walls/membranes.

Faith pours from your walls, drowning your calls
I’ve tried to hear, you’re not near
Remembering when I saw your face
Shining my way, pure timing
Now I’ve fallen in deep, slow silent sleep
It’s killing me, I’m dying

To put a little bit of sunshine in your life

Soleil all over you, warm sun pours over me
Soleil all over you
Warm sun

Now this slick fallen rift came like a gift
Your body moves ever nearer
And you will dry this tear
Now that we’re here, and grieve for me, not history
But now I’m dry of thoughts, wait for the rain
Then it’s replaced, sun setting

And suddenly you’re in love with everything

Soleil all over you, warm sun pours over me
Soleil all over you
Warm sun

(by badly drawn boy, listen to it here)

writing a thesis

[still writing, rewriting, rigging, shaking]

It isn’t easy to define a pebble.
If you’re satisfied with a simple description you can start out by saying that it’s a form or state of stone halfway between rocks and gravel.
But this already implies a concept of stone that must be validated. So don’t blame me for going even further back than the flood.

Francis Ponge

little miss tut and the object of tz.

i thought this was one of the OED’s less skillful descriptions:

tut, n

also tutt, -e, 9 Sc. tuts.

. 9 Sc. toot, tout; toots. [A natural utterance; the spelling tut sometimes represents the palatal click (also spelt TCHICK, TCK). Cf. also hut tut, hoot toot, hout tout s.v. HOOT int.] 

An ejaculation (often reduplicated) expressing impatience or dissatisfaction with a statement, notion, or proceeding, or contemptuously dismissing it. (The Sc. toot, toots, expresses mild expostulation.)

procrastinating pig.

i drew a pig.

apparently, i am a realist, innovative and active, without strong sense of family, not remembering dates, i am analytical, cautious and distrustful, i am a great listener and have a great sexlife.

the things science can tell you these days… ;o)

they didn’t ask me anything about the background! my pig wanted some mud to lie in and some sun to shine on it… hihi…

now that that’s established, back to work…

welcome to modernity.

dat as wi ech mer et firstellen wann ech texter liesen di vun dem absolutten ‘break’ tescht dem mettelalter an der modernzait schwetzen.

1600 am bulli.

d’sonn geet op iwwer engem klengen duerf iergendswou a metteleuropa.

den hunn kreit. kikerikiiiiiiiiii…

iergendwann enker as den jhempi erwaecht.

as dunn am laf vum moien bis an d’duerf getreppelt wou en de mett fanne wollt fir em eppes ze proposeieren.

wou en laanscht de kiirficht goung, as em de mond opstoe bliff, an en huet gegrommelt ‘nondidjoe’.

du hung ee grousse stofftene panneau gespaant tescht der kiirch an dem aeppelbaam op deem, op heckebelsch an latengesch stung: ‘wellkommen an der moderner zeit – si fenkt nexte mettwoch un’.

de probleem war just dass de jhemp nit vill fir d’liesen iwwrich hat…

wei geet d’geschicht weider?

note to self.

must write an english sonnet about the common agricultural policy one of these days.

that’s a challenge i would like to extend to all of you. send me poetry of the weirdest kind, and the most unexpected. no toilet humour please that would be boring.

it is pissing down with rain and i would like to curb my wine gum cravings otherwise than having to actually get some, so i write silly blogposts.

avishai cohen’s brilliance is making my head spin. ’structure in motion’ should you ever get your ears on it, will amaze you too. there are little guarantees in this world, but that is one of them.

watch this space! things can only get better.

taking care of thoughts.

last night our conversation turned on mind.

is it possible to keep taking care of our thoughts so they do not sediment into hardness with the consequence of stopping evolving and growing?

the other question concerned how we can stop living for other people’s approval, and how to keep apart their desires from our own, and what desires we choose to discard?

chasing cars in our heads it seems a lot of the time. that song woke me up this morning, along with cat being quite vocal and the rain outside having stopped and having left the place feeling very new. ended up in the blue lamp last night with cuban folk music with a scottish accent. aaaaah…

why is it that aberdeen has no places that serve tea and coffee after 8? i need to move.

under the rubric of ‘changing self to better’ my GP tells me it is time to act. alright then. i needed a push.

[image rippled from the web: paul klee, red balloon]

bees…

are, for example, very communicative creatures. The dance choreography they perform in the hive provides precise information as to where food sourcs can be found. The intricacy and complexity of the communication system… demonstrates a truly amzing capacity for bees to encode and communicate information in an abstract, symbolic way that would put to shame many a communications of GIS specialist let alone any architect (Von Frisch, 1965, took 40 years to map the dances). The code to the dance patterns was broken, almost by accident, by a mathematician who happened to be the daughter of a bee researcher. She recognised the patterns when projecting the properties of a six-dimensional flag manifold – a rare and obscure kind of mathematics – onto a two-dimensional space (Frank 1997). The entire repertory of bee dances with all of its innumerable parts and variations falls within a mathematical schema unknown to any architect. The only other known physical process to which such a mathematics applies concerns the quarks of quantum theory. This raises the speculative possibility that ‘the bees are somehow sensitive to what’s going on in the quantum world of quarks, that quantum mechanics is as important to their perception of the world as sight, sound and smell’.

[David Harvey 2000 Spaces of Hope, p. 201]

This is by far the most impressive thing I have read this week [well, considering it is Tuesday, and all...]. The following conclusions could be drawn, among others, of course:

1. superiority of humans my a***; 2. note that this woman Frank spent a lifetime deciphering the bees’ movements – that is dedication… chapeau! 3. the limits of my perception are the limits of my world; 4. what does that make of the question – what knowledge is appropriate for what analysis; 5. how to go from the idea to the realisation, from the potential to the actual, from the hope to the fulfillment without pain, without mild delusion, without growth and moments of weakness that jeopardise all…

work ain’t all in life, that much is sure, but somehow it manages to be at the centre of the themes covered in my thesis, along with (haalt iech fest…) temporality, possibility, closure, regulation, food, and placing.

menschlich, ach so menschlich. an ode to human fallibility and limits. or rather: a toast, for it is late!

frumoasa ca o stea…

inspired by masha’s chapter, i was thinking about scale a lot today. i find it intriguing why it is that when writing a thesis in anthropology we are thinking about ’scales’ and what this implies about our perception of the world. walking along in the sun the question occurred to me why, in english, the word is the same to describe the outer shells of a fish and when, later i checked my friend the OED, i had a surprise. the meanings of ’scale’ have varied a lot throughout time, and there are seven entries under the noun ’scale’ in the OED, all covering multiple things and processes.

etymology for beginners (you know i like this kind of crap…)

[a. ON. skál str. fem., bowl, pl. (weighing) scales (Sw. skål, Da. skaal: cf.

SKOAL) = OHG. scâla (MHG. schâle, mod.G. schale):OTeut. *skl, ablaut-var. of *skal, whence OE. scealu shell, hust, drinking cup, weighing scale (see SHALE n.¹), OHG. scala shell, husk (MHG., mod.G. schale); the quantity of the vowel is doubtful in OS. skala cup, and in the ODu. antecedent of MDu. schaleschaal), though it is probable that in Du. as in Ger. two original forms, skâla cup, scales, and sklascealu the inflexion appears to attest the short vowel in all the senses. The WGer. *skla (:OTeut. *skl, skal) passed into OF. as eschale, escale cup (med.L. scala ‘patera’), also husk (mod.F. écale). For the Teut. root *skel-: skal-: skl- to separate, divide, cf. SHALE, SHELL, SKILL. See also SKELE.
Between the first quarter of the 13th c. and the 16th c. the forms (containing the vowel a) represent the northern pronunciation, the forms being midland and southern. In the 16th c., however, the northern scalescale is the prevailing literary form, though scole (with other equivalent spellings) occasionally appears down to the middle of the century.] (Du. husk, shell, have become phonetically coincident. For the OE. seems to have found its way into the London dialect, being used by Palsgrave and later by Spenser and Shakes. In the 17th c.

–> from this the meanings of scale as the apparatus of measure, metaphorical for justice, etc.

[aphetic a. OF. escale (12th c.), mod.F. écale husk, pod, chip of stone:

OTeut. *skal (see SCALE n.¹, SHALE n.). OF. had also escaille (13th c.), mod.F. écaille scale of fish, shell of oyster, etc. = It. scaglia:Romanic (also med.L.) scalia, a. OTeut. *skalj (see SHELL n.) from the same root; this is perh. the source of some of the ME. spellings.]

–> from this the meanings clustering around the scales of fish and other reptiles. entirely different origin and related to nutshell in a nice way

[ad. It. scala or its source L. scla:

prehist. *scansl (scand- + -tl), f. scandre to climb (see SCAND v.). Cf. Pr., Sp., Pg. escala, OF. eschieleéchelle).] (mod.F.

–> a ladder (obsolete), musical scales, and scales as in mathematics, psychology, etc.

[ad. OF. scal(l)e, escal(l)e (mod.F. escale, esp. in phr. faire escale to go ashore) or its source It. scala = Sp., Pg. escala seaport, harbour:

L. scla ladder (see SCALE n.³).]

–> this one is also obsolete but i like it.

a. A landing-place; occas. a custom-house. rare. b. A seaport town; a trading port; a centre of trade or traffic; an emporium.

and it occurred to me that we like stars and find them beautiful because they make us think about scale (besides all the modern romantic connotations we tend to put on them). it is an existential problem, and of being human in a world that is huge.

why do you find stars beautiful?

to melt, verb.

[A merging of two distinct words: (i) (represented by the alpha forms) an Old English strong verb of Class III (orig. intransitive), cognate with an unattested early Scandinavian verb to be inferred from a surviving past participial adjective (cf. Icelandic moltinn soft, mouldering (18th cent.), Norwegian (Nynorsk) molten soft, mouldering, Old Swedish multin rotten (Swedish multen), Danish regional multen rotten); cf. also (with a different Germanic ablaut grade) Old High German malz soft, melting, dissolving (Middle High German malz melting, powerless), Icelandic maltur soft, mouldering (16th cent.), Swedish regional malt mouldering; and (ii) (represented by the forms) an Old English weak verb (causative of the former, and orig. transitive), cognate with Old Icelandic melta to digest, dissolve, and an unattested Gothic verb to be inferred from Gothic gamalteins (verbal noun) dissolution (translating ancient and Hellenistic Greek 2 Timothy 4:6: see ANALYSIS n.); both ult. < an extended form of the Indo-European base of MEAL n.¹ Cf. also Sanskrit mdu soft, ancient Greek to melt, classical Latin mollis soft, Welsh blydd soft, juicy, Old Church Slavonic mlad young, fresh, and the Germanic cognate forms with s- prefix cited s.v. SMELT v. Cf. MALT n.¹, MILT n.
The forms represent later reflexes of the Old English and forms. The two words were prob. already confused in Old English; and by the Middle English period the strong and weak inflections were used indiscriminately, the former becoming gradually less frequent (the appearance of such mixed forms as moltid (past tense), melten (past participle) indicates a complete confusion of forms). The strong past tense (esp. in the forms molt, molte, moult, moulte by analogy with the past participle) continued in use in the early modern period, albeit infrequently and chiefly in poetry. The weak past participle melted is now the usual form, with the strong form molten chiefly confined to poetic use (cf. MOLTEN adj.).
In Old English the prefixed forms gemeltan (cf. forms above) and gemieltan (cf. forms above) are also attested; some of the past participle forms with ge- cited above may represent these verbs.]

[brought to you by the OED, a source of infinite wisdom...]

yours verbally-logorrheatically but as ever unapologetically,

nutshell-sisyphus [il faut imaginer sisyphe heureux et nutshell heureuse].