Songs of the Hour: Moby Porcelain, some Mazzy Star
I fell asleep last night with words marching through my head in unit formation. Apprehensive, apprehended, prehensile, comprehensive, reprehensible…
I woke up this morning and they were still there, but in a single helix
spinning like pinwheels, hinged on "prehen". Just… spinning. Glowing
blue times-new-roman twirling in closed-eye darkness. What do these
words have in common? To grab, maybe. To hold. I
think about this sort of thing constantly, in the background, and
ultimately I’m never certain. Obsessive? Perhaps. I got so obsessed
with "hap" I actually bothered to look it up. Hap. Hapless. Happy.
Happenstance. Mishap. Haphazard. It happens to mean luck, fortune, or chance. Oh. Of course it does. It’s obvious now. That makes sense.
I had to know.
It’s
one of the things I love about Japanese (and subsequently Chinese)
[sequence, consequence, subsequent, sequel… nevermind.
Inconsequential]. You have a kanji character
that has a meaning, and probably several different ways to pronounce
it, but the meaning is modified by the other characters in the word.
Just like the Greek, Latin and German roots of English words are
modified by the prefixes and suffixes around them. But there are only
so many pre/suf-fixes in English. In Japanese, everything revolves
around combinations [evolve, revolve, revolution, volume, convolute,
volatile, volunteer]. The combination of meanings is crucial [I'm
resisting the power of "crux"].
My
personality professor implied to me an email, kindly, that I was
obsessive. As obsessive as he was in college. I had written something
about seeing cross-disciplinary patterns in the things I learned. How
history, science, art, math and literature are all interdependent
through time. I take it for granted how obvious
this is, but he took the opportunity to imply obsessive tendencies
[tend, pretend, attend, tender, tendon, intension, intensive,
detention]. I suspect we’re both right. Ultimately, a lot of what I see
is science shaping paradigm and how it manifests in all the other
areas, but the power of metaphors shaping science is also pervasive.
It’s in the terminology. Stem cells. String
Theory. Metaphor is the very foundation of cognitive science and
artificial intelligence. The solar system as a model for the atom. And
working the other way, damn near anything can be put on a graph. These
metaphors aren’t always accurate, but the dominant use of them, to me,
is wholly indicative of the way humans think.
I’m not exactly sure what it is that
I would say I’m obsessed with. I could argue that it’s metaphor. But
that’s not quite right, it’s something beneath metaphor. It’s the
concept beneath, one thing representing another. Or perhaps, as with
the linguistics, it’s simply a matter of what things mean outside of their symbols. What words mean. How we communicate. How
phrases like "You don’t have to rub my nose in it" come to common use.
Obviously, it comes from house-training puppies. But when you say it or
hear it, are you thinking about puppies? Probably not. It’s a concept
of blatantly reminding one of one’s mistake. But how often do you say
"stop reminding me of, and punishing me for, my mistake"? As I "cut"
and "paste" this post from Word to Friendster and Myspace, will I give
the terminology, and its implications about how the species
conceptualizes, a second thought? Should I?
Perhaps
I’m just trapped in a cycle of deductive and inductive reasoning.
Deducing core meanings and applying them in generalizations to humanity
at large in an effort to better understand. Perhaps I’m thinking about
twenty separate things at once and getting them all muddled up
together. Roots and meaning and metaphor and human processing. I’m
obsessed with gesture. What your fidgeting during a particular
conversations indicates about you. I’m obsessed with the power of a
peculiar glance. I’m obsessed with Wing Biddlebaum’s hands.
I’m obsessed with your word choice, and what it implies about your
values and schemas. I’m obsessed with the analysis of implications. And
currently, I’m contemplating what that obsession indicates about me
[Indicate, predicate, predict, indict, verdict, vindicate, syndicate,
dictator, contradict, addict, benediction]. Ok. Enough.
Joss
went fishing with my dad this week, and we took some time to clean
before they left. I put hundreds of dollars worth of toys in a box
labeled "free toys" on the curb and hauled everything else to the
trash. It was a lot to get rid of. Ten years worth of accumulation of
buzz lightyear dolls and happy meal toys. I was surprised Joss was
willing to let it all go, keeping mostly just transformers and magic
kits and little kid-science things. "On Turning Ten" is haunting me as
I write this. Four days away. Jeesus.
I had
my dad’s truck while they were out of town, so I took the opportunity
to put a few things in storage. I looked at all my mom’s expensive
antique porcelain dolls, her life-size Raggedy Anne and Andy dolls
(orphans, just like my brother and I, that’s why she liked them—they
represented the two of us), the 3 foot stuffed Little Orphan Annie
(same principle), and a fuck-ton of silly antiques that have crowded an
already overpacked house. The antique butter churn, the glass-top
wagon-wheel-on-a-barrel table, the four-hundred pound wrought iron
safe, wrought iron sewing bench, the antique "ice-box" full
of Joss’ books and art supplies. 85% of our furniture is antique, and
half of it so old I’m scared to put a glass of water on it lest it
crumble. Secretly, I hate it. Every bit of it. I always have.
I
started thinking about what these things indicated about my mom. It
paints an easy portrait of a woman from a small town who grew up poor
and when she came into her own, wanted to populate her home with
expensive things. She was a romantic in her way, antiques heralding
back to an idealized past of privilege and class, traditional family
values and gender roles in her choice of dolls and the zillion
cross-stitched pictures on the wall—half of which she actually did, the
other half paid for, and paid to add my mom’s initials to the bottom
where she humbly took credit for the masterpieces of my and my
brother’s stitched in portraits. She was insanely sentimental. Little
poetry books "From a Mother to her Daughter" full of fluffy
monosyllabic iambic pentameter are stuffed into every antique drawer
beside permutations of "Chicken Soup for (some poor bastard’s) Soul".
Taking it all in, I think the person she wanted to be was the type of
woman you can only find in "Touched by an Angel" reruns or old country
novels about rural southern gentry.
It
doesn’t say as much about who she was, as it does about who she wanted
to be. But that’s definitely worth knowing, maybe even moreso. Isn’t
that how we’d all rather be remembered?
I don’t know if this analysis was a result of my usual obsession, or an afterthought related to one of Marco’s posts,
but it’s lengthy and detailed and I’m going to spare you the rest
because I love you all and it’s probably awkward to read about. And for
the love of the gods, this is long. Well, Amanda, be careful what you
wish for. J You’ve got 3 weeks worth of gibberish to pilfer through.
Outside
of my incessantly churning head, I’ve spent a couple more weeks playing
spades and looking at grad schools. I had one job interview, with those
who Didn’t Call Back probably due to my unnecessary honesty, and one
interview for an unpaid research assistant position next semester that
went pretty well I think. I’ll know next week. The rest of my time has
been spent with the baby biscuit, and seasons 1 and 2 of Battlestar
Galactica, the commentary on which will just have to wait. Because I
love you. And you’ve been listening to me too long already.
Love.
