/* July 8, 2006 */
/* Without meaning to imply that their loyalty and care is a bad thing - some of my friends, frequently, scare the hell out of me. :-) */
/* July 6, 2006 */
/* Here's a little lesson, kids: When hope is pulling you one way, and every rational sense is pulling the other, follow the rational sense! Paranoia is a wonderful tool, and is so often right!
At least it didn't go on any longer than dramatically necessary.
I'm relieved. */
At least it didn't go on any longer than dramatically necessary.
I'm relieved. */
/* June 18, 2006 */
/* Oh, yeh, I got a 2.1. For those who care. And on the 28th I parade in mediaeval batman costume in the Cathedral to be given a piece of paper.
It's strange. Very anticlimactic. But then, I'm not feeling incredibly emotional at the moment. In most areas. In some I am. As always. It's strange.
Juggling marks and obsessions. I got a first for my dissertation. So maybe obssessive-compulsive behaviour does have some upsides. Other than upsetting people I care about. And making me feel freefalling.
I need to start working again. Code is my drug. */
It's strange. Very anticlimactic. But then, I'm not feeling incredibly emotional at the moment. In most areas. In some I am. As always. It's strange.
Juggling marks and obsessions. I got a first for my dissertation. So maybe obssessive-compulsive behaviour does have some upsides. Other than upsetting people I care about. And making me feel freefalling.
I need to start working again. Code is my drug. */
/* May 28, 2006 */
/* I've tasted of the fruit, it's opened up my eyes
It's giving me thirsts so hard to satisfy.
Now in freefall; post-exam emptiness, falling through a conceptual space. Thrashing about completely useless where there are no directions any more to go in anyway. The metric of space has gone walkies, and all there is is falling. Words are useless; all that is said gets sucked away by the passing wind into the directionless space. And besides, all the words you try to say get turned into a kind of hoarse meaningless yell by the pressure on your chest.
I'm not generally very good at hope. I tend to view it as something one has before one takes all the variables into account; the future is either in the short-term on rails and unchoosable, or suddenly or long-term something that is concealed by mist; just occasional india-ink brushstrokes outline key shapes, which only serves to deepen the shadows. Then when you finally fall through the cloud layer and see the fields and farms of the future before you there is time for just one "Oh shi-" before you hit it, hard, and everything, bones and all, breaks again. I fear it. Please stay to see it. Please don't leave me falling. We are surrounded by clouds and falling. Everything anyone builds sooner or later falls down. What have we done to the vastness of space that it hates us so?
We are all proofs of something. Maybe eventually just of entropy. "Hey baby, want to see my logical implication." Things can only meaninfully be ordered by causality; whether you admit an acausal principal is somewhat beside the point, since if it's acausal it isn't subject to most of the rules anyway. "For all the points of the compass there's only one direction, and time is its only measure." Every second is another triumph of logic over humanity. Sometimes I think the only purpose of being human is to act as a FUCK YOU to logic, but... I don't really know how to do that. Just about all my emotions are wired into "blind panic" at present.
Shit, it's like emo, but with less blood and more calculus.
"ex is walking down the road when it runs into a large number of functions running the other way..."
One thing I've noticed as well is the level of reality that I assign to the physical world seems to be going kinda downhill, for some reason. Or rather, becoming less detailed. Like light is a hypothesis or something. In danger of drowning in abstractions. Abstractions raised like barricades against panic? Fuck knows. All that is real in ... reality, I suppose, seems to be the sound of water, the feel of wind in my hair, the cold air on my hands, and the people I care about. The rest is hypothetical.
Sigh.
</emo> */
It's giving me thirsts so hard to satisfy.
Now in freefall; post-exam emptiness, falling through a conceptual space. Thrashing about completely useless where there are no directions any more to go in anyway. The metric of space has gone walkies, and all there is is falling. Words are useless; all that is said gets sucked away by the passing wind into the directionless space. And besides, all the words you try to say get turned into a kind of hoarse meaningless yell by the pressure on your chest.
I'm not generally very good at hope. I tend to view it as something one has before one takes all the variables into account; the future is either in the short-term on rails and unchoosable, or suddenly or long-term something that is concealed by mist; just occasional india-ink brushstrokes outline key shapes, which only serves to deepen the shadows. Then when you finally fall through the cloud layer and see the fields and farms of the future before you there is time for just one "Oh shi-" before you hit it, hard, and everything, bones and all, breaks again. I fear it. Please stay to see it. Please don't leave me falling. We are surrounded by clouds and falling. Everything anyone builds sooner or later falls down. What have we done to the vastness of space that it hates us so?
We are all proofs of something. Maybe eventually just of entropy. "Hey baby, want to see my logical implication." Things can only meaninfully be ordered by causality; whether you admit an acausal principal is somewhat beside the point, since if it's acausal it isn't subject to most of the rules anyway. "For all the points of the compass there's only one direction, and time is its only measure." Every second is another triumph of logic over humanity. Sometimes I think the only purpose of being human is to act as a FUCK YOU to logic, but... I don't really know how to do that. Just about all my emotions are wired into "blind panic" at present.
Shit, it's like emo, but with less blood and more calculus.
"ex is walking down the road when it runs into a large number of functions running the other way..."
One thing I've noticed as well is the level of reality that I assign to the physical world seems to be going kinda downhill, for some reason. Or rather, becoming less detailed. Like light is a hypothesis or something. In danger of drowning in abstractions. Abstractions raised like barricades against panic? Fuck knows. All that is real in ... reality, I suppose, seems to be the sound of water, the feel of wind in my hair, the cold air on my hands, and the people I care about. The rest is hypothetical.
Sigh.
</emo> */
/* April 29, 2006 */
/* It's an early summer's evening. Sitting here, on the sofa, listening to Lassus as the sunlight streams through the open patio doors. On one side of the sky, there are high mackerel clouds that blend into flat streaky brushstrokes centrally. The sky above them is blue and clear. Pylons as thin grey lines standing out against the misty hills and blending into the background at the same time. The hedge casting a lengthening shadow against the grass. Distant birdsong.
Madrigals will always be summer music to me.
Every structure I ever build seems weak and wobbly to me, unless it is both independent of time and can be formally proved; and I know in my heart that even this last condition is weak, because proofs can contain errors, and any proof is only valid within a containing logic anyway, and that logic, to be consistent, must be unreal.
I'm crap at proving things anyway. */
Madrigals will always be summer music to me.
Every structure I ever build seems weak and wobbly to me, unless it is both independent of time and can be formally proved; and I know in my heart that even this last condition is weak, because proofs can contain errors, and any proof is only valid within a containing logic anyway, and that logic, to be consistent, must be unreal.
I'm crap at proving things anyway. */
/* April 7, 2006 */
/* This. Now, this is beauty.
I'm sitting, crosslegged, on my bed, watching the trees stand, somehow desaturated against the bright grey sky. The sound of rain falling through leaves weaves in and out of the sound of chants from the liturgy of the dead in Gregorian chant, which fill the room. The walls are blue like clear skies in winter, and on the edge of hearing, the server's fan whines. Shadows fall, golden behind the curtains and deepening the greyness of the blue paint on the walls; turning the dark wood of my chest of drawers almost into just a shape; and then the sharp brightness of the cloud-diffused sun through the frosted window, and makes the slotted bedhead cast shadows onto the green sheets. Ivy climbs outside that window, the shapes of the leaves broken up by the leaff-patterns on the frosted glass.
Water drips restlessly. The evening wears on. */
I'm sitting, crosslegged, on my bed, watching the trees stand, somehow desaturated against the bright grey sky. The sound of rain falling through leaves weaves in and out of the sound of chants from the liturgy of the dead in Gregorian chant, which fill the room. The walls are blue like clear skies in winter, and on the edge of hearing, the server's fan whines. Shadows fall, golden behind the curtains and deepening the greyness of the blue paint on the walls; turning the dark wood of my chest of drawers almost into just a shape; and then the sharp brightness of the cloud-diffused sun through the frosted window, and makes the slotted bedhead cast shadows onto the green sheets. Ivy climbs outside that window, the shapes of the leaves broken up by the leaff-patterns on the frosted glass.
Water drips restlessly. The evening wears on. */
/* April 5, 2006 */
/* "We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered."
If I were to sit down here and attempt to enumerate the list of things that I am afraid of then it would probably rapidly grow to eclipse the length of the concatenation of everything else that I have ever written; indeed, it is quite possible that the task of the preparation of said list would be more fearsome than many of the items on the list, and thus it becomes pleasingly recursive. Both emo and pretentious. Quite impressive a depth.
One thing that recent events have shown is that there was very likely a disaster coming anyway. I thought of it originally as a kind of abstract graph, but I don't think that's alive enough or terrifying enough; I think the whole situation - far broader than originally any of us saw or even can see now - was and is a set of highly constrained springs; I sometimes feel a little like the thrown stone. Then again, maybe it is not the datum itself that causes the - heh - "readjustments" - but the spreading knowledge of it. I don't know.
Another thing I want to think about some more is the parallels between art and parenthood, which Jimmy introduced to me; I had never actually thought about art in those terms before, and I'm not entirely sure I like thinking about it like that now. Frankly, both art and parenthood terrify me, the latter more than the former; this is probably simply because art is something that I have learned to deal with, whereas the idea of parenthood fills me with the gibbering terrors. I don't think this is why I don't like thinking of art in terms of parenthood; to me, though, every piece of art is a word, and whether a word is composed of subsidiary words; and the speaking of a word is not the same thing as parenthood. Although one could argue that in fact it is the necessary precursor and in some ways the general case of parenthood; witness the idea of "creation through speech"; both biblically, for example, in John 1:1, and in other places too... the way that Aslan sings the world into existence in The Magician's Nephew. And while I cannot believe that I should feel anything less than absolute, abject terror for the concept of parenthood; does this mean also that I should fear every word I say, and everything I have ever made?
To me, there is a fallacy there. Somewhere. And it is annoying me greatly that I cannot put my finger on it.
I'm probably either wrong; or it is obvious and I am merely being stupid. Ho hum. I shouldn't post at 3am. */
If I were to sit down here and attempt to enumerate the list of things that I am afraid of then it would probably rapidly grow to eclipse the length of the concatenation of everything else that I have ever written; indeed, it is quite possible that the task of the preparation of said list would be more fearsome than many of the items on the list, and thus it becomes pleasingly recursive. Both emo and pretentious. Quite impressive a depth.
One thing that recent events have shown is that there was very likely a disaster coming anyway. I thought of it originally as a kind of abstract graph, but I don't think that's alive enough or terrifying enough; I think the whole situation - far broader than originally any of us saw or even can see now - was and is a set of highly constrained springs; I sometimes feel a little like the thrown stone. Then again, maybe it is not the datum itself that causes the - heh - "readjustments" - but the spreading knowledge of it. I don't know.
Another thing I want to think about some more is the parallels between art and parenthood, which Jimmy introduced to me; I had never actually thought about art in those terms before, and I'm not entirely sure I like thinking about it like that now. Frankly, both art and parenthood terrify me, the latter more than the former; this is probably simply because art is something that I have learned to deal with, whereas the idea of parenthood fills me with the gibbering terrors. I don't think this is why I don't like thinking of art in terms of parenthood; to me, though, every piece of art is a word, and whether a word is composed of subsidiary words; and the speaking of a word is not the same thing as parenthood. Although one could argue that in fact it is the necessary precursor and in some ways the general case of parenthood; witness the idea of "creation through speech"; both biblically, for example, in John 1:1, and in other places too... the way that Aslan sings the world into existence in The Magician's Nephew. And while I cannot believe that I should feel anything less than absolute, abject terror for the concept of parenthood; does this mean also that I should fear every word I say, and everything I have ever made?
To me, there is a fallacy there. Somewhere. And it is annoying me greatly that I cannot put my finger on it.
I'm probably either wrong; or it is obvious and I am merely being stupid. Ho hum. I shouldn't post at 3am. */
/* March 26, 2006 */
/* I do like a little bit of infinite recursion on my bread...
I've been thinking a lot recently about how one can be affected by knowing how one uses symbols; about how the knowledge of the knowledge (woot! metaknowledge) alters how one sees one's use of basic symbols and how one perceives the world.
The thing is - that when I woke up to what the stone language was and how I could speak parts of it to people who didn't understand it as I did, and yet it still worked, I was somewhat confused; grateful, as it finally gave me a way to express certain emotions that I had no real way of expressing before, but confused. And as I learned about symbology I began to feel slightly guilty about using it, because it felt manipulative to speak to people in a langauge so deep they didn't know it was a language at all. But I'm not sure that it is; the datum of whether or not I am and was speaking it is entirely orthogonal to whether or not I actually am and was speaking it; knowledge and ability are not the same thing. And I know that a lot of the symbols I used before I knew what they could do and how they worked.
In a similar vein, I'm curious as to how the symbols one uses fundamentally shapes one's perception of the world around one; and how the knowledge that one is using them can likewise alter said perception. The thing is that, to an extent, everyone uses them; the price of being a pattern-recognising creature is that one is also a pattern-generating creature. The price of being resonant is that one will resonate. The price of being human, as Aiw pointed out, is being human. And the symbols, the live symbols that speak directly to the emotional self, are notable because even as one uses them to explain oneself to others, the shapes that the symbols that you use reshape one's own perception. As you speak the language, the language speaks to you. Though I suspect this is true of all such.
"I find myself gone from all but secret languages."
Which leads also to the thought that words are wonderful because they tame the symbols; the act of speaking is considerably safer for sanity than the act of symbolising (whether that is making a symbol or, for bonus points, becoming one oneself), and while one can very easily be swayed by one's own words, it's much more binary and emotive than the use of symbols, which very slightly warp the fabric of perception itself on a more subtle level.
I wonder whether words and language themselves come from a need to tame and use the everpresent - for good biological reason - obsessive urge in humankind; a ritual is really just a symbol partially in the time domain; if you take a safety-ritual and transform it into the space domain you end up with the concept of a space being a symbol of home; and spaces are powerful symbols indeed. Witness the cathedral; the river; the bedroom.
"A sympathetic stranger lights a candle in the middle of the night."
Maybe the self-symbol is partly (only partly; being archetypal implies that it cannot be entirely dismissed this easily) the ritual that is only performed once; the ritual of one's own life.
All of this can be seen to be a bit deconstructionist or negative or cynical; but I don't mean it to be. To assume that because I know what I'm doing then I'm doing it wrongly is a delusion that haunted me for some time. However; it is possible for a linguist to write. And it is possible for me to say truth, what I mean and what I feel, even if I do know how I say it. That's a difficult thing for me to understand. Maybe people who are less suspicious of themselves will have it easier.
This is all linked in my head to why proofs, poems, programs, stories and destinies are all the same thing; the rules by which symbols change over time or space or some direction are all linked; the direction is more or less arbitrary. This is what I said in the Seven Manifesto; and indeed, this concept of the fundamental idea being a direction has been reinforced by the discussions I had today about UIs with Jimmy, and about monads and functors and all those other functional goodies...
SOYLENT GREEN IS MADE OF PREDICATES. */
I've been thinking a lot recently about how one can be affected by knowing how one uses symbols; about how the knowledge of the knowledge (woot! metaknowledge) alters how one sees one's use of basic symbols and how one perceives the world.
The thing is - that when I woke up to what the stone language was and how I could speak parts of it to people who didn't understand it as I did, and yet it still worked, I was somewhat confused; grateful, as it finally gave me a way to express certain emotions that I had no real way of expressing before, but confused. And as I learned about symbology I began to feel slightly guilty about using it, because it felt manipulative to speak to people in a langauge so deep they didn't know it was a language at all. But I'm not sure that it is; the datum of whether or not I am and was speaking it is entirely orthogonal to whether or not I actually am and was speaking it; knowledge and ability are not the same thing. And I know that a lot of the symbols I used before I knew what they could do and how they worked.
In a similar vein, I'm curious as to how the symbols one uses fundamentally shapes one's perception of the world around one; and how the knowledge that one is using them can likewise alter said perception. The thing is that, to an extent, everyone uses them; the price of being a pattern-recognising creature is that one is also a pattern-generating creature. The price of being resonant is that one will resonate. The price of being human, as Aiw pointed out, is being human. And the symbols, the live symbols that speak directly to the emotional self, are notable because even as one uses them to explain oneself to others, the shapes that the symbols that you use reshape one's own perception. As you speak the language, the language speaks to you. Though I suspect this is true of all such.
"I find myself gone from all but secret languages."
Which leads also to the thought that words are wonderful because they tame the symbols; the act of speaking is considerably safer for sanity than the act of symbolising (whether that is making a symbol or, for bonus points, becoming one oneself), and while one can very easily be swayed by one's own words, it's much more binary and emotive than the use of symbols, which very slightly warp the fabric of perception itself on a more subtle level.
I wonder whether words and language themselves come from a need to tame and use the everpresent - for good biological reason - obsessive urge in humankind; a ritual is really just a symbol partially in the time domain; if you take a safety-ritual and transform it into the space domain you end up with the concept of a space being a symbol of home; and spaces are powerful symbols indeed. Witness the cathedral; the river; the bedroom.
"A sympathetic stranger lights a candle in the middle of the night."
Maybe the self-symbol is partly (only partly; being archetypal implies that it cannot be entirely dismissed this easily) the ritual that is only performed once; the ritual of one's own life.
All of this can be seen to be a bit deconstructionist or negative or cynical; but I don't mean it to be. To assume that because I know what I'm doing then I'm doing it wrongly is a delusion that haunted me for some time. However; it is possible for a linguist to write. And it is possible for me to say truth, what I mean and what I feel, even if I do know how I say it. That's a difficult thing for me to understand. Maybe people who are less suspicious of themselves will have it easier.
This is all linked in my head to why proofs, poems, programs, stories and destinies are all the same thing; the rules by which symbols change over time or space or some direction are all linked; the direction is more or less arbitrary. This is what I said in the Seven Manifesto; and indeed, this concept of the fundamental idea being a direction has been reinforced by the discussions I had today about UIs with Jimmy, and about monads and functors and all those other functional goodies...
SOYLENT GREEN IS MADE OF PREDICATES. */
return 0;
}
