Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Dammit...

Robert Charles Wilson in his novel, Bios, has anticipated most (though not all)
of my vision of cosmic biogenesis as depicted in MY (perpetually) forthcoming
novel, provisionally titled, SUMMA.
In mine, I posit that there are planets in the cosmos where all life forms are
symbiotic with one another and no life form is obliged to prey upon another.
And in many instances all apparently different species are all different stages
of the same life form. Also, consciousness and life are all coeval with one
another--although the forms of consciousness are so radically different
sometimes that they cannot communicate or even recognize one another. That's
Mr. R.C. Wilson's vision.

Of course, MY vision is even more inclusive than Mr. R.C. Wilson's. I posit
also that there are not only stars and planets that are alive and conscious, but
a spectrum of objects between those two that are also alive and conscious
(Pluto, Jupiter, brown dwarfs, etc.), and not only that, but there are living
beings that consist purely of magnetic fields and other forces on the surfaces
of stars, and also in cloulds of interstellar dust and gases and in
intergalactic space, and the nous of all finite entities that subsist after
their endings in something like the Akashic records. After a while, you see, I
think the cosmos gets kind of complicated.

In nearly unrelated news, Michael Gruber has written a sort of "wisdom" book
based on his interpretation of Nietzche, Heidigger and Rudolf Steiner. Nietzche
and Heidigger are my two least favorite thinkers. Heidigger was a fucking Nazi.
Nietzche probably would not have liked them, but much of his writing works to
give them aid and comfort. Steiner is a tolerably sophisticated thinker who
gave some aspects of theosophy a certain veneer of intellectual respectability
with his "anthroposophy" & he is something of a gnostic Christian as well. He
was decent enough to be persecuted by the Nazis. But some of his teachings
promote (see also Alice Bailey) a sort of racism and some are just plain...odd.
Like his belief that children should not be taught to read until they have
acquired their permanent teeth. Anyway, there are people whom I admire who look
to Nietzche and Heidigger, but those folks' interpretations of Nietzche and
Heidigger seem to make them out as being the very opposite of the impressions
that I have of those two thinkers.

I don't understand Gruber's book very well on first reading. I have the sense
from reading his novels that he speaks from a certain degree of first hand
experience, so I'm inclined to think he has something really important to say.



http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

It could have been worse...

Well, it could have been worse.  If Christine O'Donnell had won in Maryland, I think I would have had real doubts about the viability of representative democracy.  But I would have gotten over them.  

I was saddened that Russ Feingold lost in Wisconsin.   That's pretty mysterious to me.  What did Russ Feingold ever do to betray the interests of Wisconsites?  The media are saying that Feingold took some maverick positions against the party--like refusing to support the Iraq War when it was all the rage--& so he didn't get much support from the Democratic Party establishment.  It seems like there's a price to pay about being prematurely right.  Feingold was outspent 4-1 but that still doesn't quite explain it.  So was Jerry Brown.  

Here's hoping Bennet and Murphy hang on in Colorado and Washington.  

And I think of Ma and Pa Ferguson & Pappy Lee O'Daniel, governors of Texas back in the day, who were Tea Party types before their time.  (Blago of Illinois is the only current analog of theirs I can think of...)  (In *O Brother Where Art Thou?* the incumbent Gov. of Mississippi was modeled on Pappy Lee--can't recall if the Coen brothers actually used his name). During the reign of the Fergusons, if you had a relative in the pen you wanted to get pardoned, it was pretty simple.  Just buy some expensive bull semen from the Ferguson's breeding operation...) 

Representative democracy is like an unspecialized amoeba-like organism that lurches through its environment, sending out a pseudopod here and getting burned, another over there and finding good stuff to ingest, far more adaptable than say, koalas, who can only eat eucalpytus and have to rely on an unchanging environment--even though they are a lot cuter. 

I think it will be interesting to see how the presence of the Tea Party folks in the House of Representatives affect Republican Caucus discipline.  Not that much I'm guessing, but I still hope they screw it up.  I know that among the Tea Party types there are  some who genuinely believe in limited government, fiscal conservatism, reining in Wall Street and the big corporations.  My guess is they will be corrupted in the twinkling of an eye.  But I could be wrong.  Some have said that I've been wrong before.  

R. 

 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/


Wednesday, September 15, 2010

The old days

Yesterday, Allen H., locomotive on the A-train group, posted a handy guide to various Texas geographical & other (Texas) oddities.  It threw me into a state of unregenerate nostalgia.  


I lived in White Flat, TX from the ages of 6 to 7 YO.  I went to school in Matador, Texas, 10 miles to the south.  They are places of primal beauty.  Well, in their own way.  

Oh.  Nearly forgot.  I *started* first grade in Flomot, TX.  


I remember my first day of school.  What I noticed was that there were Other People there and all the noise bothered me.  I was upset that I was going to have go back the next day.  I threatened to burn the school down.  

I may be possessed of a disposition as sweet, agreeable & generally compliant as a body might ever want to meet, but do not test me.  I had a childhood in the Texas Panhandle. 

Yaaahooo!

R. 
 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/


Thursday, September 9, 2010

Process philosophy is good for you...

Alfred North Whitehead lived until the age of 86.  Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, his two students who became major philosphers in Whitehead's own tradition, lived to 103 and 101 respectively. 
 
Paul Weiss won an age discrimination suit at the age of 91 when his university tried to forcibly retire him. 
 
I am deeply influenced by the process tradition--and I take vitamins. 
 
R.
 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Re: Hiraku Murakami

If you don't mind, Roy, I'm gonna go off like a wind-up bird on Murakami, one of the least known, most accomplished writers of the last thirty years. You can start anywhere you like (his work has become considerably more grounded in the last decade or so), but for those unfamiliar, I'd suggest 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World', an absolutely brilliant parallel-plot psychological potboiler with an existentialist through-line (as most of Murakami's work has); or 'A Wild Sheep Chase', similarly concerned with existence, with shadings of noir pulp and more than a little Carlos Fuentes or Garcia-Marquez.

He baffles some people, I'm sure. His work almost invariably contains a fair amount of modern Tokyo culture, (invariably jazz clubs, meticulous food preparation and an ongoing domestic crisis), but he uses it like Stephen King uses McDonald's references: a familiar door through which you pass on your way beyond anything like recognizable territory.

He's also done some classic reportage (the Kobe quake, the Aum Shinrikio subway gassing), as meticulous as any of his work, with his own idiosyncratic views. And he's put his more recent novels on an almost purely existential plane, 'Kafka at the Shore' being the best example.

Translators make a big difference with Murakami. I've seen a couple of abysmal ones, each of whose names I've forgotten, but Alfred Birnbaum (or, in a pinch, Jay Rubin) has been with Murakami's work from the beginning, he's colloquially familiar, and is clearly most comfortable with him.

I could go on and on (as if I hadn't already); there's a lot more work. 'Wind-Up Bird' I was reading the day my son was born, and the day after. Quite a memory. I apologize for all of this, Roy, but I so infrequently see anyone mention Murakami, and I think his work is uniformly brilliant, no matter where you start. But I'd highly recommend starting somewhere.

On Aug 26, 2010, at 9:56 AM, Roy Griffin <roygg9@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I've been reading his book, THE WINDUP BIRD CHRONICLES. It's not my usual escapist fare, but a work of real litrachoor--like Michael Caine sez in the movie, *Educating Rita.*
>
> For an ex-English teacher, I have a pretty bad track record for a lot of the classics I'm supposed to have read. It's not that I don't recognize their greatness. I was well into MOBY DICK & was thinking *great stuff*--then I lost the fire, and stopped reading. I don't know why. I wasn't bored exactly, but it just didn't sing to me any more. And I do intend to finish it some day (yeah, yeah, the paving to the Bad Place & all that...)
>
> And frankly, I was worried the same thing would happen with Murakami. But it didn't. And it hasn't. And, somehow, I can tell it won't.
>
> To call Murakami's book "magic realism" is probably a crude description but it gives you an idea...
>
> He's full of quotable remarks that seem to embody a kind of wisdom that straddles the categories of worldly, transcendental and psychological. I'm not sure they have any real application for anyone other than Murakami or his characters. but their spirit is eminently humanist and unobtrusively edifying...somehow.
>
> I believe if I keep reading this sort of thing I will develop a certain capacity for natural human feeling. Oh, well.
>
>
> R.
>
> http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/
>

Hiraku Murakami

I've been reading his book, THE WINDUP BIRD CHRONICLES.    It's not my usual escapist fare, but a work of real litrachoor--like Michael Caine sez in the movie,  *Educating Rita.*  
 
For an ex-English teacher, I have a pretty bad track record for a lot of the classics I'm supposed to have read.  It's not that I don't recognize their greatness.  I was well into MOBY DICK & was thinking *great stuff*--then I lost the fire, and stopped reading.  I don't know why.  I wasn't bored exactly, but it just didn't sing to me any more.  And I do intend to finish it some day (yeah, yeah, the paving to the Bad Place & all that...)
 
And frankly, I was worried the same thing would happen with Murakami.  But it didn't.  And it hasn't.  And, somehow, I can tell it won't. 
 
To call Murakami's book "magic realism" is probably a crude description but it gives you an idea...
 
He's full of quotable remarks that seem to embody a kind of wisdom that straddles the categories of worldly, transcendental and psychological.   I'm not sure they have any real application for anyone other than Murakami or his characters. but their spirit is eminently humanist and unobtrusively edifying...somehow.
 
I believe if I keep reading this sort of thing I will develop a certain capacity for natural human feeling.  Oh, well.
 
 
R.
 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Re: A Glass Not Empty...I guess...

Hi everyone,
 
I just thought you might like to know that this story has made it into the news on the other side of the pond - I heard an article about it on this morning's Today programme on BBC Radio 4. 
 
Best wishes,
 
Catherine