This is my personal blog; for all things less personal (if not, necessarily, more professional :), see lningram.com/blog
“He was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortunes and his dreams was at that moment reaching the finish line. The rest was darkness. ”Damn it,” he sighed. “How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!”
- The General in His Labyrinth, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
(via Looking for Alaska, by John Green)
I’ve just finished reading Brian McGackin’s Broetry, and it’s fantastic - laugh-out-loud funny at points, unexpectedly thought provoking in others. Best new poetry I’ve read in a long, long time…
I could go on, but I won’t. Instead, a sample:
.
.
The Belgian waffle of the sexual world.
Or maybe the McDonald’s hash brown,
if that’s more your type of breakfast item.
Both metaphors work for me. Don’t judge.
Like breakfast in bed on your birthday, minus
the breakfast and/or restriction to special
occasions. It’s pretty great when it happens
on your birthday though, if you then get
breakfast in bed, too. That means you found a keeper.
Often utilized in affairs, new relationships, and
international business deals, since it successfully translates as,
“We can be late for work/class/your mother’s brunch,”
in over forty-five languages, including ASL.
Especially ASL.
The easiest way to make your dreams come true,
particularly when one or both partners engage
before all parties involved have woken up.
Not a good idea if you’ve never before had sex
with the person you’re sleeping next to, as it may
result in unexpected flatulence, disturbingly strong
morning breath, or legal action.
Alleged to be the scientifically optimal time
for a woman to experience pleasure from a man.
This theory still requires extensive research, though,
as I’ve only ever heard this claim from male scientists.
The single best way a man can start his day.
I’m not sure where it falls on the list for women.
– Brian McGackin, Broetry
I love how many things we take for black and white are, in fact, grayscale.
- Being happy
- being gay
- being, in fact, anything; old or young, black or white, sick or well, good or terrible at a job…
- As with the last post: being in love isn’t yes or no - it’s an answer on a sliding scale, somewhere between ‘the first stirrings of love’ and the raging inferno that captured Helen, began a war that would live on, forever, in history.
“Of course, our relationship is grossly unbalanced,” said John Paul.
“In what way?” she asked, suspecting that he would find some clever way of saying that he was smarter or more creative.
“Because I’m in love with you,” said John Paul, “and you still think I’m an annoying student.” …
“We only met today,” she said.
“And what I feel is only the first stirring of love,” he said. “If you treat me like a hairball, then of course I’ll get over it. But I don’t want to get over it. I want to keep getting to know you better and better, so I can love you more and more. I think you’re a match for me, and more than a match…”
from First Meetings in the Enderverse, by Orson Scott Card
You wake up at Seatac, SFO, LAX. You wake up at O’Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth, BWI. Pacific, mountain, central. Lose an hour, gain an hour. This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time. You wake up at Air Harbor International. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?
… screenshot from Kanye West’s music video for “Power”
… this is fantastically random; looks a bit like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, I think - heavenlike images, disregarding gravity, wings and feathers and pastel colors. ..
Check out this video of Shakira’s at 1:30 - this is a fantastically interesting cultural blend.
First we we have a Hispanic woman with tribalesque tattoos dancing stomp & .. I dunno what you call this:
.
Meanwhile, she’s singing in English in partnership with an African American rapper :
.
… and then shift, and now she’s dressed in a US-style ballgown, singing in a high voiced Indian style with stylistic hand gestures (and multiple arms, ala Kali?), whilst wearing the statue of LIberty’s headdress & set in front of what I can only assume is the NYC skyline …
.
… and then we’re back again. Fade to rap, and to black.
I don’t know what Shakira’s trying to say here (should we infer from the lyrics that women the world over will give the - presumably male - spectator whatever he wants? … or maybe it’s just random)
- regardless. This is a convoluted, confusing, and awesome video. If only the music made it worth repeating …
The end of species
I’ve been reading a scifi series called The Uplift Saga, by David Brin - fantastically dense, dark scifi, somewhere between alternate theology, & apocalyptic, machine-infused, deep-time future. (If that sounds awesome to you, leave me a note. I have a few other series you should read.)
He posits - and I promise, this won’t in any way ruin the ending - vast civilizations, each one uplifting new species to sentience, sapience, as they themselves were lifted by other, older species - and then, like people growing old, each species becomes peaceful, & strikes out for a kind of species-wide redemption. A gradual withdrawing from the universe to contemplate, & then a final move to transcendence/oblivion*
“All good species go to heaven,” or some such. It’s a way to understand deep time, to make of it a living (well, life-based) metaphor.
Governments are like civilizations are like companies; they start out young and vigorous, age through adolescence to maturity, & then fade away, falling at last to some disease (geriatric bureaucracy, barbarian incursion, hostile takeover), and dying. Why shouldn’t it be true of species?
~**~
(Have I lost you yet?)
…
Ecosystemization vs Personalization
I think the Chinese have a different view of government, in general, than we do in the Western world (this is related, I promise) - seeing it not as a person, to be born & raised & perfected & thrown on the trash heap, and reconceived to start again - but as an ecosystem - something that’ll have its years of drought and famine and fire and flood - something to be maintained & rebuilt & nurtured. Ultimately, it’s seen as something to be revered - even if it’s feared.
& we can layer viewpoint upon viewpoint, for any conglomeration of people or ideas you care to name; to the founders, it’s a startup. To employee 40,001, it’s an environment. To the romans, it’s luxury. To barbarians, decadence. To the US, it’s a shining example of “the rule of justice” - even if that justice was enforced by practices too barbaric for ‘modern’ post-Europeans. For more on said reluctance, see Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire, by Niall Ferguson.**
Point is, empires rise and fall, no matter how we see them - even if the seeing can stave things off for a while. The Romans fell. The Greeks fell. The Aztecs fell. The US will fall - and Russia and China and India and Australia and Switzerland and Iran and South Africa and Cuba. Some sooner than others. Some perhaps not for millenia.
~**~
Does it matter?
So everything rises and falls, in the time we’ve had to observe it - & from what we can tell, species do the same. But species tend to do it when they run out of resources, when there’s no way left to grow.
What happens if you never run out of resources? (if you run out of the need for resources)
Brin posits an eventual coalescence of the spirit, an inward-drawing as a whole. Contemplation (for an entire species?). A loss of interest in the struggle for resources and recognition.
… but what’s happened in the past when large groups have run out of the need for resources ? What happens when the Romans have everything they could possibly want?
— answer: they drive their soldiers farther and father afield. The empire’s built on conquest, and so Romans find themselves in Spain & Africa and Asia, fighting not for survival, but for accumulation. They drive their merchants toward the exotic. They seek medication & art and culture. They experiment with sex, with marriage, with love, with death. Always the search for a new conquest, a new horizon.
… We, as a species, are uplifted by our explorers, given rationality & security by our bureaucrats, bankers, & brewers.
Animals & molds expand to fill the space given, & then momentum (or greed, or habit) takes us over the edge, until we’re desperate again, scrambling to feed ourselves.
Without a need for survival, we invent games & puzzles, & shopping, & currency & work & vacations.
We invent wars.
~**~
Here’s my theory. If there are other species out there, perhaps the sociosexual imperatives are different. Maybe some species’ individuals would travel too far apart (whales lost in an ever-widening ocean) until they couldn’t find each other. No meeting, no mating, no breeding. Species snuffed out, no harm done.
Or maybe crowding would trigger a kind of species overload, mass lemming-like suicide.***
Or maybe we’d discover - again - that humanity is its own worst enemy. The only thing that can really harm a human adult these days is either human, or based on some human action. (AIDS. Car crashes. Heart diseas & lung cancer. Radiation poisoning. Death by McDonald’s. What have you)…
So.
I think - that like corporations & nations & companies & bureacracies & religions & individuals - each species carries within it the seeds for its own destruction.
Does that really mean anything? Probably not. But it’s interesting to think that, some million or 10 million years in the future, my descendants will face some of the same questions & challenges I do today. To think that violent self-destruction may be the only thing, in the end, to say we’re still human, after all…
** or you can read “Reluctant Empire,” the short version also by Niall Ferguson. (via the Hoover institute)
*** And yes, I do know lemmings don’t commit suicide en masse, but it’s such a useful image, or else why would it’ve stayed current so long ..?
I dreamed last night of an earthquake
shaking me to the edge of bed;
floor a chasm infinitely below.
Woke to echoes of shuddering earth
the wild body of a lover beneath me.
Somewhere a thousand lifetimes away,
the city is drafting up in flames,
and we dreamers are still caught above the abyss,
hanging, wondering whether to wake or fall ..
New Year’s Resolutions are silly. But they’re worth making, and I’ve been thinking a lot the last few days, so here goes:
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