The Sky Does Not Speak

Warning: unapologetic religion, of the Christian existentialist variety. You have been warned.

In his short essay “Pascal’s Sphere,” Jorge Luis Borges traces the history of the sphere from Xenophanes’s declaration that God was an eternal sphere to Plato’s insistence that the sphere is the most perfect shape, from Bruno’s description of the Copernican universe as an infinite sphere—its centre everywhere and its circumference nowhere—and finally to Pascal’s very modern despair in such a view:

In that dejected century, the absolute space that inspired the hexameters of Lucretius, the absolute space that had been a liberation for Bruno was a labyrinth and an abyss for Pascal. He hated the universe and yearned to adore God, but God was less real to him than the hated universe. He lamented that the firmament did not speak; he compared our lives to the shipwrecked on a desert island. He felt the incessant weight of the physical world; he felt confusion, fear, and solitude; and he expressed it in other words: “Nature is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.”

I do not know how accurate a description of Pascal this is; I do know that much of this description is fairly accurate when applied to me. I too yearn to adore God, but God is less real to me than the universe; I too consider our lives to be like those shipwrecked on a desert island; I too feel the incessant weight of the physical world, and respond with confusion, fear, and loneliness. I find myself alienated from that to which I declare allegiance, and I see this alienation—acknowledged or not—in all of us. A labyrinth and an abyss indeed.

But there is one way in which this description is inaccurate: I do not hate the world and I do not lament the silence of the firmament. Oh, there are many things about the world which I find deserving of hatred: the world is filled with limitless suffering, more than I can imagine or bear, and my scant incomplete knowledge of this unremitting suffering sits like a hole in my chest. But I cannot bring myself to hate the world, and its speechlessness in particular I find lovely. I look at the mountains piled above Vancouver, distant and stony; I look at the hummingbird flitting about my feeder, dependent on the sugarwater my neighbours and I provide but thoroughly indifferent to us; I look at the toiling ants on the pavement and the silverfish swimming across my bathroom floor, incapable of even perceiving me; and I am enchanted by them. Their indifference to me is the twin of my incomprehension of them, my inability to imagine myself in their place. They are wholly other to me, and in this they free me from my suffocating self-concern. In this they also remind me of the distance of other people, people with whom I am tempted to exaggerate my empathy and affinity. And they also remind me of God, the distance and self-sufficiency and ineffability of God. I am not sure why, but these reminders calm my soul. I bask in their otherness and at least feel connected, in this way, to the otherness of God. God may feel distant, but at least God's distance is near to me. The firmament does not speak, and for that I love it.

This is my reminder to myself: I can try to cross the silence of the sky, but I shall never truly know it; I can try to read the silence and the speech of friends and strangers, but I shall never fully understand them; I can reach out into the absence I perceive God to be, but I will never totally plumb those depths. And yet my failure to succeed perfectly does not encourage a failure to try. There is a beauty in trying.

The sky does not speak, and I shall listen.

The Postmodernism-Tapeworm Analogy

EDIT 31/10/2013: I made a silly mistake; it's hookworms, not tapeworms, that are beneficial to humans. That being said, tapeworms are still not detrimental to humans.

I just saw an article at Patheos entitled "Many Post-Moderns Have the Intellectual Equivalent of a Tapeworm in their Minds," which was pretty much certain to get my click-through. Here's why: I'm sure the author means that postmodernism is an intellectual parasite, some kind of malefic being which devours cognitive sustenance before the thinker in question can digest it, so I was primed to disagree with the author's intent, but NOT with the title, because tapeworms aren't actually detrimental to human hosts. They're actively beneficial!

First, they don't consume enough of our nutrients to harm us; only anemic or severely malnourished individuals would suffer any harm from a tapeworm. Second, for reasons not yet fully known to science, people with tapeworms have no allergies. There's evidence to suggest that deliberately infecting oneself with tapeworms will cure you of allergies. This is because they aren't parasites but symbiotes; just as we've evolved to have a special relationship with dogs, we've also evolved to have a special relationship with tapeworms. Third, you'll have a permanent friend. About the only downside to hosting a tapeworm is that it's pretty gross when the tapeworm tries to leave your body (something it will only do if it is starving, and that will only happen if you are starving), and this can be easily avoided by encouraging it to remain in your body.

(Thanks to my brother for informing me of this; he's told people that they shouldn't accept food from him if they've complained of allergies, because he'll likely try to cure them with tapeworms.)

So! Yes, I agree. Postmodernism is a tapeworm in your brain! It makes you less allergic to things you'd otherwise react badly toward, and it does not prevent you from ingesting ideas whatsoever.

Disclaimer: I do not consider myself a postmodernist and I do not encourage others to be postmodernists. I do strongly encourage people to learn about postmodernism, to recognize its achievements and respect it for those achievements (eg. its role in anti-racist activism, cf bell hooks), and to adopt the better of the tools which postmodernism has given us (eg. deconstruction, the idea of culture). In a sense, house a little postmodernist!you in your mind to be one of the many philosophical angels on your shoulders.

And actually engaging with the article at all: I don't know what Mark Shea is talking about. Pretty much every postmodernist I know or have heard of is extremely well-educated, in both the senses of "erudite" and "good at thinking."

Hope, Remoras, and The Homeward Bounders

A Note on Depression?

In my previous post "Splitting Planarians: Incomplete Thoughts on Theodicy (and Complete Ones on Certain Flatworms)," when I'm not geeking out about natural history, I complain a bit about that week's lectionary readings. "And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings," Paul writes in Romans 5:3-5, "knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." I was complaining about the suffering part of that verse, but I also want to complain about the hope part. Specifically, the bit where hope doesn't disappoint seems a little off to me, if by "a little off" we mean "lies from start to finish." Hope is fine-tuned for disappointment.

I have a troubled history with hope (link and link), but I haven't written on that recently. Depression is a wonderful reason to bring that old issue out again: do I hope that I will eventually be free of this major depressive episode? do I hope that I will eventually be free of mood disorders altogether? The former is likely; the latter is not so likely. I've also been struggling with the more immediate problem of my unemployment. If I do not get a job in Vancouver, I will be moving to Alberta for the summer to work there. It's not that I dislike Alberta, but I would far prefer to remain in Vancouver. Hoping for a job when I knew that I wasn't likely to get one in Vancouver's unforgiving job market was an almost physically painful experience. I felt like it would almost be better to give up on getting a job entirely, even though my self-imposed deadline was only nigh, not here. And yet I wanted a job in Vancouver, and had applied to so many promising-looking places, that I felt hope anyway, despite my better judgement.* (As of writing, the deadline has passed and I am still unemployed, so I will be leaving for Alberta soon.)

The good news is that I suddenly understood Diana Wynne Jones's The Homeward Bounders a few weeks after reading it. SPOILERS One of the underlying fantasy mechanics in that novel is that hope drains the reality from the world you inhabit: by projecting your efforts into a world you cannot access, you make your current location unreal. /SPOILERS "Hope is an anchor," says Ahasuerus, and he doesn't mean that it stabilizes you but that it impedes you.** Jones is right. Hope can drain the present of reality: when I was desperately hoping for a job I did not have, I was ignoring my present situation and, for that matter, not preparing for my probable future. And I'm sure most of us know people who use hope to delegitimize our current hardships; maybe the future will be better, but I need to know how to handle my suffering now. (Jamie, the protagonist, encounters Prometheus chained to a rock and wants to ask how Prometheus could have survived his torment, but doesn't ask because he already knows the answer: he had to.)

So is Paul completely wrong? I'm sure he's not, because he's talking about a particular hope (albeit one that hasn't paid many dividends for me quite yet), but we must be careful with this hope thing. I would like to not be disappointed by hope and I would like to know the love poured into our hearts, but so far I have no experience of any of that. I will let you know if I figure anything else out, and please let me know if you have any non-platitudes to say about it.

Also, I would like to direct you to Nadia Bolz Weber's post on the same verse.

--------------
*Did you know that there is a word for acting against your better judgement? It's acrasia. Thanks, ancient Greece, for another useful word! Now if only you hadn't advocated misogyny and slavery.
**I think a better metaphor would be the kind of fish that is called a remora. Sometimes known as sharksuckers, whalesuckers, or suckerfish, they latch onto sharks and whales and, sometimes, boats. It is called a remora, which means delay or hindrance in Latin, because Pliny believed that enough remoras attached to a ship would slow it down or even hold it fast. This isn't true, but the name has stuck onto the fish about as much as the fish sticks onto sharks. (It is thanks to Borges's The Book of Imaginary Beings that I learn this etymology.) Remoras are commensalists rather than parasites. (The kind of commensalism they practice is phoresy). It is at that point that the metaphor breaks down, because I don't think hope is commensalist.

Those Ghastly Mountains

Today is Earth Day.

I am an environmentalist, though not as effective at it or active about it as I likely should be. Most of my environmentalism comes from the heart rather than the head, though, as always with me, it is greatly affected by the latter.

The truth is that I love so-called natural spaces: mountains, swamps, forests, rain forests, badlands, beaches, prairies. If I ever have the chance to visit steppes, tundra, saltflats, deserts, or dead seas, I'm quite sure I'll love those, too. I love red pines and pond scum and thistles growing out of pavement. I love pigeons and moths and butterflies and jumping spiders and centipedes and goats and giraffes and leeches and hagfish and lionfish and hoopoe. I find all of them beautiful, even those most people find ugly or creepy.

I heard a story once about Northrop Frye visiting Vancouver. Vancouver is surrounded by mountains and temperate rain forest; from pretty much anywhere in the city you can see those mountains, but of course some places have better views than others. Frye was visiting friends and sitting on their back deck, and someone said, "Look at the view of those mountains," and Frye said, "Yes, aren't they ghastly?"

To Frye, the wilderness is horrible because it is inhuman. He considers the natural world to be hostile to human efforts, but I'm sure if you pushed him on it he'd consider that it isn't really hostile, but merely indifferent. It does not care about us one way or another. Neither a mountain nor an ant acknowledges me; as far as they are concerned, I do not exist. It's not an issue of power, precisely; I could easily kill the ant, or pick it up and keep it in environments where I could manipulate its action all I like. But it would still not care at all about me. Nothing I do could make it spare the slightest attention for me. It is this which Frye finds so ghastly, but it's also what I love so much.

Animals, plants, fungus, geological formations: these are alien to me. Some have no life or consciousness at all; others have psychologies which are in some ways very similar and in other ways wildly different from human psychology. When I meet them I am meeting an Other more Other than any human could be. Such an experience is sublime (in its aesthetic sense, not the sense perverted and ruined by advertising, where it seems to mean something like sensual). But its indifference to me also forces me out of narcissism. It reminds me that much of the world does not care about me at all. I don't matter so much as I think I do. To someone as neurotic as I am, this reminder is always needed, and also always a relief.

It's that indifference that kills our Earth, though. The Gaia hypothesis is wrong in this way: if the Earth were truly concerned about self-regulating, it would be exterminating us much more vigourously. So as an environmentalist, what I seek to defend is the Earth's indifference, which by its own nature cannot make a defense for itself.

(But then, I also love dogs, who have evolved so that they can communicate with humans, and tigers, even when they are stalking humans--one of the most chilling sights, even when they're behind double-fences at the zoo--so it's obviously more than just indifference that I love.)

Like No Other Animal on the Planet

I want to recommend the BBC Horizon documentary The Secret Life of the Dog, which explores the relationship dogs have with humans re: domestication. One of their theses (granted, not the primary one) is that humans and dogs co-evolved; our relationship with dogs has radically changed them, but it has also changed us--perhaps allowing for the agricultural revolution. Thanks to my reading of Haraway, this is something I now take as obvious.

However, the primary subject of the documentary is the way in which dogs are unique among all other animals in the traits they've developed which adapt them specifically to human interaction. For instance, when dogs look at human faces, they regularly look towards the left (so they look to the right side of the face), a trait they share with humans alone. (They do not look at the left side of anything else; left-biased expression is a human trait.) So they've developed a unique capability of reading human emotion and understanding human communication.

One of the more interesting segments is about the planned and systematic domestication of foxes as an experiment to learn more about domestication. Two things are remarkable: the first is that it was successful. While foxes may not be as incredibly domesticated as dogs are, it is nonetheless possible to domestic foxes to a remarkable degree. The second remarkable thing is that while the experimenters selected for behaviour, certain physiological traits followed: shorter legs, more white in the coat, curled tail, floppier ears. Specifically, the traits that physiologically differentiate dogs from wolves also developed in foxes over the process of domestication.

I highly recommend this video. The combination of clever scientific research, dogs, and mind-theory stuff will always interest me. The Secret Life of the Dog has an X-Files feel to some of it, which I found amusing; they play almost-eerie music when leading up to the sorts of things a really intelligent dog named Betsy can do which made me think of the psychic-of-the-week episodes, and of course the experimental breeding of foxes was reminiscent of the experimental breeding of clones that a certain Fox Mulder discovered. Perhaps this is why I considered wild sci-fi scenarios while watching the show: what if the next sentient life to exist on Earth was not AI but canine? And what other animals could we domesticate: lions? cheetahs? elephants? If we did domesticate them, what effects would that have on our own behaviour and development? In what ways (cognitively, behaviourally) would those domesticated animals differ from dogs? (I suspect that horses are another animal worth investigating re: domestication and adaptations uniquely suited for interaction with humans.)

7 Animals

I have not done the 7 Quick Takes genre in a while now, and do not intend to take it up again. However, I have a possible replacement. For a few months now I have posted a link on Facebook to an article on a different animal each day. I will gather those together and post them here on Fridays, if I remember.

1.

Feb 2's animal was the sea potato, a kind of temperate-water sea urchin. They have a commensal relationship with certain bivalves.

2.

Feb. 3's animal was the four-horned antelope. The small antelope's most unique feature is right there in the name: it is the only mammal to have four horns.

3.

Feb. 4's animal was the shocking pink dragon millipede. Despite looking like a centipede, it is a millipede, and like many of its kin it secretes cyanide when nervous. Those are warning colours.

4.

Feb. 5's animal was the resplendent quetzal. They are part of a family of birds called trogons, which sound to me like something out of the Monster Manual. (Also, they are gorgeous birds.)

5.

Feb. 6's animal was the mud dauber. When I was a kid I quite enjoyed watching these guys fly through the air clutching balls of mud.

6.

Feb. 7's animal was the salp. Salps look a lot like jellyfish, but they are actually chordates These animals are very strange, with a two-stage life cycle; in one stage, they are solitary and reproduce asexually, thus becoming aggregate and reproducing sexually. It's worth reading about salps.

7.

Today's animal is the freshwater pearl mussel. They have negligible senescence, which means that they do not age or hardly age. For this reason some of these mussels will almost certainly live longer than I will.

Penguins

If you ever want to watch some penguins live online, I've got just the thing for you:

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/frozen-planet/penguin-cam/

7 Quick Takes (76)

I'm doing a 7 Quick Takes for the last month or so. Wow. This should be fun.

1. I returned to Fort McMurray for a brief time to visit friends and family. I'm still here as I write this but I won't be here for much longer. As usual, I'm staying with the folks.

2. Twice now we have gone to Elk Island National Park. This is a lesser known park near Edmonton. We did not see a single elk in the park, but we did see numerous bison. The first time we stayed in Edmonton; the second time we camped in the park itself. It was sometimes difficult to sleep because the ducks and geese and frogs and coyotes did not observe the 11 o'clock quiet hours. So the frogs chorused and the geese honked and the coyotes howled and yipped. The second time we also visited the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village. This Village is one of those where everyone acts like a historical person, refusing to acknowledge that it's 2011 rather than the 1920's. I suppose many people find this sort of thing annoying but I rather enjoyed it. Perhaps it is because I liked to hear them talk in their fake Ukrainian (or, in one case, British) accents. I learned things about Orthodox church architecture, too; did you know that Orthodox churches have their belltowers detached from the church as part of a separate structure because they do not allow instruments in the church and the bell counts as an instrument? I had not known this.
This was all quite exciting, but in trying to take supermacro photos of water insects, I managed to get water on my camera which eventually culminated in its permanent damage. Now the photos it produces are wonky. However, it was an excellent final shoot for my dear camera. I got clear macro shots of spiders, frogs, dragonflies, and water striders. I might put some of these up at some point.

3. My summer plans, as I think I indicated before, include lots of reading and writing. I am treating this sort of work like a full-time job. You can go over my reading to date here, though I should also add that I have been reading some blogs, particularly Experimental Theology, philosiology, Unequally Yoked, and the best in us. (That last is more of a personal project of a friend relating to people he knows, so it may hold less interest for random Internet people. Perhaps it holds some value for you as a project, though--writing nice things about people he knows--so you may want to look at the mission statement.) I have also been reading and editing a manuscript for a friend's writing project. Where writing is concerned, I wrote a draft of an academic article and am now working on Creative Writing, though I must shamefacedly admit that I spend more time writing journal entries and letters. My tendency to go on theoretical diversions means that I am, at least, thinking.

4. Fort McMurray has been dreadfully smoky. There are forest fires all around us. The one in Slave Lake got news attention, but there is also an enormous one north of us. The wind often carried think clouds in to the city, preventing me from running outdoors. It's worrying and inconvenient, but at least our community hasn't been destroyed.

5. My birthday occured. The most noteworthy things concerning this event are going to see Thor, having a picnic in the park, and getting The Complete Calvin and Hobbes. If you are a fan of Calvin and Hobbes, I encourage you to see this series Dr. Beck produced giving a theological reading of it. (If I'm not careful I will start recommending it as often as Leah does a certain Harry Potter fanfiction.) If you are not a fan of Calvin and Hobbes, I encourage you to become one. Otherwise my birthday was very quiet. I will have a joint (half-)birthday party with a friend in Vancouver when I return.

6. A little while back I saw the next installment of Pirates of the Caribbean. I realize that not many people liked it. It certainly was not as good as the first. Notwithstanding that, I enjoyed it, mainly for the mermaid-missionary sideplot. It was good that they excised the Elizabeth-Will story from the series; it had reached its logical conclusion and any further story there would be of incredibly shoddy value. They needed to have a morally steady character, though, and the missionary filled this admirably, I think. He is certainly less annoying than Will was. I also find mermaid myth and lore fascinating (but I mean the old stuff, where they're fay, wild, ammoral creatures as much as amorous ones, where they can get human legs without having to make a deal with a witch, where they can't quite decide whether to drown you or love you). While the Pirates of the Caribbean version wasn't exactly like that, I was still pleased. In fact, I was rather OK with the depature made at the end. (For excellent mermaid-related storytelling, please visit Hark! A Vagrant's mermaid story. In fact, visit anyway. World history, canonical literature, and Canadiana have never been more awesome.)
In related news, I'm coming to understand that my tastes in what makes a movie good vary significantly from almost everyone else's. I tend to gravitate towards elements I like without seeing the chaff that is the rest of the movie. If I like that element strongly, I like the movie. If there is nothing outstanding, I tend to dislike the movie. If there is something else that is not simply unartful but outright repulsive, not much can make me like it.

7. I have watched a few TED talks which I want to recommend. In no particular order:
Mustafa Akyol's Faith versus tradition in Islam
Kathryn Schulz's On being wrong (this is crucial for anyone who has an overwhelming confidence in their own rightness, aka most people on the Internet)
Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation
Dan Meyer's Math class needs a makeover (on making mathematics a good sell)
Nate Silver's Does race affect votes?

Please visit Jen at Conversion Diary, host of this fine carnival.

The Problem of the Obedient Body

or, What is our body?, part 2

If what does and does not count as part of my body is not determined by organic attachment (or at least not entirely), then is it possible that obedience does determine it? That is, can we say that whatever obeys our mental commands is part of our body? This is the sort of reasoning Leah at Unequally Yoked suggests, along with some commenters. Explaining why she thinks a prosthetic counts as a part of one's body, she says, "It's attached to me and serves my will." Presumably, then "regular" body parts are governed by the same principle: that which is obeys your will is part of your body. It is not this particular claim that I'm interested in refuting, but a similar one. That is, that our body is that which obeys our will. Perhaps (I'm not yet conceding this point) whatever we can command is part of our body, but I am going to suggest that not all of our body is especially obedient. In the course of this post, I am going to suggest that obedience can only be part of the story because our bodies have a knack for disobedience.

First I want to notice briefly that our bodies have physical limits. We cannot, for instance, bend our elbows beyond a certain angle no matter how hard we will it. We cannot bend where we do not have joints. We cannot expect our eyes to smell or our noses to hear. We can only will our body parts to perform the functions they can perform. This seems obvious and does not seem to me to suggest that the body is disobedient. One could easily enough stipulate that we're only refering to a body's normal functioning. (I am using "normal" deliberately because I plan to indicate later how big of a problem normativity is in this question.) Again, I am going to use a list to indicate ways in which bodies are disobedient.

1. Paralysis Bodies sometimes do not act when willed to act; they are paralyzed. This can be permanent or temporary, caused by nervous tissue damage, psychoactive chemicals, or psychosomatic disorders. Whatever the details, sometimes our bodies, even when physically capable of the action we will, do not move. If obedience alone determined what counted as our body, would we then be required to say that a paraplegic person's lower torso is no longer part of their body? This seems to me to be a highly problematic move.

2. Conjoined Twins and "Two Headed" Snakes You may recall that last time I worried that, by the definition of organic attachment, conjoined twins could not distinguish their bodies when it seemed clear that they should be able to. In this post I want to suggest instances in which conjoined twins actually cannot distinguish between their bodies. Since I do not know of any human twins to whom this applies, I will refer to snakes. (Note on phrasing: it is typical to refer to human conjoined twins as plural people but to refer to animal conjoined twins as a single two-headed organism. This seems an arbitrary distinction to me. Insofar as animals have consciousnesses, two conjoined animals would have separate consciousnesses and therefore be distinct animals. So I am continuing to use the phrase "conjoined twins" rather than "two-headed snakes" to emphasis that these are two snakes sharing a body, not one snake with two heads.)

If you watch the video, you should be able to see that the two snakes here share (or, perhaps more accurately, compete for) control over their body. Both control the body; put differently, the body is obedient to both snakes, except when they compete. In this instance I think it would be quite fair to suggest that at least some of their body is shared. That is, it is part of the left snake's body and part of the right snake's body. However, obedience as an indicator of being part of a body is complicated by the possibility that your body could obey another. Further, it makes more complicated the idea of what a "body" is. The left snake's head is not part of the right snake's body, I shouldn't think. But both of these are attached to the parts of the body which the share. Conceptualizing the body as some sort of concrete "thing" is therefore pretty problematic. That human conjoined twins have never been reported to share motor control does not, to my knowledge, mean it could never happen. Further, conjoined twins do sometimes share tactile perception. (Abigail and Brittany Hensel, I have heard, can both feel touch on the skin between their spines. Do their bodies not just connect but overlap in this instance?) And what of internal organs that "obey" signals from both brains? Not conscious willing, no, but signals which help moderate chemical production in digestive and reproductive organs. This does occur in human conjoined twins, and suggests that we cannot simply write of these problems as ones belonging exclusively to conjoined animals.

Perhaps someone at this point will object that these are not normal bodies with normal functioning. There are two problems with this objection. The first is that if we want a universal definition of what constitutes a body, it needs to account for ALL bodies. The second is that we will have trouble defining what a normal body is. "Normal" is a problematic word, in the first place, because it has a normative element: that is, normal is how things should be. And just switching for "typical" isn't going to work. If we say that we're only talking about "typical" bodies and then define bodies as we are used to them, we're still saying that these atypical bodies are somehow uncategorizable according to the rules we've set up, recreating a standard by which bodies are considered "typical" or "atypical", with these terms functioning identically to "normal" and "abnormal." But if you remain unconvinced, I have two parallel examples remaining which apply to all bodies.

3. Inert body parts Some of our body parts do not obey our will. I was somewhat interested that in Leah's post on transhumanism she suggested that our teeth obey our will. Do they really? I haven't ever commanded my teeth to do anything at all. I don't think they would do anything if I did command them. And this is something slightly more than limits to their functionality: there is literally no way that they can obey my will. Neither can my bones or fat deposits. Like a person with paralyzed body parts, not all of my body can obey me. Therefore obedience cannot possibly be the only marker of what counts as my body, unless I wish to forfeit my bones and teeth and fat.

4. Body parts that do things "on their own" Sometimes body parts seem to act of their own volition. The other day I got into an argument and immediately afterwards I was shaking so badly I had to sit down. My legs buckled without my ordering them to; in fact, they continued buckling even when I tried to stop them from shaking. Of course I am sure this was a result of things going on inside my nervous system, but if we're defining according to will, then I must say they weren't obeying my will, even though they were fully capable of doing so. There are numerous physical states and phenomena which have the same effect; off-hand, I can think of nervous tics, hyperventilation, and unwanted physical arousal. In each of these cases, one or more organs act in ways counter to our conscious will. If you are still skeptical, let me suggest an exercise for you (don't actually do this). Turn on one burner of your stove range. Wait five minutes. Touch the burner. Don't pull back. See if your body obeys you. (Even if you succeed in keeping your body there, I am rather sure your arm and finger will be "attempting" to jerk back in ways you did not will.) In the case of paralysis or inert body parts, sometimes parts of our bodies do not obey our will but are nonetheless part of our body. In the case of some conjoined twins and some physical states/phenomena, our bodies will do things we did not will, either because a conjoined sibling willed it or because of a command given by the nervous system outside of a conscious will. While I might be able to say that something is part of my body if it obeys my will, I cannot say that obedience to my will is the only feature which could make something part of my body.

Series Index

7 Quick Takes (67)

1. Light rain and overcast. (You can tell it's been a slow week when...)

2. Advent service was held in the basement so that we could have an Advent garden instead of a sermon. It was pretty, I suppose, though I wasn't sure what to make of its theological importance.


3. It was the last week of classes. I planned my last discussion for the term. That being said, I do have a make-up class next week and a symposium tomorrow.


4. While I'm talking about the symposium, I should say that the paper I'm delivering is almost twice the maximum length. Great. I have so much introduction that that will be all that I can deliver...

5. I saw some raccoons yesterday. I don't know why I find that altogether too interesting; I have seen some in the city before now. I got some blurry photos this time. I suppose that's why I bother mentioning it.


6. I went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I. I might blog about it at some point, but then again I might not. I want to see Red Riding Hood, though. This I have decided.

7. I'm exhausted and I have a lot of work left to do. I'm going to have to call it quits early and get on that work.


Remember to go to Jennifer Fulwiler's blog; she's the host of this carnival.

Poetry from the MoA

I am going to do something I will likely regret. Due to my continued absense from this blog, resulting in equal parts from overwork and procrastination, I feel the need to post something, even if it's not great. As such, I am going to present some shoddy poetry I wrote at the Museum of Anthropology. I thought it would be cool to go to the MOA and sit down in front of artifacts and just write free verse poetry on the objects I saw. And on this forum I am going to treat you to the poor poetry I wrote.


The Lion and the Owl (in the Koerner Ceramic Gallery of the MOA)
15 Oct 2010

Gold and baroque
--as baroque as a piped waltz--
the lion holds his shield and helm
which blends into his unruly chest
On the red shield is his little twin
rampant and roaring as silently as his larger self
Ornate golden lion, your glazed stare
plumbs the empty space before you

Smooth, blue, yellow, and white
--as plump as a jar--
the owl too looks wide-eyed into
the air, shining with the tinny chords
He comes to the lions shoulders,
his wings by his side hold no shield
His own flat plumes will do for his colours


Hamsalagamł (bumblebee masks) at the MOA
15 Oct 2010

Eight faces, eight dwarf cherub faces
their yellow seive-noses high between their eyes
cheeks sink down
and there is a man, a boy-man
looking at you across the room from an armchair
trying to see you with his poet's pen
seeing only your empty faces
But are your faces empty?
What history would those eyes dream
which looked through yours?
What do your eyes dance?


On Bill Reid's Haida Bear in the MOA
15 Oct 2010

the bear looks on
the canoe down whose length he stares is more polished than him,
worn with the grease of hands
but it is painted in the same colours, its prow the same red as his tongue
the man he sees through the arches is traced with the same black veins,
but these veins contain yellow and white,
unlike the bear's
the double serpent on the arch is the same weathered wood as the bear's long claws but they do not see that
the bear, from his corner, looks on


In the shadow on the chairs in the MOA
15 Oct 2010

there is a hummingbird
with a long beak
and folded wings still as wood
and it sits on a disc held by
seven stiff men who hold
their hands palms out against their many faces
--some faces shorn off--
and their small doll-feet hang suspended
above the eagle's cracked face
with a fissure running deeper than the frowns it cuts
past the pale end-less beak
over its chest and down its leg
into the claws that
clutch a disc sitting on
the heads of twelve men with unreadable expressive faces
and naked formless bodies and
who in their turn stand on
the head of a creature, human-like,
with no nose but a knotty hole
and the fault running through her eye
(she holds a child, damaged
in her sibilant asymmetrical arms)
and her knees turn together and that
crack still runs between them right down
to her crooked feet and vague toes
which hold the weight of them all.

7 Quick Takes (XLVII)

1. I worked this weekend. I had certain things I planned to do, and did none of them. Instead I did lots of yard-type work and also prepared for our Monday event. What was I expecting, planning to get specific work done? That isn't how work ever goes.

2. One interesting task this weekend was catching an escaping pony. On Sunday a petting zoo was setting up in the Park and, while they were putting up a shelter, a pony and a donkey made a break for it. I saw them headed to the gate, and just managed to catch the pony's lead as he was headed out. Then I gathered up the donkey and led them back to their people. They were actually fairly obedient once I had their leads, minus the odd sudden stop to graze or a yearning for the flowerbeds. Good thing, too, because that donkey was way stronger than me.

3. Monday, then, was National Aboriginal Day. Hence the petting zoo. I was flipping burgers at our concession stand, which made me a little nervous. That was the second time in my life that I'd barbequed, and I was terrified that I'd burn them or undercook them and give someone food poisoning. Anyway, it went well. It turns out that barbequing isn't all that complicated.

4. Due to the fact that I worked the weekend and Monday, I got Tuesday off. I went to the library, where I picked up some books (more on that later) and went to the bank. By the time I got back, the day was getting on and I was tired, and so I ate frozen alfredo penne with broccoli and watched a movie (1408), and then I did the dishes, and then Mom got home from work, so we had supper, and then it was already evening. I still can't figure out how that happened. I rediscovered that having two single days off spread over a week is just not the same as a two-day weekend.

5. Books. Right. You know that moratorium on book buying? Yeah. About that. There was this book sale at the Haxton Centre on Sunday, so we swung by there before work, right? And books were a dollar apiece. These are books, ok? For a dollar. So I leave with three. That seems reasonable, right?

Except at work the receptionist, who's moving soon, left me a bag with, oh, about nine books. Hardcovers, most of them. Modern fiction and historical non-fiction. And she says there are more coming if I want them. I do want them (they are after all books, an essential property of which is that I want them), but I don't know if I want to wrestle my current bookshelf to BC with me, let alone a dozen more hardcovers.

But then, see, the library, which I visited on Tuesday, has a bookcase downstairs on which they shelve used books for sale. Paperbacks are 50¢ apiece. It cost me more to ride the bus on Tuesday than it did purchase three books, and Fort McMurray's bus fare is the cheapest I've ever seen. By the way, I did buy three books. And borrow three.

At some point it becomes clear that it is possible to be addicted to books. I think most of us knew this anyway. Not that, you know, I am addicted, or you, for instance, are addicted, but this is something we know. If only we could get crack addicts to transfer their addiction to literacy. That would get them off the streets, improve their education, and quite possibly save the floundering public library.

6. More specifically, Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. The possibility more than exists that I lost some of my Tuesday reading (all of) this book. Graphic novel? Graphic non-fiction? Graphic culture-criticism? Book.

I am a genre nerd. We knew this. So when I listen to a TED talk and realize that this guy has written a book about the structure of the comic strip (what he calls Sequential Art), identifying in the process four distinct schools of comics which can be located roughly on a Cartesian plane, I get excited. I also think I remember seeing this at the public library and, my narrative folding yet again upon itself, I look for it while at the library on Tuesday and pick it up.

!

It is great, though I disagree with him whenever he starts talking about literature. He has taught me a lot about the medium of comics. Notice that he spends much of his time talking about the medium. This isn't about Superman or Batman or the Incredible Hulk; he talks about Maus and Egyptian heiroglyphs and sequential 18th century woodcuts about as or more often as he does superheroes. This is about the form's structure and its literary/artistic possibilities, not pop culture, except when that pop culture provides a good example of his point.

In other bookish news, I am currently reading Reading Lolita in Tehran. It is excellent.

7. I've started househunting. It's getting close, but there are lots of listings up, so I'm not too worried. Yet.

I am sorry about the poor white-space management. I put spaces between all of my paragraphs when in draft, but somehow the publishing removes half of them. Again, apologies.

Jen Fulwiller of Conversion Diary hosts the 7 Quick Takes carnival. Be sure to check it out!

7 Quick Takes (XLV)

1. Last Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I was in Canmore with my folks. From there we visited Banff National Park and Yoho National Park, doing an assortment of interesting things involving wild animals and mountain tops. There are obviously pictures of such activities scattered throughout this post.

2. A few more birthday presents came rolling in. They were all in the form of DVDs. My folks had ordered Clint, and it finally came in. It's a collection of 35 of Clint Eastwood's films, along with a documentary called The Eastwood Factor and a small book based on a biography of the man. I am pumped.
There were also DVDs from Friend in Windsor, namely Hollywood Homicide, The Bank Job, and 1408.
Also, I had order the album Epicon by Globus with an Amazon.ca gift certificate my brother gave me, and it just came in today....

3. I am liking this Epicon CD. I had heard a number of their songs already through Grooveshark. Well, to begin with, I saw some time ago a Youtube video which compiled bits of a number of "epic songs," and one of them was Diem Ex Dei, which I thought sounded good. Then Jon introduced me to Grooveshark, and I thought the whole song was pretty good. This led to finding more songs by Globus, and, eventually, my buying the disc.
I listened to the album straight through; Jon has said something to the effect that the order the songs are presented is part of the album as a discrete musical composition, and that they are meant to be listened to in that order. At least, while each song does and must stand alone, there is an overall structure to the album itself.
It is the same, I assume, as reading a book of poetry or short stories in the order they are presented.
I am trying to learn music.
Also, Jon, I think you know what reprecussion all of this has for you and your forthcoming travels.

4. Soon summer students and I will be headed to the Marine Park again. If you have been following me only lately, you can learn more about the Marine Park by clicking the "marine park" label and skimming through the entries.

5. I read Water for Elephants on the way to Canmore. I highly recommend this book. I cannot stress this enough. It's about an old man in a senior's home remembering his years as a young vet for a run-down circus in the Great Depression. If circuses, the Depression, veterinary practices, love triangles, or well-developed characters appeal to you, read this book. Otherwise, read this book.

6. I also recently watched Lions for Lambs. I enjoyed this movie; in case you haven't seen it yet, it contemplates the American presense in Afghanistan from a number of points of view, some of which obliquely but importantly related. Furthermore, the structure of the film itself is interesting, in that it revolves primarily around two interviews (an idealistic professor with a faltering student, an old-school liberal reporter with a young Republican senator) and two injured American soldiers stranded in the Afghanistan mountains. The action of the film covers just over an hour, less time than the actual movie itself (the difference being made in overlap between scenes and some reminiscing). It's about courage, idealism, activism, hypocrisy, looking forward, looking back, and making a difference. (And it has Maryl Streep, Tom Cruise, and Robert Redford, if that makes any difference to you.)

7. I am spending more time with Frye's Anatomy of Criticism. I think my forays into postmodernism have resulted in a more fervent return to metanarratives. (This may be simply reactionary, but nonetheless I do have reasons for this return.) I think Frye's ideas will be useful for my upcoming graduate thesis, provided I wind up doing what I think I'll wind up doing, which is why I'm saying I'm re-reading his book.
But I'm also just so impressed with Frye's vision. Whether he succeeded or not, you have to give the man credit.
For those who don't know, Frye put together a diagrammatic structure of all literature. He created axises and categories; he scanned the breadth of world literature, looking for patterns and teasing out structures. He looked at words in fiction and discerned how many layers of meaning they possessed. Frye took many of the theories of criticism of his day and synthesized their observations. What he came up with was a vast structure into which, he believed, all literature could be fit, from lullaby lyrics to political satires to Victorian novels to Ethopian oral literature to Hindi scripture to hagiographies to free verse to horror films. It's pretty impressive, and freakishly accurate. (Though there's that quotation about being surprised about finding something where you hid it...)

I guess that's seven.

Visit the host, Jennifer Fulwiler.

Note: apologies for the weird formatting with the photos. I had tried to make them smaller, but Blogger wouldn't have it.

7 Quick Takes (XLII)

1. So we were at the Valley Zoo on Saturday. There were tigers and Arctic wolves and capybaras and an elephant and sea lions and wallabies and other things. It's not a terribly big zoo, but it's nice enough. I'm always concerned about caging animals at all, but in general these are animals that could not survive in the wild.

Oh, and did you know that once upon a time capybara were classified as fish by the Catholic Church? This means that they could be eaten during Lent; apparently large populations of South American peoples live primarily on capybara, and banning these delectable rodents would guarantee the starvation of whole indigenous peoples, or something like that. The RC Church was therefore under considerable pressure to declare that the world's largest rodent, being amphibious, was in fact a fish. I'm not sure what the status is now, other than that it's OBVIOUSLY a super-awesome adorable rodent.

2. Sunday was Mother's Day, but my own mother was at work. This means we did the mother's day stuff on Saturday, while at the zoo and in Edmonton.

I finished reading Paradise Lost and this edition's introduction, and then commenced The English Opium-Eater.

3. Due to basic workplace confidentiality, I can't really say any details or anything, but I got some bad news on Monday which made Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday rather miserable for me. At points throughout those three days I really felt like I couldn't trust my own memories and I was pretty eaten with shame and guilt. At other points I was incredible nervous, to the point of nauseau. It felt like I had a large sticky earthworm writhing in my stomach. But I got some sort of resolution on Wednesday, and it's been pretty much better from there.

4. I got some good writing done. I'm also finally liking the style or sound of the prose I'm writing, which has been so rare lately.

5. At work, we have a whole bunch of new summer students. I now have people to meet. That is always exciting. There may be more coming, too.

6. I'm supposedly supposed to be (read that out loud! such fun) writing another post about hope because I had the folly to mention that Kay and Jon have both recently written posts of that topic. I'd be lying, though, if I said I had any good ideas at the moment. I'm trying, though.

7. Somehow the people at work figured out that it's my birthday this weekend. Facebook likely told them. Anyway, there was cake, which I accidentally left at the Park. I hadn't thought they'd know, but, well, I suppose I was wrong on that one. I was out of the Admin building all day, so they did have lots of chances to scheme and plan and get cake.

I encourage you to visit Jen, host of this meme.

Planaria

In murky ponds your flattened lengths you hide,

Your heads like tender diamonds gazing dim

'Long logs you use as cover for your slim

And soft bodies, your vision feeble-eyed.

Your race's many members creep in streams

Around this world, yet we the treading swains,

Whose errors cut upon you ample pain,

Do little know your cross-eyed, broken dreams.

Yet every brokenness will yield another

You, from your wound; each fragment blooms into

A separate self. A cloven head's now two

That share a body branching. Quarrels mother

You clones who split your lengths by pulling free;

You worms will grow through love--and injury.

Yup. Planaria are funny little critters.

This is more emphatically a draft than usual. If anyone is out there, interested in contributing, I have a question: do you prefer the fourth line as it is, or would you prefer to see it, "And soft bodies, with tiny muscles filled inside."? Further, would the twelfth line be better as it is, or rendered, "That share a branching body."? Other critiques also welcome.

I had wanted to do more with this, but I often find that sonnets hold less than I anticipate they will, so I have to make due. Perhaps I could write another planaria sonnet, one that should follow immediately after in the sequence, which discusses how sexual reproduction is more genetically beneficial than asexual reproduction... and, yet, asexual reproduction seems to directly benefit those planaria who get injured, since they reproduce their genes exactly. It might be worth another sonnet.

Actually, an aubadina might work well for this subject. Shame it's not a real tradition.

Tetramorium caespitum

or, Pavement Ant

You march with many sisters, Amazon.
Across your desert mount you track your twin
In rushed obedience to now begin
The second hill to bring adherents on
This upper plain, for war against your foes.
Of your six limbs you give but empty care;
For queen and colony alone you bear
The unexamined burdens, senseless blows.
If thinking were your province, then would you
Forsake your bloody kind? Does thought condone
That social animals desire to be alone?
Would reason force the end of selfless crews?
What fate's the maid's who lacks a queen to give
Her harvest to, and guards her chance to live?

Forficula auricularia

or, The European Earwig

Your body lithe, you swim in dying leaves,
A hunter seeking moribund remains,
In reeking flowers, dumps, and swollen eaves,
Devouring pests and, lacking them, our grains.
Translucent legs and vested wings your weeds,
Which nightly you parade as ghoulish gown,
Not down those tunnels that your naming reads,
Though still provoking fear with pinching crown.
But 'neath the wintry earth you lay your clutch
In chambers underground, and tending turn
Your eggs to forestall mould, and mother much
Those white nymphs who in spring your ways will learn.
From humankind you've found but constant strife;
Yet buried under death, you raise up life.

4 March 2010, Fort McMurray

For some reason earwigs have always fascinated me; their bodies seem so graceful, their browns so glowing and clear. I used to be afraid of them, but I'm not any more. If they pinch me, it's my own fault for handling them. However, I recognize how other people are afraid of them. I've wanted to write a sonnet on them for some time and, after researching them on Wikipedia and letting the ideas percolate for a few days, something finally came to me. I was meditating on the form of the sonnet, and the above structure resulted.

Lines broken to reflect pauses in reading:

Your body lithe,
you swim in dying leaves,
a hunter seeking moribund remains in reeking flowers
dumps
and swollen eaves,
devouring pests
and, lacking them,
our grains.

Translucent legs and vested wings your weeds
which nightly you parade as ghoulish gown,
not down those tunnels that your naming reads,
though still provoking fear with pinching crown.

But 'neath the wintery earth
you lay your clutch in chambers underground
and tending turn your eggs to forestall mould
and mother much those white nymphs
who in spring your ways will learn.

From human kind you've found but constant strife;
Yet buried under death
you raise up life.

Cepaea nemoralis

or, The Grove Snail

You little nomads, keep your secrets banked
Inside your yellow Atlas-shoulder stores,
And hide within those rounds your patient lores,
Enclosed among your kind, disliked, unthanked.
Or pass between you glacial wisdom, slow-footed news.
At leafy caravanaries you trade
Among your gradual people, from gardens strayed;
To them reveal your gospel, them, in conch-like pews.
You are tucked, your puckered foot is bare.
I pluck you from my palm and you unfurl
Your body; prongs are, like the point, in air,
A question mark, your shell the inward-questing curl.
Why trust your tender self to me, one bred
In a speed-mad world from which all wisdom's fled?

I wrote this on Monday (the 15 of Feb), on the Winter Road between Fort Chipewyan and Fort McMurray. One of the things I miss about Ontario are the snails, especially the yellow ones, which from Wikipedia I gather are Cepaea nemoralis, or grove snails. I have written about the snail's wisdom before, but I decided to try the idea again. Actually, I like some of "Eulogy for the Garden," but not the whole thing. It needs a lot of work yet, and that's something I will some day give it. In the meantime, I'll expand the snail bit in a sonnet and not free verse. As the New Englander says in The Tommyknockers, "Real poims rhyme."

Re-written, so the line-breaks match the pauses:

You little nomads,
keep your secrets banked inside your yellow Atlas-shoulder stores,
and hide within those rounds your patient lores,
enclosed among your kind,
disliked, unthanked.
Or pass between you glacial wisdom,
slow-footed news;
At leafy caravanaries you trade among your gradual people, from gardens strayed;
to them reveal your gospel, them, in conch-like pews.
You are tucked, your puckered foot is bare.
I pluck you from my palm and you unfurl your body;
prongs are, like the point, in air, a question mark, your shell the inward-questing curl.
Why trust your tender self to me,
one bred in a speed-mad world from which all wisdom's fled?

The Fort Chip Adventure: Where I Play With Husky Pups and Go Dogsledding

On Saturday night we went dogsledding. The following a pictures taken from this event. Hopefully the video works.

7 Quick Takes (XXI)

1. Was it only last Friday that I went to a party? It must have been just a week ago. That's crazy. That, then is the first entry: On Friday I went to a party. The import of this is that I haven't been to a real social gathering since September--September!--when I visited Oakville, Kingston, and Windsor. It was tremendously awkward at first since I knew so few people and didn't want to latch onto those I did know and drag them down with my own social ineptitude. But in the end it worked out, as I got to know a few other people there and by the end I had quite a bit of fun.

2. Saturday. What happened Saturday? Books happened on Saturday. That's what. We went to the library, where I extracted The Magician's Book again, as well as Neuromancer. I finally got to finish the former, which has excellent parts and less than excellent parts. (It also gave me a book idea--I good one, I think--that I will attempt in the future. Not yet. I am not mature enough to take on this task yet.) I began Neuromancer, but will return it without finishing it, I think. It is perhaps too dark and gritty for me. Maybe not; maybe it's just a mood I'll pass through. But I am not feeling it right now.

After this, there was an expedition to the Peter Pond Shopping Centre (ie. the mall). This involved Chinese food and Bootleggers (not for me) and Zellers and Coles. This later was what interested me most, as from it came The Elements of Style and Huston Smith's The World's Religions. Lacking a reference book in either English grammar or world religions, I decided that I must use my gift certificates to remedy this situation. I have never read Strunk and White's classic, so I picked it up. And Smith's book was the most promising and most comprehensive, though now that I look over it I realize it stills lacks things on what might be called 'minor' religions--Shinto, Zoroastrianism, Rastafarianism, Wicca and Neo-Paganism, Mormonism, Scientology. There is a section for "primal religions" in the back, but this is thin and covers too vast a territory for me to confident of it. I haven't read that far yet, so I can't tell you for sure.

What Huston's book has so far done is greatly improve my understanding of Buddhism and re-familiarize me with Hinduism and Confucianism. That's as far as I've read so far, but I feel edified for having read this. Also, it's here in Fort Mac with me, so I can refer to it as need be. This is better than my host of textbooks in Ontario, which I cannot access. Yay!

Visits to the other stores mentioned, incidentally, involved buying presents for families through the Salvation Army.

3. Events must have occured on Sunday, but for me the day revolved around the twin axes of church, in which I didn't serve, and reading. I haven't spent enough time reading lately, so spending a whole day with The Magician's Book (see above) was nice. Not that I agree with certain parts of that book, but it was nice to just read.

4. And then on Monday work recommenced. Somewhere in this past week I finished writing text files, which is to say that most of the prose for the exhibit I am designing is now in draft form. This I must edit myself and then have edited. I have a rock-truck of work left to do, which means that the coming holidays will lack in certain holiday-like elements. Such as free time, or as much of it as Christmas usually heralds. This exhibit is becoming a stress-centre.

5. I need to spend more time on grad school applications again. I very much do not want to--I have mentioned this sentiment before--but there you go. I must, or I will be here in Fort McMurray for yet another year, and I can tell you that if that wasn't an incentive before, this week has changed that...

6. ...because it is COLD here! Geez jumpin' Louise. It took the knights of yore less time to suit up for a joust than it does for me to get my outdoor gear on, and I'm still woefully underdressed. I lack snowpants or other leg-warming accoutrements, for instance. I wear a coat and a jacket and a sweater over a t-shirt or long-sleeved shirt simultaneously, as well as two pairs of gloves (that's gloves, not mittens, b/c I need fingers to work) and two pairs of socks in my boots. I wear a hat and a hood (sometimes two hoods, if I am wearing my one-and-only hoodie that day) and a scarf or a neckwarmer. Under this pile of cotton and polyester my torso and ears are warm, but my hands, legs, and feet are still cold.

Now, in case you're thinking that I'm merely participating in that time-honoured Canadian tradition of griping about the cold, let me lay down some figures for you. Yesterday I saved some outdoors-related tasks at work for the early afternoon, when it was to warm up to -30 oC. For you Fahrenheiters, that's -22 oF, according to some on-line temperate calculator. Notice that it warmed up to that temperature. You wouldn't know it, though. I heard tell that with the wind chill it was -50. My legs actually hurt they were so cold when I did my end-of-day security round.

Some forecaster was talking about a balmy -5 next week, but I've been told that they lie about the forecast all the time. This happened during the summer when they told us it would be sunny next week, and it never was. I'm not surprised they lost a zero somewhere between the meteorologist's office and the newsroom.

7. I went to work for a few hours today and got a photo shoot done. (Of artifacts and not models, alas.) And then on the way back I had an impromptu photoshoot of some ravens. My subjects were kind enough to pose for me, though they were a bit nervous.

Oh, and I didn't do this last night because the folks wanted to break out a new game Mom bought called Catch Phrase. I found out about it at the party (see above), so Mom got it on Saturday (see above).

Also, again outside of the 7 Quick Takes thing, do people ever e-mail information to themselves, like pictures or links or whatever, instead of burning CDs or using USB keys? If yes, does anyone else feel weird about writing anything in the body? Like it somehow bifurcates your selfhood, makes you uncomfortably non-singular? Or am I the only one who both feels such bifurcations and feels uncomfortable about them?