what-money-stands-for corner

The antimonopolist reading of The Wizard of Oz - that it's actually about the gold standard in American currency - came up in a class recently. It's a topic which quickly leads to questions about just what money is. 

Top answer: it's just a symbol! 

And while I totally agree w/ that observation - what is the symbol representing?

Maybe a way to investigate is to examine the two instances of gift giving in the story. The first, about halfway through the book, is when the Winkies give gifts to their liberators:

Finding they were determined to go, the Winkies gave Toto and the Lion each a golden collar; and to Dorothy they presented a beautiful bracelet studded with diamonds; and to the Scarecrow they gave a gold-headed walking stick, to keep him from stumbling; and to the Tin Woodman they offered a silver oil-can, inlaid with gold and set with precious jewels.

The Winkies go on a spree at the Franklin Mint and give Dorothy and company gifts of useful objects inlaid w/ gold, diamonds, etc. Maybe they saw the gold cap the newly-deceased witch was wearing just prior to this passage - in order to command the flying monkees - and at some level want to pass along the power. That is, maybe a transitive relationship exists within these gifts, albeit one where the Winkies try to give something they never had themselves.

Near the end of the book, the Wizard gives the company gifts in order to keep his promise. Here is the exchange with the Tin Woodman:

"Come in," called Oz, and the Woodman entered and said, "I have come for my heart."

"Very well," answered the little man. "But I shall have to cut a hole in your breast, so I can put your heart in the right place. I hope it won't hurt you."

"Oh, no," answered the Woodman. "I shall not feel it at all."

So Oz brought a pair of tinsmith's shears and cut a small, square hole in the left side of the Tin Woodman's breast. Then, going to a chest of drawers, he took out a pretty heart, made entirely of silk and stuffed with sawdust.

Oz is also giving the Tin Woodman something he had already, but the gift makes it tangible. Also adding to its tangibility? The gash Oz is carving into him.  In his breast.  

It's almost sexual.   

The wizard's gift contains no gold or diamonds.  The pretty heart is instead made of silk and sawdust, two contrasting items, one of shiny lustre (ie, lust) and the other a by-product of labor. If Oz is passing along any form of power, it's this symbolic awareness of lust and labor, contained in a hand-made art object.

And so maybe there are two ways to transmit a symbol?  In currency, as a proxy for power, or in art, transmitting awareness of everything worth having.

here live kind-hearted women

^^^^^^^ a curious symbol meaning here live kind-hearted women

so then why is the house upside-down?

(via the symbol a day feed)

muxtape redux

the very awesome (and made in nyc) muxtape is back, albeit in a diminished form.

atomic lighthouses

lighthouses powered by atomics - for real, not fiction.

wilde and whispering

Oscar Wilde on questions. There is only one worth asking and it's best to ask in a whisper:

[...] Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer. The beautiful sterile emotions that art excites in us are hateful in its eyes, and so completely are people dominated by the tyranny of this dreadful social ideal that they are always coming shamelessly up to one at Private Views and other places that are open to the general public, and saying in a loud stentorian voice, `What are you doing?' whereas `What are you thinking?' is the only question that any single civilised being should ever be allowed to whisper to another.

-- Oscar Wilde in The Critic as Artist

reflections-on-journalism corner: john donne and reading

Whenever I read newspaper articles (ie, normal journalism) this poem by John Donne usually occurs to me. Most of the time it comes to mind while my attention wanes. I picture myself as the narrative figure, laboring to admit the author-as-God who is attempting to ravish and enthrall my person with a story.

Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

-- John Donne, Holy Sonnet 14

I feel like this is a fairly accurate representation of the author-to-reader relationship.

It's rare for one's heart to be battered by plain old newspaper journalism. The nytimes op-ed'ers are an exception; they are able to knock and ravish with expressive vigor and rhetorical flourish.

on city people and looking up

What sets people in this city apart is not how tough they are but how willingly they live with eyes cast down in a culture that wants us all to look up. The tourist gazes up at the skyline; the New Yorker prefers to stare down at the intricacies of the sidewalk -- dog droppings and all.

^^^^^^^ from an essay by Leonard Kriegel - 'Beloved Enemy'

the winter of our jouissance

The reading list for Lacan W4995 includes everything but the discourse on the kitchen sink:

Tentative Reading Schedule: Reading Lacan

Jan 20 Introduction

27 Various articles by J.A. Miller etc., explaining basic concepts: the Real, Imaginary, & Symbolic; Jouissance; object a; need, demand (drive), and desire; the Name of the Father; the mathemes, the formulas of sexuation; the four discourses. Secondarily, articles by Lacanians and others (Damasio etc.) relating psychoanalysis to neuroscience, capitalism, feminism, and to questions about cognition, feeling, faith, freedom, gender, and love.

Feb 3 Continued

obama icon

flyers referencing a certain alumni are popular at the moment:

reflections-on-deism corner: from a notebook entry on 'noteworthy miscellany in 08' but which most likely took place in the first few days of '09

**** the big banging deist ****

the more i read about this*, the more i realize i might be a deist. i feel like i'm losing my agnosticism.

do you believe there was once a god in man's image who created the universe?

well, no.

i think that means you just believe in the big bang, then.

oh.

* the notion of one's self as a loop: cf. Hofstadter, Dennett

** all the above cf. Richardson, Baer. brunch conversation. time unknown.

women's & men's restroom

^^^^ this is the bathroom sign in one of the main buildings at Barnard, where a subtle reluctance to have the boys come over is palpable in the clunky-sounding women's and men's restroom

just try saying it a few times-- feels pretty clunky on those "s" sounds, y? 

yeats fascinates

The issue of thinking too much about doubt and its reasonability (and the difficulty of determining just *what* that subjective notion means among a small group of strangers) came up recently, a problem to which Yeats has an answer:  pull out the bolt

What does this mean?  I have absolutely no idea.  

Yet it feels, well, right.

The Fascination of What’s Difficult

-- W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)

THE FASCINATION of what’s difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent
Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart. There’s something ails our colt
That must, as if it had not holy blood, 5
Nor on an Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,
Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt
As though it dragged road metal. My curse on plays
That have to be set up in fifty ways,
On the day’s war with every knave and dolt, 10
Theatre business, management of men.
I swear before the dawn comes round again
I’ll find the stable and pull out the bolt.

(cf. here)

back off man, i'm a scientist

^^^^ from an article in the nytimes on school curriculum and evolution in Texas.

the stylish scientist in the above photo is the (curiously named) Dick Neavel.

daily routines until the tardy bell rings

The Daily Routines blog collects the daily habits of interesting folks. Their entries are sourced and seem to be non-fictional, however some are extremely ripe for parody, such as this one by the fastidious Emily Dickinson:

I will tell you my order of time for the day, as you were so kind as to give me your's. At 6. oclock, we all rise. We breakfast at 7. Our study hours begin at 8. At 9. we all meet in Seminary Hall, for devotions. At 10¼. I recite a review of Ancient History, in connection with which we read Goldsmith & Grimshaw. At .11. I recite a lesson in "Pope's Essay on Man" which is merely transposition. At .12. I practice Calisthenics & at 12¼ read until dinner, which is at 12½ & after dinner, from 1½ until 2 I sing in Seminary Hall. From 2¾ until 3¾. I practise upon the Piano. At 3¾ I go to Sections, where we give in all our accounts of the day, including, Absence - Tardiness - Communications - Breaking Silent Study hours - Receiving Company in our rooms & ten thousand other things, which I will not take time or place to mention. At 4½, we go into Seminary Hall, & receive advice from Miss. Lyon in the form of lecture. We have Supper at 6. & silent-study hours from then until retiring bell, which rings at 8¾, but the tardy bell does not ring untl 9¾, so that we dont often obey the first warning to retire.

...and a more general comment w/r/t daily routines by nytimer Thomas Friedman:

"Honestly, I still can't wait to get my pants on in the morning"

cool cat obama

worth reading in this month's Atlantic: christopher hitchens on the fellow pictured above

don't expect, suggest

i just woke up after dreaming i was listening to the u2 song 'numb' - the one where The Edge reads a list of various imperatives - and seeing all of the words in text.

a quick check of the internet (google, tap tap tap) ... here ... reveals that my unconscious tossed up a fragment of the lyrics, from the first 'don't expect / suggest' then skipping some down to around the last 10 to 15. it tossed them pretty much intact, as far as i can remember now, albeit out of order.

there is a *great* connection to u2's fellow-Irishman Wilde's essay The Critic as Artist in the refrain:

don't expect

suggest

it could be that expectations are a form of intention, ie putting something forward with an expected outcome, whereas a suggestion is putting something forward for its sake alone, sans additional expectational weight. expectation is founded on intention, while suggestion inherently lacks it (expection, but maybe intention too?)

well, unless there are 'expectational suggestions' ...

suggestion is still not quite a form of subtle influence, per Wilde, unless its the overhearing of someone suggesting something to someone else.

the word origins (add'l tap, tap) might also reveal some clues:

expect: ORIGIN mid 16th cent. (in the sense [defer action, wait] ): from Latin exspectare ‘look out for,’ from ex- ‘out’ + spectare ‘to look’ (frequentative of specere ‘see’ ).

suggest: ORIGIN early 16th cent.: from Latin suggest- ‘suggested, prompted,’ from the verb suggerere, from sub- ‘from below’ + gerere ‘bring.’

okay then, it occurs to me now that this may have been better in a notebook than a post. whatever.

the scarcity of the audacity of hope

an open request to the President-Elect's alma mater:

please buy some more copies of his books.

a mere 2 copies at Butler and 1 over at Barnard??