It's all silly and dumb

Posted by I'm the penguin | Posted in | Posted on Sunday, November 14, 2010

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I don't really know why I post about this, but here's a piece of Vonnegut's Jailbird that I personally found amusing. I'm not very sure if the deep content is what I'm figuring it to be, or if It has anything to do with what I think. Just read it and find meaning, if you're willing to.

"I feel so silly," said Sarah.

"You don't believe you're beautiful?" said her grandmother.

"I know I'm beautiful," said Sarah. "I look in a mirror, and I think, 'I'm beautiful.'"

"What's wrong then?" said her grandmother.

"Beautiful is such a funny thing to be," said Sara. "Somebody else is ugly, but I'm beautiful. Walter says I'm beautiful. You say I'm beautiful. I say I'm beautiful. Everybody says, 'Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,' and you start wondering what it is, and what's so wonderful about it."
[...]
"It's so silly," she said. "It's so dumb," she said.

"Perhaps you shouldn't think about it so much," said grandmother.

"That's like telling a midget to stop thinking about being a midget," said Sarah, and she laughed again.

"You should stop saying everything is silly and dumb," said her grandmother.

"Everything is silly and dumb," said Sarah

"You will learn differently as you grow older," her grandmother promised.

"I think everybody older just pretends to know what's going on, and it's all so serious and wonderful," said Sara. "Older people haven't really found out anything new that I don't know. Maybe if people didn't get so serious when they got older,we wouldn't have a depression now"


---
Isn't it all silly and dumb? Isn't it all so light, so unbearable and non-transcendental? All this social constructions that hold together out little beloved world as we know it, aren't they the most silly and unimportant of things in the universe?

Also, about older people pretending to have answers, that's something I've come to agree with. Growing up I always had all these questions about existence and explanations for things I couldn't understand. Grown-ups seemed to deal with those things just fine, as if it was very clear to them, as if the answers of the universe revealed themselves just with time. They made me believe so.
And you go on thinking that.
Until, of course, you notice that in case they're wondering the same, they've been just as scared and confused as you've been (or worse), they just learn how to ignore it. Or deal with it. The things, I think, is that in the end, we're all just taller children.


---

And it's dumb... thinking of you like a __________

Sulfuric demon.

Posted by Mrs. Kite | Posted in | Posted on Saturday, November 13, 2010

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-“Es el olor del demonio.”
-“En absoluto, está comprobado que el demonio tiene propiedades sulfúricas.”
-“That’s the scent of the devil.”
-“Not at all, it is proved that the devil has sulfuric properties.”

Let's not forget that Mr. Galileo Galilei described the location, shape, and dimensions of Dante's Inferno. xD

All you need is courtesy

Posted by I'm the penguin | Posted in | Posted on Friday, November 12, 2010

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Kurt Vonnegut put in one of his Prologues (Jailbird) something that might or might not be fiction, but to me it's all the same, you know that. It was about a young man writing a letter to him, that could touch the core of all of Vonnegut's work in a single phrase:

"Love may fail, but courtesy will prevail"

The author concurred that the phrase was accurate and complete into describing what he tried to say in his dozens of works. And then makes a punch line about how much time could have been saved having generated that phrase before.

That's a curious piece of information.

But what else is it? It got me thinking about humanity, its problems and love. Relationships are very complicated: partner, friend and family wise. We continuously talk about how love could fix every problem, if it was extended to every person: to love like a brother and sister every person on the planet. Hippies. But isn't this the single most idealistic thing? Even more than communism (I'm obviously stating a similarity). It's hard as it is to keep families from wrecking and being dismembered, it is an extremely rare event for friends to remain close after tests of time, and don't even get me started in the partner department: we've made (as a specie) enough songs, books, paintings, bank accounts and restrain orders to burn all and have enough energy to heat Earth for a million years (completely arbitrary and bad analogy). All that, just to say how fucking hard is it to keep someone around who will listen to how did you do at work and kiss you good night.

Love, as I see it, is a very complicated social system, that despite all of its social, mystic and economic powers conferred by us, tends to utterly fail.

So how else are we ever going to fix these crazy naked apes?
Courtesy and kindness I suppose.

No strings attached, only a few teaspoons (or tons) of empathy and a little verbal ability could do it. No one has ever suffered from a broken heart out of being courteous have they?

...
If only we could realize everyone's just as lonely and confused about it all, or more, than us; I think we'd be bonobos instead of gorillas.

Ideas de gitano

Posted by Mrs. Kite | Posted in , | Posted on Thursday, November 11, 2010

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Si has de volverte loco, vuélvete tú solo, pero no me trates de inculcar tus ideas de gitano.
If you’re turning mad, do it yourself, but don’t come and try to give me your gipsy’s ideas.

Not much to say about this one,
it is filled with exquisite beauty and brutal honesty.

In my case, regarding this, I have this.
I am the gipsy, and the scientist.

Voces

Posted by I'm the penguin | Posted in | Posted on Wednesday, November 10, 2010

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Y desde mis voces yo corro y finjo
Mis voces, que
desafían, se desafían
y desafinan.

Convergen y se disipan.

Dan un juicio y dos y tres
y rebaten y destruyen.
Crean pinaculos de verdad
sobre grumos de aire.
Pintan el cielo de azules obscuros
y las mentiras de miel acaramelada.

Mis voces que otorgan y gritan
que se desgarran al ser liberadas
y susurran palabras de aliento al confundido.
Palabras de invierno al alegre,
y notas de muerte al vivo.

Mis voces que no mienten pero si farfullan
que no hablan pero nunca callan
se elevan al atardecer y se condensan
en figuras de porcelana que no tienen otro destino
más que caer por su propio peso
y destrozarce

Y cuando se elevan las nubes se desarticulan
mis voces se secan y se deshacen.

Entonces pronuncio un aire de reproche
y como títeres, se alzan al ataque.
Mi bosque madura.

Sun war

Posted by Mrs. Kite | Posted in , , | Posted on Tuesday, November 09, 2010

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Los complicados artes de la guerra solar.
The complex art of the solar war.

Geek time!
Lets talk about Archimedes Death Ray.

“Archimedes who created a mirror with an adjustable focal length (or more likely, a series of mirrors focused on a common point) to focus sunlight on ships of the Roman fleet as they invaded Syracuse, setting them on fire.”

Turns out, it is one of the awesomestest [sic] things to try with light and mirrors.
MIT did it, read it, it’s awesome. :D

Ceci n'est pas un post

Posted by I'm the penguin | Posted in | Posted on Monday, November 08, 2010

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I love Magritte, his illustrations are rich and beautiful, and have a meaning deeper than may appear, or so I love to believe.

This special work is pretty, but it is actually more valuable because of its meaning. Ceci n'est pas une pipe- This is not a pipe.

Sure, at first you'd think "Of course it's a pipe, he's just stating the contrary to the obvious" which wouldn't be wrong, I guess, but is not the point.


The point is making the partition between representation, concepts and reality. That's truly not a pipe, but a group of shades and tones that form a figure that has enough characteristic features that resemble the image of what the object named "pipe" looks like.

It is not a pipe, but the representation of the concept. And that's a partition worth observing, because in real life we constantly encounter ourselves mistaking the concept with the real with, and vice versa. Now, I might be inflating it more than it was intended to, but how I see it, it is an awesome critique of how ideas work in society.

There the real thing, the atom made structure that exists in reality. And then there's the concepts that inhabits in electric impulses and a social network of collective memories. And being very objective, the atom-based structure existed already (in case of non-human made objects) without us, it was us who made it an idea, packed it inside a name and gave it life within the realm of ideas. Like a tree. The cells that conform it where there and will be there with or without naming, yet I don't have to put a picture of one for you to think about it, because we've wrapped the thing inside a concept and a name so we can carry it on our mind pockets.

And there are so many things that inhabit the world of ideas, not only the concepts, but meanings too. When I write tree maybe not only the image of a tree comes up, but also the peace and quite trees commonly have as a connotation. The atom-based structures don't posses these properties per se, we assign them and conform a context and meanings. And so in the world of collective ideas that we create, begin to exist conjuncted meanings, concepts and feelings. Forming a whole network of thoughts and meanings that become more complex than the actual atom-based world (in some ways only).

It doesn't rest at that, the world of ideas often is used to explain the world of atoms, and as long as the world of ideas makes sense to itself, the world of atoms is condemned to be described any way it is. But I'm setting it too dramatic, for the atom world cannot actually worry about it, or does it? Weren't we atoms realizing their own existence?(topic for other post). Anyway, this world of ideas is also very particular, because it is in constant change, reformation and reinterpretation. And so it is an unstable flux of ever changing ideas.

And so we're left with two worlds: the real world and the world of ideas. And being cultural animals as we are, we need to question every chance we have, in which world are we living? And which are the consequences of our interpretation of the world based on what reality are we choosing to live?


I'll just leave it at that, saying that this is precisely why I love this painting so much. (Sorry Magritte, I know you said no to look too deep into it, but to be me I had to...)
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