NYC centre of the universe times are shitty but they could always GET WORSE
I have at least another 40 minutes of sleepless, feverish dementia here at the airport, so I'm going to write about the Thing That Stole Me From LJ For The Last 9 Months and the ways in which the Core Ridiculum has warped my already crepe-paper-creased mind, and how it occasionally comes back to fic. No one's obliged to go on this rollercoaster ride, but people are invited to leave prompts at the end if you wade through anything interesting. Or to just laugh at me through the monkey-cage-bars of my life.
Telecommunications. This has nothing to do with the CR, but it does have to do with my life. I got an iPhone, and the rest of the world exploded into a scattershot diaspora of places I could access from places I didn't use to be able to access them from. I feel like my world has sort of dribbled itself into a Jackson Pollock style field of external memory painted onto an international and internet canvas. In spite of this, keeping up with LJ has been harder than ever. In the face of diversification, localisation is my only reserve of sanity.
US bills. I don't understand why they're all the same colour, but for that reason I love the $10 more than I love any other bill in my wallet. That, and the ATM at my school only ever seems to dispense $20s, as though it's afraid of odd numbers.
Latin. It's the language I think I need to learn, and the language I may not "have the time to learn." Ah well. It's dead; it isn't going anywhere. But when your school throws people with names like VIRGIL at you, you want to know how sentences like this read in the original:
Harsh necessity, and the newness of my kingdom, force me to do such things and to guard my frontiers everywhere. (Aeneid)
Machiavelli, you chose well with that line. Even if Dido did end up, well, um. Carthage... must... burn? Then again, Machiavelli can do whatever he want because he is a badass, as evidenced here:
As a method of torture, the strappado is simple but efficient. The prisoner's hands are tied behind his back; a rope is thrown over a pulley or beam; the prisoner is lifted into the air by his wrists. This is acutely painful and undignified, particularly if he is left dangling for hours or days. But from time to time he is dropped and allowed to fall a few feet before the rope goes taut; the sudden stop tears at his shoulders, even dislocating them. The pain is excruciating.
Torture was legal in most sixteenth-century states as part of the investigation of a crime. Machiavelli presented himself to the authorities, knowing what was in store, on 12 February 1513. Two acquaintances of his had been arrested for plotting against the new government of Florence, now controlled by the Medici family. In their possession was a list of names, of which Machiavelli's was one. He was presumably tortured fairly soon after his arrest-but not until he had heard the screams of other victims, and their cries of “Too high! Too high!” as they waited for the drop, for the torturer was not supposed to inflict permanent damage, and calculating the drop was not easy. Had he confessed under torture-and presumably people often confessed to crimes they had not committed-he would have been executed, as his two associates were. (One of them was, like Machiavelli, all too enamored of ancient Rome: he died begging the priest to help him get Brutus out of his head, so that he might die a Christian.) Machiavelli held out, in fact, through six drops and over several days. The torturers persisted longer than usual (four drops was the normal allowance), perhaps because they were persuaded he was guilty; or perhaps they felt his small, wiry frame had enabled him to get off lightly. In a letter to his friend Francesco Vettori, Florence's ambassador in Rome, Machiavelli was later to boast that he was proud of his own resilience.
Time. If anyone tells you that they don't have enough time, they're lying. There's always enough time as long as your head hasn't been set on fire. And even when your head has been set on fire, there's probably still time enough. The wonderful thing about having 24 hours is that there's only ever a lack of willpower that fills up the gaps. The human being seems to operate in three ways, insofar as I've been able to discover: 1, you deprive it, 2, you overload it, 3, you feed it just right. In all three cases the result is adrenaline and madness. I could keep going forever some days.
Drinks, stiff ones. In spite of not being a drinker, I've come to learn how to drink. Social situations I never imagined finding myself in; social situations I never imagined myself inventing. Scotch is all right. Vodka tastes like shit. Rum and I, oh rum. And etcetera. I am legal in every country except this one. I go to England and everything changes. Ultimate aim in life: to have a good drink with everyone I haven't met, especially people who live a few oceans away from me. ellnyx and dnatio_memoriae and pere_chan, why must you guys a) be far away and b) be not far away in the direction that I'm being far away in?
Sunsets. Are the most beautiful things in the world, and there is no need to share it with anyone but yourself.
Crime and Punishment. My hate for Russian literature nonwithstanding, C&P came and beat my head in and printed the words THE HUMAN CONDITION all over my forebrain. I can't explain why Raskolnikov lives in all of us, but he does: we are fucking pathetic little ubermenscheseses, capable of self-deceit as readily as we are capable of self-redemption, great catharsis, and the invention of our own philosophy. (insert thoughtful thing about FFVII here.)
Jazz music is sometimes the only way to survive a city. Its invention was a necessity. Went down to a jazz club twice; it was awful and cramped and dark and still amazing to sit there, bored out of my mind but carried on the vibrations of the line of a double bass.
God is in the tarmac some days. And The Bible is something everyone should read, because in it lies the greatest writing; enduring and full of a kind of rhetoric that I can only imagine ever being able to achieve. Palimpsests of time are in this book.
16th century philosophy is full of Rationalists and do I hate Rationalists or do I hate Rationalists. Maybe it's because I'm and have always been jealous of maths. I apologise for none of my contractions (or sentences) making any sense at this time of day.
Learning a new language is like injecting yourself with a new world and anyone who doesn't try to do this at least once in their life is missing out on 100 other lives, other worlds.
Time is best flipped 12 hours or not at all. I can live in two cities, but only when they're diametrically and dichotomically (I CAN INVENT WORDS IF I WANT TO) opposite. It was hard being in London; the streets are beautiful but the nights never started and the days never ended. Alice falling down the rabbit hole in that city; I didn't want to leave, but I'm glad that I did.
New York City can be the most anti-social place in the world. I could live in a storage box. Only $71 per month for a four by four by four foot space! I don't know how I've managed to get through 9 months practically living on-campus: I fall into worlds of people instead the worlds people create. Or perhaps it's the knowledge of the City sleeping at the edges of an otherwise perfect little world, waiting.
Harmonics were a weird little thing we had to read up on for philosophy. Philosophy, I am finding, is hard to study in this country; maybe there's a difference in teaching style, or maybe I've just changed. In any case classes this semester weren't enjoyable, but every once in a while an idea would creep into my head and germinate like a Darwinian monster. Harmonics - the thought that the world exists in some sort of chaotic/coordinated pre-established vibration; everything we do echoes and amplifies the greatness and goodness of the things around us. Isn't this the theory of people?
Sentiment is the only word I have to describe a lot of how I felt between the months of February and May: I think one day I woke up and I was a few months older, physically and mentally, than I was when I'd gone to sleep the night before. Sadnesses and insanities now get tempered by a third voice (second voice?) -- in between the voices of heart and logic there's now the voice of some sort of teleology: this in view of the life that has come before and the life that's coming after. I enjoy feeling things now, even the worst of times: when am I ever going to feel them again? While I'm alive, I might as well live. I sound like a bad Nike commercial. Here, have a Japanese poem to make sense of this stuff:
When, loosened from the winter's bonds,
The spring appears,
The birds that were silent
Come out and sing.
The flowers that were prisoned
Come out and bloom;
But the hills are so rank with trees
We cannot seek the flowers,
And the flowers are so tangled with weeds,
We cannot take them in our hands.
But when on the autumn hill-side
We see the foliage
We prize the yellow leaves,
Taking them in our hands,
We sigh over the green ones,
Leaving them on the branches;
And that is my only regret -
For me, the autumn hills!"
Japanese literature is fantastic and naturally very frustrating. I can't read any of it without feeling like it's trying to read me, and being more successful at it than I am at understanding even the most superficial of sentences. It doesn't help that all of it is coming to me in translation; there's a whole other epistemological abyss in which to fall. But go Wikipedia the Tale of Heike and tell me that its opening lines aren't beautiful in any language:
祇園精舎の鐘の声、諸行無常の響きあり。娑羅双樹の花の色、盛者必衰の理をあらわす。
おごれる人も久しからず、唯春の夜の夢のごとし。たけき者も遂にはほろびぬ、偏に風の前の塵に同じ。
The sound of the Gion Shōja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sāla flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind.
The Tale of Genji = Genji is a pimp. I am sure that somewhere in between the thousand pages of this book, I read something significant and awesome and full of mono no aware or whatever it was my beautiful teachers were trying to beat into me, but at this hour, sitting here watching a lady doze into her chair (quite literally; if we could fall through the furniture of this place I think we all would), all I remember is his frivolity, his unhappiness.
Tsurezuregusa/Essays in Idleness by Kenko: everyone needs to read this. Everyone. Everyone. Just. Everyone needs to read this. If you could paint the world in a sense of calm, good taste and a synthesis of practicality with useless aesthetic, it would be in the colours of his words.
Nothing stood in the way of the lay priest of Chikurinin and Minister of the Left rising to be prime minister, but he said, "I doubt that being prime minister will make much difference. I'll stop at Minister of the Left." He subsequently took Buddhist orders.
Carpet grass and lawn grass - I AM IN LOVE IN ROLLING AROUND ON THIS STUFF. GREEN. GREEN. GREEN and dewey and delicious in the mornings.
More later. I hope I don't wake up to regret having the ability to type vague dyslexic entries.
[edit] it's technically only half an hour to my flight and no one is at the gate. Worry, much?
[edit 2] stuck in hellport for another two hours, joy.
[edit 3] now we're doing some slow elephant ballet between gates; i should be grateful: the 415pm flight to Toronto is still grounded next to us, and their people look ready to burn continental officials at the stake.
[edit 4] YOU'RE NEVER, YOU'RE NEVER, YOU'RE NEVER GOING HOME, YOU'RE NOT ULYSSES, BABY NO. the continental airlines desk is my charybdis
Telecommunications. This has nothing to do with the CR, but it does have to do with my life. I got an iPhone, and the rest of the world exploded into a scattershot diaspora of places I could access from places I didn't use to be able to access them from. I feel like my world has sort of dribbled itself into a Jackson Pollock style field of external memory painted onto an international and internet canvas. In spite of this, keeping up with LJ has been harder than ever. In the face of diversification, localisation is my only reserve of sanity.
US bills. I don't understand why they're all the same colour, but for that reason I love the $10 more than I love any other bill in my wallet. That, and the ATM at my school only ever seems to dispense $20s, as though it's afraid of odd numbers.
Latin. It's the language I think I need to learn, and the language I may not "have the time to learn." Ah well. It's dead; it isn't going anywhere. But when your school throws people with names like VIRGIL at you, you want to know how sentences like this read in the original:
Harsh necessity, and the newness of my kingdom, force me to do such things and to guard my frontiers everywhere. (Aeneid)
Machiavelli, you chose well with that line. Even if Dido did end up, well, um. Carthage... must... burn? Then again, Machiavelli can do whatever he want because he is a badass, as evidenced here:
As a method of torture, the strappado is simple but efficient. The prisoner's hands are tied behind his back; a rope is thrown over a pulley or beam; the prisoner is lifted into the air by his wrists. This is acutely painful and undignified, particularly if he is left dangling for hours or days. But from time to time he is dropped and allowed to fall a few feet before the rope goes taut; the sudden stop tears at his shoulders, even dislocating them. The pain is excruciating.
Torture was legal in most sixteenth-century states as part of the investigation of a crime. Machiavelli presented himself to the authorities, knowing what was in store, on 12 February 1513. Two acquaintances of his had been arrested for plotting against the new government of Florence, now controlled by the Medici family. In their possession was a list of names, of which Machiavelli's was one. He was presumably tortured fairly soon after his arrest-but not until he had heard the screams of other victims, and their cries of “Too high! Too high!” as they waited for the drop, for the torturer was not supposed to inflict permanent damage, and calculating the drop was not easy. Had he confessed under torture-and presumably people often confessed to crimes they had not committed-he would have been executed, as his two associates were. (One of them was, like Machiavelli, all too enamored of ancient Rome: he died begging the priest to help him get Brutus out of his head, so that he might die a Christian.) Machiavelli held out, in fact, through six drops and over several days. The torturers persisted longer than usual (four drops was the normal allowance), perhaps because they were persuaded he was guilty; or perhaps they felt his small, wiry frame had enabled him to get off lightly. In a letter to his friend Francesco Vettori, Florence's ambassador in Rome, Machiavelli was later to boast that he was proud of his own resilience.
Time. If anyone tells you that they don't have enough time, they're lying. There's always enough time as long as your head hasn't been set on fire. And even when your head has been set on fire, there's probably still time enough. The wonderful thing about having 24 hours is that there's only ever a lack of willpower that fills up the gaps. The human being seems to operate in three ways, insofar as I've been able to discover: 1, you deprive it, 2, you overload it, 3, you feed it just right. In all three cases the result is adrenaline and madness. I could keep going forever some days.
Drinks, stiff ones. In spite of not being a drinker, I've come to learn how to drink. Social situations I never imagined finding myself in; social situations I never imagined myself inventing. Scotch is all right. Vodka tastes like shit. Rum and I, oh rum. And etcetera. I am legal in every country except this one. I go to England and everything changes. Ultimate aim in life: to have a good drink with everyone I haven't met, especially people who live a few oceans away from me. ellnyx and dnatio_memoriae and pere_chan, why must you guys a) be far away and b) be not far away in the direction that I'm being far away in?
Sunsets. Are the most beautiful things in the world, and there is no need to share it with anyone but yourself.
Crime and Punishment. My hate for Russian literature nonwithstanding, C&P came and beat my head in and printed the words THE HUMAN CONDITION all over my forebrain. I can't explain why Raskolnikov lives in all of us, but he does: we are fucking pathetic little ubermenscheseses, capable of self-deceit as readily as we are capable of self-redemption, great catharsis, and the invention of our own philosophy. (insert thoughtful thing about FFVII here.)
Jazz music is sometimes the only way to survive a city. Its invention was a necessity. Went down to a jazz club twice; it was awful and cramped and dark and still amazing to sit there, bored out of my mind but carried on the vibrations of the line of a double bass.
God is in the tarmac some days. And The Bible is something everyone should read, because in it lies the greatest writing; enduring and full of a kind of rhetoric that I can only imagine ever being able to achieve. Palimpsests of time are in this book.
16th century philosophy is full of Rationalists and do I hate Rationalists or do I hate Rationalists. Maybe it's because I'm and have always been jealous of maths. I apologise for none of my contractions (or sentences) making any sense at this time of day.
Learning a new language is like injecting yourself with a new world and anyone who doesn't try to do this at least once in their life is missing out on 100 other lives, other worlds.
Time is best flipped 12 hours or not at all. I can live in two cities, but only when they're diametrically and dichotomically (I CAN INVENT WORDS IF I WANT TO) opposite. It was hard being in London; the streets are beautiful but the nights never started and the days never ended. Alice falling down the rabbit hole in that city; I didn't want to leave, but I'm glad that I did.
New York City can be the most anti-social place in the world. I could live in a storage box. Only $71 per month for a four by four by four foot space! I don't know how I've managed to get through 9 months practically living on-campus: I fall into worlds of people instead the worlds people create. Or perhaps it's the knowledge of the City sleeping at the edges of an otherwise perfect little world, waiting.
Harmonics were a weird little thing we had to read up on for philosophy. Philosophy, I am finding, is hard to study in this country; maybe there's a difference in teaching style, or maybe I've just changed. In any case classes this semester weren't enjoyable, but every once in a while an idea would creep into my head and germinate like a Darwinian monster. Harmonics - the thought that the world exists in some sort of chaotic/coordinated pre-established vibration; everything we do echoes and amplifies the greatness and goodness of the things around us. Isn't this the theory of people?
Sentiment is the only word I have to describe a lot of how I felt between the months of February and May: I think one day I woke up and I was a few months older, physically and mentally, than I was when I'd gone to sleep the night before. Sadnesses and insanities now get tempered by a third voice (second voice?) -- in between the voices of heart and logic there's now the voice of some sort of teleology: this in view of the life that has come before and the life that's coming after. I enjoy feeling things now, even the worst of times: when am I ever going to feel them again? While I'm alive, I might as well live. I sound like a bad Nike commercial. Here, have a Japanese poem to make sense of this stuff:
When, loosened from the winter's bonds,
The spring appears,
The birds that were silent
Come out and sing.
The flowers that were prisoned
Come out and bloom;
But the hills are so rank with trees
We cannot seek the flowers,
And the flowers are so tangled with weeds,
We cannot take them in our hands.
But when on the autumn hill-side
We see the foliage
We prize the yellow leaves,
Taking them in our hands,
We sigh over the green ones,
Leaving them on the branches;
And that is my only regret -
For me, the autumn hills!"
Japanese literature is fantastic and naturally very frustrating. I can't read any of it without feeling like it's trying to read me, and being more successful at it than I am at understanding even the most superficial of sentences. It doesn't help that all of it is coming to me in translation; there's a whole other epistemological abyss in which to fall. But go Wikipedia the Tale of Heike and tell me that its opening lines aren't beautiful in any language:
祇園精舎の鐘の声、諸行無常の響きあり。娑羅双樹の花の色、盛者必衰の理をあらわす。
おごれる人も久しからず、唯春の夜の夢のごとし。たけき者も遂にはほろびぬ、偏に風の前の塵に同じ。
The sound of the Gion Shōja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sāla flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind.
The Tale of Genji = Genji is a pimp. I am sure that somewhere in between the thousand pages of this book, I read something significant and awesome and full of mono no aware or whatever it was my beautiful teachers were trying to beat into me, but at this hour, sitting here watching a lady doze into her chair (quite literally; if we could fall through the furniture of this place I think we all would), all I remember is his frivolity, his unhappiness.
Tsurezuregusa/Essays in Idleness by Kenko: everyone needs to read this. Everyone. Everyone. Just. Everyone needs to read this. If you could paint the world in a sense of calm, good taste and a synthesis of practicality with useless aesthetic, it would be in the colours of his words.
Nothing stood in the way of the lay priest of Chikurinin and Minister of the Left rising to be prime minister, but he said, "I doubt that being prime minister will make much difference. I'll stop at Minister of the Left." He subsequently took Buddhist orders.
Carpet grass and lawn grass - I AM IN LOVE IN ROLLING AROUND ON THIS STUFF. GREEN. GREEN. GREEN and dewey and delicious in the mornings.
More later. I hope I don't wake up to regret having the ability to type vague dyslexic entries.
[edit] it's technically only half an hour to my flight and no one is at the gate. Worry, much?
[edit 2] stuck in hellport for another two hours, joy.
[edit 3] now we're doing some slow elephant ballet between gates; i should be grateful: the 415pm flight to Toronto is still grounded next to us, and their people look ready to burn continental officials at the stake.
[edit 4] YOU'RE NEVER, YOU'RE NEVER, YOU'RE NEVER GOING HOME, YOU'RE NOT ULYSSES, BABY NO. the continental airlines desk is my charybdis