Thoughts Untitled

I love to run my fingers across the covers of a book. To hold it in both hands, like a lover. I stand before my bookcase. It too is a beautiful thing; a stained pine cabinet built in from floor to ceiling and stretching across 16ft of floor boards. The sun spills in across the north facing balcony, through the sliding doors, and stretches its warm fingers towards the books and vinyl records. Like me, the sunlight yearns to behold these sensual creatures. I reach out to the Genuine Works of Hippocrates and inch it gently toward me. First running my left hand along its spine, I regard its firm leather hardcover and its engraved gold text and artwork. I recall the day I found her, and the place. My wife and I were celebrating our first wedding anniversary, and I had taken my wife to Berrima for a 4 day mystery retreat. I had heard about the rare book department at Berkelouw Books in Berrima, and I felt rather clever at having made the connection between our paper anniversary and a secluded book store. The assistant held the solid tome with due respect as she checked it through the register, and advised me to oil her lightly every now and then to maintain the quality.

Sliding her all the way out now, I cradle her in my left palm as I caress the front cover, switch her to my right palm, and open her gently. The scent wafts out from the pages and intoxicates me. There is no equivalent descriptor of the scent of a loved book. If you have not experienced it, you have neither lived a full life, nor can you imagine it. Aristotle held that friends are necessary for the good life. In the absence of a friend, I can attest that a book will serve you very well indeed.

I choose a couple of pages randomly and read them carefully; closely. Closing her gently again I raise her to my face and take one final inhalation before returning it to its place. This brings me to the source of my discontent. If time and circumstance would only permit me two wishes, they would be an eternity with my wife and children, and the equivalent eternity to read and write. That may seem like four wishes, although the granter of wishes I trust would not be so pedantic.

Last year I purchased three moleskin journals. My intention is obviously to write something, and yet they remain empty. Why is this the case? First and foremost the problem is this. I respect the quality of the journals so highly that I am frightened to spoil them with my writing. I insist upon writing fluently, neatly and coherently. I want to get to the end of the journal and have before me a masterpiece that requires no editing; a work of art that contains no mistakes. The journal to me is like a canvas. But unlike the canvas it can’t be painted over. All that is possible with the journal is to tear out the offending page and start again. Clearly, tearing pages out here and there is simply not an option.

So, another day passes. The crickets busily rub their legs together in search of a mate, I sit by the light of the monitor, and my desire to honor the hand-written word suffocates beneath my ideals.

Open Source Philosophy

“In general, open source refers to any program whose source code is made available for use or modification as users or other developers see fit. (…) Open source software is usually developed as a public collaboration and made freely available.”

That quote was freely cut and pasted from http://it.jhu.edu/glossary/mno.html

The fact that I have here attributed the quote to an author might suggest that the work is not really that freely available. After all, I am committed by my standard of ethics to give dues where they are due. On the other hand, Linux has a name by which it is identified; and Microsoft can’t simply take it and call it Igloo Windows. So, even the champions of open source draw a line in the snow.

Now the inspiration for this post originally stood outside my own limited circumference of thought. In fact, it began here with Waz. Then Simon and Nathan contributed to the seed of thought. Now here I am trying to make some sense of these unsolicited thoughts.

In the true style of open source delivery, what I would now like to do is present you with a couple of ideas, sourced from decades not so far apart from each other. I will have succeeded in my endeavour if you make the links and present your data back to me for further development.

Sir Julian Huxley, in his introduction to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man, gives us an insight into his conception of the noosphere.

“In an unlimited environment, man’s thought and his resultant psychosocial activity would simply diffuse outwards: it would extend over a greater area, but would remain thinly spread. But when it is confined to spreading out over the surface of a sphere, idea will encounter idea, and the result will be an organized web of thought, a noetic system operating under high tension, a piece of evolutionary machinery capable of generating high psychosocial energy” (1963:17).

Ok. Now the next module consists of a Youtube video developed by Michael Wesch over at Savage Minds. When you have finished watching that, give this some thought.

Operating System – program, that after being initialized by a boot program, manages all other programs in a computer. http://it.jhu.edu/glossary/mno.html

Scholar’s Mate

–

Adversary

Welcome, wise

Leading, urging, scheming

Queen takes naive pawn

Mate

–

by Brad

This Cinquain deserves an explanation. It was inspired by the infamous Scholar’s Mate; a 4 move checkmate. As is the case with my previous Cinquain efforts, I have attempted to incorporate a variety of interpretations. I have therefore taken the liberty of suggesting that “adversary” and “mate” are synonymous; not in the literal sense, but in a practical sense. I will leave it to you to decide how many interpretations exist.

Lover

——

Lover

Optimistic, proud

Longing, reaching, failing

Innocence shrouded by guilt

Dear?

——

by Brad

Cinquain poetry

During my last random search for inspiration, I stumbled across the Cinquain Poem. The Cinquain is a diamond-shaped poem that succinctly brings a subject together with a couple of predicates, three words to describe the actions of the subject and four words to say something relevant about the subject. Finally, you tack on a word at the end of the poem that is synonymous with the subject.
My immediate intuition was that this form has great potential to encapsulate philosophical ideas. That fourth line is particularly appealing. Opinion, conclusion, observation, implication and much more would seem to be possible here. When I speak of encapsulating philosophical ideas, I mean that in the widest of senses. Mathematical and scientific ideas. Anthropological, social and cultural ideas. Passionate ideas. Essentially, I am imagining a door to wisdom and intellectual stimulation in 5 lines.

I have penned/keyed a few of my own to give you the gist, and I hope to keep them coming.

——-

Virtue

Intellectual, moral

Intending, choosing, directing

Praise at your expense

Excellence

———–