47

Prime numbers have that morbid satisfaction of only having themselves and their God as factors. In that sense, they are like the religious hermits of old, or like cats.

It was on this day that I realised how old we were, here in Atlantis. To begin one's life in 1959, only to be told that it really began in 1965, and then to be reminded that gestation began in 1819, or perhaps six hundred years earlier, or a few thousand more... this beggars belief, depletes it to poverty levels.

And yet the Harper says Atlantis was the centre of the ancient archipelagic and peninsular realm that sliced one ocean from another. And Hobson says that the Gateway of the Dragon's Teeth was famous from afar, even unto the streets of Samarkand.

Then I realised. You make a flag of red and white every time you bare your teeth.

Figureheads

It's always bemused me when people think of figureheads as something or someone that is 'only for show'. A hundred years before the word first came to mean 'leader without real authority', it meant the ornament at the prow of the ship which symbolised the mission of its crew, their deity or source of moral guidance. It was the pre-literate version of a mission statement.

Even before this, sailors have always had superstitions about their figureheads. It was always unlucky to change one if the old one had not been lost to natural causes. It always had to be something the crew felt comfortable with, and a captain who chose an unlucky or ill-omened figurehead was not one that a seasoned crew would want to sail with.

If I had had to choose a figurehead in those pre-literate days, I'd choose one which gave my ship a sense of dignity, of beneficial omen, and of calm guidance. The reason that these ship ornaments were called figureheads is because, at the very least, such ornaments bore heads with clearly marked eyes to find the way through the dread and danger of the wine-dark sea.

Word of the Day: Theogony

The Greek root -gonia means 'a point of origin'; in geometry, it is the point at which two different lines meet at an angle. In literature, Hesiod's Theogony is an account of the origins of the Gods.

But Hesiod's masterwork is not just a clever synthesis of all the mythology he could lay his hands on; rather, it is a long poem in which he establishes the right of the poet to rewrite the foundations of his world. In the end, the true story is not about the mythical basis of existence, but about how change and reform are the rights of humanity.

Along the way, of course, Hesiod does mention bloody revolution and how rebels always end up making themselves the new establishment. He mentions it three times. The final rebellion is when Prometheus, the learned titan whose name means 'Foresight', steals fire from Zeus and earns no reward except his loss of freedom and an eagle to eat his liver every day.

It is always fascinating to read mythology. It is not quite fantasy. It is a symbolic approach to understanding the way humans engineer their perceptions of the world so that the stories are easier to tell. And also, in case there are indeed gods on Olympus, this form of narrative disguises the poet and protects him from their wrath.

Green Eggs and Red Monoliths

I had a most curious dream last night. I dreamt that the First and a few of their departed mentors were building a huge monolith out of a strange mixture of red-bean ice cream and strawberry gelato. Everywhere there were banners saying things like, "Beware The Pinko Scum!" and "Better Red Than Dead!" and "Chill In, Chill Out!"

In the midst of the purposeful chaos were people like Trivandrum and Green Eggs. What was really interesting was that the latter was setting up chess boards, making cryptic comments about the Sicilian Defence throughout and playing multiple games with me. The former kept spraying water all over an ominously threatening cage made from bars of ice. The empty cage had a little hand-lettered wooden sign next to it, saying, "Wild Yak, Do Not Feed Gratuitously."

There was an accidental historian wandering by. He muttered randomly to people he met and to pillars (of which the area had an inordinate number), "My initials are YW and not WY! I have no X anywhere!" He had a few confederates with him, who were plotting the overthrow of the one-party state.

Lastly, there were two tall, thin subcontinentals. They had a placard saying, "From the Little Green Spot, not the Big Black Hole." One was dressed in spotless white uniform with medals all over it. The other one was dressed in spotless red uniform with trophies all over it. He was carrying a shield that said '1886' in huge golden numbers, but had a truly diabolical image in the centre. This one had "Gunning For You" in the middle.

It was the last image that made me wake up gasping. I've never seen my former CEO wielding a trident and brandishing a forked tail before.

The One-Bookie Leader (Part III): Right Makes Might

To wrap up this entertaining diversion on the Monobibliarch (the OBL of legend, or One-Track Cogitator), we must take a look at the kind of sloganeering or one-sentence-reductionism that has been indulged in by such creatures. It is educational, sometimes entertaining, but always a warning for us to heed...

In the beginning was "Arbeit macht frei", apparently related to the mounting of striking eagle statues to keep watch over prisoners the inhabitants of the gulag workplace (although it must be said that hundreds will attest that the Leader in question used the term 'concentration camp' proudly, frequently and with brio). This slogan, well... least said, soonest mended. I refer you to a link that may be of use.

This was not the only familiar slogan to those of us who wondered what was going on in the once-hallowed corridors of the academic gulag workplace. Occasionally, we thought we heard "Jedem das Seine" instead. Or maybe it was "Recht macht Macht" or something like that. Oddly enough, the name that came to mind for most of us was Iosif Vissarionovich, which seemed quite counter-intuitive.

The problem is of course that OBLs in general have a rather unfortunate way with words. Not having any of their own, they tend to pluck lines out of context and 'reveal' them to the populace as veins of gold and banners of light. In fact, he of the 'concentration camp' was prone to get upset when corrected at all, which made some of his utterances rather painful to most civilised people.

The problem is a holistic one in a certain sense. Given a slogan or vision, OBLs in general tend to make everything line up to suit them, even if inappropriate. To 'soar on wings like eagles' becomes to 'strike like an eagle' and eventually degenerates into apocryphal tales and symbolic hodgepodges about eagles. Eventually, without intending it, the OBL may think of himself as an OBerstLeutnant and then the commander of some holocaustic education establishment.

It is sad. But he has the right, and hence the might. And so we have to let it go on. The most important thing is to not become like that ourselves.

Sleeping Positions I: Suspension

Last night as I dozed off, my last thought (I think) was that I was falling asleep in an oddly familiar and iconic position. I sensed that I was lying with one leg crooked under the knee of the other, rather as if I were in the shape of the number '4'. I didn't think about it again until this evening.

Well, I remembered why that position seemed so familiar. It's an old one, and you can find an image of it here. It's the Hanged Man from the old decks, an image I've commented on before.

Don't take me for some sort of occultist. I just look at symbols and try to unravel their meaning. My sleeping position last night was very natural to me, but it doesn't mean I think of myself as Odin hanging from Yggdrasil or something like that! You might however recall that this grim wanderer was also the master of two ravens.

No Joking Matter

I've had been present at many occasions that felt that they were the set-up for some sort of joke: you know, the kind that begins with, "An Englishman, a Welshman and an Irishman walk into a canteen..." or perhaps "A teacher, a judge and a politician walk into a bar..." or something like that.

It strikes me that in real life, the matters discussed at such meetings tend to be more serious than that. Whenever two or three (or four, or five) people gather together in the name of gold, guns, graft, gin, government, or God; that name is like a guiding spirit hovering over the discussion. Most times it is barely more serious that what it looks like; sometimes, it is deadly serious. The conversation tends to move with a kind of adept facility into channels which are more portentous.

I remember a few counting rhymes which seem to conceal that kind of sinister dexterity. These include the relatively simple, "One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to go!" Of course, the one which is a classic to me is the one I quoted just a month ago, "One for the morning glory..."

But one looks for signs and portents, and finds them. In the Bible there are some famous examples: "But when you shall see the abomination of desolation... standing where it ought not, then let them that be in Judaea flee to the high mountains..." is a clear one related to graven images and symbols of pagan power; likewise, the preoccupations of Nebuchadnezzar and the dreams which resulted (it is always fascinating to read the first few chapters of the book of the prophet Daniel if you have the time).

And at first, those too look like jokes: "Two Roman eagles meet in the courtyard of the temple..." or "A statue with a head of gold and feet of clay..." and so on. But of course, there are always lessons to be learnt, and prices to be paid.

Another Look

A reply (though not a rebuttal, nor even a rejoinder) to Second Class.

Sometimes, I suspect visual metaphors for knowledge come with too great a facility to the sons of men. From a literal looking back, as in my post this morning, people think of looking into the past. That's not necessarily the case, but let's consider both possibilities, and one more for the fun of it.

The literal act of looking back, the need to turn one's head to look, is of use only if one is going backwards, or if one is using that act to fix in one's mind the visual image of something one has already turned away from. We've heard phrases like 'to look back in anger' or 'to look back in regret'; these are metaphors engaging the visual aspects of memory, and not the optical aspects or the associated cognitive and perceptive aspects of using one's eyes. When Lot's wife and Orpheus looked back, the act was a prohibited one, not the thought; the physical look, not the memory.

The second case is the Second Class viewpoint. To look back at the past is an honourable occupation, and a wise one; without knowledge of the past, one is doomed to a meaningless present and an implicitly useless future; after all, if your future is not engaged with your present, why are you looking forward to it? It would have no relationship to you at all (or you do not think that relationship is important), since in the future, you would not be looking back to the 'you' of now. I agree with the gist of that post, although I don't think it is quite a rejoinder, but a complement.

The last case is the peculiar one of modern heraldic interpretations. I've been resident on the island of Singapore for some time now, a city-state which in some historical accounts was founded by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles. One of his legacies is an educational institution, which has a version of the Raffles arms bearing a two-headed gryphon, which is said to be looking back to the past and forward to the future.

This is clearly wrong; the two-headed eagle is a symbol of Empire, looking both east and west with rapacious eyes and greedy claws. That the Rafflesian eagle was made into a gryphon (an even hungrier, horse-eating beast) is merely tribute to the meaning of 'Singapore': 'Lion City'. In this case, the eagle is now grounded in a lion; the Raffles Institution has claws firmly planted on the island, never to take off again (as Raffles used to do, frequently).

If the modern Rafflesian interpretation is correct then, to be consistent with the trappings of Empire that the school still uses (Latin motto, baronet's helm etc) on its heraldry, the two eagle heads must symbolise a Western past and an Eastern future. It looks back into the West, just as Tolkien's elves do. It cannot let go of its colonial past. That's why it needs two heads.

Self-Medication

Today I took the brave step of scrubbing part of the old programming and replacing the nanobots. Years of caffeine dependency don't peel easily away from the walls of the mind, but once you begin to peel, all you have to worry about are scabs. I am no longer dependent on caffeine. Rather, I have weaponised it. My nanobots are continually destroying caffeine dependency plaques and replenishing caffeine levels.

I am now a stainless steel cafetierre. I admit that the image of being a stainless steel cafetierre is not as appealing to the rebel mind as that of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat, but it is a step up from being a mere vessel to both vessel and source (or at least, intermediary).

At the same time, I have scrubbed all semiotic greenery from my heraldic codes. All you people out there who think my heraldry contains any tinctures save azure and gules, and any metals save or, should go scrub yourselves too. I am not one for the vertical or viridian. Sometimes I despair at the intelligence community; signs and symbols are not so difficult to read.

Yes, it does seem as if the caffeine boost has made this posting a tad jumperitical, but I assure you I am not channeling the ghost of Robert Silverberg the Science Fiction Writer of the 1960s. I am just doing what comes naturally when one's blood as significantly deviant in content from the norm. Three cheers for serratiopeptides and capsaicin oleoresin. And another two and a half for the nanobot collection I inherited from my precursor entities. Hoo-hah!!

Kings & Ashes

From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king.
– J R R Tolkien

It's been thirty days of night here at Zombie Central and we have smelled the exhaust of the passing of brimstone and the velocity of the fall. You shall know them by their redundant meticulation and the razor ice of their cold and barren wombs. We have won not by might nor by power but by the spirit and everyone is humbled, you can feel it by the fire of the light.

Maybe, maybe, maybe it is time for a new wave. Fluctuat nec mergitur, we shall surf and not be serfs, we shall ride and not be ridden, we shall be a wild hunt and a brave one. And the armies of memory, the hosts of twilight, they shall be with us, and the past shall win a glorious victory. For the best is yet to be.

Nine Muses (Redux)

Very amusing situation, a who-are rather than a who-is. Lunch with Morningblade and Paladin beckoned. And amongst the chaos and everything, comes the question, "Who are the Nine Muses you wrote about?"

Well, I must confess that I did a direct translation from the Greek texts, which accounts for the names and iconography. While I was doing that translation, nine very specific young ladies came to mind, all of whom (sadly) are not much longer for the Age which is soon passing. So I did have images about who they might look like, but I must stress that the goddess-phenotypes and goddess-archetypes all came first.

It just so happens that they resemble nine young ladies whose acquaintance I am honoured to have had. And that is all there is to it. I suppose that they young men of that cohort might be able to guess which ones, and I would probably acquiesce to the issuance of model answers. But again, I say, girls are girls; goddesses are goddesses; and you really should not confuse the two on pain of mortal agony and terror.

Hearting Inside

It's only been in the last couple of years that "I heart you" became a common term of endearment. It means (sometimes in equal parts, although that complicates the argument later) that the first person has affection for, has a great(ly) positive attitude to, is highly inclined to roll around on the floor with, the second person. It can, of course, mean other things as well.

But that's not the point. What gets me is that some people resent the conversion of (what is to them) a noun into a verb. In grouchier moods, I too feel a little of that resentment. Yet I can easily put it aside, reminding myself that if you can't stomach it, and you can't skin it alive or gut it, you can still eye it from a distance or hand it to someone else. It's not the first organ to be made into a verb; surely it will not be the last. (I have omitted some other organs because some verb forms are reserved mostly for undignified genres such as pornography or textbooks or both).

Are there any other 'organic' ways to convey one's deep appreciation of another person? Interesting question. "I liver you" sounds nice, but the opposite would intuitively be "I deliver you" which seems odd, since the latter is somewhat religious in tone and of positive semantic burden. We could try "I kidney you" but then the rejoinder is "I kidney you not" which seems more like an assertion of truth-telling than a statement of lack of affection.

What about "I lung you"? Sounds good, but "lunging you" sounds as if a preposition is missing (when it's probably a proposition that's about to be made) in a duel. "I finger you" is probably either gross or offensive (and can be grossly offensive). And "I brain you" is certainly not conducive to harmony. Some figures of speech are just too violent.

So what could possibly suffice to convey affection as deeply as "I heart you"?

I guess nobody nose.

Nasal

I was trawling through the murky waters of my section of the blogosphere when I spotted this. It was obviously written by someone I know for someone else I know. And it seems somewhat, even if only peripherally, related to the general mood at the moment. I present to you the poem rather oddly entitled, Nose.

=====
Nose

she asked if his name was a prophet's
she wondered at all on the road
she danced in the deeper discomfort
of bearing the heart-hidden load

she had no reply in the winter
she heard no reply in the spring
she looked at the deep-frozen thinker
upon the ice-hardened ring

in summer, he said, you shall see me;
in autumn before the leaves fall –
the words of the wind might not free me
but we all wait the sanctified call

the sight of a flame is not summons,
the sound of a drum not the horn;
but scent when the sacrifice beckons
and all will be bright in the morn

Yet Another Myth Take

I don't know why I bother. But sometimes, the suspicion that something interesting might come out of an otherwise silly business drives me to do certain things. I am occasionally a sucker for quizzes. Heh. What an odd result!

?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??

Hades
Take this quiz!




Quizilla

Chinoiserie?

Today I encountered something I'm sure has been around for a long time. It's just that I never really noticed it. The Canadian Zodiac (apparently a creation of one Charles Alexander Moffat) assigns an animal to each year in a twelve-year solar cycle. It was deliberately crafted with relation to the Chinese Zodiac, which is based on a lunar calendar and a 60-year cycle of elements and animals. Let me show you the years assigned to the various animals and you can draw your own conclusions. The following list shows [Canadian (Years Assigned) Chinese]. Note that the Chinese Lunar New Year starts in late January or early February, so there is some overlap; a person born in early January 1989 would be a Coyote/Dragon, not Coyote/Snake.

=====

Canadian/Chinese Year Assignments

Muskrat    (1912, 1924, 1936, 1948, 1960, 1972, 1984, 1996)       Rat
Caribou    (1913, 1925, 1937, 1949, 1961, 1973, 1985, 1997)        Ox
Gray Wolf  (1914, 1925, 1938, 1950, 1962, 1974, 1986, 1998)     Tiger
Hare       (1915, 1926, 1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999)    Rabbit
Polar Bear (1916, 1928, 1940, 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988, 2000)    Dragon
Coyote     (1917, 1929, 1941, 1953, 1965, 1977, 1989, 2001)     Snake
Moose      (1918, 1930, 1942, 1954, 1966, 1978, 1990, 2002)     Horse
Grizzly    (1919, 1931, 1943, 1955, 1967, 1979, 1991, 2003)      Goat
Fox        (1920, 1932, 1944, 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004)    Monkey
Loon       (1921, 1933, 1945, 1957, 1969, 1981, 1993, 2005)   Rooster
Beaver     (1922, 1934, 1946, 1958, 1970, 1982, 1994, 2006)       Dog
Goose      (1923, 1935, 1947, 1959, 1971, 1983, 1995, 2007)       Pig

You should refer to the original article to see what traits Moffat attributed to his totemic animals. Heh. I'm a grizzly goat.

Ecumenical Internationalism

The International Baccalaureate Organisation has many ideals, and one of them is internationalism, quite appropriately.

I was quite struck with its new logo, announced on 20 Apr 2007. If you examine it carefully, you will see all kinds of things. I am not sure all of them were intended, but that logo seems to pay tribute to all kinds of cultures and traditions while being beholden to none.

For example, I see a distinct Yin-Yang motif, an elephant's head, the traditional colours of the Holy Spirit, and a three-quarter lunar disc. There are probably more, but it's an interesting effort; if these ideas were deliberately incorporated, I'm impressed at their imagination.

And lastly, if you reference the link above, you will read about the process by which they arrived at this new logo. It's interesting and impressive that anyone should spend this much energy and time in something they believe in. If I weren't already a supporter of IB-type ideals, I would be converted.

Word of the Day: Autochthon

This is an interesting word. It is guaranteed to cause fits to Hangman players and players of other games who are taken unawares. Such players, trawling for vowels, will go through A, E and I before discovering the paucity thereof; on going doggedly onwards to O and U, they will find a rather unsettling distribution in the second part. What four consonants could those be, between the two Os?

But lexically, autochthon comes from the Greek auton, 'a thing itself' and chthonios, 'of the earth'. It denotes an entity which comes from where it is found. What? That's it? Yes, well... the Latin equivalent is aborigine, which means 'from the origin(al place)'.

The opposite of 'Chthonian' is 'Olympian'; that is, Chthonian is to Olympian as Earth is to Air, or as plebeian is to aristocrat – or symbolically, as hammer is to thunderbolt. That, of course, resonates with symbols from many places and cultures. I leave you to think about such resonances on your own.

Resignation

You sit in peace and calm upon the rock of your faith. You have divested yourself of worldly power, and authority is given unto you of a different kind. You exercise your gift and learn to strengthen it. And you realise that the race that you are to run is not the race that others wanted you to run. For the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but time and chance happen to them all. For you might soar on wings like those of an eagle, but you must remember Moses said the eagle is a detestable bird, and Obadiah prophesied that Edom, soaring like an eagle, would fall from the stars of heaven. You need not soar, except when the power above you sends rescue on such wings.

Resignation is seen as avoidance of worldly duty, resignation is seen as loss and failure. But to be resigned to the inevitable and the glory of the infinite is wisdom. For a servant who has served well, who has done his duty and has been acknowledged as such, can indeed resign; there is no shame in it. For after a tour of duty in the burdensome heat of the desert, who will blame the servant who takes up a cross for a crown? For that yoke is easy, and that burden is light; and uneasy is the head that wears a crown. Why do you chafe against the noose and kick against the goad? The worker is worthy of his hire, and the ox should not be muzzled when treading out the grain. You are humble, humbled, and yet in a strong and exalted place.

And there you should rest, until you are called once more to serve.

A Long Walk

On a clear hot day, you can see forever. You can walk along the corridors of the teeming hive, watching industry vie with the apathy of fatigue, watching the clash of intellect against intellect in the arena of the pit. Iron sharpens iron, as one man sharpens another, weapons in the hands of warriors. Salt in open wounds, salt for spoiled meat, salt, salt, saltiness. Salubrious and salaried, all mingling in the cauldron of sweat. The perspirate meet the aspirate, the desperate meet the vituperate. And from the ash a fire is woken, the cockatrice is born, the phoenix arises.

Lead is transmuted to gold, quicksilver is the unalloyed spirit, and the antimony withers on the chalcogen alembic. It is like that, it is all like that, no paean to the pagan coould capture this rippling suppleness of the fine and private place. This is a school, of discipline, of emotion, of intellect, of fish. The salmon leap, the sailor swears, the mermaid giggles and the old man rolls his trousers up as he looks out to the sea. The sea gurns, like the crystal watchglass of Atlantis.

Through the glass, we see the praetors, the lictors, the young proconsuls and the younger magistrates of a newer age. None carry sticks, let alone axes. None will wield a sickle for the harvest, or a hammer at the forge. And yet there is a bemused keenness in their gaze as they try so hard to influence their peers, to make them believe that they do not care and yet have great care for things that matter and do not. Byzantium's nightingale, and the doom of Rome.

Yet there is light, as from a tall hill, an old but mighty beacon. It is a pharos without the pharisees, it is a colossus in old gold now tinted with a coppery glaze. And it stands tall, like a giant beset by - no, not pygmies - but industrious and determined sappers. Will anything survive in this mighty pile of the works of man beneath the gaze of God?

The mind sizzles, the fuse burns down, the gelignite sweats its sweat of instability. Somewhere is a stable where four horses whicker to be ridden out, and four riders arm. Somewhere, justice waits to fall like a thunderbolt, an eagle stoops to conquer.

Yet behind the eyes, a reservoir of calm remains; God is in His heaven, eternity is in a grain of sand, terror stays in its pinch of dust. The lenses are unsullied. The windows of the soul are clear. And we will all give glory to the Highest in the end.

Grey Areas

There is a world where no more angels go
Where armoured hearts beat out the passing years
Confident in nothing, bold in dismay;
Here are the ashes of our yesterday,
Here are the echos of our fallen tears,
Here is the valley of eternal snow.

And yet one scents the iron in the frost,
One hears the distant horn of Roland lost;
And though the sun has swept its circle out
These many ages clouded here in doubt

There are still kings beneath the silted dross.
A tarnished helm, a chapel in the moss -
Now here and there, the light of dawn returns;
And in the ashen hearth, a fire burns.