babbling on like some sorta babylonian babel in the brain.  a good place for mining the metaphors inside stories.

reading ‘six memos for the next millenium’, so i can revisit and reconsider some of the musings i made on the lightness of being, when beginning this blog however many years ago. 

need to read ‘de rerum natura’ by lucretius.

refreshing my memory of rilke’s elegies as i feel the theme concerns the flash i am currently workshopping, and came across this quote discussing the poet:

‘at each stage now and again the miracle occurs, his delicate, hesitant, anxiety-prone person withdraws, and through him resounds the music of the universe; like the basin of a fountain he becomes at once instrument and ear’  hesse on rilke

now i’m tempted to dig up the short story ‘basin’ i wrote when staying in paris with my sister taryn, but i should probably stay on task.

i will study the science of imaginary solutions.

Daniel Dennett identifies four properties that are commonly ascribed to qualia. According to these, qualia are:

ineffable; that is, they cannot be communicated, or apprehended by any other means than direct experience.
intrinsic; that is, they are non-relational properties, which do not change depending on the experience’s relation to other things.
private; that is, all interpersonal comparisons of qualia are systematically impossible.
directly or immediately apprehensible in consciousness; that is, to experience a quale is to know one experiences a quale, and to know all there is to know about that quale.

i read a book from this guy awhile ago; i can’t remember the name but i know i liked it. consciousness explained? i should try to find my old notes on it.

i generally really dislike science fiction, but roger zelazny is an other-ordinary sci fi writer. i  took ‘the doors of his face, the lamps of his mouth’ from a pile s was giving away.  i picked it solely for the name (though the cover pic is compelling too), which it totally lived up to.  a couple of my favorites so far:

‘a museum piece,’ where artists slip into the artwork and hang out in the museum after closing.  this sounds like fun, and i’d like to try it, especially the late night food raids.  also, kissing can suspend lions while mid-pounce, (which makes sense to me) and mobiles are admittedly alien life forms who eat albino lions when necessary. 

‘devil car’ is still my favorite so far, though, the protagonist’s car jenny being one of the most human characters i’ve come across ever.  like she makes me cry, not kidding.  she’s so badass, and so freaking weak.  i love myself a contradictory character.  also, rebel car gangs are pretty cool to picture.

so, to repent for my thinking all science fiction sucks, i’ve been workshopping an at least supernatural piece i started awhile ago, then put down, ‘alien in the airport.’  hopefully this will come into its own and i can submit it somewhere soon.  the only science fiction thing i ever tried submitting was ‘moonlighting,’ a story set in a health food store (hey, write what you know).  they suggested i edit it, but i never did, suggestible as i am.  maybe i’ll see if i didn’t lose it in the move.

the insolent christmas tree was afire with every hue of the rainbow, as nabokov would say.

this would be a nice way to pass the day.