Wine Cork Stratification

     Despite its previous life as a spaghetti holder, this glass cylindrical bottle has now been relegated, most likely spontaneously and therefore haphazardly, to the duty of wine cork receptacle.  In the event of a real deluge I can use all my many corks for extra flotation material but in all likelihood I probably saved them initially in anticipation of using them in some vague and arcane "project."  Evidence of many such "projects" in their primordial stages adorn, perhaps more appropriately, litter, my house and its outlying areas.  Upon inventory I am reminded of Borges' lament of realizing there are books he will never read and in the uncompromising face of mortality I lean toward a similar sentiment which then degrades to a lower level of negativity which provides ground too infertile to accomplish even the most accessible task.
     Or does it?  Impermanence is touted as the antidote to laziness and I am inclined to agree.  Perhaps not just laziness but apathy and indecision or any of those murky states of mind in which no clear plan emerges from the quagmire. 
     So what am I to do with these corks?  At present, they are merely serving a decorative purpose.  But then I considered them more closely and an interesting conclusion emerged: since they were placed there in the order used they form a sort of "strata" like the different layers archaeologists consider when dating artifacts, under the logical supposition that older stuff gets covered up over time and the newer stuff ends up on top.  A crude earthen pot might be found at the deepest layer followed by an elaborate clay vase, a plastic vase, and a Smart Vase, in that order.  So it seems with my wine selections: there are a variety of corks at the bottom including two from Louis Jadot's Beaujolais (the red that got me into other reds) but at the top they seem more uniform.  As I truncated my expenses to coincide with my truncated work hours, I found the most economical way to imbibe was Aldi's store brand wine called Winking Owl.  They carry another "brand" which is a slight upcharge of Winking Owl's $2.89/bottle; it's called Flirty Bird.  I can't tell much difference between the two so there are mostly winking owls on the top floor of my birdhouse.  Perhaps I can suggest to Aldi some corollary names...Cheap Chickadee Chardonnay, anyone?   

poem: chiaroscuro

the light

illuminates the corner

out of spite

highlights the emptiness

and underlines the loss.

all the scars come into view

when the light hits at just the right angle

like a beam across a prism

the spectrum is displayed.

this life

a symptom of disease

a beginning with an end

a brief wind through ancient trees

a fortress no one can defend.

these trials

herculean and daunting

yet cathartic and redeeming

despite the cruelest haunting

the clouds begin receding.

the light

envelops darkness

in a strangling embrace.

i begin to see my shadow

stretched out like a corpse

i catch a glimmer of my life

as i look up from the floor.

Kant Measure Weight in Grams: the Ultimate Truth of the Moon Pie

     Sometimes I think I should place a disclaimer proclaiming: "Contents may unsettle."  This will not be one of those situations as I expound upon the pound (the unit of measure not the place for abandoned animals, that would be unsettling).
     In order to appease their devotees, manufacturers of certain snack foods reassure that "contents may settle; product is packaged by weight not volume."  It promises twelve ounces but the bag of mostly air leaves us feeling somewhat empty.  Perhaps such things should be packaged by density to consider both mass and volume?
     Let's take a Moon Pie to the moon.  Upon consulting Moon Pie's nutrition facts I find it "weighs" 57 grams.  The more correct way to put this is a Moon Pie has a mass of 57 grams since weight is gravity dependent.  Accounting for the difference in gravity, the Moon Pie is virtually weightless on the moon.  You can calculate it manually or use a conversion calculator for different planets.

     My point to all of this is if you are buying snack foods by weight on different planets the quality of the deal you are getting will vary based on gravitational fields.
     No, actually that is not my point, it is merely an extended introduction to an analogy and I don't eat Moon Pies on this planet or any others. 

     Mass, though useful in scientific formulae, doesn't have direct meaning for us as inhabitants of Earth and therefore subject to its gravity of 9.82 newtons.  Newton brings to mind powdered wigs and frilly things like how Immanuel Kant is dressed here for his portrait.
     The Moon Pie's mass of 57 grams is unchanging amidst its interstellar wanderings and is sort of like the "thing in itself," independent of gravity or our perceptions.  We can't really know the ultimate truth of the Moon Pie (Kant would say noumena because the Moon Pie hadn't been invented yet) because of our limitations; we can only experience it subject to our sensory perception which includes the gravity on our planet.  To know the ultimate truth of the Moon Pie would be to know the ultimate truth of reality itself which thanks to Newton's not-so-frilly successors in the world of physics may be much less of an "ultimate truth" than originally described by both scientists and philosophers.       

Interview with Bacchus, #1

Jen: Should I call you Bacchus or Dionysus?

Bacchus: Either is fine, just don't call me late for the orgy!

Jen: I would expect you to be quite an aficionado on fine wine.  Do you prefer whites or reds?

Bacchus: I don't discriminate.  

Jen: What about beer?

Bacchus: My frat boy followers seem rather enamored with it.  But I've never tried it myself.

Jen: How do you see your role in today's modern society?

Bacchus: I'm here to show people how to have a good time and get in touch with their true selves.  Put down the phone and pick up the goblet!  Let's shed our moral coils!

Unsavory intervals?

     Does your tongue love the taste and texture of hot fudge?  Do your eyes enjoy the sight of it slowly invading and usurping the territory of vanilla ice cream?  Is there some subtle olfactory amalgam of maraschino cherry/chocolate/vanilla bean that sends your nose atwitter?
     As a vegan, I don't endorse any of the above except maybe the cherry sans the Red #40 (I prefer the sensory delights of a tofu/wheatgrass/sprout surprise naturally).  As a musician, I can tell you that there is a musical equivalent to a hot fudge sundae: intervals your ear loves to hear.  Conversely, there are leafy green tonics in the musical world and if you hear one of them you will want to move quickly to dessert to cover up the earthy taste...unless you're an outlier like me.
     When Pythagoras broke his flute in half in a fit of anger over GoogleMaps' inability to give directions solely as a series of hypotenuses, he noticed something pleasing when he played it that almost assuaged his ire.  Let's say the first flute played the note "A" that vibrates at 440 Hz.  The half-flute also plays an A but will have twice the frequency: 880 Hz.  When played together they form an interval called an octave, which is very pleasing to the ear (provided both flutes are properly tuned, else it will be auditorture) as are its mathematical variants.  I won't go into all of those because I want to introduce the so-called dissonant intervals, i.e. the pairs of notes that create tension that you want to hear resolve (into consonance, of course.  Dissonance is for dissidents!)
     First, let's take a gander at two almost-octave intervals: the major seventh (a half-step short of an octave) and the minor ninth (with a half-step too much).  Remember that these have been historically unpopular intervals that were surely thought to incite riot.  So it may come as no surprise that one of the best examples of a minor ninth is the opening to Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name Of."  In stark contrast, John Tavener's "The Protecting Veil" frequently features musical sentences ending with the cello descending into a minor ninth.  This was my first introduction to the interval and the unsettling feeling it gave me stayed with me and I continue to use it in my own works, following my aesthetic that art should always unsettle (a topic I will expand in another post).
     Quickly, we consider the minor second, which is a half step itself (two adjacent piano keys).  Everyone knows this as the infamous prelude to a shark attack in Jaws.  Finally, there is the augmented fourth aka diminished fifth lovingly known by such monikers as the tritone and the Devil's Interval.  Despite the early church's proscription, bad boy madrigalist Gesualdo used it here and there.  Not nearly so scandalous in our modern times, it forms the musical backbone of "Cool" and "Maria" from West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein.
     I've played them for you below, trying to illustrate where they are located on the piano should you like to learn them too and join the dark side.

       

Biblioteca Infinita

       I have good news and bad news (but those terms themselves are merely subjective).  The bad news is that no stroke of pen on paper can truly wriggle its way into existence for the first time.  Unseen, however, it still may be.  Discovery, not creation, becomes the mechanism.
     The infinite library depicted in Jorge Luis Borges' Library of Babel has been brought to life in cyberspace: Library of Babel.  It's like the sequencing of the genome: if that got you feeling all warm and fuzzy then you'll love this.

Prism Wall

     He pulled the hoop over me and I found myself in a surreal cocoon. I was there, but apart. The separation in question was a prism wall.
     Twelvish, my best friend and I were at the science museum. I was standing in a bubble. 

     A bubble is many things save permanent. It is an event: ephemeral and extraordinary. Languid, the soap lies dormant and amorphous in its crass colored container. An agent must bring it into existence; it must be breathed into life. In this way it is like music and dance; incapable of self-execution.

2, 4, 6, 8

Patterns can be simultaneously exploited and revered; they can remain unadulterated or be subject to retooling, scrupulous and not so.  We cling to them pathetically at times but they also create origins for new spiderwebs.  I put these notes, these words, and these instruments together, for reasons that may seem perfectly clear to me.  So much so that sometimes I feel my patterns betray me.  Our brains love them and society quickly snaps up anything that can be packaged neatly in single-serving, 100-calorie bags.  Advertisers sell feelings after all.  The product disappears, trailing off in a prattle of side effects in eight point font.

Click Here to Turn Off Commentary

     Unfortunately (according to some), we live in the world of conceptualization and reference.  Wired in a particular fashion, we go about business as usual without so much as a passing thought as to the nature of reality (or our experience of the so-called 'reality').  There are many distractions.  Perhaps these distractions have euphemistic names and do not even appear as distractions.  Life itself is distilled into a chronology of distractions.  This is the problem with history: Charlemagne, the War of 1812, the debut of mustard gas.  Moments are replaced with the dates of battles.  The dates of what we think of as pivotal moments.  We all have these.  But I can't help but wonder if I was absent from some, maybe most, of my own.  I'd have done better to turn off director commentary in the film of my life which should not and may not even exist in the first place. 

The Joy of Sets

     All day, I dream about sets.  Matching sets, jet sets, Mandelbrot sets.  A group of related objects bracketed (and therefore corralled).
     I'm being a bit facetious; my tastes are more free range (though I do love fractals in all their transhemispheric glory).  To have a set is to have a set of things not in the set in question, the "everything else."  Therefore, it would seem a set's identity lies not in its contents or non-contents but in its inclusion/exclusion criteria.  Perhaps this line in the sand is false, or at the very least, subject to change when it encounters a wind.

Blame the FitBit?

     Business is bad.  Gone are the cookbooks calling for lard-laden dishes served up by a smiling brunette with a bob and a smile that says "Yes, Dear."  How does she keep her figure?  Perhaps it is the relentless vacuuming, in high heels nonetheless.  Really stretches those calves. 
     No, people are forsaking the casserole for the salad, trading the remote for the dumbbell, and chewing gum in lieu of smoking.  They are tracking their steps/miles/kilometers/furlongs with those ubiquitous, sleek watch-like bands.  Taking the stairs, biking to work, drinking kombucha and organic green tea...unfiltered, unprocessed, unadulterated.  Raw is the new cooked.
     As a weight-lifting, asana-striking, mostly vegan vegetarian, what am I complaining about?  After all, we're all on board now on this waste vegetable oil powered bandwagon sipping hemp lattes and trading essential oils! 
     It's business, my business, namely working in a procedural area of the hospital.  If no one needs their heart fixed, I don't work.  Thankfully, due to habits inherited from my Depression-era grandparents and an overall lack of interest in many material possessions, I haven't had to resort to eating Ramen noodles or pawning action figures.  In fact, I have become richer.  Not in money, but in time, a most precious natural but nonrenewable resource.  I can't put hours into my 401k but I can invest in myself, cheesy though it sounds.
     So here's to the next small ration of time.  Time to dust off old projects, start new adventures, plot new mayhem, and get ripped (to the extent that I can with peanut butter shakes and a limited amount of intrinsic testosterone).  If what I unleash seems better kept in the dungeon, blame the FitBit.