Some Thoughts

I found this in my Drafts folder. I wrote it two months ago, and I’m not really sure where I was going with this. But time has divorced me from this post emotionally, so while it was too trite to publish at the time it is now a window into my past. Make of it what you will…

I stubbed my toe so badly last tuesday there was legitimate concern I had broken it. It is still so swollen that wearing shoes is painful for the first twenty minutes, until the pressure forces out some of the fluid. I don’t think I walked into the table because it had been moved, or I’d forgotten where it was. I think I just expected it to get out of my way.

I have always had problems with spatiality, though. Remember Goldeneye for the N64? As impressive as the graphics were at the time, and how awesome James Bond is, I just couldn’t play it. Even with the map, I just could not for the life of me remember where I was in relation to anything, or what I had just passed. I spent the entire game trying to figure out how to get over there. Right there. Come on – I can see it, how the HELL do I get down?

The thunder this morning was so loud that as it woke me up I worried it had something to do with the structure of the house – perhaps the deck falling off onto my doorstep. Moments later another crack and another rumble and I was still concerned because it sounded like it was right on top of me. Needless to say, I couldn’t get back to sleep. I decided to try to be productive. I got up and read about Kurt Goedel’s disappearance of time, in which he discusses the dying concept of a spatial Time. I can see the simplistic appeal of trying to map temporal progression the way we do a landscape but I gotta say, if I were to fight for a spacial model of time it would be based on the fact that I seem to keep stubbing my toes on Time, too.

Oh, and so you know, my toe is still messed up. Eventually my concern over the possible long-term effects of an untreated foot injury prompted me to see the doctor, which played out exactly as I predicted: she pressed, tugged, stretched and squeezed my swollen pinky then ordered an X-ray… which I failed to follow through on. And now it’s set, and permanently enlarged, and I can’t wear high heels because the pressure on that angle creates a stabbing sensation. At least I learned my lesson, so I won’t be one of those people whose appendix bursts because they kept saying, “It’s just a stomach ache.”

Setoric

As Bill mentioned to me on the increasingly less-secluded sands of King Edward Bay, the set theory of music is definitely going to play a role in my essay on rhetorical axiomatization. The symbolic logic of mathematics will be integral to my study and I think that the proof of the relative value of pitches’ ability to elicit emotion strengthens the idea that some concepts are better served when discussed in different languages. The difference in phrasing from one linguistic family to the next is obvious to even the least-trained ear (as a child, my favorite songs were Cape Breton folk sung in Gaelic, which appealed to me almost viscerally). I think it’s fair to suggest that, though the masses will always be suckers for demagoguery, Hitler and Lenin would not have been so successful in as bastardized a language as English. Could it be the cacophony of their tongues that did it?
On the other hand, Mussolini and Franco did it with languages no longer referred to as “Romance” because of their latin roots. When looking at the specifics of musical set theory, I’m going to have to begin with these two men.

Pleonexy

I wrote a poem today, which I’m still not too pleased about. I really enjoy poetry, but I’ve never felt inclined to write any myself, as everything I’ve come up with to date has been a total waste of time. Unfortunately, as I went back to read my first draft of this story I realized that it really belongs as a poem. If you think this could work as a story, help me out, because as far as I’m concerned it’s utterly useless like this, though I am really fond of the imagery/emotions/symbolism etc.

Pleonexy

Today as I waited for a prescription

I walked into a pet store.

I watched a small iguana

Struggle to swallow a piece of lettuce

Much wider than his jaws.

He flicked his head from side to side

Trying to get it down.

I think he ate it to prove a point.

When I found him he had been sunning himself,

Dead still,

And I was overcome with the desire to tap the glass and rattle his cage,

So that I could see

The miracle of his tiny, wiry muscles

Rolling beneath sagging skin,

And appreciate the beauty in the miracle of creation.

It was not miracle enough

His tiny, wiry muscles

Were working tiny lungs.

I looked up to see a Chameleon

looking down at me.

“He has been watching me the whole time,” I thought,

And felt violated.

I saw that his other eye had been elsewhere the whole time,

And I felt betrayed.

As a child I knew about chameleons’

Colour-changing long before I had ever seen one,

And when I did

I pitied myself,

That this awe-some power

Had been wasted

On such an ugly creature.

I decided to leave

And noticed the iguana had made no progress.