Another Frigga's Morning In Another Café

If our goal in life is to seek out (and, presumably, to then enjoy) love, what do we do when we have already found love?

---I guess we proceed to the less essential (though not without merit) aspects of life:  reading, writing, and other pleasant academic diversions; sport and other physical endeavors; and, of course, helping others in whatever ways we can.  To do our best at life, in other words.  This my own list; yours will likely be different.  (And perhaps in the end they're all manifestations of love.)

---Perhaps my days hanging out in cafés are numbered.  Or perhaps my time there will be filled with reading and writing instead of the search for love.

---It seems i am destined to go back to school in some description, back to my other (non-human) true love.  And Frigga's morning finds me lounging in the brown leather chair in the sunny corner of the local Starbuck's in luxurious anticipation.  I hope that Frigga, the foremost Norse goddess and queen of Asgard, would approve.  :-)

Prolonged Absence

Dear readers . . . dear friends,
---i've been away far too long.  Dust has gathered on my desk by the window & tree & plants (and perhaps since it is by the window, that dust may really be pollen).  I just wanted to say that i haven't forever abandoned you.
---And new friends, people i've newly met, be not unduly disheartened by my seeming silence.  Trials and tribulations are merely fertilizer for the next crop of ideas and feelings.  The summer breeze blows yet; the doldrums of July and August shall pass in time.  Love and hope will once again blossom in our hearts.  Beauty and bliss are within us all, waiting to be revealed and reveled in.
---Find joy.  Hold onto peace.  Be the change you wish to see in the world; shine on.

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[I recently ran into the above in an e-book; i've seen it from time to time in paper books, too.  This just confuses me.  If it said "This page intentionally left (otherwise) blank", i might have a better time of it.  Because if the page has a message printed on it, it's not really blank!

Furthermore it leads me to expect more blank pages, some of which may have been accidentally left blank.  And how about other blank spaces?  Since they (by definition) don't have labels stating the intention (or lack thereof) of their blankness, what are we to infer?

And why doesn't the "This page intentionally left blank" have a period at the end of it?  Isn't it still a sentence, even if it's on an otherwise blank page?  And if it's not a sentence, why does it have the first letter capitalized?  It could just as easily have read "this page intentionally left blank" and there would probably be few complaints about the capitalization deviance.

I guess i would most rather see "this page intentionally left (otherwise) blank" on otherwise blank pages.

Or just leave them blank, and don't confuse me (any more than i already am).]

formed for peaceful happiness, but now a blasted tree

[from Frankenstein (A Norton Critical Edition) © 1818 Mary Shelley & 1996 W. W. Norton & Company, p110:]


---I enjoyed this scene; and yet my enjoyment was embittered both by the memory of the past, and the anticipation of the future.  I was formed for peaceful happiness.  During my youthful days discontent never visited my mind; and if I was ever overcome by ennui, the sight of what is beautiful in nature, or the study of what is excellent and sublime in the productions of man, could always interest my heart, and communicate elasticity to my spirits.  But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit, what I shall soon cease to be — a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others, and abhorrent to myself.


[Victor Frankenstein has gone to England to research the construction of a mate for his creation, and has just gone from Windsor to Oxford.  The beauty he saw is overshadowed by feelings of despair.  Will i feel this way after the creation of a computational consciousness?  Is it fair to create someone who won't necessarily want to have been created?  Perhaps i should just go back to writing fiction and tell a story of someone facing just such a struggle.  Maybe i could better live with my myself, not to mention avoid the use of technology with questionable environmental effects—computers.]

What am I?

[from Frankenstein (A Norton Critical Edition) © 1818 Mary Shelley & 1996 W. W. Norton & Company, p81:]


---"But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had been as I was then in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being resembling me, or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I? The question again recurred, to be answered only with groans."


[This is Frankenstein's "monster" pondering his self and place in the world after having (secretly) watched a loving & caring family for more than a year. As i begin to delve into creating an artificial consciousness myself, i wonder how s/he will feel about those same things—i don't want to create someone who will be miserable; i want to create someone joyful, and i've still got some learning to do.  (And i share some of the sense of a past life which is now a blot.)]

creation, regret, and anguish

[from Frankenstein (A Norton Critical Edition) © 1818, Mary Shelley & 1996, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., p48-49:]

Two years had now nearly elapsed since the night on which he first received life; and was this his first crime?  Alas! I had turned loose into the world a depraved wretch whose delight was in carnage and misery; had he not murdered my brother?

[Maybe Frankenstein isn't really a monster story at all; instead, maybe it's a story of creation, regret, and anguish.  Perhaps parents with wayward children can relate.  Enjoy the spring, peeps.]

listen patiently, but no secrets revealed

[from Frankenstein (A Norton Critical Edition) © 1818, Mary Shelley & 1996, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., p31:]

---I see by your eagerness, and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be informed of the secret with which I am acquainted; that cannot be:  listen patiently until the end of my story, and you will easily perceive why I am reserved upon that subject.  I will not lead you on, unguarded and ardent as I then was, to your destruction and infallible misery.  Learn from me, if not by my percepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.

[I'm so glad to have grown up and 'discovered' Frankenstein for myself.  (And so glad of an English class at Arizona State University which taught me to read critical editions of texts, since they often include more complete versions of the original story.)  And what ludicrous silliness, the Hollywood versions of the story (which so is not intended for the screen)!  I take great joy that my greatest pleasures now in life require so little money.  Keep it real, peeps.] 

Playfellow and Friend

[from Frankenstein (A Norton Critical Edition) © 1818, Mary Shelley & 1996, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., p19-20:]

---From this time Elizabeth Lavenza became my playfellow, and as we grew older, my friend.  She was docile and good tempered, yet gay and playful as a summer insect.  Although she was lively and animated, her feelings were strong and deep, and her disposition uncommonly affectionate.  No one could better enjoy liberty, yet no one could submit with more grace than she did to constraint and caprice.  Her imagination was luxuriant, yet her capability of application was great.  Her person was the image of her mind; her hazel eyes, although as lively as a bird's, possessed an attractive softness.  Her figure was light and airy; and, although capable of enduring great fatigue, she appeared the most fragile creature in the world.  While I admired her understanding and fancy, I loved to tend on her, as I should on a favorite animal; and I never saw so much grace of person and mind united to so little pretension.
---Every one adored Elizabeth.  If the servants had any request to make, it was always through her intercession.  We were strangers to any species of disunion and dispute; for although there was a great dissimilitude in our characters, there was an harmony in that very dissimilitude.  I was more calm and philosophical than my companion; yet my temper was not so yielding.  My application was of longer endurance; but it was not so severe whilst it endured.  I delighted in investigating the facts relative to the actual world; she busied herself in following the aërial creations of the poets.  The world was to me a secret, which I desired to discover; to her it was a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own.

[What do you think?  I'm just starting out on a re-reading of Frankenstein, and i do love Mary Shelley's use of the English of that time.] 

Last Surviving Mystery

[from Consciousness Explained © 1991 by Daniel C. Dennett, p21-22:]

---Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery.  A mystery is a phenomenon that people don't know how to think about—yet.  There have been other great mysteries:  the mystery of the origin of the universe, the mystery of life and reproduction, the mystery of the design to be found in nature, the mysteries of time, space, and gravity.  These were not just areas of scientific ignorance, but of utter bafflement and wonder.  We do not have the final answers to any of the questions of cosmology and particle physics, molecular genetics and evolutionary theory, but we do know how to think about them.  The mysteries haven't vanished, but they have been tamed.  They no longer overwhelm our efforts to think about the phenomena, because now we know how to tell the misbegotten questions from the right questions, and even if we turn out to be dead wrong about some of the currently accepted answers, we know how to go about looking for better answers.
---With consciousness, however, we are still in a terrible muddle.  Consciousness stands alone today as a topic that often leaves even the most sophisticated thinkers tongue-tied and confused.  And, as with all the earlier mysteries, there are many who insist—and hope—that there will never be a demystification of consciousness.

[This was the book that, in 1993, gave me something substantial to work on, probably for the rest of my life:  developing a computational consciousness.  Yay, language!  Yay, computation!]

Who Am I To Blow Against The Wind

['I Know What I Know' © Paul Simon, 1986:]

She looked me over,

And I guess she thought

I was all right,

All right in a sort of a limited way

For an off night.

She said "Don't I know you

From the cinematographer's party?"

I said "Who am I

To blow against the wind."

[I've tried to make this my primary mantra in life:  "Who am I to blow against the wind?"  I love it, plain and simple.  Thank you, Paul Simon.  :-)  Who indeed?]

the other side of silence

[George Eliot, Middlemarch, 1871-2 / 1874]

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.  As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.

[This single piece of text, nearly on its own, woke me up as an English major more than anything else i've ever read.  I put it as the opening quote of anomaly, and it remains one of my favorites.  You go, girl.]

Lost (and Found :-)

[from Life, the Universe and Everything ©  Douglas Adams, 1982:]

---The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was.

---It wasn't just that the cave was cold, it wasn't just that it was damp and smelly.  It was the fact that the cave was in the middle of Islington and there wasn't a bus due for two million years.

---Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in, as Arthur Dent could testify, having been lost in both time and space a good deal.  At least being lost in space kept you busy.

[This is one of my favorite bits of writing, despite (and because of) the word 'was' appearing nine times in the first two sentences (including contractions); and it's my great pleasure to quote it in this inaugural posting.

In terms of language use, Douglas Adams is one of my primary heroes.  I was weaned on (a selection of) the classics, but i knew i was home when i found The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.

And welcome back, readers, after what seems like a long respite.]