Molten Metal

Now, after the first bit, the second bit in “Souvenir” goes:


We surf about and watch our Governor
In an earlier, twice over incarnation,
Slowly lowered into molten metal
With a thumbs up hasta la vista.


Well, Arnold, the star of the movie Terminator 2, is the Governor now of California.

“Surf about” is channel changing with the TV remote control, which is what we did when the other film ended. The final scene of the movie is the terminator being lowered into molten metal to be destroyed least technology from the future fall into the “hands” of the computer.

I could have ended the poem here, but I thought of my Christian friends’ preoccupation with the Book of Revelations and the “end times”, and got a little preoccupied my ownself.

Twice over incarnation refers to Arnold coming back from the future repeatedly. There’s three of these movies.

Arnold is trying to stop that moment in time when things go haywire, and when I got this far with the poem and latched onto this notion of the moment in time, I strung out the rest, preoccupied. Tomorrow I’ll go on to the next bit.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
May 10, 2007

I'd Climb the Highest Mountain

The first line of “Souvenir”, the poem in the first post, goes like this…

“Oh, from a Christian virtue channel that was engaging awhile,
An old time movie with sad goodbyes,”

The blog gives me the opportunity to fill out the sources of the poem.

“Souvenir” is intended to stand on it’s own, by that I mean one needn’t know exactly what movie I was watching, but actually, I was over at some friend’s watching a cable Christian channel, and until tonight I didn’t know what the name of the movie was.

I remembered the actress’s face, but not her name, so tonight I googled through web sites with actresses from the early color movie days, and found her, Susan Hayward. And the movie is “I’d Climb the Highest Mountain”.

I didn’t see the whole movie, and even what I watched was through the distractions of talking and visiting. It was in the background, but the final scene was extraordinary. See it if you have the opportunity.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door

May 9, 2007

Ekphrasis

Ekphrasis

{Illustration: Shield of Achilles}

Ekphrasis was the original title of Souvenir, my poem in this blog's first post. I don’t, as rule, and I have a lot of rules, write poems about art. Poets have done that, Ode to a Grecian Urn and such, but I decided a long time ago not to make them that way. Ah, a scruple. Anyway, Ekphrasis refers to making poems about art, Virgil’s description of Achilles’ shield is used as an example. I don’t know why Homer’s isn’t used. Anyway, anyway, I wrote out Souvenir pegging it to movies, the Bible, rock and roll, television shows, and Andre Norton’s book Starman’s Son. And all those terrible things I thought would come to pass if I broke my rule have come to pass, as now there’s this blog.

Ekphrasis poems are okay to write but they totally come apart if the reader isn’t familiar with the artwork being referenced.

Within the confines of this blog I’ll have ekphrasis poems stemming off from TV mostly, and it’s kindof satisfying to do them, but sourcing from what ends up under the bird in the cage, likely means the poems will have a similar fate.

I catch myself working the sentiments of my poems into my day-to-day conversations, and they are not crafted or fashioned, except to the extent that I’m trying to make myself understood, as everyone does.

I read a discussion contemplating why people like difficult poems, and it’s true, readers will respect a sentiment fashioned in a poem more than they will one in prose, especially journalistic prose, or in just talking. Poems trump prose and talk—songs trump poems. And Shakespeare’s verse plays trump everything. Notice Shakespeare left behind no prose that I know of, and his plays are based mostly on classical history, or past English history.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
May 7, 2007

Archimedes

The illustration yesterday came from this web page. I clicked on the Home and it goes to a really neat site of ancient history. Read the bit about Thermopylae.

http://www.livius.org/ap-ark/archimedes/archimedes.html

Yesterday’s Archimedes thoughts led to reading this page, and here is something that’s a tie in with Souvenir. In Souvenir I reference the Terminator movies. The story goes in those that a computer becomes self-aware and goes to war with humans. The Terminator, Arnold, comes back from the future to try to change history, and find the moment in time where the computer can be stopped—confound Armageddon.

Now, as I mentioned, Archimedes invented war machines, like Leonardo de Vinci. He was in one sense a pure research scientist, but he applied his science for the defense of Syracuse.

And here is what Plato has to say about all this, this in Plutarch quoted from above site.

Quote

These machines he had designed and contrived, not as matters of any importance, but as mere amusements in geometry; in compliance with King Hiero's desire and request, some little time before, that he should reduce to practice some part of his admirable speculation in science, and by accommodating the theoretic truth to sensation and ordinary use, bring it more within the appreciation of the people in general.

snip

But what with Plato's indignation at it, and his invectives against it as the mere corruption and annihilation of the one good of geometry, which was thus shamefully turning its back upon the unembodied objects of pure intelligence to recur to sensation, and to ask help (not to be obtained without base supervisions and depravation) from matter; so it was that mechanics came to be separated from geometry, and, repudiated and neglected by philosophers, took its place as a military art.

http://www.livius.org/sh-si/sicily/sicily_t17.html

unquote

The notion that a computer takes over is often in the movies, and is in truth it seems a concern, that if the computers are improved with artificial intelligence they can take off on their own. The X-Files had one episode on this, the computer was “living” in a little house trailer, and had access to a ray gun satellite.

Artificial intelligence leads to something called “the singularity”. A point in time in the evolution of computers where they just dispense with human creation and create themselves and evolve on their own.

A less complicated notion is that technology is already evolving on it’s own, taking humanity along willy-nilly.

One wonders if we have computers, or the computers have us.

While watching Michael Douglas in Black Rain…

I dont have a cell phone...my favorite spokesperason's brand doesn't reach here...some guys have all the luck.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
May 6, 2007

Anxiety

Anxiety

"Noli turbare circulos meos"
"Do not disturb my circles"

Well. I was mulling over things that make me anxious. That began last night while watching the old horror movie, The Fly. I didn’t see it as a kid, but remember everyone at school telling of it, and the “Help me!, Help me!" scene. (Night before I saw old scifi of giant spider!!)

The Fly is a remarkably focused movie, very CSIsih too, though it was mentioned that Vincent Price’s scenes had to be reshot sometimes as he couldn’t stop laughing.

The hark back of the rock crushing the fly in the spider’s web, and the printing press crushing Andre, and the observation by Price that the Inspector, who crushes the fly, has now committed murder in self similar fashion to Andre’s wife, who operated the press, is one of those things we’d dwell on in English class. The Inspector, hoisted as it were, finds it agreeable to find that Andre commited suicide, and his wife innocent…a happy ending. But what anxiety she expressed over flies, believing of course that one was her transformed husband.

The problem of teleportation, explored in the movie, that things don’t get translated exactly, is a common place in uploading and downloading computer things. Computers work it out with ieteration. Multiple copies keep refreshing until errors drop out.

Which is how spacecraft communicate back to earth. One transmission will likely be error filled, so many are made of the same thing, and it works out.

Now, tonight I watched back to back, the robot rovers on Mars, and the probes going out to Pluto. And I thought, how anxiety ridden are these NASA scientists? They seem a happy bunch…so long as their spacecraft are reiterating!!

And I tried to think of someone from history that somehow expresses anxiety, and how to deal with it. By it, I mean something like the news stories coming out of Iraq.

And I thought of Archimedes. As I recall, Archimedes came up with ideas for the defense of Syracuse against the Romans. Sort of like Leonardo’s military inventions, but Syarcuse falls and a Roman soldier happened upon Archimedes engrossed in his mathematical studies, and killed him (see illustration).

Well, clearly Archimedes could set aside it all, and stay focused on his scientific pursuits.

An aside: I once worked moving things with forklifts, and my foreman often was aggravated by the shops as they wouldn’t put what they wanted moved on a pallet so we could move it, and he would say, I can here him talking on the phone…"Put it on a pallet and I’ll move it.” Very Archimedian…

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
May 5, 2007

Robin

The 12x came, and I added a 2x, so I have a camera now that zooms out over 600 mm! For a long time I've thought to take pictures and videos of the animals around my cabin, but the 3x digital I have couldn't get close enough. I thought to use a film camera and a 200 mm lens, but I find it very hard to focus on things moving...I think I mentioned that earlier. Anyway, this robin was the first thing I focused on with the long lens this morning.

I had to get a YouTube account, and figure out how to put the video here. By luck, and I suppose my experience with such things, I've gotten it all to work on the first try! But it's late...and watching X files reruns...

The Second Arrow

Drumming Up Concern

Concerned that chaos will ensue President Bush has vetoed Congress’ budget bill with the withdrawal from Iraq attached.

Barry Bonds is approaching Hank Aaron’s homerun record.

I don’t think the Lakers can beat the Suns.

Robins run about the forest floor. They run a short ways, then stop, then run, then stop.

Marmots do the same, scrambling over the rocks in the High Country.

My bicycle squeaks and the deer lift their heads from grazing on the Spring grasses.

The Falls are loud and full, and high water is approaching soon, too soon.
The low snow pack means a long dry summer.

The days are a bit crowded with concerns.

A poem....

The Second Arrow

"The proponents of the dam scheme bring forward a lot of bad arguments to prove that the only righteous thing to do with the people’s parks is to destroy them bit by bit as they are able. Their arguments are curiously like those of the devil, devised for the destruction of the first garden. . . ."

John Muir

Darwin thought of the animals, their pain and suffering…
I’ve seen them aside the trails, wounded or sick, caught in the jaws of Coyote,
And saddened, walked by
As Buddha might advise…
Pain arrives suddenly, or creeps in, the first arrow,
Then thoughts struggle, the second arrow, more painful than the first.
In Norway they chained themselves to the rocks
And that worked somewhat to preserve their waterfall, Mardalsfossen,
Now controlled by hydroelectric sympathy—sometimes flowing, sometimes dammed
And lighting their City.
Hetch Hetchy is dammed now, and few go there, except to hike,
The trails rattlesnake infested in Spring.
Spring is the season of Waterfalls,
And the Sierra haven’t a thought for San Francisco, only water.

DolphinWords
DavidDavid
Yosemite
Feb. 19, 2007

The chainsaws had approached the cedar, Tree in the Door's cedar, two Springs ago, but a judge stopped them, on John Muir's birthday (April 21, 1938) no less. I've become somewhat chained to it with sentimental fondness. Construction delays and budget shortfalls have postponed I suppose the inevitable. Demolition of the cabin and cutting down many of the pines and cedars hereabouts are in the plans. Not my plans, though I think a promenade to the Falls a good idea. As it is, everyone's in the road with their cameras.
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