Autumn Pantomimes

I have just published Autumn Pantomimes, my fifth book of poetry. I like this one a lot. Autumn has always been the season when I return to myself, when I am most energetic and alive. After the sluggish stupor brought on by August and September heat, the return of the clouds, the coolness, the breeze through the changing leaves stirs my mind back into a more creative mode.I like spring with its returning green and promises, but the sadness of autumn has always seemed more like home.

I like my other books too, though perhaps not equally. I worry that One Nine Twelve Three is too much a collage of modernist and postmodernist philosophy texts. I worry that it is too male and too white. I like the first section quite a lot, and Three, I think is quite good. I think Nine and Twelve are uneven with good and not so good. The book fulfilled several architectonic notions I had been playing with for decades, and so is an accomplishment in that way.

Of the 52 sonnets Fifty Two, I would say about a third of them are quite good. I kind of wished that I had written the sonnets over a run of say 5 years and then chosen the best from the lot rather than publishing each one I wrote. The virtue of the way that I did it, if there is one, is that it provides a diary of a very distressing year.

Etudes I am proud of. It represents decades of work in reading and translating ancient Greek. I think the quality and variety of the translation are good overall, and by the last bits that I was adding, particularly the epigrams on Heliodora, I was reading the Greek with as much fluency as I ever had. Unfortunately, no one seems much interested.

Outrages was another experiment in form and journaling. The structure of each poem reflects the date on which it was written. Each poem begins with a stanza of 17 words for the year 2017. The next stanza has 1 to 12 words representing the month. The third stanza has 1 to 31 words representing the day.This form was much more flexible than the sonnet, and, since I was doing one each day, I had 365 of them to choose from. I chose a little over half of them for the book.

Currently I am working on an SQL textbook for Franklin Beedle. I also have, as usual, too many poetry projects. I have at least three that I am working on now, and a fourth that I may start soon. But more on that later.

George Oppen

I usually read several books at once, though they each occupy different spaces in my routine. I usually have a book I only read on the train during my commute. These tend to be non-fiction, philosophy, biographies, literary criticism. I have one or two books, usually science fiction, that I read odd times during the day, mostly on weekends. And I always have a bedside book--usually poetry--which I read just before bed.

My recent bedtime reading was the Collected Poems of George Oppen. I had read them before, but it was a long time ago and the reading had been casual, just getting the feel of the poems.

Reading the poems this time, I read only a poem or two each night and tried to give them some of the attention they deserved.

I liked the early "Objectivist" poems with their straight forward, slightly Marxist images, and simple statements of the poet's observations or feelings. Here is an excerpt from a poem called "Product."

There is no beauty in New England like the boats.
Each itself, even the paint white
Dipping to each wave each time
At anchor, mast
And rigging tightly part of it
Fresh from the dry tools
And the dry New England hands.

Clear clean observations. "Objectivist" was Zukofsky's word for it. A new poetry movement based on the facts, the objective experience, of the poet in his place and time.

But, I actually like his last poems better, particularly the volume Myth of the Blaze. In these poems, Oppen abandons the clear syntax of the earlier poems. He composes in phrases and even sentences are broken up and distributed across stanzas. Here is an example from "THE BOOK OF JOB AND THE DRAFT OF A POEM TO PRAISE THE PATHS OF THE LIVING."

of the sea's surf    image   image

of the world its least rags
stream among the planets    Our
lady of poverty the lever the fulcrum
the cam and the ant
hath her anger and the emmet
his choler the exposed
belly of the land

There is still a sentence here, but it twists and winds its way among phrases. Punctuation is abandoned for the most part with spaces and stanzas used to separate clusters of related materials.

I find this more powerful and more interesting than the earlier poems, though I do like them. There seems to be more emotion, more mystery. They require more attention to follow and digest--a good thing I believe. (Jameson argues in Marxism and Form that modern poetry is difficult in order to force people who--haveing become conditioned to not pay attention to words and images because of advertising--to pay attention.)

Attention is the price you pay to enter the poem.

2019

Janus, the god of gateways, of doors and transitions, two-faced--not in the sense of being a liar, but having literally two faces--one looking back, the other ahead. He is the god of the New Year, looking back and looking ahead. Guardian of thresholds. He doesn't really have much personality, more of an abstract concept than a fully developed deity, appropriate perhaps for a god who is never really there, always staring behind into the past or ahead into the future.

It occurred to me that we are invisible to him. He can see the things we left behind us, the things we shed like a snake sheds skins. He can maybe see some of our potential acts, possibilities for tomorrow or the next day. But we, ourselves, are always in the threshold, always between any past and any future.

Janus is blind to the now, to what is in the threshold itself, the perpetual transition that is us.

The doorframe slides along an infinite string of nows. We are not in the past. We are not in future. We are always and forever in the doorway, hidden from the two-faced god.

Perineal Promise.

I have neglected this blog over the last couple of years. Once in awhile i come back and make some great renewal of purpose with a new focus. Well, it is time for that perineal statement again, only i am not going to promise any special focus or topic. My new committment is simply to try to add an entry at least once a week. The entries will reflect whatever i am thinking about and working on, whether translations, poetry or ideas.

For almost a year now i have been working on a series of poems that i am currently calling “Standing Water.” It is, in some ways, a reaction to Trump. The poems are a reexamination of what it means for me to be American. It is currently in five parts: Daniel Boone, who was a childhood hero of mine, Apollo, which traces the Apollo 17 mission to the moon and back. Chernobyl, September 11, and Timelines. Some parts have proven difficult to write ( Daniel Boone, September 11), others have flowed fairly easily (Apollo, Timelines). The whole, the book, as i imagine it, also has an extensive introductory essay which is part history and part autobiography. After a year, i am almost done with a first draft. One it is finished, i will rewrite it carefully and extensively.

When it is finished, instead of self publishing it immediately, i may try to get it pulished through a univerisity press. We will see. So far none of my self published books are selling at all. I am planning a social media push. If it succeeds, maybe i will go with self publication again.

Cottonwood

I wrote a poem this afternoon on the train. It has nothing to do with the train itself, but looking out the window, about to nod off, I was watching the cotton from the cottonwoods fly past the train. (There are a lot of cottonwoods along the tracks.)

I am not sure what the poem is about. Maybe getting old. I like poems that hold some mystery, even to me.

The poem has a form I used all last year for my Journal. The date is inscribed in its structure. Just count the words: 3 stanzas, 18, 5, 30.

A blizzard of cottonwoods
beside the creek.
We drift, you, drift--
Where?
What has drawn us here?

The white of my beard.

The aged skin on the back
of my hands.
What have I labored to do
in the sun's shift--
the cottonseed's drift
across half remembered roads.
Where did you go?

Or This

In capitalism there is no place
for the numinous

the unspoken virtues of weeds

milkweed and mildew
in an abandoned pot

to embrace the valueless
has value

spring snow melts
off the car windshield

there is a haze of cloud
over the fir greened hills

“red twiggy stuff”
(as Williams called it)

there is no coin
minted for this moment

no one can sell stock

Milkweed and Mildew

Lying in bed, before sleep, I was thinking about capitalism and how everything has a price, and nothing without a price is given any value what-so-ever. It occurred to me, as a poetic project that I should create a poetry that focuses on things un-valued, beneath value, worthless, and on things priceless, beyond price, the numinous and transient, the unsellable.

Also, as I was drifting into sleep, these lines:

milkweed and mildew
in an abandoned flower pot

Waking, these thoughts were still with me. . .

Tacitus

I am still working on the Homeric hymns, but I also want to update my Latin skills, which are extremely rusty. I was looking for something in prose to start with. Grammar is always a lot clearer in prose. I was looking a various things and came across the beginning of the Annuals of Tacitus. The first paragraph is so terse, it is hard to believe that anyone would begin a book or history like that.

1. Vrbem Romam a principio reges habuere; libertatem et consulatum L. Brutus instituit. dictaturae ad tempus sumebantur; neque decemviralis potestas ultra biennium, neque tribunorum militum consulare ius diu valuit. non Cinnae, non Sullae longa dominatio; et Pompei Crassique potentia cito in Caesarem, Lepidi atque Antonii arma in Augustum cessere, qui cuncta discordiis civilibus fessa nomine principis sub imperium accepit.

The city Rome in the beginning had kings. [a very plain spoken sentence, but Vrbem Romam accusative, object of habuere, they have (pl).] L. Brutus instituted Liberty and Consulships. Dictatorships were held for a time. Decemvirs held power not more than two years, nor was the consular jurisdiction of military Tribunes long in days. Neither dominion of Cinna or Sulla was long. The power of Pompeius and Crassus passed quickly to Caesar; the arms of Lepidus and Antonius before Augustus, who, when all were wearied by civil discord, subjected it to empire under the name first. [as in first citizen]

I think, along with all my other projects, I will continue to translate in the Annuals until I am more confident in my Latin--then maybe I will venture to Virgil or Ovid.

Hymn to Demeter Notes 1

At the beginning of Hymn 2 of the Homeric Hymns, the hymn to Demeter, she is described as ἠύκομον, well haired or good haired. I never know what to do with this kind of epithet. "Trim coiffed," is how Pound translated the same epithet, though as applied to Aphrodite, in his Canto I. "Well haired" or "with good hair" don't really cut it, so "with luxurious hair?"

Another word that gives me pause is ἥρπαξεν. Traditionally it is translated as "seize," but it is where we get our word "rape," and it is in every sense a rape. Persephone is a child and unwilling. She is being carried away against her will, crying for her mother. In the ancient world the gods could rape with impunity--witness all the loves of Zeus. Men too seized and raped. It was part of the expected plunder and rewards from war. In the Iliad and the Odyssey, it is common to raid villages to steal their supplies and women. The lot of women was often harsh. But this hymn does acknowledge the trauma of it, in Persephone's screams and Demeter's sorrows.

As she is being carried away she cries out in a shrill voice to her father, the son of Chronos, and ὕπατον καὶ ἄριστον, most high and virtuous. The epithet seems ironic to the modern ear. He, after all is the instigator of this rape. She is calling out to the one who authorized her abduction. But I suspect there was no irony to the Greek ear. Zeus, by his nature, being the most powerful being, defines what virtue is. Whatever he wills is just, even if his subjects cannot see the justice or wisdom of it.

I also find it interesting that among the list of those who did not hear her cries--gods and men--olive trees are included

but no one of the immortals or of mortal men 
nor even the fruit bearing olive trees heard her voice

This is heartbreaking and beautiful

So, the god, Ruler of Many, Host of Many, 
Son of Chronos bearing many names, carried her away 
against her will with his deathless horses, his own brother's child. 
For so long as the goddess could see the earth and the stars in heaven, 
the flowing swells of the fish breeding sea 
and the rays of the sun, as long as she hoped to see her trusted mother 
and the tribes of the eternal gods, for so long 
hope bewitched her great mind from despairing, 
and the peaks of the mountains and the depths of the sea 
rang with her immortal voice, and her queenly mother heard

Bull God

I have always wanted to translate all the Homeric Hymns, so I finally decided why not. It is something I can work on while working on my long poem, currently titled "Standing Water."

The first hymn is to Dionysus. It is a fragment. (Most of the hymns are intact, but this one, not.) There is a word in the second line, "εἰραφιῶτα." Hugh G. Evelyn White, a translator I much respect, translates it as "insewn" and notes that Dionysus was sewn into the thigh of Zeus to hide him from Hera. This is how the Hellenistic scholars read it. They saw the letters "ραφιῶ" and related it to "rapio" "to sew." We get the word rhapsody from it--a sewing together of melodies or song--. Modern scholars, however, trace the word back to Sanskrit for "Bull God."

Translating this, one is faced with the question which to use. The later Greeks, at least, read it as referencing sewing and the god sewn into the thigh of Zeus. Did it once mean Bull God to the earlier Greeks? It is hard to know. I am tempted to go with both:

Some at Drakanos, some say on windswept Ikaros,
some in Naxos, divine born, god of bulls, 
                             sewn into Zeus’s thigh

But then, I am left with what to do with it when the word occurs again in line 17:

ἵληθ᾽, εἰραφιῶτα, γυναιμανές:

Be gracious, Lord of bulls, thigh born, who drives women to frenzy

Not sure

Excalibur

Reading Philosophical Investigations I came across this discussion of The sword Excalibur: "The word Excalibur is a proper name in the ordinary sense. . ." But in the German text, which is en-face, has no mention of Excalibur. Rather the sword is Nothung,, the sword Siegfried places between himself and Bruenhilde to guarantee her chastity. It is obvious translator has substituted the English sword for English readers. It saves a footnote, and the point of the passage is that a name applies whether a thing exists or not, so that the idea that there is a direct relationship between a noun and a thing doesn't really make sense. Both are famous swords within their own cultural context.

Yet, i will say, i would have preferred the original sword, even if i am less familiar with the legend and the Wagnerian Opera. I like to get the feel of the cultural context of the original. I like a bit of otherness, strangeness.

I see this done a lot with Greek texts too. A strange or difficult idiom or reference is substituted for with a familiar one. In The first elegy of Kallimachos, I remember, the translator wrote "from an ancient people." In the Greek the word was not ancient but προυσέληνς, "before the moon", because the people were said to be so ancient they were older thαn the moon. A much more poetic and interesting take.

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The Ways that Can Be Known

After the goddess greets Parmenides, she tells him there are only two paths that are available for questioning: either things are and are not for non being, or things are not, and of necessity must not be. In other words, things either have being or they don't, either being or nothingness. Of the two, she says, only the first is truly thinkable. The second path has no report. There is nothing that can be really said about nothing.

The first path is persuasive, because it attends upon alethea, Heidegger's favorite word. Coxon translates it as "reality." If there is a fault with Coxon's excellent translation, it is that he has a tendency to too easily gloss ancient words into modern concepts. Heidegger's attempts to "think the Greek in the Greek way" may go to torturous extremes, but it would reassuring to see Coxon wrestle a bit more with the ancient terms. The Greek philosophers were at the beginning, struggling to find a language for their new concepts. To translate them into modern philosophical concepts ignores the struggle and loses some of the dynamism of their attempts.

Alethea, truth, is the unconcealed, the remembered, that which has opened itself to presence. As such, it cannot possibly be nothing. Only something can be, and to be it must be something.

That said, though, a few words about nothing. We cannot, in fact, imagine nothingness. Nothingness has no properties. Imagine a cave with no light. There is a stalagtite dripping into a black pool. Ripples run from the drop to the edges of the pool. Despite the lack of light, you image the shape of the stalagmite, the black pearl of a drop. The ripples have a slight gleam on the crest. Try harder. Even if you concentrate very hard, you will still be left with your own mind hovering over the darkness, like God over the waters. Even the empty space of the physist is not empty. It is a sea of overlapping waves of energy generating a random foam of particles and anti particles that bust into being and then are annihilated. 

Yet nothingness haunts us. The idea of not existing is the source of our deepest anxieties. We cannot truly imagine a world without us. Even when we try we imagine ourselves observing a world without us.

The goddess in Parmenides' poem is correct, that pursuing nothingness will give you nothing in return. Yet, I think, as the Buddhists have long known, there are spiritual aspects and benefits in meditating on nothingness, even if it is not something we can ever fully grasp.

Talking About Being

For the most part, it is wrong to think that a particular word has a given meaning. Dictionaries tend to perpetuate this myth, though if you look you will notice, even there, a word constitutes a cluster of associated meanings. 

Take even the simplest word like "dog." We say things like: "collies are my favorite breed of dog," "it was a dog of a day," "I am dog tired," "he was a good dog," " I worked like a dog today,"  "you're nothing but a hound dog," "don't dog me," etc.. All these phrases relate to some, essentially undefined, dogness. (One shouldn't forget, by the way, that though seemingly simple, dog is an extremely abstract word. It includes at least hundreds of breeds and billions of individuals under it single syllable designation.)

I came across this argument in Heidegger's lectures on Aristotle's Metaphysics where he (Heidegger) is discussing Aristotle's statement that being can be spoken of in many ways. He compares it to Aristotle,s dismissal of Plato's idea of "the Good." He (Aristotle) says that the good can be spoken of in many ways, but that does not imply that there is some absolute idea of the good that has a separate existence on some ideal plane. Rather, the good exists as a cluster of analogous meanings that cannot be reduced to a single meaning.

A similar argument holds for being.

An interesting aside: this is essentially the whole technique of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigation. He asserts that philosophers are too often mislead by taking abstract words as realities. He looks at how words really work, by looking at how we actually use words, not as meaning something, but as analogous to some cluster of related meanings.

Parmenedes comes into Heidegger's discussion of Aristotle because Heidegger asserts that Aristotle is reaffirming Parmenides against Plato, asserting, in fact, that being is one, though we speak of it in many ways. We cannot give it precise definition, but it is the commonality behind every statement of existence. 

This would imply that Being can only be approached by analogy, through individual beings. 

But that is the subject of Being and Time, and I am going to continue focus on Parmenides for the time being, so to speak.

What the Prologue Might Mean

In ancient times, the prologue was treated allegorically. Each detail was assigned someprecise allegorical   significance. But, while Parmenides might have had some allegorical intent, I don't think that was his primary thrust. Mostly, I think the prologue served to provide divine sanction for his philosophical vision and to place his philosophical insight outside the "common abidence of mankind." (Heidegger, or at least his translator's phrase.) (it might be worth taking a look at Lucretius' prologue to Venus as a direct imitation of Parmenedes)

There are elements of note:

The verb in the first line is present tense. "The mares carry me. . ." The journey is not something that happened in the past, it is something that continues. (This could also play into the statement later that being is timeless, an eternal present.)

Moving through the gates of night and day places him in the fiery realm, which the physics part of the poem says surrounds all.  In general though, his physics is the least interesting part of the poem. 

There may be some significance in the idea that the daughters of Helios steer the chariot. It may also be important the the goddess justice guards the gate. What that importance might be, though, is unclear to me.

I think one of the goddess' final statements in the prologue is significant--at least for how I understand the philosophy here. She says it is necessary for P to learn all things through asking. She says she will tell him the truth (alethea) but also the common opinion of men and, this is the significant part, why it is necessary that men believe as they do. The mistaken beliefs of men are necessary--not simply ignorance.  

I will talk about this more later, but I think it helps explain why, after describing being as one, unchanging and timeless, he goes on to provide a sort of theogany that describes the origins and nature of things. It is because these beliefs are necessary for men. It is how they must believe to operate in the world.

 

The Prologue

So here is the prologue to Parmenides poem. It was written in hexameters in imitation of Homeric verse, but, after working through the Greek and Coxon's notes carefully, I have rendered it into Dante's terza rima. Why? Just because:

the mares that carry me bore me
as far as my hopes had ever aspired
they had taken me and set me
on the goddess’ path ​inspired
by innumerable discussions​     on this way
they bear me through all stages   ​​untired
to meet her face to face​​     a man who can say
he is a man of knowledge    ​in this way I
was carried   ​the clever mares  ​they
strain at the chariot steered by
maidens     ​the axel burning and singing
like pipes within the center eye
of the silver inlayed wheels​    straining
whenever the daughters of the sun
urged them to carry me​​     having
pulled back the scarves they wore on
their heads as they left the house of night
for that of light​​     between the sun
and the night​    between dark and light
stands a gate   ​a great lintel stone
seals both top and bottom​    tight
against the architrave where it shone
in the fiery realms​    the keys
which punishing justice holds    ​alone
allows the opening of these
two gates​   the maidens persuaded her
with soft words to please
push aside the locking bars
briefly     which were bound
to the gates with pegs and poles and were
designed to turn in their sockets around
the poles opening the gateway there
so the maidens having found
the way clear drove the chariot and mares
straight through the gates and along the road
and the goddess greeted me there
taking my hand in hers and told
me the following​      young man
you have arrived at our abode
in the company of deathless charioteers and
horses​​     no ill fate sent you to travel
on this path which leads to a land
far removed from the usual
places trod by man​     you must
learn everything by asking​    the dual
paths ​      both the persuasive thrust
of truth with its untrembling heart
and the beliefs of mortals which you cannot trust
but you will also learn at the start
how it is necessary that those
things men believe to be should be a part
of the general belief that goes
through all things to the end
​​

An Aside on Purpose

Although I realize I have few if any readers, never-the-less, I think I should note that this discussion has more than academic interest to me. I try to read those things that help me find some meaning in and understanding of my existence. I do not believe that we are given meaning through some external agent, some god. I believe life has an intrinsic value, because given the cold calculus of the universe and the vagaries of evolution, every individual existence is miraculous. But, beyond the simple fact of existence, I believe it is up to each of us to give our life meaning. I read books that help me find that meaning. I am not attracted to easy answers or sentimental self affirmations. I want something that looks at the whole of life and death without glossing over the uncomfortable aspects.

That being said, I have to admit that I also like tomes. I like big books that purport to hold the whole world between their covers. I like fragments in other languages, especially Ancient Greek, that can be teased for meaning, little cryptic riddles that can yield surprising images or insights. I like the scholarly, the difficult, the obscure. On the negative side, I think it gives me a slight sense of power, like some magus possessing a secret, hard to acquire knowledge. It boosts my ego. All my life I was praised for being smart. Tomes and fragments reinforce that former praise. If I can read this stuff, I must be smart. 

But I also know, I am not that smart. I am no scholar. My main insights are more emotional than intellectual, and the primary output from my reading Parmenides is a series of poems inspired by the emotions and images evoked by the process. Ultimately, it is in my poetry that I find meaning.

Still, one of the things I have learned over my 58 odd years is that one must at least entertain one's self. Working through the Greek of Parmenides' poem and writing my poems in response entertains me. 

The argument

Parmenides' poem starts with a prologue in which he is transported beyond the gates of day and night in a chariot drawn by immortal horses steered by the daughters of the sun. As Heidegger puts it, "far beyond the usual abidence of man" he is greeted by a goddess who reveals to him the truth.

She tells him there are only two ways that can be thought: either being is, or being is not. She then warns against the path of not being. How can you say that nothing is? That way leads only to paradox and confusion. The other, and correct path, is that being is. She then defines some of these properties. Being is one, because how could it be differentiated from itself. Being is whole. It has no beginning and no end. Time is an illusion. This is the gist, though the meat is in the details which I will talk about in later posts.

The final, and probably longest part, of the poem was a discussion of the common understanding of nature with its comings and goings. There is not much of this section left. But in the existing fragments he discusses the fiery essence of the universe, it's various realms, and even how progeny inherit from their parents.

Many have noted the contradictions between the elements. The prologue involves movement and a normal sense of time.  How is that possible given the changeless nature of being? And why do the third part in which the goddess imparts the common understanding of those who do not understand the true nature of being? If being I some and unchanging how can the discussion, or anything for that matter, progress or change?

I think it is actually possible to reconcile these contradictions, and actually find something of more than academic value here.

Alethea

I have been working my way through the Greek text of Parmenides philosophical/poetic fragment. In part, I am doing so because Heidegger's writings and lectures persuaded me that there was something of value there. The very last lecture of his life was on Parmenides and the nature of truth or alethea. 

Alethea is made up of two parts: a privative "a" and the word Lethe. A privative is a negation. We use exactly the same negation in the words "atypical," "atonal," and "asymptomatic." Lethe, as a proper noun, is the river the dead cross as they enter the underworld. Wading through its waters washes away all memory of their lives in the world, even memory of their self. When they reach the other bank, they are nothing but shadows in the dark.  Lethe means concealment, forgetting, oblivian. So alethea means unconcealment, rememberance, and presence. Alethea is a key term in Heidegger's works. He spends great effort contrasting it to the Latin "veritas" which defines truth as the correct correspondence between what's said and what is the fact. His entire lecture series on Logic is devoted to this distinction.

In his Parmenides, Heidegger identifies the goddess who presents Parmenides with the path of true as Alethea. But there is nowhere in the poem itself where that identification is made. She shows P the truth, but nowhere does it say she is truth. If anything she is associated with Dike, justice. I don't think that necessarily weakens H's argument, but it does show one of his tendencies. Heidegger tends to make leaps of imagination and judgement in his interpretations of Greek texts. He justifies it by saying he is trying to understand the Greek in a Greek way.

Coxen, whose text I am using, is more scholarly, though he also notes that alethea is more appropriately translated as "reality" than truth. Coxen's problem, one that Heidegger"s methods were an attempt to correct, is that he has a tendency to too easily gloss the Greek words into modern conceptual language. This is anachronistic. These concepts didn't exist for the Greeks. Their philosophy and their philosophical language presents a struggle, a groping for words to express their ideas. The poetry and the power of these early philosophers is in the struggle. And, as Heidegger continually insists, there were elements, crucial elements, present in that early struggle epithet words and ideas, that we're lost later.

So Many Books

I have read many thousands of books. I don't say that to brag. I am not even sure if it is a thing to be vaunted or a thing to be hidden away like a teenage diary. It is perhaps a matter to regret how much time, just physical time, I have spent reading. There is so much I could have done with that time--at least theoretically. Not that I didn't do things, I did a lot of things, traveled,climbed mountains, walked beside the sea, shared good times with good people, drank way too much beer, but I could have, perhaps, done more, even, somewhat ironically, written more.

It is not like all those books were profound or life changing or even offered any new knowledge of the world, it's people, or of myself. I would say that most of them were probably the intellectual equivalent of watching a tv show or going to a popular movie. Science fiction, mysteries, thrillers, historical novels, most are disposable, offering momentary distractions from boredom or the occasional existential angst. Nothing is more comforting to me than to curl up on the end of the couch with a book. For the most part they are ways of getting lost in more interesting, more adventuresome lives without the accompanying risk and toil.

There are exceptions of course; there are always exceptions. There are some science fiction novels and stories, in particular, that will be with me forever. More on that on another day. I have also read many of the so called great books, literature, philosophy, history, science, biography, etc. Many moved me tremendously and a few bored me more than two economists talking in depth about variations in the liborg scores.

Over the years I have tended to focus or obsess on particular writers, often for years at a time. In high school it was William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot. Then, for years I focused on Ezra Pound, especially the Cantos. More on that someday. I read most of Freud and Jung. I spent years on Louis Zukofsky's "A" and The Maximus poems of Olsen. I have spent probably a decade reading and retreading the various works of Heidegger. And I spent a least five years on the cryptic poetry of Paul Celan. Other obsessions include classical poetry in Greek and Latin, with a particular obsession, for reasons I can not adequately explain, with the poetry of the Hellenistic poet Kallimachos.

My obsessions do not necessarily result in full acceptance of the work. I pretty much reject the theories of Freud and Jung and I have serious questions about most of the others. To a certain extent I just like delving into tomes, the thicker, the more obscure the better. It helps me maintain the self delusion that I am somehow smarter than the average bear to quote Yogi.

I also have read, and continue to read, many books on science and the history of science. I am especially interested in physics and astronomy, but I have read books on evolution, genetics, and information theory.

Along with all these, I have read hundreds, if not thousands, of technical books on mastering certain software, or learning programming languages.

So what does it add up to?

Probably nothing, in the end. I know too much to be sure of anything. Lately I have been wondering how to reconcile the major interests and influences in my life. How do I bring literature, philosophy, science and technology together in a way makes sense, but is not a lie, not simply an artifact of language, a book among far too many books?

That is what I am going to focus this bog on for the foreseeable future: bringing things together, making sense of it.