Sunday, July 24, 2005

the runaway idea of Shakespeare

I am a little surprised to hear that Scott reads science fiction, I wouldn’t have expected it, nor did I expect that he would still be reading Shakespeare. Science Fiction itself is a genre that I think can be compared to video games; SF readers and Video Game players are stuck in some type of a mental loop that they do not seem to recognize; there are a finite number of alien civilizations and a finite number of obstacles and enemies. SF in particular always reconstructs the same theme, which could be summarized as: rational is a practical tool that should not be taken to extremes, technology will save the universe and in the future emotions will serve feelings in a jar. By an large most science fiction entails a pseudo compromise of three things, feelings, biology and technology and they are not much more brilliant than that; science fiction landscapes sustain the same political realities that we perceive today, the same rivalries, the same economic difficulties and similar apocalyptic endeavors.

And then Scott makes the mental leap which few with any frame of reference would make by noting that Shakespeare is science fiction, and that trounces the mind. Is it possible? I take another sip of my cup of coffee. The thought comes like a two ton piece of iron 30 feet long, four feet wide and four inches thick. It doesn’t fit. I take another sip of coffee.

I always have said that I am bored by Shakespeare, I wish we would get over him and move on. But then I am also bored by Freud and Tchaikovsky and Darwin. I just want to move on, I mean 80 decades of psychoanalysis ought to be enough to include two orbits of repetition! Two centuries of evolution and we have not evolved beyond it! Why then evolution itself must be the best argument against evolution.

I think ideas some times are like lollypops, only after a while a lollipop melts away and ideas unfortunately don’t come with self destruct tags, and there is the folly of it. As a result some ideas permeate civilizations well beyond their times and prevent other more brilliant ideas, (read brilliant ideas like mine,) and thus ideas suffer from very long tails that squash everything.

Someone less brilliant might say, “But Ricardo doesn’t the fact that the idea of evolution has lasted almost two centuries, doesn’t that mean that it is fertile and rich with insight and thus humanity’s intellect continues to mine it?”

No! Absolutely no! An idea is only fertile the first quarter of its life expectancy. Psychoanalysis like Relativity were both exhausted of prime material by the 1970s; there has been no significant revelation made by either camp since the 1980s killed all lines of thought and turned the world into pure action adventure. According to ideal idea life expectancies, having successfully survived adolescence both psychoanalysis and relativity should die out within the next fifty years. Psychoanalysis gets a little longer life expectancy because it is not so much a science as it is an expression of sedentary angst.

“Bur Sir Ricardo how do you know the quarter fertile life of an idea without knowing when it died?”

It is a good question but not a wise or principled one. There is no need to suspect that ideas have reached the level of half life principles that Radioactivity has championed. Radioactivity has proven beyond all doubt that it is the most substantive singular idea that has ever existed. All things appear to have to come to terms with radiation, and the idea that cockroaches will survive an atomic bomb has obviously not been tested. If I am correct, and there is no reason nor contemporary evidence that disproves this, then radioactivity can also help us date ideas, in much the same way that carbon dating allows us to date mummies.

The reason for using radioactivity its because it is pervasive, all encompassing and thus it is an absolute. And as any department of weights and measures will tell you, rulers have to be absolute! Now having defined the ruler where do we start measuring? This is not as foolish a question as it sounds, it is subject to two possible interpretations but fortunately no more than that and so there is 50/50 chance that we will get it right and if not we can change our minds and still get it right anyways.

Our starting points have to be when the human species came to be or when ideas came to be within the human species? We have to decide if ideas were born with the inception of homo sapiens or if ideas were born after homo sapiens? That is, is having an idea synonymous with homo sapient existence or is an idea a parasite mandating a precursor homo sapient?

Like I’ve said, we may go either way but there is another problem, that is no one knows when humans really came into existence so we don’t know when idea & homo sapiens could have arisen. Rumor has it that it was about 300 thousand years ago. That is not a long time and it assumes that we have all the evidence and well of course we don’t for much of what we know about our origins is pure science fiction with a doctoral endeavor as its only supporting structure.

Yet I think we may ascertain one thing, humans have not been around for more than a million years and I am very comfortable with that large margin for error. A million years ago there weren’t a lot things here, and so a million years ago some chemical biology could have risen to create homo sapiens, or god could have said, “Let there be Adam and Eve.” (That must have been his wisest move, naming things, baptism and cataloguing go hand in hand.) Or some aliens might have germinated the planet a mere million years ago. So there you have it, starting with a none to precise number we have been kind and added longevity and resistance and a long time of ignorance to the human species.

A starting point is everything, we humans work a lot on beginnings and endings and so we are fortunate that it is only a million years ago; 100 thousand to the tenth power, 333 thousand multiplied by 3 plus a little more, or half a million twice, a million is nothing really!

I think you are getting the picture mi Rosa, Rosa mia, Rosa Rosa, if ideas & homo sapiens were born at the same time then the extreme extremists mostess fertile period for ideas can only be 25% of that existence! Then it stands to reason that all ideas must absolutely start to die after a theoretical maximum of 250 thousand years! That is an incredible discovery for it will allow us to measure if an idea has gotten away with humanity. That permits us to know if an idea is becoming too autonomous from us humans and thus dangerous to the human species.

Suppose for instance that the idea of there being an omnipotent being was an idea that considered the god-idea more important than the human species, to the point that the idea God would ask humanity to sacrifice itself for the god-idea. Well with our new criteria for the life expectancy of ideas we could readily conclude that such an idea was getting out of hand and, barring there being a Galileo with another idea to challenge it for the hearts and minds of our peoples, then such an idea might have to be put to death! And if peoples wouldn’t want to let go of it, even as they knew it to be bad for them, we could instead give them a lollipop until it melts.

Or suppose for instance that there was a nullifying point for evolutionary theory, a point at which humanity ceases to perfect itself through evolution because the environment is no longer a challenge; if there is no conflict with your surroundings then evolution might nullify itself. Where there is no need to adapt why therefore Darwin? One can easily imagine humanity creating such an artificial environment, an environment so subservient to humanity that any evolution could only be a consequence of manipulation. I don’t know if manipulation has been considered as a factor in evolutionary theory but I damn well doubted. The point here being that ideas can and may indeed die of natural causes, i.e. the environment is no longer favorable, or in catastrophes, i.e. unexpectedly turning into vulgar British comedy.

But let us continue with the difficulty or not of our measure. The fact of the matter is that the assumption that ideas are born with homo sapiens is wrong. What if ideas were born before homo sapiens? Why we happen to know that Homo Habilis used tools, and to me you have to have the idea to use tools, maybe that is not the same as making tools but if you use a stick to get at some delicious red ants you are in the idea, dark chocolate ideas cannot be far away. Only Habilis wasn’t apparently very successful, indeed in the evolutionary racetrack it dropped out of the race. But that doesn’t mean that we can avoid the heavy to lift idea: Is it possible that ideas originated before homo sapiens?

Minds cannot hold such things, it is easy to think that we are the uppermost intelligent of life forms, that doesn’t require any heavy lifting, but the idea that the human species was preconceived by an idea, a superlative at that, that is not so easily graspable and so I grapple with it. Shit, it is easy to say physical evidence easily implies that we are less than a million years old as a species but how do you date the origins of idea if such by reason of causation were to predate the advent of Milesian aquatics and even homo sapiens?

I now realize that we are a little dizzy from where we started, for now there is a third question so it is no longer a 50/50 proposition of error. Idea before humanity, Idea after humanity or Idea and humanity at the same time? That is the question.

Which in a round about way gets us back to Shakespeare, and that might actually help us to answer the question as Shakespearean thought has been one of the most repetitive ideas of all time to the point where it can even build theaters, actors, writers, wealth, and dramas in real life as a matter of pure consequence. This is a clear and unspoiled sign of a mature idea, The Shakespearian idea is a mature idea because it builds things, immature ideas, that is to say ideas that are still fertile cannot build anything because they haven’t even constructed themselves.

And I think here we have finally gotten a hold of something solid, at least when it comes to ideas, which as you have witness is not an easy thing to do. And that solid thing is that ideas that are mature build genuine and solid things! Shakespeare today is an industry, it edifies London and Londoners and indeed civilization; acting or directing a Shakespearian play is often the crux of a fine career; and quoting Shakespeare a sign of self inflicted cultural kudos. More important you don’t have to think Shakespeare any more, everyone knows Shakespearian thought, even the commonest of the commonest, the lowliest of the lowliest knows something or other about the much ado about Shakespeare.

And because it is an all pervasive idea it makes it very easy to lavish and subsidize it, and to recreate more of the idea anew until this idea enters every aspect of our existence. And thus I now bleakly realize what a logical transition it was for Scott to conclude that Shakespeare is science fiction. Far from being a brilliant insight it is rather a logical foretelling of what is inevitable, there will be a Quantumitized Hamlet; a Hamlet that at once is and isn’t, a hamlet in 11 stringing dimensions that uses a tractor-bean to bring about the murderers of his father, a Hamlet that will use 3D glasses to see his adulterous mother, a Hamlet that rages through the universe in a hyper-navi-usv squeaking atoms from his rage; and finally a Hamlet that realizes how insignificant he is after overreaching the frailty of his vanities. And in this final episode we can see Hamlet put a finite point in the universe, where he inks with his own blood the stained idea that ideas are before man and will be so after man.

A ruler cannot measure an object larger than itself.

RC

Sunday, July 10, 2005

CATFISH

All of a long knife, waiting there to take on this thing, where did we get started? Oh yeah I was one of the boys, well not really one of them, we grew up together and now we were all graduated, well I was sort of graduated, very close, only a couple of more months of some classes that I had wanted to take so as to feel overly academic.

Matt, Huston and I, we were the inseparable trio though my not being athletic had always somehow jeopardized the genuine equilibrium of our friendships.

Today we were sitting here on the couch at Mrs. Monties house, it was at Mrs. Monties that we grew up, she had three lovely daughters, and all six of us grew up in this house playing with Cocker Spaniel Albert, so named after Albert Einstein, Mrs. Monties liked men like Einstein, distant that is, neutered like Albert; she herself had had three daughters already when she moved into our neighborhood, some how it wasn’t necessary to ask about a father or a husband. The girls, Miniach, Ann and Lundi never mentioned a father, when they got here they were all fine and complete without one. Mrs. Monties invited the local college professors over for many an engaging conversation on the topics of the day but we never saw any love interest, we sort of accepted her autodidactic marriage.

Today, we were all going to celebrate the graduates together, a nice Sunday lunch awaited us all at Marley’s. Marley’s was as expensive as it was delicious; Mrs. Monties was treating us to a celebration of the mostly successful conclusion of our studies. Miniach, Ann and Lundi were still getting ready while Mrs. Monties was tidying up the house, something she liked to do a lot. Me and the boys were just sitting in the family room, overlooking a fine green lawn, ignoring the occasional bird or Albert’s barking and simply talking about our assured future successes with one exception; Huston, he had graduated a year earlier, as was his right as he was a year older than Matt and I, which was why he was already on his first year out in the workforce, a successful investment banking something.

I never took the time to understand what it was that Huston did, it wasn’t that he didn’t explain it to us several times, but perhaps it was how he explained it. Always in terms of his salary, why just today he had confessed, “…this next year alone I could end up making a quarter of a million dollars and I don’t know what I do to earn all that money.”

Yeah, I kind of agreed with that, I don’t know what anyone could possibly do to earn that kind of money. Matt was in awe of the amount and he was asking for pointers on how to land a job with Huston’s firm in New York; only the matter was that Huston didn’t seem near helping him.

“Well Matt, its like this,” Hands gesturing unknown modalities, “…to get you in I think is easy but do you really want to be in investment banking? I mean you have to consider how much of a fanatic you are, these guys that you could be working with are highly accelerated types, they are always eating vitamin A, its daily tennis, that fast, that strenuous and that confusing in scoring, and so you want to give it some thought because it is not for everyone.”

Fortunately Matt was a sensitive fellow but not an intuitive one and so he was undaunted, he would crash into that wall as he put it himself in a less robust fashion: “Well I would like to give it a try, my major was after all in Economics so I am suited for the role at least academically, and I intend to pursue a masters. Why I could fly down next week and maybe you could set up some meetings for me.” Yes, that was the Matt I knew, perfectly tuned to nothing but himself and his unknown objective; he was a homing pigeon he would fly anywhere he thought you wanted him to fly as long as it wasn’t towards himself.

Then there was me, in-between the laughter and the naive eternality of our friendship I had nothing more in common with these boys than my neighborhood; a neighborhood that grows over time because you live in it and you see the same faces over and over again and so they conscript themselves as part of your essence, there in your mental catalog they all successfully flutter. Miniach, Ann, Lundi, Matt, Huston, Mrs. Monties; and even types like Joe the elder statements of the neighborhood, having amply proven himself the helper of the neighborhood, Joe was Matt’s father, always ready to come over and cut your lawn help fix a leaky faucet. And then there was The Admiral.

The admiral was the go to guy for advice, he always knew what to do in any situation, he would always reasonably settle any fights between us boys. I will never forget the time that Huston and Matt dragged me through the cement in a fit of communed rage over possession of a silly water gun. My knees all bruised up and somehow we ended at the presence of the admiral. He quickly bandaged my knees up nicely, this after pouring aching disinfectant and then joining us via an all encompassing group hug, my tears were moot, I toss them off my face with a backhand and started smiling with the boys; heck we were memories for life times.

“Yoohoo boys, I need one of you to do me a favor before we leave for Marley’s.” From the deep end of the hallway, a hallway that tunneled in grayness in-between the well lighted family room to the equally well lighted dining room, there stood lacquered red hair Mrs. Monties. Her ricocheting smile, her firm grasp of the crown feathered duster, “Well which one of you boys is going to do me this favor?” The girls lined up behind her, and from there studiously analyzed us boys, their eyes were focusing on me, their smiles were focusing on me, their thoughts were pinpointed, “Jake he looks so noble…” “Why look how handsome he looks with those curls…” “…Yes he will do it for you mommy…” And that was that, Matt and Huston went to toss around a football while Mrs. Monties channeled herself from one end of the hallway to administer instructions.

Her fingers flirting through my curls, “They are so cute.” While I recollected how much free work I had nicely done for this woman, and here I was again. “All you need to do is take this here knife and go get me the catfish that is at The Admirals…” Her requests were always flirting with happiness, “…he promised me fresh fish and I just want it scaled and fillet so I can refrigerated before we leave for lunch.” She pauses as if to think with her index finger poking her cheek, “Why maybe we could even have it for supper. Yes.”

There was no question mark about the task at hand, again the neighborhood sort of builds itself into you and you are no longer just yourself, you are owned by the neighborhood it is so much you that it cannot leave you alone. I was all dressed up in olive trousers, a lightly yellow shirt and a mostly blue Cashmere sweater; and I despised with all intensity the smell of fish and fish in a bone and the scales of a fish more so, thus my fainted refusal. “But I will get all dirty just scaling the fish Mrs. Monties, how about I do it after lunch?”

“Oh nonsense Jake I will get you an old raincoat that I have had forever and it doesn’t matter if it gets dirty and then all you have to do is wash your hands afterwards and that will be that.” Hearing nothing else she fast tracked to the coat closet and in animated fast-forward returned with a brown raincoat and helped me put it on or just put it on me. The she handed me a large meat cutting knife and with that I went across the street, in a tight raincoat on a bright sunny day, with a knife in hand to get a catfish from the admiralty.

The admiral owned a sailboat and he was known for his good will gestures of bringing fish from his wild sea outings for the neighbors. I knocked at the door. “Jake how are you son? Come right on in.”

I entered at there was a beer drinking, spent the night here gang all over the house.

“Hey ballast and sailors say hello to Jake.”

They all valiantly championed off their hangovers “Hello Jake, Hello comrade.”

A nice and jolly old lady even launched a compliment my way, “Sure wishing I were a little younger right now.”

The admiral as master of ceremonies interjected, “Helda don’t be so pessimistic maybe the lad likes them good old oldies.”

The gang fornicated all over that joke and the admiral molested himself to guide me down the hallway into a smelly bathroom, that had a huge fish tank and thus he left me. “There it is boy you take that nice one there to Mrs. Monties, and tell her I kept it all lively fresh for her.”

There was this huge catfish glistening before me, giving me that non stare that is the gift of fish to give. Swimming back and forth in this aquarium that was only twice his size, thus no sooner had he gone in a straight line that he had to turn around by making slight undulations in the water, and so he kept on doing this before the man in the raincoat with the knife.

I went back without the fish, Mrs. Monties opened the door or her door was always open in our neighborhood, I threw the knife on the table while saying, “I cant do it Mrs. Monties.” And with that I let out a blistering sigh of relief.

“What do you mean Jake! Why I will have none of that, you boys cannot be disrespectful to me, you go back and get me that fish, you haven’t grown up so much that you can just be rude to someone that has cared for you all your life.” She took the knife and placed it in my hand and said. “Now go on and get me the silly fish and hurry we best be getting to Morley’s quickly.” Her resoluteness was indefatigable.

I stormed back into the admirals house, trying not to think about fish, trying not to think about anything, reflection was my problem, I was always reflecting upon things and that is why I couldn’t really do anything. My major was philosophy, I didn’t know how to scale a fish, I hypothesize about it, you just rasp the knife’s edge against the scales and they will readily come off, after that you slice the fish in half, and then cull off the fillet from the skeleton. Cannot be that hard. After scaling over the admirals gang and reaching the bathroom and facing the aquarium, and catfish yet again I realized that catfish was still alive; this wasn’t just about cleaning catfish, catfish had to be killed first. I sat on the toilet seat and reflected upon my situation.

The tank that stank had to have a limited supply of oxygen right? I didn’t know how gills worked but I had heard that fish may suffocate in water, that they can exhaust an entire seacoast of oxygen; however this catfish was the size of half of my arm and longer by three to four inches, he didn’t seem set to die of natural causes. I thought, if I could just hold him out of the water for a few seconds and if so he would drown from the over exposure to fresh air and that would do it. That was it.

Fishing his slimy body from the small aquarium was a cinch, all I then had to do was just allow enough time, catfish out of the water and he would collapse. I reached in and elevated catfish with my arms into the air as if I were offering him to the gods; and the thing was heavy maybe five or six pounds of catfish there and he hastened to a furious rush of flapping, and in the wet floor we lost our balance and catfish fell on top off me; and pretty soon we were both splashing all over the wet floor, as I was trying to grab him and he seemed not to want me to grab him, though I finally did and raised myself to my feet and without thinking I threw him back into the fish tank! Fuck! I couldn’t do it.

The raincoat had repelled water but not the stank from the tank, and I walked over to Mrs. Monties, and climbed over the fence, instead of going through the gate, as I was now more adrenalin driven, and I opened the welcoming door and there were all of them sitting there, waiting for me, and the chorus was thunderous, “We are all starving here waiting for you Mr. Jake!”

Mrs. Monties started on me. “What is going on Jake? For Christ sake it is just a little fish inst it?”

“Yes Mrs. Monties, I am sorry for taking so long but its just that the fish is not dead…” Gesturing with my hands and arms, “…it is a large and well alive catfish!”

“Well of course it is alive, it is kept fresh that way that is why I gave you the knife all you have to do is cut its head off!” With that she walked around the coffee table while frustratingly grabbing her head.

Matt, who could not stand to see any woman in any form of misery, “Mrs. Monties don’t worry I will go get the fish, why Huston will help me, we will bring it right back and clean it, it will only take us fifteen to twenty minutes at most, count on us.”

Her frustrated eyes raised towards the kind young man, and then she marched over to me, cringing. “Look that is very nice of Matt to offer but you are already wearing the coat and it will just take you a little bit of effort to get this done fast, there is no need for anyone else to get dirty here, please Jake!”

The admiral with a sleepy hussy on his lap gave me a reassuring drunkard’s smile, “Back again Jake?” I didn’t respond, there was nothing to say, I just walked over to the bathroom angry and despondently determined.

Catfish was back to normal, back to that indifferent stare, he didn’t seem to hold a grudge or any other kind of feeling, he was swimming in his forced oval circuit. I grabbed him again raising my arms, and tried hard to ignore everything that I could think, “How old is this fish? What seas has it swam? Has it had a chance to spawn? Will it know it was me that killed him? Does he have a memory of my neighborhood?” stuff like that, and while I was ignoring all those thoughts the fish drowned in my hands from all the fresh air.

I sat on the toilet and put him on my lap. I kind of knew this fish now. I looked all around the bathroom and in the empty aquarium but I didn’t see his ghost anywhere. I took the knife and dutifully cut his head off, the blood running throughout my fingers and palms, almost crawling up my arms, his head fell to the tile floor. I scrubbed the scales off his body or peeled his skin and it all seemed just like I had imagined, some parts of this lump of fish required a little more elbow grease but they all mostly came off. Until all I had on me was now catfish fillets.

I got up and threw them fillets back into the aquarium. I then went back to the expectant Mrs. Monties and friends, “Hey I wont be joining you guys for lunch today.” And with that I walked off to enjoy a nice sunny day’s walk, still wearing my stank.

RC