For some reason I’m looking forward to the selected works of Subcamandante Marcos because it links back to a lot of writing I did just after college when I developed a fascination for the Zapatista movement in southern Mexico.
A young man, one of the Mariposa kids, makes his way south with his grandfather and loses himself among the rebels. He eventually falls in love in Guadalajara. He never meets Marcos, though. But he meets enough.
For those of you wondering, I’ve been unable to login to WebCT Vista from home. I’m not ignoring you, but I’m wondering if you’re having the same problem.
I’ve had lots to say over the last few days but a cold/flu has really strung me out. Hard to think.
Looking forward to a little Paradise.
In his novel, The Life of Geronimo Sandoval, which he’s now calling an essay in fiction, Professor Sandoval has another feature of things to deal with: the idea of edges.
He enterprizes:
I’m laying awake at night thinking about studcuts for a shed, let’s say. Let’s say I want to make a 7 foot cut (about 213 centimeters) and draw a line for cutting. On which side of the line am I to cut for perfect length? The answer is easy. But the I’ve made the wrong cut several times because as I cut I momentarily forget which side establishes length, and I often can’t see with a saw where a cut begins in relation to the line because of the width of the blade, say at 3/32 of an inch, and the starting angle of the cut (my friends tell me this is why I need a miter saw). But the problem is not the reality of the shed, but where the edge actually exists in reality on the stud. The line also has width, thus a cut on any board is board + line width – extraneous piece.
I’m working on a survey of names in a phone book, each a link to a real human being. The phone book, filled with strings of text, is a hypertext of edges, each name an impression or image, a border completing the form of a human body. A library full of books with repeating titles. It’s impossible to cut two studs to perfect length. It’s also hard to fall asleep under these conditions.
Susan Gibb is now moving, moving into Boethius.
Ah, ground freeze. Our older dog, Arrow, must live long enough for the ground to soften up. The other way would get us in trouble. We could amble to the Farmington River and give her the Scyld treatment.
. . . Many a treasure
fetched from far was freighted with him.
No ship have I known so nobly dight
with weapons of war and weeds of battle,
with breastplate and blade: on his bosom lay
a heaped hoard that hence should go
far o’er the flood with him floating away.
I picked up a copy of Time’s recent The Most Amazing Inventions of 2005 to skim through during a dinner of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. I think the hook is actually mistitled or maybe I just haven’t a clue why these are the amazing inventions. Here are a few examples, along with those “catchy” short descriptions:
The Cool Cat: “The notion of a robot as home companion is nothing new, but iCat adds a human dimension to the job: an expressive face. Praise her and she will beam.”
Nuvo: “Tired of coming home to an empty nest each night? Try Nuvo. This 15 in., two-legged bot can dance, talk, play music, tell time and even shake your hand.” Even? For $7000.
One of the promising items is a suit that can assist those who need it to walk and lift. Very promising.
I am now an official resident of Second Life. I’ve been looking for a virtual community to join for experiment purposes but hadn’t ever made the leap because I’m:
1. not into Lineage or WoW
2. unable to commit that much time
3. not crazy about the pay methods
Eve was a close choice. Second Life offers more of the kind of interaction I’m willing to experiment with: real object scripting and site manipulation. SL also offers a virtual world that can slowly materialize much like the way I think about story: start and let the thing happen at its own pace. It’s a rich world and if I do build there and make friends–already have one–then I can experiment with narrative building as a matter of implicit in-world logic.
I’m already thinking about in-world hypertext and patterns for learning.
On another note, I’ve noted this semester that I am less able to do school work during the weekends. The week days are as intense as they’ve ever been with numerous initiatives at the college. Weekends are now reserved for rejuvenation, rest, project play, and reading Milton till 1A.M..
Chris Coonce-Ewing asks a juicy question: what is history?
This is a test of many things: there are discipline answers, philosophical answers, political and phenomenological answers. There are kinds. There are characterizations. The Beowulf and Gawain poets provide answers in their own way, which has been a big subject in our examinations and interrogations of the these works. Both poets need the past. We do too.
The historian wouldn’t like this answer:
History is a sound in another room.
You call and either he, she,
it
goes mouse quiet