Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from January, 2015

"To sing in green" by Hugo von Hofmannsthal

I Didn’t you hear, in here, How music prowled the house? The night was hard and lightless But out there on a stiff stone larking – that was me. I said all I could: "Dear, you're everything to me!" But the east shoved out new light and the harsh day drove me home. My mouth was shut again. II Under a murky weighted sky So lonely we were, Cleaved from the other! But no more: The air blows free and fro; And the whole world inamidst us Shines as if glass. The stars arose, were Shown shimmering on us, And even they knew: So strong and stronger their splendour That we sighed, Lay blissful, captured by other's touch. III My beloved spoke: "I'll not block you; You owe me nothing. Folk should not be kept – They weren't born to trust so. Hit the road, my friend, Behold land upon land Try out many beds Take many women by the hand. If a wine’s too sour for you, Go drink Malvasia – But if my mouth is sweeter, Only then come

the awful world as one

Question was " What would the world be like if everyone was like you ?" People took a couple of very different scenarios from that: either physical identity (a world of clones, body and mind) or philosophical identity (a world in which everyone shared your values) or both (because of confusion between those two, or some mind-body identity intuition), or even neither (because focussing on behaviour only). One friend asked if Uma Thurman would have a beard like him, a line of inquiry which got obscene very quickly. Most people assumed that 7 billion people would morph overnight, and that the great new Them would have to deal with the world as it is currently (scarcity, egotism, path dependency, cognitive bias), rather than bending any other variables to make e.g. perfect uniform social justice possible. The intuition pump was for people to report the things they see as essential about themselves. (Can someone have your exact values or personality without also having y

wait in room

Buro meets ochlo and neither yields; instead there's a steady faceplant meld of rule with weeping exception. Christ. Reach me a nothing, save me a stay! If you are given pause — if you give me a bed larger than I need and heed the answer retrodicted — you will brush the wrecks of timetables from me, wash my shoulders of lead, and see in me hot and fragile seas. To leave me ungeneralised.

'Rain Clearance' by Dù Fǔ

for Qiu Ji Sky emptied, the autumn cloud thins; A west wind spans a myriad fields. The morning scene is good — cleared: Long rain has left us land. Tight willows show sparse green, Uphill, pears are flowering red. Upstairs, a reed pipe plays; One goose rises in plain air. ************************************************** 雨晴 (一作秋霽) 天水秋雲薄 從西萬里風 今朝好晴景 久雨不妨農 塞柳行疏翠 山梨結小紅 胡笳樓上發 一雁入高空 杜甫 (758 CE)