February 10, 2004 - 10:01 p.m.

Just made myself coffee. smell filling my corner of the 
room half empty cylinder Mc Vitties wrapper beside me.
I was sad a moment ago Its strange how a coffee can 
change things. Like sleep. I wake up and ive forgotten 
most things about yesterday.

                        ((
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                     (o|   |        
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.Jorge Luis Borges: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~boozer/etexts/tlon.html

Short story about a world where objects don't exist, only 
our perceptions of them exist.

Go visit '~boozer'(real name Dave) at his website for 
the text. Site also includes a shrine to Tori Amos.

Anyway in Tlön, the whole world (science, language) is 
based around the acceptance of the fact that only 
perceptions exist.
This theory has been put forward in our world by a guy 
named Berkley:
 "If it be allowed that no idea nor anything 
  like an idea can exist in an unperceiving 
  substance, then surely it follows, that no 
  figure or mode of extension which we can either 
  perceive or imagine, or have any idea of, can 
  be really inherent in matter. (Three Dialogues 139)"

So if reality only exists in your mind, you can make any 
old thing up, really belive it, and it becomes real.
God:
 "Hence it is evident, that God is known as 
  certainly and immediately as any other mind 
  or spirit whatsoever, distinct from 
  ourselves. We may even assert that the 
  existence of God is far more evidently 
  perceived than the existence of men; because
  the effects of Nature are infinitely more 
  numerous and considerable, than those 
  ascribed to human agents. (Principles 109)" - Berkley

This whole 'mind=only reality' thing reminds me of 1984.
Big Brother controls the minds of the people, therefore 
he controls the past. Not only is a fake history made 
up, but because everyone believes it, who's to say it is 
any less real than the disgarded history. You control 
minds and you control _everything_.

Back to the Borges' story. What does the language of 
this world look like?

 'The world for them is not a concourse of 
  objects in space; it is a heterogeneous series 
  of independent acts. It is successive and 
  temporal, not spatial. There are no nouns in 
  Tlön's conjectural Ursprache, from which the 
  "present" languages and the dialects are 
  derived: For example: there is no word 
  corresponding to the word "moon,", but there 
  is a verb which in English would be "to moon" 
  or "to moonate." "The moon rose above the 
  river" is hlor u fang axaxaxas mlo, or 
  literally: "upward behind the onstreaming it 
  mooned." 
 
  The preceding applies to the languages of the 
  southern hemisphere. In those of the northern 
  hemisphere the prime unit is not the verb, but 
  the monosyllabic adjective. The noun is formed 
  by an accumulation of adjectives. They do not  
  say "moon," but rather "round airy-light on    
  dark" or "pale-orange-of-the-sky" or any other 
  such combination. In the example selected the  
  mass of adjectives refers to a real object, 
  but this is purely fortuitous. The literature 
  of this hemisphere abounds in ideal objects, 
  which are convoked and dissolved in a moment, 
  according to poetic needs.
  At times they are determined by mere
  simultaneity. There are objects composed of two 
  terms, one of visual and another of auditory 
  character: the color of the rising sun and the 
  faraway cry of a bird. There are objects of 
  many terms: the sun and the water on a swimmer's 
  chest, the vague tremulous rose color we see 
  with our eyes closed, the sensation of being 
  carried along by a river and also by sleep. 
  These second-degree objects can be combined with 
  others; through the use of certain abbreviations, 
  the process is practically infinite.
 
  There are famous poems made up of one enormous 
  word. This word forms a poetic object created by 
  the author. The fact that no one believes in the 
  reality of nouns paradoxically causes their 
  number to be unending. The languages of Tlön's 
  northern hemisphere contain all the nouns of the 
  Indo-European languages - and many others as well. '

One string-like word, describing a single perfect 
feeling/moment. I like that. Nouns are just lazy 
labels. Long live descriptive.... argh... wordy? 
('ADJECTIVES' IS A NOUN AND PLURALS ARE A LIE)


.Enlightenment
http://users.crocker.com/greenfield/panaram3.jpg
Someone using a computer at a high school in Greenfield, Massachusetts
stumbled onto my site a few minutes ago. It was 4 in the 
afternoon, school had probably just finished and they 
were searching online for the words of a korean buddhist 
teacher.  Schoolkid questioning the meaning of life? 
Teacher clearing her mind with a zen koan after a 
stressful day? I hope you find enlightenment elsewhere.

 
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combined companions
biscuit banana coffee
friendly mcvittie