 2nd Edition

Some months ago I finished a series of posts on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam as translated by Edward FitzGerald.  I went through all 75 quatrains from the First Edition and included matching quatrains from the Second and Fifth Editions.  However, while the First Edition has seventy-five quatrains, the Second Edition has one hundred and ten quatrains and the Fifth has one hundred and one.   Therefore there are at least twenty-five quatrains which I have so far ignored.

I am going to do something about those ignored quatrains now.  Over the next several months? years? I will quote and briefly discuss those missing quatrains.  Actually, it's just an excuse to once again open the pages of a favorite work.

So, what follows are the missing quatrains from the Second Edition and the equivalent quatrains from the Fifth Edition.  These did not appear, as far as I can tell, in the First Edition.


Second Edition: Quatrain VIII

Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run, 
      The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.



Fifth Edition:  Quatrain VIII


Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run, 
      The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one. 


As you can see, the two versions are identical: he made no changes to this quatrain. 

Naishapur and Babylon were important cities in antiquity but now are of little importance.  For recent significance, if one is looking for that,  Naishapur can claim to be the birthplace of Omar Khayyam.

The theme is a common one in the Rubaiyat, that in the slow passage of time, the dissolution of all things moves onward relentlessly, regardless of whether life is sweet or bitter.

The Maltese Falcon: Three film versions

A classic example of Hollywood's ongoing struggle to be creative, imaginative, and original is the remake. A great film comes out, or at least one that does very well at the box office, and in a frenzy of creative energy, remakes appear, or, if not remakes, then at least a host of films that strongly resemble their progenitor. In most cases, therefore, the remake is a pale copy of the original. Only rarely does the opposite occur: the remake is actually the superior version. I am aware of only two cases in which this has happened. However, I'm sure that this has happened more often; I'm just not aware of them, and I would appreciate hearing about other examples.



The two cases I'm familiar with and have viewed are the two versions of Gaslight (see my post of August 26, 2008) and the three versions of The Maltese Falcon. The Maltese Falcon has long been a favorite of mine, so I was surprised and intrigued when I recently discovered the two previous attempts at film versions of Dashiell Hammet's fine novel. The two earlier versions are The Maltese Falcon which came out in 1931 and Satan Met a Lady, which appeared in 1936. The classic or best known version with Humphrey Bogart appeared in 1941.






Satan Met a Lady is quite different from the other versions for it is a comedic adaptation of Hammett's novel. Most of the basic plot elements are present, although in a modified form. The black bird becomes a ram's horn, specifically the horn Roland the Brave finally sounded to bring back Charlemagne, although too late to save him and the rear guard from annihilation. (See Le Chanson de Roland, an epic poem of some 4000 words written probably around the early 12 century.) The horn is, of course, stuffed with jewels. Along with various plot element changes, the characters were renamed:



Actor Character Hammett's character



Warren William -- Ted Shane (Sam Spade)
Bette Davis -- Valerie Purvis (Ruth Wonderly/Brigid O'Shaughnessy
Alison Skipworth -- Madame Barabbas (Casper Gutman)
Marie Wilson -- Miss Murgatroyd (Effie)
Porter Hall -- Milton Ames (Miles Archer)
Arthur Treacher  -- Anthony Travers (Joel Cairo?)
Maynard Holmes -- Kenneth (Wilmer Cook--young gunman)



Imdb.com gives the complete cast for those who are interested.



The film opens with Ted Shane being kicked out of a small town. He then returns to rejoin his former partner Milton Ames. The Woman appears, and the plot loosely follows the novel, more or less, mostly less. Although I watched the movie last week, I've forgotten most of it.



Warren William makes Shane a bit of a dunderhead, always tripping over his own feet, metaphorically speaking. Bette Davis clearly is the Class Act as Valerie Purvis. She is too strong for the rest of the cast. Alison Skipworth's Madame Barabbas was also quite good. I wonder if Greenstreet had watched her performance. Marie Wilson played Effie as a ditsy blond, much like her later roles as the ditsy blond in several Dean Martin--Jerry Lewis comedies. Maynard Holmes' Kenneth (the young gunsel) becomes a schoolyard bully who spends considerable time scowling and whining.



The title isn't as weird as it sounds, for Hammett in the first paragraph of the novel describes Spade:



"Sam Spade's jaw was long and bony; his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down--from high flat temples--in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan." So, the satan met a lady.









The 1931 version, the first version, plays it straight. As far as I could tell, the only significant plot difference between it and the 1941 version is the ending. The 1931 version kept Hammett's original ending in which Wilmer kills Gutman. Aside from that, there are only a few differences between it and the Classic 1941 version. The secondary characters seem to have less onscreen time in comparison to the Classic version. This perhaps may partially be the cause for what I see as the most significant difference between the two.



It's hard to describe the difference, but the closest I can come to it is to say that the characters in the first version were thin in comparison to those in 1941. They seemed to be surface characters only while the characters in the 1941 film had depth to them. Moreover, the choice of Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade is bewildering. Why it was decided to cast someone who appears to be the Latin lover--Ramon Navarro or Valentino--is beyond me. Perhaps that type of leading man was the rage at that time.



Cortez is not convincing as Spade. For example, when Ruth Wonderly is doing her helpless heroine bit, Cortez has this big wide grin on him--this is all fun and games. Bogart, on the other hand, has just the slightest grin, and it's not an all fun and games grin. It is a tired, cynical grin; he has been lied to by his clients in the past and it always made his job harder, and now he's hearing more lies again.



And again, when Cortez explains to Wonderly at the end why he's going to turn her in to the police, it seemed to be just someone reading lines. Bogart looks directly and her, and then turns away, looks down at the floor because he can't face her. He may be in love with her, but other considerations are more important--loyalty to a dead partner being one of them.



The same holds true for the rest of the cast: there really is no comparison between Greenstreet, Lorre, and Elisha Cook and their counterparts in the 1931 version. The dialogue and the encounters among them are similar, but the difference is between real people and one-dimensional cardboard cutouts.



There's always the debate as to whether it's the director or the cast that's most important. Would Roy Del Ruth, director of the 1931 film, have produced the same film if he had the 1941 cast? What would John Huston have done with the 1931 cast? Intriguing questions. I don't have an answer, except the perhaps too obvious suggestion that it is the combination of director and cast that creates a forgettable film in 1931 and a classic some ten years later.



Overall Rating: Have some fun and see all three. Read the novel too.

Robert Frost: "Misgiving"

An Autumn Poem----


Misgiving

All crying, 'We will go with you, O Wind !'
The foliage follow him, leaf and stem;
But a sleep oppresses them as they go,
And they end by bidding him stay with them. 

Since ever they flung abroad in spring
The leaves had promised themselves this flight,
Who now would  fain seek sheltering wall,
Or thicket, or hollow place for the night.

And now they answer his summoning blast
With an ever vaguer and vaguer stir,
Or at utmost a little reluctant whirl
That drops them no further than where they were.

I only hope that when I am free
As they are free to go in quest
Of the knowledge beyond the bounds of life
It may not seem better to me to rest. 

-- Robert Frost --



The usual debate is whether there is life after death.  Is the soul or some sort of life force immortal and does it survive the death of the body?  Frost, being Frost, doesn't see it that way in this poem, naturally.  In the last stanza, Frost's usual place for mischief, he posits it a different way.  He fears that he may follow the lead of leaf and branch and flower and take his final rest instead of attempting to go beyond what knowledge we have gained from life and finding out if there is something more.


A very disturbing thought.  We spend much of our lives wondering about, speculating about, arguing about, even killing others who disagree about the possibility of life after death and then be too tired to find out when we have the opportunity.   Typical Frost--always off on his own somewhere.

Judex: a film

Judex, a French language film
Black-and-white, English subtitles
Directed by Georges Franju
1963


The public library in Tucson publishes around the first of the month a list of acquisitions made during the previous month.  I always check it to see if anything interesting has come in.  In this way, I find  some intriguing books and films, many of which I had never heard of. This is how I found Judex.   Although it came out in 1963, it was in black-and-white.  It is also a French language film, with subtitles in English.

The description sounded intriguing. A corrupt banker is kidnapped by a shadowy crime fighter, Judex, played by the American magician, Channing Pollock.  The plot gets more complicated as a group of thieves led by the scheming Diana Monti attempts to benefit from the situation by getting their hands on some of the banker's files that have information about rich and powerful people and using the information for blackmail.  Diana had worked her way into the household by gaining a position as a maid and then getting the banker, a widower, to fall in love with her. 

A short way into the film, I began to think that this film resembles a serial and also a film that might have been produced much earlier, perhaps the 20s or before.  It was in black-and-white, and scene-changes were denoted by several seconds of darkness.  In addition,  text messages providing narrative information were provided during some of the scene changes.  Other elements were some vaguely SF or futuristic technology such as a closed circuit TV picture that resembles others I had seen in early serials and rock doors that slide open smoothly accompanied by a distinct hum, obviously the motor.  Some drugs with unusual properties were also used by various individuals in the film.

After viewing the film, I read the information booklet that came with it.  The film was produced in 1963 and directed by Georges Franju.  Franju's Judex, according to the booklet, is his homage to Louis Feuillade, who in 1916 had produced a five-and-a-half-hour, 12 episode serial by the same name.  Franju cut a considerable amount of the film that dealt with the backstory explaining Judex's motivation for attacking the banker.

Judex, when he is the crime fighter (he also had a secret identity, naturally), is dressed in black with a hat and cape that reminds me of Zorro (no sword though).  He is assisted by four or five men who also dress in black clothing and wear black masks.  Diana Monti, who leads the group of three or four thieves,  wears a tight, black outfit, reminiscent  of numerous catwoman outfits that have appeared over the years, and has a stiletto. strapped to her thigh.    

While there really are no cliffhangers, forcing one to wait for the next episode, the influence of the serial format appears clearly as every one of the major characters--the banker, Diana Monti (the chief villainess) , Judex,  Jacqueline (the banker's beautiful young daughter), and at least one of the thieves--is captured and either knocked out or drugged into insensibility at least once during the film and then manages to escape.  In fact, the banker's daughter spends much of her time unconscious and being carried about by the thieves, who plan to force her to reveal where her father's papers are hidden, or by Judex and his crew when they rescue her.


And, you mustn't miss the battle to the death on the rooftops between the attractive Diana Monti in her tight, black catwoman outfit and Daisy, an attractive circus performer, in her tight. white trapeze outfit.   

 Lots of fun.  I wonder if the original 12 episode serial is available somewhere.

Simon Ortiz: Hawk

Hawk

Hawk
sweeps
clear through
the background
which is sky
and mountain ledge,
--Old Chuska Mountain,
my friend, shelter--
His immense knowledge
of wind,
his perception
of circling slow wind,
his edge of wing
on air trail

straightens then suddenly
overhead,
directly above us,
the pines.

This man, he knows
what he is doing.

-- Simon Ortiz --
from Woven Stone


What would it be like to fly like this hawk?

I remember standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon and watching birds fly, first maybe ten feet off the ground where I was standing and then, beyond the edge where I couldn't go.  What would that be like, to have the ground maybe ten feet below and then suddenly drop away to hundreds of feet below?  What would that be like?

Kenko: an anecdote, with a point?

No. 45

Kin'yo, an officer of the second rank, had a brother called the High Priest Ryogaku, an extremely bad-tempered man.  Next to his monastery grew a large nettle-tree which occasioned the nickname people gave him, the Nettle-tree High Priest.  'That name is outrageous,' said the high-priest, and cut down the tree.  The stump still being left, people referred to him now as the Stump High Priest.  More furious than ever, Ryogaku had the stump dug up and thrown away, but this left a big ditch.  People now called him the Ditch High Priest."

-- Kenko --
from Essays in Idleness


Perhaps he should have just left well enough alone.  Frankly, I think I would have much more preferred being called the Nettle-tree High Priest than the Ditch High Priest.   Some people take longer to learn than others, while some never learn.  

Notes:
Fujiwara no Kin'jo (died 1301)  was a poet.
Ryogaku Sojo (died about 1305)

Lu Hsun/ Lu Xun: A Madman's Diary

Lu Hsun or Lu Xun (his stories and poems appear under both names) is a new name to me.  I just happened to run across him while browsing the shelves of a used bookstore (can't count the number of times this has happened).  The title of the book is Selected Stories of Lu Hsun.  It was while I was searching for information about him and other works by him that I discovered that his works show up under two names.

"A Madman's Diary" is just what it purports to be, for the most part, anyway.  However, there are some disquieting elements to it that appeared only after I had finished the story.  It is the journal kept by a man who was suffering from a persecution complex and was convinced that all around him were cannibals, just waiting for the chance to sink their teeth into him.  At one point he even catches a dog eying him strangely.

The journal depicts his slow disintegration, from the early stages when he wonders about the strange look the dog casts his way and his suspicion that his neighbors had a inexplicable grudge against him to when he was convinced that all, including his older brother, were just waiting for a chance to eat him.

What makes me wonder though is the frame to the story.  The first chapter of the story is a first person narrative in which the anonymous narrator tells us that one of two brothers that he had been friend with was ill.   He had to be in the neighborhood, so he stopped by to see him.  At the house, he was met by the older brother who said that "my brother recovered some time ago and has gone elsewhere to take up an official post."  He then laughed and showed him the younger brother's diary in which he said he could see the nature of the younger brother's illness.  The older brother then gave him the diary, saying there could be no harm in giving it to him since he was a friend.

This sounds strange to me.  If I had become mentally disturbed in this way and had kept a diary, I should want to keep it with me when I recovered, or perhaps destroyed it if I found it too disturbing to be reminded of what had happened.  I doubt if I would give it to my brother.  Secondly, if my brother had been ill, recovered, and left his diary with me, I would never have given it to someone else, regardless of how good a friend that person might be.

The third point that bothers me is the present status of the younger brother.   According to the older brother, whom the younger brother was convinced he was a cannibal, "he recovered some time ago and has gone elsewhere to take up an official post."  Why was the older brother so vague about where his younger brother was and what that official post was?   

I've been accused in the past of over-reading, and this, possibly, could be another example.  But, I see no reason why the older brother couldn't have simply said what city his brother was now living in.  It is this point and the relinquishment of the diary that makes me wonder what really happened to the younger brother.

I've also toyed with the idea that there is a political message behind the story and the cannibalism is a mask to avoid getting afoul of government censors.  His reference to cannibalism could be symbolic of his insistence on being independent and not just part of a faceless community.  After all, cannibalism is the most extreme form of being absorbed by the community.   Unfortunately, I know too little of the political situation in China when this story was written in 1918.

In any case, I find the story intriguing and shall definitely go on to the others in the collection and perhaps, go looking for more by him.



September 4, 2014:  Late comment.  I should read intros and informational flyleaves more often--might learn something.  


From the flyleaf of Selected Stories of Lu Hsun:

"A Madman's Diary" was Lu Hsun's  " 'declaration of war' against China's feudal society, and the first short story in the history of modern Chinese literature."

N. Scott Momaday: The Bear

Words are names.  To write a poem is to practice a naming ceremony.

              These figures moving in my rhyme,
              Who are they?  Death, and Death's dog, time.     

And to confer a name is to confer being.  We perceive existence by means of words and names.  To this or that vague, potential thing, I will give a name, and it will exist thereafter, and its existence will be clearly perceived.  The name enables me to see it.  I can call it by its name, and I can see it for what it is.

-- N. Scott Momaday --


The Bear

    What ruse of vision,
escarping the wall of leaves,
    rending incision
into countless surfaces,

    would cull and color
his somnolence, whose old age
    has outworn valor,
all but the fact of courage?

    Seen, he does not come,
move, but seems forever there,
    dimensionless, dumb,
in the windless noon's hot glare.

    More scarred than others
these years since the trap maimed him,
    pain slants his withers,
drawing up the crooked limb.

    Then he is gone, whole,
without urgency, from sight,
    as buzzards control,
imperceptibly, their flight.
 

The quotation and poem are from
-- N. Scott Momaday --
In the Presence of the Sun:  Stories and  Poems



About the Author:
"N. Scott Momaday is a poet, novelist, painter, playwright, and storyteller.  He resides in the American Southwest, and he is Regents Professor of the Humanities at the University of Arizona (in Tucson).  Among his numerous awards are the Academy of American Poets Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Premio Letterario Internazionale 'Mondello.'  He is a member of the Kiowa Gourd Dance Society and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He walks long distances, and he rides an Appaloosa mare named 'Ma'am.'  At his best he cooks.  He is justly famous for a recipe named 'The Washita Crossing Soup,' the ingredients of which are, in his words, 'simple, sacred, and secret.'   He is a bear."

Taken from the back cover:
In the Presence of the Sun:  Stories and Poems is a collection of poems, stories (obviously), paintings,  and illustrations by N. Scott Momaday.  They represent thirty years of work, from 1961 to 1991.  "Momaday's voice is ancestral and contemporary, profoundly American and genuinely universal.  Here, at his best, is a truly distinguished poet, storyteller, and artist.

Eric Hoffer: on total commitment

No. 54

Anyone aware of the imperfections inherent in human affairs is hardly capable of total commitment.  Part of him will inevitably remain uncommitted.  It is the perch of uncommitment which makes an act of self-sacrifice sublimely human, and distinguishes the man of faith from the fanatic.

-- Eric Hoffer --
from Reflections on the Human Condition

The question that immediately comes to my mind is what Hoffer means by self-sacrifice.   Would this include suicide bombers, those who strap a bomb to themselves and then go on a school bus or in a crowded restaurant or a market and blow up themselves and numerous others--men, women, and children?   Is this sublimely human or the act of a fanatic?   How can one distinguish between them?

   

Eric Hoffer: some thoughts on freedom

Some random quotations from Eric Hoffer on the nature of freedom:

No. 55

We take for granted the need to escape the self.  Yet the self can also be a refuge.  In totalitarian countries the great hunger is for private life.  Absorption in the minutiae of an individual existence is the only refuge from the apocalyptic madhouse staged by maniacal saviors of humanity.


Fortunately we don't have any of these maniacal saviors of humanity, around here, do we?  We don't have people here who are convinced that they and they alone have the Truth and God's blessing on them and their ideas and are willing to create chaos and massive disruption unless they get their way, do we?  We are so lucky, aren't we?



No. 56

One of the chief objectives of freedom is to make it possible for a person to feel himself a human being first.  Any social order in which people see themselves primarily as workingmen, businessmen, intellectuals, members of a church, nation, race, or party is deficient in genuine freedom.

Since I retired, I've met a number of retired people who are unhappy, confused, and lost.  They do not know how to define themselves anymore.   They no longer are teachers, business executives, engineers, police officers, clerks. . .  They defined themselves in the past by their occupations, and now, since they no longer work, many are lost and no longer see themselves as anything.  They are lost and bitterly speak about retirement for they no longer have an identity.

Others take refuge in politics and redefine themselves as Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, or Greens.  Politics, which had been of lesser importance in the past now becomes their all-consuming interest. They now become staunch supporters of their party, complete with closed minds and unwilling or unable to listen to opposing views for fear that they may develop doubts and again lose their identity.  And others turn to religion, again rejecting and demonizing those who think differently.

On the other hand, it's harder to see oneself as a human being only because then one has to make one's own decisions about the pressing issues of the day.  Being a staunch member of a political party or a religious group gives one a ready-made collection of maxims or rules to follow, a set of criteria for making the "right" decision, and leaders who explain the right way to think, the approved opinions and ideas.

It isn't just retired people who are this way.  There are many who are not retired but show the same attitudes about the groups they belong to and also about those who are different.  I'm not saying all members of any political party or religious group are like this, but they are there and generally they are the ones who cause the most problems.  They have a way of making others, who are not as adamant or unswerving in their faith, appear to be less than genuine members of the group.  They are loud in their condemnation of others who are not really True Believers, as defined by them, True Believers really being those who think the same way as they do.  They and they alone are qualifed to decide who is and who is not a real member of the group.

These true believers are really slaves, trapped within an imperfect belief system, as all human systems are, and cannot really breath the fresh air of freedom for they spend their waking hours making sure that they and all others are on the One True Path to Paradise.




Quotations are from
Eric Hoffer
Reflections on the Human Condition

Han shan or Cold Mountain: a poem

Han shan was a hermit poet who probably lived sometime during the ninth and tenth centuries.  "Han shan" means cold mountain in Chinese, which is the name of the mountain where he resided.  His poems show a strong Taoist and Buddhist influence, and he may have been a monk at some point.  His poems were only collected after his death by someone who went looking for him and found his poems on trees, rocks, and walls of a nearby temple and nearby villages.

Today, according to one account, Han shan is ignored by scholars and critics, but his poems are found in very many temples and shrines throughout China.


People ask the way to Cold Mountain
but roads don't reach Cold Mountain
in summer the ice doesn't melt
and the morning fog is too dense
how did someone like me arrive
our minds are not the same
if they were the same
you would be here

-- Cold Mountain --
from The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain
trans.  Red Pine


At first I thought the difficulty was purely physical.  Cold Mountain is a difficult place to reach, according, at least, to the first four lines.  However, the last four lines suggest that the real difficulty may not be physical but psychological or even spiritual.  That brings me to ask if  "Cold Mountain" is a place or a state of mind. 

Baltasar Gracian: the necessity for the coverup

No. 126

"He is not a fool who commits foolishness, but he who having done so does not know how to conceal it.  If your merits should be kept under seal, how much more your demerits.  All men go wrong, but with this difference, the intelligent cover up what they have committed, and the fools expose even what they  may commit.  A good name rests more upon what is concealed, than upon what is revealed, for he who cannot be good, must be cautious: the sins of great men should be regarded as mere eclipses of the heavenly bodies.  Let it be a mistake to confide your errors even to  a friend, for were it possible, you should not disclose them to yourself; but since this is impossible, make use here of that other principle of life, which is: learn how to forget."

--Baltasar Gracian --
from The Art of Worldly Wisdom
trans.  Martin Fischer


I think the core of the paragraph is the following:


"A good name rests more upon what is concealed, than upon what is revealed.  .  ."

Is this true?  I admit that this probably is true in a number of cases.    Almost daily we hear about the hidden transgressions of our social, financial, political, entertainment, and religious leaders and idols.  However, is this true of all, or even a majority of them?   Are there people whose good name is just who they are and not the byproduct of a campaign of concealment?

The last few words--"learn how to forget"--reminds me of a favorite saying of mine.  I've forgotten the author, but I do remember the remark: "Perfect happiness is good health and a bad memory."

Henry Beard: the anonymous old English epic--Beocat

Following is a poem that dates back to the heroic years, a thousand years ago, an Old English Epic written by an Unknown Author's Cat. 


Grendel's Dog

Brave Beocat,      brood-kit of Ecgthmeow,
Hearth-pet of Hrothgar     in whose high halls
He mauled without mercy     many fat mice,
Night did not find napping,     nor snack-feasting,
The wary war-cat,     whiskered paw-wielder,
Bearer of the burnished neck-belt,     gold-braided collar band,
Feller of fleas     fatal, too, to ticks,
The work of wonder-smiths,     woven with witches' charms,
Sat on the throne-seat     his ears like sword-points
Upraised, sharp-tipped     listening for peril-sounds,
When he heard from the moor-hill     howls of the hell-hound,
Gruesome hunger-grunts     of Grendel's Great Dane,
Deadly doom-mutt,     dread demon-dog,
Then boasted Beocat,     noble battle-kitten,
Bane of barrow-bunnies,     bold seeker of nest-booty:
"If  hand of man unhasped     the heavy hall-door
And freed me to frolic forth     to fight the fang-bearing fiend,
I would lay the whelpling low     with lethal claw-blows;
Fur would fly     and the foe would taste death-food.
But resounding snooze-noise,     stern slumber-thunder,
Nose-music of men snoring     mead-hammered in the wine hall,
Fills me with sorrow-feeling     for fate does not see fit
To send some fingered folk     to lift the firm-fastened latch
That I might go grapple     with the grim ghoul-pooch."
Thus spoke the mouse-shredder,      hunter of hall-pests,
Short-haired Hrodent-slayer,     greatest of the pussy-Geats.

-- Anonymous Feline --
trans. by Editor's Cat


 Henry Beard
from Poetry for Cats