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Journals 2007

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Wednesday July 25, 2007 6:50 am Lethbridge

It is +15 C with a high forecast of +26 C. Sunrise 5:52 Sunset 21:24 Hours of daylight: 15:32

A. Morning Musings

7:20 am

Today will be a short break in the hot weather, but then it is supposed to warm up again. I will take the truck in to have a mirror replaced and will take a math book with me and see how the morning unfolds.

C. Actual Learning Activities

10:25 am

Another brief insight into my mind. I have been reading Don McKay's prose/poetry in "Deactivated West 100" for much of the last hour. He is a geologist with a poetic mind (or a poet with a geologic background) (or ...). I tried reading this book when I first bought it about a month and a half ago but for some reason it didn't take. This morning it did.

I now have a freshly cut Gala apple, a few slices of two-year old Balderson cheddar cheese (white, not orange), and a fresh cup of coffee beside me, and an Apple MacBook Pro in front of me. I want to capture a few special quotes from both McKay and from the Murakami novel I finished yesterday.

McKay:

• "This set of reflections is a series of runs at an answer." [p.17]
  
  much like trying a maths activity.
  
  
• "This would involve asking, for example, not 'what's the beach to me? but 'what am I to the beach?' " [p. 17]
  
  McKay describes picking up a stone from a beach and then, a few years later, returning it to the same beach and then picking up another. I have such a stone from Shelly beach in Ballina. I think it is time to return it, and pick up a new one.
  
  While looking for the stone - it took less than a minute to find it - I found a personalized letter opener from Japan as well as a signature stamp that I used when receiving my bi-weekly living allowance. Once I became aware of the significance of such stamps I bought myself another one - a small green turtle. Now to begin using these at the end of each of my mathematics exercises.
  
  
• "Place becomes place by acquiring real or imagined borders and suffering removal from anonymity." [p. 18]
  
  
• "... place is first a matter of perception, then a set of activities, and only latterly walls and a roof." [p. 19]
  
  
• "... place is the beginning of memory, and memory is the momentary domestication of time." [p. 30]
  
  These thoughts on place remind me of a book by the Australian David Dale, "Essential Places".
  
  
• "When other rocks are washed with rain or sunshine, they begin to take themselves lightly, and start the process of assimilating." [p. 36]
  
  we could learn something from these rocks.
  
  
• "Since we spend much of our lives in the velvet grip of dreams, we are ready to accept any amount of magic deriving from the mind ..." [p. 36]
  
  very much like Murakami
  
  
• "What else but 'geopoet' should we call Xenophanes, as he stands with the fossil of a seashell in his hand, in his mind the wild notion that the quarry he stands in once lay under the sea?" [p. 42]
  
  
• "Or, for that matter, myself, trying to cobble together this strange sign system out of the varieties of our dumb astonishment." [p. 43]
  
  
• "Such experiences may have to do with dream mind bleeding into waking mind, Or it may be that, since we are doggedly linguistic as a species, our brains naturally process any continuous sound as a language." [p. 50]
  
  
• "... the wise one who will teach me to desire only whatever happens" [p. 56]

Murakami:

• "I'm not a fast reader. I like to linger over each sentence, enjoying the style. If I don't enjoy the writing, I stop." [p. 108]
  
  
• "You build up relationships like that one after another and before you know it you have meaning. The more connections, the deeper the meaning." [p. 189]
  
  
• "... people build up meaning between themselves and the things around them. The important thing is whether this comes about naturally or not. Being bright has nothing to do with it. What matters is that you see things with your own eyes." [p. 189]
  
  
• "For the sake of argument, let's say all your choices and all your effort are destined to be a waste. You're still very much yourself and nobody else. And you're forging ahead, as yourself. So relax." [p. 199]
  
  
• "A theory is a battlefield in your head." [p. 204]
  
  
• "Something other people can't see, something you pursue for yourself. An inner process." [p. 245]
  
  
• "A small publisher put it out, but it barely sold. The book didn't come to any conclusion, and nobody wants to read a book that doesn't have one. For me, though, having no conclusion seemed perfectly fine." [p. 250]
  
  
• "Listen, every object's in flux. The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith, justice, evil - they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place forever." [p. 287]
  
  
• "I've always been a great fan of the Chunichi Dragons, he thought, but what are the Dragons to me, anyway? Say they beat the Giants - how's that going to make me a better person? How could it? So why the heck have i spent all this time getting worked up like the team was some extension of myself?" [p. 325]
  
• " 'Which is why I'm taking you to the mountains.'
  'But what should I do once I get there?'
  'Just listen to the wind,' he says. 'That's what I always do.' " [p. 336]
  
  
• "Taking crazy things seriously is - a serious waste of time." [p. 338]
  
  
• "Pointless thinking is worse than no thinking at all." [p. 338]
  
  This reminds me of a note on a door of a professor at Queen's University: "A job not worth doing, is not worth doing well."
  
  
• "Without those peak experiences our lives would be pretty dull and flat. Berlioz put it this way: A life without once reading Hamlet is like life spent in a coal mine." [p. 379]
  
  
• "Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart." [p. 389]
  
  
• "A theory that still doesn't have any good counter evidence is one worth pursuing." [p. 399]
  
• " 'Symbols are important,' the tall one adds. 'We happen to have these rifles and soldier's uniforms, so we play the part of sentries. That's our role. Symbols guide us to the roles we play.' " [p. 402]