Remarkable

I attended an Evensong service last night, and it was just brilliant.  Mostly sung, by the choir, even the Apostle's Creed.  We - the handful that of congregants was there, in a Church near where I live - spoke only a few prayers, but they were the way up on the top of my list.  The Lord's Prayer, at first said by the congregation, later choir-sung (without the doxology at the end, which I often omit - it's how we spoke it in boarding school.)   And a general confession that I really love, from my childhood, with this:

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We have left undone those things which we ought to have done;
And we have done those things which we ought not to have done;
And there is no health in us.
But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders.

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Just knocks me out.  Is it some kind of masochism?  I don't think so.  Incredibly honest, say I.

Tyrants

I guess at this point we are waiting around to see if Ghaddafi can be brutal enough to survive.  Let's not forgot that Detestable 20th Century Dictators Nos. 2 and 3 - Mao and Stalin - died in their beds.  (I will always give No. 1 status to the half-eunuch who sought the Final Solution.)

But Ghaddifi has a pompous, unbending ridiculousness to him that has in the past proved fatal - I'm thinking, Mussolini, with whom G has some historical links.  And Ceausescu - and, coming out of his hidey hole - Saddam.  Those three, all dead at the hands of their people.

The liberalizing dictators, on the other hand, don't seem to be able to hand onto power but do hang on their scalps.  Marcos and the Shah.   Mubarak and the dude in Tunisia.

The elephant in the room - the blue whale in the room - is the royal family in Saudi Arabia.  They won't shut down the Internet, or use tear gas, or shoot rubber bullets, in order to stop protestors.  The Saudis will hang them.  It'll put this Administration in a really tough position, but BHO won't be dumb enough to side with the opposition there.  He won't.  He won't?

More Back of the Brain

And I had lunch with a guy the other day whose brother is a TV sports game-caller.  Those guys call the game, naming the names, describing the plays, while there is a production booth in one ear and a computer screen in front of them, channelling "color" - stats, what's on deck, whatever.  The game-caller assimilates all that and comes out (one hopes) with a coherent narrative.

Can't see a computer doing that, either.  Just too much humanity involved...

Back in the Back of the Brain

Yesterday, just for grins, while driving, I tried voicing a detective story.  Just to see if I could.

And it came out.  Unrehearsed, unplanned, with a plot line and characters - I left off as the new female client was telling me about this creepy guy who had made up lies about her in high school, had reappeared in her life, was showing up, without a word, wherever she went, and just looking at her...

OK can't say it's very original, and it may even be unlistenably bad, but the point is:  where does that come from?  I was driving.  There was nothing in it recognizable from my past, at least nothing conscious... wait.  Maybe that's really the point.  The unconscious is what puts together a narrative, just as it does in dreams.

I think we explain all this on the basis that there is some kind of meaning behind the story.  We tell a story because we are trying to make a point.  But I am not persuaded that that's how the unconscious operates - I think the meaning comes later, we retell our stories and impose ideas by jiggering the plot. The unconscious just streams stuff out.  It's synapses firing.  It comes out in words because we know words.  And it isn't gibberish because there is some kind of superfast mental process saying yeah-now-what-happens-here-is-a-choice-I'll-follow-it playing out in the background as the words are coming out - a logic, to that extent.

The good news is that they will never make a machine that can do that.  The old query was whether androids dream.  Maybe so, but I don't see how they ever will just riff, free-form, make up stories from the air.

Keeping the Plate Full

OK last week we went to Sundance to see our kid's husband's premiere, then I quit my old firm, then I joined my new firm, then over the weekend we went and brought home a brand-new Westie:

And next weekend I am scheduled to take up beekeeping.  Plus the band's got another gig coming.

And maybe take up bridge.

And biking season will be back when this Winter finally ends.

One thing I'm starting to learn:  don't wait.  Live life.  Once in a while, when you can, get a puppy.

Two Days Past Groundhog's Day

And so, if he sees his shadow, there's more Winter to come, and he goes back underground.  If not, he stays out because winter is over.  Just not good science.  There sure was no sun that day, it was close to a blizzard, and today the temperature is about 5 degrees and the snow is firmly packed.

But it's an ancient holiday, the marker of mid-season, like its cousins Halloween and May Day.  It is about breaking light and lengthening days, a confirmation that Spring will come.  I hope he did go back underground, it's freezing out there, but I'm on board.

Land Ho

I left my old firm yesterday and joined a new one today.

The story of how I got here is long and occasionally fierce.  I can't think how to dress it up in metaphor, so I won't, and I won't tell it straight, so that's that.  Maybe there will be later musings on lessons learned and vengeance.  But nothing really, at least nothing for now.

Today what matters is that I have sailed into Plymouth, the Indians are friendly, and under the watchful eye of the Big Guy the landscape looks well lit and promising.