Contents:
- Dear Diary (#Life)
- We Interrupt (#McCarthyQuote)
- What’s New (#Scaruffi)
Meta (aka “In yesterday’s iinstalmentof Shai’s rambling linguistics”): Yesterday I finished off writing a little bit (just a tad, really) about my ongoing note taking relating to Scaruffi’s book. I’d also written about one of (many) films I had watched yesterday, namely the ridiculous Christian cumshot (aka I Am Gabriel)!
What else can I talk about. Well, how about what’s happened since I last logged into this writing effort, namely, a day.
Dear diary; or, how I spent my words “right now” (henceforth to be called “some time ago”)
When I think about what was interesting about today, I tend to conflate the question with what it was that I learned, which is similar to the set of things I’d like to communicate to my ongoing self (a term superior to “future self”, which of course (shouted Watts through sheer repetition) doesn’t exist due to the omnipresence of the Now). Included in this transcendental-sounding array of wondrous discoveries I must include, due to a shared mechanism of action, the banality of my own common existence; c’est la vie.
I’ve initiated a test wherein I make records of my activities in the day, but choosing only to include those that are directed by goals, and helping me to notice what I do. That can be used to illustrate for me what I’d like to notice more often or not. (I bare myself to an assumption that motivation acts on attention, but to me, that sounds reasonable).
Now, this is meta: I pause myself in the flow of writing, acknowledging the web of forces that created it and every single part of it. Standing outside language (metaphorically) I can see that it is a dance between partners, and that yet, it is pressed out of the self that is the concrete reality.
I pause again, I have been lost in thought, thinking about what meaning is and how it manifests itself in language as a production of self. I have been thinking about beauty in language, and how the practise or writing allows one to indulge in beautiful language (a state otherwise reserved for a passive role in the chair of the reader). And only moments ago – before I pulled myself out of that particular reverie – I concluded to ask what it is that makes a sentence beautiful.
And thus paused again; a pause within a pause. I had reached the point of now and suddenly became concerned with other concerns, all of them practical. The author, his body buoyed by the necessity of change become motion, asserted his departure in these final words.
Interruption, “to what?”, a thing that has happened that I (of all people) find interesting. “Oh, how embarrassing,” I wink.
We interrupt this program to bring you news from the sparkling gardens of literature
I read a McCarthy passage that really pawed at my soul. It was eloquent of course, this is the author I said it was. But it was also deep like a canyon overfilled with shadows and played with great philosophies and ideas into a tapestry.
There, I have said enough but it’s ephemeral nature (i.e. a topic too vast for this passing venture). But I have not said anything of its particular themes and aesthetics.
The two paragraphs begin by telling that we forget the alien nature of our reality sitting in contrast upon the non-existent throne of nothingness, due to which we entertain a reign that lasts a moment.
The second paragraph continues the essay by incredible expression of the breadth of the universe. It does this by talking about possibilities of existence, and the small flickering of sense hovering inside them as part of them.
To any future self who may have forgotten the brilliance of that passage, I recommend looking it up. I’ve saved it in a file dated today.
“What’s new?” I asked Scaruffi
I’ve practically finished my notes on chapter 3 (and the mind map to finish along with whatever tangent notes I may be inclined to explore down the road). The last few sections were less constrained by their feel, which reflected the theme that leads to the end which is that cognitive capability and intelligence are gut feeling concepts which differ when defined. Whatever they are they must be holistically considered, which for various reasons supports the need for production by genetic algorithms, (i.e. this is an argument that) and that only by inspiration with biology will we be able to generate intelligence that approaches anything near the sophistication (albeit their atavistic nature) of primates (including the superior human).
Scaruffi ends the last paragraph by endorsing a search for intelligence by its association with wonder and curiosity (which is a trait no one else discussed by the chapter thought to entertain the thought).
