this week i

tested removing industry from weighting calibration.  midnight suddenly, i boiled coffee water, worked till two.  all-night diner three blocks from me has frango parmegiana and molho picante.  my father said, "that stuff didn't last long around me."  drawn to likeness of paul sorvino, rip, i remember the day in seventh grade when his character's full name revealed. my father also said, "you know who doesn't tuck in their shirts?  fat guys."

 

compost, burn incense over the sink.  guilherme disputed good trees being good trees, andrea decorated refrigeration appropriately, canela no maca

 

read player piano by kurt vonnegut

consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet i say unto you, that even solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. . . . matthew 6:28

objectively, know-how and world law ere getting their long-awaited chance to turn earth into an altogether pleasant and convenient place in which to sweat out judgment day

the music stopped abruptly, with the air of having delivered exactly five cents worth of joy

"checker charlie, world's champion checker player, and looking for new planets to conquer."  he grabbed a corner of the bedsheet, and unveiled charley - a gray steel box with a checkerboard painted on its front panel.  in each square that could be occupied by a checkerpiece were a red and a green jewel, each with a lamp behind it

paul could see the personnel manager pecking out bud's job code number on a keyboard, and seconds later having the machine deal him seventy-two cards bearing the names of those who did what bud did for a living - what bud's machine now did better.  now, personnel machines all over the country would be reset so as no longer to recognize the job as one suited for men.  the combination of holes and nicks that bud had been to personnel machines would no longer be acceptable.  if it were to be slipped into a machine, it would come popping right back out

everyone's i.q., as measured by the national standard general classification test, was on public record - in ilium, at the police station

thoreau was in jail because he wouldn't pay a tax to support the mexican war.  he didn't believe in the war.  and emerson came to jail to see him.  'henry,' he said, 'why are you here?' and thoreau said, 'ralph, why aren't you here?'

"i'm doctor of cowshit, pigshit, and chickenshit," he said.  "when you doctors figure out what you want, you'll find me out in the barn shoveling my thesis"

supper will be ready in twenty-eight seconds

he carried her across the wide-board floor into the pine-wainscoted bedroom and laid her down on a patchwork quilt on a bird's-eye maple bed.  there, mr. haycox had told him, six independent people had died, and fourteen had been born

abandon all hope, ye who don't wear green shirts

doctor ewing j. halyard was giving himself a ragged manicure with his teeth in one of the waiting chairs

culture's so cheap, a man figured he could insulate his house cheaper with books and prints than he could with rockwool

anybody that competes with slaves becomes a slave

a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction

7/28

this week i

ate japanese food and then the paparazzi found us.  dante's inferno includes fat-shaming. do not twist until everything is safely ensconced

 

reply to checks i've arrived home safe with a little whiff of asshole.  accustomed to crime, brazilian culture means well.  but look at these liars

heard invasive whistling in not orange laranjeiras trees. up the hillside for beans and rice, we celebrated june to the tune of long live the punks

 

 

pasted the url of a small rio de janeiro pizzaria's online menu into the top four search engines, none included the actual website as the first result

 

read the road by cormac mccarthy.  scorched earth, tho unlike both sherman burning everything in front of him, barclay burning everything behind

 it's snowing, the boy said.  he looked at the sky.  a single gray flake sifting down.  he caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last host of christendom

two softdrink machines that had been tilted over into the floor and opened with a prybar.  coins everywhere in the ash.  he sat and ran his hand around in the works of the gutted machines and in the second one it closed over a cold metal cylinder.  he withdrew his hand slowly and sat looking at a coca cola

because the bullet travels faster than sound.  it will be in your brain before you can hear it.  to hear it you will need a frontal lobe and things with names like colliculus and temporal gyrus and you wont have them anymore.  they'll just be soup

covered with gore and mute as a stone

there was yet a lingering odor of cows in the barn and he stood there thinking about cows and he realized they were extinct

the crushing black vacuum of the universe.  and somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover.  borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it

chile, corn, stew, soup, spaghetti sauce.  the richness of a vanished world

people were always getting ready for tomorrow.  i didn't believe in that.  tomorrow wasnt getting ready for them.  it didnt even known they were there

i will not send you into the darkness alone

in the evening the murky shape of another coastal city, the cluster of tall buildings vaguely askew.  he thought the iron armatures had softened in the heat and then reset again to leave the buildings standing out of true.  the melted window glass hung frozen down the walls like icing on a cake.  they went on.  in the nights sometimes now he'd wake in the black and freezing waste out of softly colored worlds of human love, the songs of birds, the sun

 

7/21

this week i

tested code, old and new.  unless you've turned a head, caused a traffic accident death, abandon your modeling ambitions and continue your studies

celebrated a birthday with stolen flowers, hamburgers, karaoke.  sometimes if you're nice to a woman, she will sing for you.  she pinched my nose, asked me to repeat the portuguese.  you dance like a north american. brazilians pronounce real like this. mysterious money, pictured folded twenty

 

read the penguin atlas of north american history to 1870 by colin mcevedy.  humans arrived in north america before the chesapeake bay

chunkier peninsulas

the wisconsin glaciation - the geologists' term for the ice-cap at its final maximum

 the long-term trend was for the st lawrence to replace the mississippi, but the illinois connection between lake michigan and the mississippi was to remain open intermittently till 2000 bc

though we call them the olmecs we have no idea what they called themselves

year dates were calculated from a base-line equivalent to 3113 bc when the middle americans reckoned that the world as we know it had been created

the sun comes up whether you sacrifice virgins or not

glottochronology (the study of rates of differentiation within language groups)

fishing smacks

the french privateers were handicapped by the failure of their attempts to establish bases on the atlantic coast of north america.  the first, charlesfort on parris island, south carolina, was abandoned within a few months of its foundation (1562).  the second, fort caroline in northern florida, was wiped out by the spanish the year after it had been set up (1564-5).  the episode prompted the spanish to establish forts of their own in the area, namely st augustine, florida, founded in 1565, which makes it the oldest continuously inhabited european settlement in north america, and st elena, on the site of charlesfort

the only practical line for a southern pacific railroad lay south of the gila river, in mexican territory.  president pierce, anxious to accommodate the southern lobby, sent senator james gadsden to mexico city to see what could be done about this.  the senator persuaded santa anna - currently president for the fifth time - to sell (for $15 million, later reduced to $10 million) and the gadsden purchase, as completed in 1854, brought the southern border of the united states to its present position

in 1800 the only city in the americas with more than 100,000 inhabitants was mexico city.  by 1820 both new york and philadelphia were of the same order of magnitude.  by 1870 new york was in a class of its own - well over the million mark and, on a world scale, outranked only by london and paris

7/14

this week i

crashed andrea's lecture at ence, about latin american increased reliance on non-survey data sources to inform official statistics.  we drank puro mal-te cervezas at not first nor second but third fish bar, plotted our attendance at lula's cinelandia rally.  mai-te met me at same metro before san-te jante, i impersonated um caracol de agradecimento.  she laughed good to know: kkkkkk bom saber.  first from joe frigiola, rome was almost reme

 

 

watched atlanta season three, afrosurrealism across europe with an atlantan asking an adolescent holding the free hugs sign: is that your dad?

read has china won? by kishore mahbubani

 

gm and ford have made huge profits there, generating more profits from their sales in china than their american sales

even though singapore is physically the smallest state in southeast asia, with only 5 million people out of the 650 million people in southeast asia, it has attracted more american investments than the rest of southeast asia combined

by creating a dent in global trust in the us dollar, america is putting a pebble in its own running shoe, just as the race with china is about to become more competitive

china spends its budget on sophisticated land-based missiles that could make us aircraft carrier battle groups utterly ineffective.  an aircraft carrier may cost $13 billion to build.  china's df-26 ballistic missile, which the chinese media claims is capable of sinking an aircraft carrier, costs a few hundred thousand dollars.  new technology is also helping china to defend itself against aircraft carriers.  professor timothy colton of harvard university told me that aircraft carriers become "sitting ducks" when they face the threat of hypersonic missiles, which are maneuverable and fly at tremendous speed, at varying altitudes

there are more members of military marching bands than make up the entire u.s. foreign service

autocracy with democratic characteristics

former treasury secretary hank paulson.. "we have a china attitude, not a china policy"

president xi jinping said: "civilizations don't have to clash with each other; what is needed are eyes to see the beauty in all civilizations.  we should keep our own civilizations dynamic and create conditions for other civilizations to flourish.  together we can make the garden of world civilizations colorful and vibrant"

 

7/7

this week i

found a bug in base r after cigna released its transparency data.  professor lumley focused on more consequential topics, namely bquote.  perto da praia da urca, filipe's mom can touch pao de acucar from her window.  when maite's not gripped by a story, she's listening to the party or commandeering houseboats in botafogo bay.  mountainside airplane shadow continues to amaze, just once i'd like to see the outline of a dragon

 

 

read the hero with a thousand faces by joseph campbell

among the aborigines of australia, for example, one of the principal features of the ordeal of initiation (by which the boy at puberty is cut away from the mother and inducted into the society and secret lore of the men) is the rite of circumcision.  "when a little boy of the murngin tribe is about to be circumcised, he is told by his fathers and by the old men, 'the great father snake smells your foreskin; he is calling for it.'  the boys believe this to be literally true and become extremely frightened.  usually they take refuge with their mother, mother's mother, or some other favorite female relative, for they know that the men are organized to see that they are taken to the men's ground, where the great snake is bellowing.  the women wail over the boys ceremonially; this is to keep the great snake from swallowing them"

the standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation - initiation - return: which might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth

the dangerous god appeared mounted on an elephant and carrying weapons in his thousand hands.  he was surrounded by his army, which extended twelve leagues before him, twelve to the right, twelve to the left, and in the rear as far as to the confines of the world; it was nine leagues high.  the protecting deities of the universe took flight, but the future buddha remained unmoved beneath the tree.  and the god then assailed him, seeking to break his concentration.
whirlwind, rocks, thunder and flame, smoking weapons with keen edges, burning coals, hot ashes, boiling mud, blistering sands and fourfold darkness, the antagonist hurled against the savoir, but the missiles were all transformed into celestial flowers and ointments by the power of guatama's ten perfections.  mara then deployed his daughters, desire, pining, and lust, surrounded by voluptuous attendants, but the mind of the great being was not distracted.  the god finally challenged his right to be sitting on the immovable spot, flung his razor-sharp discus angrily, and bid the towering host of the army to let fly at him with mountain crags.  but the future buddha only moved his hand to touch the ground with his fingertips, and thus bid the goddess earth bear witness to his right to be sitting where he was.  she did so with a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand roars, so that the elephant of the antagonist fell upon its knees in obeisance to the future buddha.  the army was immediately dispersed, and the gods of all the worlds scattered garlands.
having won that preliminary victory before sunset, the conqueror acquired in the first watch of the night knowledge of his previous existences, in the second watch the divine eye of omniscient vision, and in the last watch understanding of the chain of causation.  he experienced perfect enlightenment at the break of day.
this is the most important single moment in oriental mythology, a counterpart of the crucifixion of the west.  the buddha beneath the tree of enlightenment (the bo tree) and christ on holy rood (the tree of redemption) are analogous figures, incorporating an archetypal world savior, world tree motif, which is of immemorial antiquity.  many other variants of the theme will be found among the episodes to come.  the immovable spot and mount calvary are images of the world navel, or world axis.
the calling of the earth to witness is represented in traditional buddhist art by images of the buddha, sitting in the classic buddha posture, with the right hand resting on the right knee and its fingers lightly touching the ground

the crisis of birth


the first stage of the mythological journey - which we have designated the "call to adventure" - signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown.  this fateful region of both treasure and danger may be variously represented: as a distant land, a forest, a kingdom underground, beneath the waves, or above the sky, a secret island, lofty mountaintop, or profound dream state; but it is always a place of strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments, superhuman deeds, and impossible delight


she hath wrists which, did her bangles not contain,
would run from out her sleeves in silvern rain


"the foot," writes dr. freud, "is an age-old sexual symbol which occurs even in mythology" .. the name oedipus, it should be noted, means "the swollen footed"

not even monastery walls, however, not even the remoteness of the desert, can defend against the female presences; for as long as the hermit's flesh clings to his bones and pulses warm, the images of life are alert to storm his mind.  saint anthony, practicising his austerities in the egyptian thebaid, was troubled by voluptuous hallucinations perpetrated by female devils attracted to his magnetic solitude.  apparitions of this order, with loins of irresistible attraction and breasts bursting to be touched, are known to all the hermit-resorts of history


the nile fled in terror to the ends of the earth and hid its head, and it is hidden yet

"after this lived job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons' sons, even four generations.  so job died, being old and full of days


hermaphrodite (the child of hermes and aphrodite)


the cosmic praying-mantis


jainism is a heterodox hindu religion (i.e., rejecting the authority of the vedas) which in its iconography reveals certain extraordinarily archaic traits

the image of the cosmic egg is known to many mythologies; it appears in the greek orphic, egyptian, finnish, buddhistic, and japanese

 

the hero-deed is a continuous shattering of the crystallizations of the moment


stated in direct terms: the work of the hero is to slay the tenacious aspect of the father (dragon, tester, ogre king) and release from its ban the vital energies that will feed the universe.  "this can be done either in accordance with the father's will or against his will; he [the father] may 'choose death for his children's sake,' or it may be that the gods impose the passion upon him, making him their sacrificial victim.  these are not contradictory doctrines, but different ways of telling one and the same story; in reality, slayer and dragon, sacrificer and victim, are of one mind behind the scenes, where there is no polarity of contraries, but mortal enemies on the stage, where the everlasting war of the gods and the titans is displayed.  in any case, the dragon-father remains a pleroma, no more diminished by what he exhales than he is increased by what he repossesses.  he is the death, on whom our life depends; and to the question, 'is death one, or many?' the answer is made that 'he is one as he is there, but many as he is in his children here.'

the hero of yesterday becomes the tyrant of tomorrow, unless he crucifies himself today

 

6/30