Salt's Savor

I'm sick of the Quadrennial Horse Races -- they can take care of themselves...

"Can the street die?"

"Can a car die?"

"Can a rocking chair die?"

"Can the Sun die?"

A five year old boy asked such questions these many years ago and the answers were, "Yes, the Sun can die, but it takes so long that it is almost like it never happens."

"And, yes, things like a car or a rocking chair fall apart and are gone, so, we can say they sort of 'die' -- but they don't die in the same sense as a bird, a cat or we ourselves die."

"In fact, one might be tempted to say that the more a thing lives, the greater the living of life, the greater the death in its dieing."

"And that is why the salt must never lose its savor."

Salt's Savor

No matter how hard you try to twist the truth,
the fact remains that right in front of your face
resides the answer you've sought since your early youth!

It delights your sight and tantalizes your taste.
It tickles your nose and sometimes even your toes!

It whispers in your ear, "Never fear,
I am with you wherever you ever go
in the spring, summer, fall and winter of all your years..."

It is life, that is to say, all that is.
It is life for only life is what-is.
It is only life that really exists.
Life is the essence of all your "God" business.

Without it, the salt has already lost its savor!
Without it, there was never any savior!

Gender of Inanimate Objects

Although, unlike many other languages, English does not have gender specific definite and indefinite articles, we give many inanimate objects a gendered pronoun when they are referred to in the third person.

For example, a ship is referred to as "she" or with the possessive pronoun "her". Why we do this sort of thing I suppose is because hhumans have an innate tendency to anthropomorphise every thing from our God(s) to the kitchen sink.

Anyway, a wag once quipped that ships are "she" because, when one comes to a harbor, she goes after the buoys -- this inspired someone with much too much time on their hands to figure out through logical induction, the gender of many other inanimate objects.

FREEZER BAGS: male, because they hold everything in, but you can see right through them...

PHOTOCOPIERS: female, because once turned off, it takes a while to warm them up again. They are an effective reproductive device if the right buttons are pushed, but can also wreak havoc if you push the wrong buttons...

TIRES: male, because they go bald easily and are often over inflated...

HOT AIR BALLOONS: male, because to get them to go anywhere, you have to light a fire under their ass...

SPONGES: female, because they are soft, squeezable and retain water...

WEB PAGES: female, because they're constantly being looked at and frequently getting hit on...

TRAINS: male, because they always use the same old lines for picking up people...

EGG TIMERS: female because, over time, all the weight shifts to the bottom..

HAMMERS: male, because in the last 5000 years, they've hardly changed at all, and are occasionally handy to have around...

REMOTE CONTROL: female, they easily gives a man pleasure, he'd be lost without it, and while he doesn't always know which buttons to push, he just keeps trying...

What Kind of World?

What kind of world are we living in?

Well, it's the only world we have, so maybe it's a bit stoopid to ask.

Also, it depends on what kind of creature you ask.

The house fly says that it's fine and the cockroach too.

Rats are living high on, well not the hog actually, but their tails are fat from what they are getting by on.

The folks running things, the fat cats, the wise guys (of whatever stripe), the fuggin oligarchs -- yeah, they all think it's a fine world.

I used to brew beer as a hobby and it's a fun thing to do, you cook a great big pot of water, malt and hops. If you don't mind criticism from purists, you also put apples, potatoes -- anything to add some sugar...and then you add the yeast. The yeast cells go crazy -- they awaken to Heaven, that is food, food, food! So, the yeast cells eat, multiply geometrically and do the other things that cells do -- they excrete. In the case of yeast, their excrement includes a large portion of alcohol.

Kind of weird, isn't it? All of life is trying to something to do something to get ahead and yeast hit upon shitting (pissing?) alcohol which just happens to be an addictive substance for the (at present) dominant species on this poor planet -- which gives the yeasts which can eat sugars and shit/piss the purest alcohol a leg up on other microorganisms.

That just goes to show you that evolution works in often inscrutable ways -- which is pretty much what we used to say about Yee God.

What I am trying to say is that, although it looks pretty much like we have screwed the pooch as far as our planet is concerned, perhaps the Earth is just an apple and we are making a quality calvados for some divine dilletante...

On the other hand, I figure we could do better than that!

From Tic-Tac-Toe to Chess

When I sit on the crapper I have what is maybe an odd habit -- I solve chess puzzles on my cell phone, "Find check for White in two moves" is what I am doing now...

Today, while wiping my ass I suddenly thought of a chess puzzle with all the pieces in their starting position -- "Find check for White in x moves..."

Is that possible? Is there one or more opening moves where White can always beat Black? Is there a "solution" to chess?

Or, is chess like tic-tac-toe? In tic-tac-toe, once both players understand the game, neither can win. Or, is there in chess at least one opening move that will always win?

Is it possible to prove it one way or the other?

That's kind of a silly thing to think of I suppose, with all the problems, in fact challenges to our very existence we face on this little blue puff ball hanging in space.

I suspect that, although our leaders think they are playing a Great Game like chess for the world's resources, our situation is actually like tic-tac-toe, that is none of the players can win this fighting over a hill of beans in which we are engaged.

In fact, if we don't stop these silly games, all players will lose.

Hounds of Hubris

Here in the Happy Little Kingdom, I have been following a program about the Brits and the history of their troubled isles. Yesterday, the theme was about the time after the Union and the last Jacobite uprising.

At that time, fed up with centuries of endless wars over power, religion and fine points of succession, they revelled in peace, freedom and a certain prosperity -- and the vision was to share this with the rest of the world.

However, in short order, the United Kingdom dominated the world with what, up to then. was the greatest empire the world had ever known. In short order, millions and millions were enslaved, impoverished, even dieing of starvation to feed the machine that fed the empire.

With an historian to guide you, it's easy to see how it happened, but it's harder to understand why it, almost inevitably had to happen.

Similarly, today, we have our Arrogant Empire which grew both quicker and with ever so much more fragility, and has begun to collapse hardly before being recognized for what it is.

Hoping I will not be accused of snark, I can thankfully say that we have already learned our lessons and Arrogance will never be hounded by the hounds of hubris.

On Doing Good and Whacking Bugs...

Sorry folks, but you are in for some cracker barrel feel-os-o-phee.

That was nice of me, I don't sneak up on you -- it's just like in the old days of tee-vee, when I was a young whippersnapper back in Poosah City: "...and now folks, a word from our sponsor". Then there was a commercial and then they said, "...now we return to our broadcast."

Of course in those days there was only two, then three, then four channels to choose from -- and the zapper had yet to be invented. If you wanted to change channels, you had to get off your butt. Today, depending on how closly you are interfaced with the audiovisual beast, you have at least 30, but more likely 500 channels of illusion to choose from -- and many of them are HD!

But what I wanted to talk about was "doing good".

It's good to do good. Heck, even the bloodiest dictators and tyrants will subscribe to that. Name me one of those mass murderers who wouldn't tell you that they were only trying to "Unite Europe", "Spread Democracy", "Baptize the Heathens", "Give Our Homeland a Place in the Sun" -- or whatever dollop of bullshit that suited the time and culture.

Myself, I like to see the big things in the small, minute daily things. One of my older paroles is: "The Third World War Begins At Home." That is, what is your connection to the holy shit even stoopid guys like me can see flaming down the tube?

I dislike killing bugs just because they are in the house. If possible, I try to escort them outside. Does that mean that I am doing a "good thing"? Well, the honey bee gets lifted outside because there is a serious problem with the number of honey bees here in the Happy Little Kingdom. Yellow jackets and the late summer and early fall get whacked with my little electric fly swatter.

Am I good? I don't know -- is the electric fly swatter really painless? It could well be that getting squished by a rolled up newspaper was the preferred way to go by yellow jackets -- it's hard to get a statement from them, though.

As for escorting little things like moths in my hand outside the house -- it sounds like a no-brainer. Of course it is a "good thing".

But I remember one time I threw a little night moth out the back door and, even as it landed on the tiles there, a little sparrow swooped down and graciously accepted the snack...
So, was there "good" here? I suppose the sparrow would say, "Yum!" And, when you get down to it, who really gives more than a half damn about a bittsy little moth?

The Wisest Man...

Well, dear hearts, here we are, back in the Happy Little Kingdom (where everybody's happy and the king is a queen, but the king is not in drag...)

Scotland is an amazing place, with a population of only 5 million, it has sent people all over the world. I'd guess, off hand that they are a close second to the Irish in that respect, especially to the North American Continent.

The main reason for the emigration, as with Ireland and certain parts of England, was the result of the greed, avarice (and incompetence) of the ruling classes (arrogance, avarice and incompetence defines the ruling class!)-- people who had lived on the land for centuries were dispossessed and kicked out to make way for "modern improvement" (sheep instead of grain).

The Scots were a bit lucky, as they were not pushed out by starvation, as the Irish, where potatoes and grain were sent to England (under armed guard) during the height of the Great Famine -- but unemployment and poverty can also be an incentive...

But let it be for the moment, here is an odd tale:

In St. Andrews, a lovely town between the Firths of Fourth and Tay on the East coast, just south of the ruins of the stone cathedrals, there is a passage down to the harbour. At the side of the passage, there is a small archway.

I was there for a few minutes and saw no one go through the archway. There is a reason:

It has been prophesied that when the "wisest man in the world" goes through
that small archway, it will collapse...

Ummn, this is a conundrum of
sorts. Assuming that I was the "wisest man", I would know that it would fall
down on me when I went under the archway -- therefore, being the "wisest man",
would I go under it...?

On Being Alive This Eternal Moment

It is possible to sail against the wind, but it requires a certain skill and patient use of your ship's capability. You don't sail directly against the wind, but you sort of sidle up to it, tacking first this and then that way.

And thus it is with the truth. The truth is like a wind that blows from eternity to -- where? -- nobody knows...

An old friend asked me a question the other day that kind of took the wind out of my sails for a moment, so to speak. I had earlier written to him that it had been a most wonderful summer up to now in the Happy Little Kingdom and he wrote back, "How do you define a good summer?"

Indeed, what makes a summer day "good"? Ummn, yeah, what is it? The experience of a day as being good is what?

It's not blue skies -- although a good summer day needs some blue, it also needs some clouds to sort of help define the blue. It certainly doesn't have to be dry, a bit of rain is okay, as long as it doesn't drizzle all day long. One thing a great summer day needs is a morning with the sun playing with the clouds and the trees, revealing soft and delicate colors.

Bird song, of course, and the odd thing you happen to see -- like a fish heron being heckled by some seagulls, for what reason I have no idea and neither the heron nor the seagulls thought it worth the time or trouble to give me even a hint as to the reason for the altercation. The heron took the skydives with a certain stoic resignation and finally decided enough is enough, unfolded its wingspan and flapped away, followed by a small contingent of seagull hecklers.

Meanwhile, the morning sun played colors upon the clouds and blackbirds were singing their hearts' joy at being alive this brief yet eternal moment.

Is There a word for Anti-Serendipity?

There ought to be a word for events where, in a sort of anti-serendipity, our leaders, rulers, the high and mighty are suddenly revealed, like H. C. Andersen’s Emperor, to not only be wearing no clothes, but have big pimples on their butt.

Moments like this rarely reach in the history books. But I assure you they happen -- I’ve usually seen them several times on television and heard them with my own two ears.

When Prez Nixon’s made his last State of the Union Speech to the joint session of Congress, he referred to the storm clouds of scandal and cover-ups which were even then on the verge of destroying his Administration, asking Congress to join with him in a bipartisan manner to "remove the President [painful pause] -- remove the present situation..."

I guess that was more than a Freudian pratfall than a slip. "Even presidents have to stand naked sometimes" as the Bard of the Sixties once wrote.

Another story -- again, you won’t be likely to read it in the history books, but it happened just the same. Pope Pious IX was on television opening a Jubilee Year. The ceremony required that he open "Peter’s Gate" which is normally kept closed.

The Pope was to open the gate by knocking on the door with a little silver hammer and the gate was supposed to swing open -- but nothing happened and the Pope, the Vicar of Christ, the Keeper of the Keys to the Kingdom was suddenly an embarrassingly puzzled wizened old man. Meanwhile, banging sounds were heard from behind the door and a few minutes later the door swung open as if by carpenter magic...

When the Secretary of State, Colin Powell held his (in)famous press conference at the United Nations in the February, 2003, just before the US war of aggression against Wudda-Wreck, there were so many press folk that the conference had to be held in the main hall.

As was reported, the tapestry copy of Picasso’s "Guernica" behind the podium where Mr. Powell was to do his little performance was covered with blue muslin.

Contrary to what many believe, the tapestry was not covered at the request of either the State Department or the UN -- it was at the request of the photographers, they needed a neutral background in order to take good pictures.

But that is what made the anti-serendipity even more delicious!

The covering of Guernica that drew more news then the picture itself would have -- and how fitting! The war was foisted upon us through cover-ups, disinformation, omfustication and bald-faced lies -- but every one knew what was behind the blue backdrop.

Have any of you ever noted any examples of anti-serendipity?

The Burning Fuse...

[I suppose that what follows below could be seen as a background, after the recent events which caused me to compose and post the day before about Ooog and Schmoog.

In any case, although I hope it is still not to extinguish, I do strongly feel that the fuse, which will ignite the conflagration which can only be thought of as the Ultimate Wars, was lit the day Yitzhak Rabin was murdered.]

It is those who have the power who have to make the first move in a situation collapsing in a spiral of violence. This is especially true when the party with the power is an intruding force.

An obvious problem course is that the perceptions of the various sides are -- incompatible.

The English were incapable of seeing themselves as outsiders, intruders. One side in Northern Ireland saw themselves, not as Scottish Immigrants, but as rightful heirs returning to their Homeland -- the Irish population had a rather opposing view.

The years the Thatcher gov't refused to "negotiate with terrorists" were wasted. It was obvious, even to a relatively ignorant person like myself that this was a bullshit stand point. The only way to end the conflict militarily would have been to either expel or exterminate the entire Catholic population from the North. A political solution, negotiation was the only real solution. Finally, it was the Brits, with the support and pressure of the US that made moves which ended in ending the bloody stalemate. True, the present situation is not perfect or even stable for certain. But it's better than the bloodiness that ruled before.

This is ever so much more true of the eye of the storm in the Muddled East -- so much so that it is almost impossible to speak of the actual situation on the ground and the incredible suffering of millions of people there without being accused of a bias of anti-semitism -- which is weird since most of the people involved are semites, albeit affiliated with different religious systems..

The Oslo Accord in 1993 was a turning point -- again marked by the influence pressure of the US as a superpower as well as the brave initiative of the Rabin gov't.

Three things snuffed this small flame of hope.

One was, of course, the murder of Rabin. The second was the goal of a Greater Israel pursed by the Netanyahoo and Sharon gov'ts. The third was the corruption and incompetence of the Arrafat led Fatah and PLO. This led to the rise of the Hamas movement.

The present situation is that people are being murdered, except for their innocence, indsicriminently by the handfuls, by the dozens and by the hundreds in both Israel and the Gaza. As this goes on, land continues to be expropriated on the West Bank to sate the dream of a Greater Israel.

Again, there is no way out of a tragic situation except negotiation. Again, it is the party with the power and which is also the intruder, in the Gaza and the West Bank, which can initiate negotiation.

Unfortunately -- and this is a failing of the Bush administration which exceeds even Iraq -- the US has not used its influence and power in any meaningful way -- and there are still elements in the Olmert gov't which see "transfer" [expulsion] and even "shoah" [annihilation] as the final solution.

Fifteen years ago I saw the fuse lit which will eventually ignite what, in the Third Galaxy, were known as the Ultimate Wars. But it does not have to be. The burning fuse could still be extinguished

A Question of Truth

[Note this post has been updated below the line]

An odd thought struck me today while I was preparing supper: pasta with a bit of sugo, fresh green beans and home fried parsley root chips.

In the background, the television was babbling on about the wars and conflicts of the 20th Century -- suddenly it struck me that every one of these wars were based on and sold by lies and that every peace which was declared after each terrible conflict was infected with lies which bore the seeds for the next and, most often, ever more terrible conflict.

So I thought: "If it is correct to say that war is only possible because of the lies which are told, then perhaps it is even more correct to say that peace can only be possible if the truth is told!"?

But then, another picture flashed in my mind: Pilate asks of the condemned man, "What it truth?" There was no answer, that is, not unless you can hear the answer in Jesus' silence.
_________________________

Now, what did I mean by that picture of Jesus and Pilate? I had to think about it my self!

I'm certain i didn't mean silence as means to tell the truth.

Perhaps that last image was a picture of our common humanity approaching a time of ultimate stress and need when the truth perhaps, maybe -- we can hope can't we? -- will explode into a common understanding of some sort, a Unity of Awareness...

Imagine that there is a sort of something to what we think of as telepathy -- not thought transfer as such, but maybe a real form of empathy between us all so that we actually knew and felt the pain and joy of others so the knowledge of our being brothers and sisters was an actual fact and not just a nice, cuddly idea.

If that awareness were suddenly to break out like the glitter of shook tin foil, like lightning shining from east to west and back again -- do you suppose we could then stop these wars, join hands and start to clean up this mess?

Whatever the fact of the matter, that is something I could pray for.

Status Report...

Well, dear hearts, after a year and a half of blogging, my post last Monday was number five hundred, so I guess it's time to take stock of what I am doing here.

First of all, I want to thank my readers who are few but faithful, especially my cousin, Nuke Watcher, for their continued encouragement and advice.

When I started, I had the idea that the discipline of writing regularly would make my writing, if nothing else, more fluid. I also had the idea that perhaps it would shape up some ideas I had been fooling around with for a long time and perhaps be able to mush them into a more continuous skein of words -- what people call a "book".

Well, as for the first, I think that that is the case, the fluidity is there and the writing at least seems to give the impression of cogency.

I have downloaded various portions of the posts and am now trying to edit them -- it is harder work than I would have imagined!

If the world doesn't end, I hope to have a rough text for "The Automated Armies of Arrogance" and "The Arrogant Prophecies" sometime during this year -- time will tell!

Beauty and the Beast Revisited

When I went for my walk this morning, I was rewarded with one of the most magnificent sunrise displays I have seen in a long time!

The rising sun rays undershot a heavy but scattered cloud cover. It was beyond description. All one can say is, "Thanks!"

As a matter of fact that is what I presume to imagine what the Eternal mainly requires of us as conscious entities calling ourselves human beings: be thankful for the wonder we are privileged to know and experience in this life, behave decently with others and not screw up the Earth -- our Blue Mother -- who nourishes us all, along with the birds, the bees, the bears, the squirrels, the ants and all the other squiggly critters.

Speaking of birds, another experience: I saw in the sky this morning several flocks of wild geese gaggling and V'ing south for wherever it is they spend the winter -- it was a pleasure to see and hear them!

Yet another experience: two days ago, in the Happy Little Kingdom, a 10 year old girl was dragged off and raped, twice. Okay, the perp was a nasty guy called "Dirty Leif" and they got him, caught him, jailed him. Happy ending? Well, it depends on whether you are newspaper reader or a 10 year old girl.

A statistic: one out of six women raped in this country are less than 16 years old. For most of them it is their "sexual debut", as they so nicely put it in the local language.

I was working today moving firewood, getting ready for the winter season. Some of this wood had been lieing there since the last winter season and a lot of kribbly krabbly things crawled out, centipedes, pill bugs and spiders the size of a silver dollar -- kind of yechy things.

What I am trying to tell you is that there are disgusting things, ugly things, even evil things in the nature of living things -- but it is only we, the concious entities which presume to call ourselves human, who can bring the ugly evil into the world.

Glory in the Morning...

"There's a glory in the morning because the earth turns 'round and a promise in the evening when the sun goes down." -- Crazy Bird, around 1975

I've been puzzling for some while over something. In fact, it occurs to me almost every time I go for my morning walk around the neighborhood where I live in the Happy Little Kingdom here in the far north.

The play of the rising sun light in the clouds is often a most pleasant experience. Indeed, it is amazing the joy, awe and wonder a sunrise can bring.

Why is this?

I suppose many or even most aesthetic experiences are acquired tastes tinged by cultural bias. But I suspect that the pleasure of seeing the beautiful glory revealed in the sky is natural, universal, in fact arch typical.

My question is: why? Why are we, so to speak, "hardwired" to enjoy the sunrise?

I propose that it has to do with the spirituality innate in our common humanity. What I mean by spirituality is the feeling or grasping of meaning in this existence which at times can seem somewhat chaotic.

There is one effect, not rare yet not frequent either that strikes one as almost metaphysical in its effect. I am thinking of the situation where shafts of sunlight pierce the clouds in shafts of light and shadow, creating a sort of fan-like effect.

Until recently, these were the only straight lines one would ever see in the sky.

Today it is almost a daily experience, weather permitting, to see the condensation trails of high flying airplanes scratching their chalk marks across the blue.

I hardly know of any thing more ugly than the meaninglessness of their incongruity than these contrail graffiti defacing the sky.

Life is More Than a Bag of Chips

What this is really about is an essay I just read by Joe Bagent, but first I must make a detour.

There is a folk singer you may never have heard about, his name was Alex Campbell and he was World Famous in Denmark.

He was a Scot from Glasgow and if you met him in the wrong way you might have thought him to be an insufferable bastard. The fact is though, he was really a nice guy. It's a hard life doing gigs here and there, struggling to promote an image so's you can get more pay when all you really want to do is for people to listen.

Alex wrote one song that should be in the school books, he sold it for fifty quid and regretted it ever after, the was later recorded many times and often been a hit. The name of the song is "So Long". I want to sing y' a couple of verses here:

I've seen what was war -- so long!
The pain and the scars -- so long!
The lies and the greed of the leaders of men,
Those cheats who would lead us to war again
So long!

But hope lives in me -- so long!
It's a new day I see -- so long!
In the courage and hope in a young girl's smile
The faith that lives in a little child.
So long!

The essay of Bagent's I refer to here is a difficult and in some ways a rambling piece, yet I find it to be one of the best things he has done. For me, it's like he has come full circle. However, if you are not familiar with his work that means nothing to you and a précis of his thought is difficult to construct. Joe Bagent is what they call in Denmark, an original, that is he is defined by himself.

Many of Joe's tales are so funny you laugh so hard that you are in danger of farting and crying at the same time. But this particular essay is different -- I think he is getting close to writing his manifesto of the American Dream or something like that.

I've been going through this essay, trying to pick out quotes and end up with this paragraph which made me remember Alex Campbell's song:

After all, it is not the coursing energy of the human spirit that is doomed. It never has been and never will be so long as a single newborn baby still squalls out "I AM!" immediately upon its delivery, even into this most recent issuance of "the world" we have allowed to happen in the name of reason, progress, science, democracy -- feel free to pick your own pious scientific, political or religious excuse. It does not matter. The animating forces of the universe seem unmoved by the collision of planets and implosions of supernova, much less the outbreak of a temporarily virulent virus called man on a speck of cosmic dust we call earth.

But go read the entire thing -- in fact read all his essays and the many fantastic letters people have written to him in response.

Something from Nothing, the Casimir Effect

In a rather pessimistic [= realistic] rant JamesEagle referred to what one would think was a solution to our, uhm, present existential conundrum -- the possibility of obtaining unlimited energy from nothing.

He was referring to the consequence of some arcane effects predicted by quantum mechanics. The theory was first put forward by two Dutch physicists, Hendrik Casimir and Dirk Polder back in 1948.

In brief, a vacuum, that is a space empty of matter is not only a place of nothing -- it is also a place of potential, that is there is always the possibility of this that and the other thing happening. Normally, all of these possibilities cancel out and a vacuum is a vacuum.

However, under certain circumstances, force, i.e. energy, was predicted by Casimir and Polder. There has since been enough experimental evidence to not only back the theory up, but to raise the possibility that it might actually be possible to extract energy out of nothing. This is a dream older than the alchemist's of turning base metal to gold.

Imagine! Unlimited power and energy to drive our thing-um-jigs! All our problems could/would be solved!

Right?

No, wrong!

The problem is twofold.

First of all, there are no free lunches. Furthermore, there are no free breakfasts, dinners, desserts or after-dinner mints. That is to say, there is a catch to everything and if we started pulling energy out of the very fabric of cosmos, something would probably say "ouch!" And react in some way, probably catastrophic to us.

Secondly, being the bloody critters we are, if we had access to an unlimited energy source, there would go perhaps five minutes before some half-smart yokel would ask how that energy could be used to make a weapon. With unlimited energy, we'd have super energy weapons. Giant lasers and death rays would sweep the planet, turning bedrock into bubbling streams of lava, killing even the cockroaches.

Summa sumarum, if we do not succeed in realize the true potential of our common humanity, we will turn all knowledge to our mutual destruction.

Like I've said before, it is a most fortunate happenstance that the stars are so far apart. I suspect that, tops, one out of a hundred sentient species figures this out and that at least some of the nova explosions we see in the galaxies are simply another "intelligent" race failing their final exams...

Other than that, it is a lovely spring morning, in fact, here in Denmark, it is, for the moment, summer.

Ask not for Whom the Bell Busks...

[The basis for what follows came from a link at Moon of Alabama]

The Washington Post pulled a stunt with the help of a fellow named Joshua Bell. (Yes, that is the heartbreaker in the picture)

The shtick was: what would happen if a world famous master violinist like Mr. Bell stood up in a public place and did a busking* gig for the better part of an hour.

What happened was that he played on his $3,000,000 Stradivarius for 45 minutes and $32.17 were thrown into his violin case. More than a thousand people passed by, but only one man stopped to listen. There was also a little boy would also have stopped to hear the wonder, but his mommy had him by the hand and he had to go to kindergarten instead.

A big deal was made that nobody recognized Mr. Bell and that he was mostly ignored. The event, or happening if you will, was recorded on video and many of the pedestrians were later interviewed.

The conclusion was more or less that people don't know what's good or what they like unless somebody tells them.

However, the "experiment" was flawed for a number of reasons. It took place in a busy metro station and, although the acoustics were not too bad, it was by the doors and the gig started a few minutes before 8 in the morning on a Friday in the middle of January.

Heck, under conditions like that, I don't think Jesus Christ himself would get much attention, unless he was raising the dead or turning water into wine and passing it around...

I've done a bit of busking myself and I can tell you that place and timing were completely wrong. If he had played on the "Walking Street" in Copenhagen, he would have both had a crowd and a lot more cash in the kitty -- assuming he picked the right time day.

The fact is, people do recognize something of quality when they hear it. However, if the entire ambiance of the space is to get from one place to another quickly, like from home to the office, no one stops. If they are not completely concentrated on a goal to get from here to there, people will stop up, if only out of simple curiosity -- especially if there are already some people there.

On the other hand, most of us, myself included, are snobs in the sense that we let our preconceptions and what we have been told color our experience of what we meet in the world.

One must constantly struggle to remain awake in order to see what we are seeing and hear what we are hearing -- and not just what we think we are supposed to be seeing and hearing.

To put it another way, it is a struggle not to mistake the packaging and the hype for the content and the experience.

Or, more brutal: Conscious awareness is not just an innate quality but a skill which must be honed and kept in form through constant use -- otherwise, like any muscle, it atrophies.
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* To busk is to set yourself up in some public space and perform music, poetry, whatever, in the hopes attracting attention, preferably in the form of money in the kitty, donated by the public one manages to attract.

Unfortunately, more often than not, the attention attracted is the authorities of public order, that is the police.

Free speech does not apply in most public places.

The Theory of Dialectic Moment

The Theory of Dialectic Moment occurred to my mind some thirty five years ago, when we were living in a two room flat on the Vesterbro of Copenhagen. There was no toilet and you either had to pee in the sink or pay fifty cents to do the other thing at a place five minutes down the street.

The funny thing is, I never realised that we lived in slum until years after we moved from there. I suppose I focused mainly on the rent which was less than fifty dollars a month, accounting for inflation into today's money.

When I was a kid, my dad had a book called, "So, You Want to be a Writer?". There was a lot of good advice in that book and one was that, if you want to be a writer, the first thing to do is find some place where you could live on very little money.

I did that part pretty good, by settling in Denmark in the sixties. But I forgot about the writing, so I never got very far as a writer.

I also forgot about the Theory of Dialectic moment until recently when I saw on teevee a program about consciousness where an old philosophical bromide was brought up -- the one which says: we cannot determine if there really exists any thing or any consciousness other than our selves and our own consciousness.

That is such complete intellectual bullshit!

Doctor Samuel Johnson refuted this in a most practical way, when told of Bishop Berkeley's waft of disembodied vapour from his ivory tower that "we have no way of knowing that anything really exists, except in our mind", the doctor kicked a large rock by the side of the road, yelped in pain and humped off down the road as Boswell dutifully recorded the event.

The program reminded me of the Theory of Dialectic Moment. So, perhaps the program -- my seeing it anyway -- was not a complete waste of time -- or maybe it was. It all depends upon your general point of view and, more specifically your opinion of my thought.

I know, Dr. Johnson's refutation is not valid -- other than in itself. The dear bishop would never have accepted it, I'm sure. Kicking the rock, though, is a clear and literal demonstration of Johnson's opinion and mind on the matter.

It is also a demonstration of dialectic moment and demonstrates conscious entity. In turn, evidence of conscious entity refutes Berkeley -- but only if you can let go of a lopsided and strictly logical view of reality.

The Theory of Dialectic Moment maintains that every monologue contains some amount of internal dialogue, and that this dialogue, in itself, is evidence of conscious entity.

The sum total of all conscious entity is the Nature-of-the-Universe.

Conscious entity demonstrates itself through the dialectic moment it generates. There are different ways in which this happens, but basically it is through the manifestation of its "word". We meet its "word" in words, or other artefacts of expression.

To the degree writers or speakers pay attention to the meaning of their words as they unfold, awareness is revealed and dialectic moment is generated.

Our speech creates the context in which it can be understood -- again, this implies conscious entity.

We experience this phenomenon as a sort of "tension" in the inner dialogue. Borrowing from physics, I called this tension "moment". As it arises from an inner dialogue -- therefore the term "dialectic moment".

We experience this in poetry.

In poetic texts, the apparent spring of thought, the juxtaposition of seeming incongruence is often quite obvious. When we recognise a text as poetry and not just cut-and-paste babble, we then become aware of cognisance other than our own.

The reason is that: "between the lines", there must unfold, in mind, some cognition, insights, conclusions -- some mental activity -- to which the following line is, to a degree, a comment, answer or criticism of something not said but implied.

Dialectic moment is evidence of conscious entity -- that you are experiencing conscious entity.

Consider the matter, you will see that the experience of conscious entity is not something we do continually -- or at a high level of intensity. If you do, then you must be a natural born saint or Zen master.

Dialectic moment is evidence of conscious entity because conscious entity is what generates dialectic moment. Conductive wire passed through a magnetic field generates electricity.

You may not care for or approve of Maxwell's theories, but you cannot deny that the lamp on the ceiling is proof of the pudding and so it is with dialectic moment and conscious entity.