Two Books

regram @wordlessdictionary

A photo posted by Terra Leigh Bell (@leighandharriet) on Aug 8, 2014 at 6:28pm PDT

            Two books, very different.  Though both were crafted replies to other writers.
            The first — first in chronology as well as psychic weight — is Beltenebros, or the Beautiful Obscure.  This is my first book of poetry, and it was released by Seattle's Babel/Salvage at the end of August.  Beltenebros is a (short) book-length poem.  It was written in direct response to Cervantes' Don Quixote de la Mancha; I think of it as sort of "talking back" (albeit with a great deal of affection) to the novel(s).*

The book finally got finished! #papercraft #paperart #handmadebooks

A photo posted by Terra Leigh Bell (@leighandharriet) on Nov 11, 2014 at 9:10pm PST

            The second, though it got finished around the same time, is quite different.  It is a very small, handmade object.  Each page contains "memorabilia" from either Lemuel Gulliver's journeys in Jonathan Swift's 18th-century novel, or from my own journeys, or some of each.  It took much longer than I'd expected, but I have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised by how it turned out.  There are a couple of pictures in this post, but if you click through to my Instagram account, you can find images of all the pages.

                    _______________________________________________________


            I wish I could remember more clearly.  Like most children, I did various art projects when I was little.  And I'm sure that, also like other children, some of my experiments prompted my mother and other grown-ups to say, with a mix of pride and puzzlement, "What is it?"
            I wish I could remember exactly how I felt about that question.  I suspect it doesn't bother kids as much as most adults worry it does.  I vaguely remember feeling pleasure.  Not because of their interest, but because, in realizing the adult didn't recognize what my picture was an image of, I could tell them whatever I wanted.  A dog could suddenly be claimed as a giraffe.  A tree could become a boat.
            I like the adult version much less.  Now people say, "What is it about?"
            In the last few months, each time I have told a person that my first book was published, or that I made a handmade book/art-ish object, I have heard the question, "What is it about?"
            I can think of two appropriate responses.  I could launch into a long analysis of all of the themes and shapes and recurring images and all the layered meanings in Beltenebros.  I could talk about memory and materialism and my highly clichéd but nonetheless thriving romance with the sea in the Gulliver's Travels book.  That's one way of responding that seems as least reasonable.
            Or I could shrug my shoulders and say, "I have no idea."  This seems most honest.
            But I am just as socially assimilated as the next schmuck, so I politely say something like, "It's an homage to Don Quixote/Gulliver's Travels."  Blatant relief sweeps across their face as they realize A) it's not sexual, and B) the fact that it is "about" books they haven't read lets them off the hook from having to feign interest.  They (equally politely) reply, "Oh, I haven't read it."

#papercraft #paperart #handmadebooks

A photo posted by Terra Leigh Bell (@leighandharriet) on Nov 11, 2014 at 9:15pm PST

            The reason I think all of this matters is simple:  I caught myself.  I caught myself being more proud of having had Beltenebros published than I was of finishing the handmade book.  And if I dig under that pride a bit, I realize that my pride in having a book published stems from a sense of validation.  Having someone — anyone — choose your poem or novel or essay collection to send off to a printer's and slap an ISBN on it feels like "someone" — that conveniently vague notion of the rational capitalist at the back of everything — has put their stamp of approval on my work.  Receiving that stamp of approval permits others to grant theirs as well.
            But...really???  Have you seen some of the  books to get published recently?  I know I'm showing some of my elitist colors here, but "getting published" (and the passivity of that phrase should probably bug you) says nothing of the artistic value of a, um...book.  What it tells you is something about its capitalist value; that Babel/Salvage and many, many publishing houses like it are so clearly labors of love, doesn't change that fact.
            For the time being, I'm not going after this so much as an attack on capitalism "out there," so to speak, as I am concerned about the ways capitalism and consumerism have clearly shaped my own mind.  I care deeply about human creativity, and any ideology that fucks with the underlying structures of our individual minds and the consciousness of our larger societies to such an extent that we value the approval of the market more highly than our own inner compass should disturb me.  It should disturb me often enough to actually do something about it.  Maybe I could start with being proud of having written the damned thing.

                    _______________________________________________________


            As I mentioned in my last post, the move to Portland has been tumultuous, and I can't currently locate my copy of Don Q.  But in the next couple of weeks I should be able to put up a couple of posts that show some of what I did in working with Cervantes' text.  If you're curious, you can search for "quixote" in the upper left-hand corner to see a couple of short excerpts, as well as some of my thoughts on the novel and my process in general.
            As always, feel free to comment, and thanks for the patience in my transition to Portlandia!



* Today if you go to your local bookstore (my favorites being Elliott Bay in Seattle and Portland's Powell's on Hawthorne), you will find the single book Don Quixote de la Mancha.  I only think it worth mentioning that it was actually two separate books written by Cervantes because the two are quite different, and writing the second book probably contributed to Cervantes' decline in health.  He worked his ass off to get the book out partially because so many copycats had published spurious second volumes to his original, and he wanted to set the records straight.

All the various pieces are finished...

...and so now they begin to be assembled.

            Which is fitting, since my very first book of poetry will be published next month.  I truly did not intend to have my first little art book get finished around the same time as Beltenebros, or the Beautiful Obscure, but I confess to being the teensiest bit pleased.

So these top two — the elephant and camel postcards — are going to be the covers.  I picked them out of a collection of vintage-ish postcards I have, mostly because the map behind the animals is of India.  For those who don't already know, the theme of this little art book is roughly "Gulliver (and Terra Leigh's) Travels."  Places Mister Gulliver went, places I've gone, and the slight overlap between.

The one above I'm particularly proud of.  Mostly because it took more diligence than I normally display.  The paper itself is from the journal I kept while in Spain in 2006, and the journal entry to the left is an actual journal entry I wrote on May 19 of 2006 while sitting on my first real, live topless beach.  The journal entry to the right is from Lemuel Gulliver's retelling of how he began to learn the language of the Houyhnhnms.

And above, of course, we have Laputa, the floating island (i.e., England), hovering over Balnibarbi, threatening to block out the sun for the inhabitants below (i.e., Ireland).

And this is quite simply one of the most time-consuming projects I have ever undertaken, having mistakenly believed it would be "super quick and easy."  Not so.  Nonetheless, I am happy with the results.


Now comes the easy part!  Please, please dear God, let it be easy...

I swear I'm still doing things! Fantastic things!

            So partly because I'm excited that I've figure out what the inter webs meant when it said I could simply "embed an instagram code into my blog's html," and partly because I really am working on things that don't necessarily have to do with words, I thought I'd share some pictures.
            Basically, some time ago I got the idea to make a book.  I like coming up with some type of creative response to all the old, ruddy-duddy classics, but I wasn't entirely sure what to do with Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.  Until I realized a fun little detail about that book.
            Most of the places that Lemuel Gulliver travels over the course of the novel are imagined locations:  Laputa, Brobdingnag, the land of the Houyhnhnms, and perhaps most famously, Lilliput.  But interestingly, he also goes to Japan.  As in, you know, Japan.  The country/place.
            Having been to Japan once several years ago, I found it funny to think about my travels and Gulliver's travels having overlapped.
            And so, the book.
            Just to be clear, this isn't THE book, as my first book of poetry to be published this summer.  That's called Beltenebros, or the Beautiful Obscure, and it's very much a book of poetry and prose; i.e., Art with a capital "A."  This little project is very much craft/art with a lower-case "a," which means it's been a lot of fun and much less angsty.  These are just a few pictures, and it's still not quite finished, but it's getting very close.

            As a side note, I am working on my next post on Plato.  This time it will be on his Crito.  Just in case you're interested, and if you'd like to have not only an idea of the points of Crito, but also a good laugh, you can check out a highly irreverent and superficial summary at Philosophy Bro, which might be my new favorite blog.
            Cheers!

            So this white boat was actually just a prototype.  For the boat above I just used the template and instructions from Robert Sabuda's website.  Which has lots of fun little projects on it that would be awesome for littles, if you have any.

            The boat for my book is modeled on this one, but significantly smaller, and much more colorful.

            This is just a mash-up of some pretty pictures from magazines, but according to +CyanSlowly, the middle one may be Aran Island.  For reasons I cannot explain, I feel like the one on the far right is the Caribbean/Atlantic, and the one on the far left is the Pacific.


            Seriously.  Iris Murdoch.  Philosopher, novelist, and all-around fascinating lady.


            Blind contour, that somehow didn't turn out so bad, so I re-drew the lines and kept it.


            You know Brobdingnag.  Just to the west of us here in Washington.

...mortale, risus capax

            So clearly, from my last post, you can tell I have sympathy for a definition of reason which is more social, less individualistic.  Interestingly, a friend of mine pointed out that, in his experience, when good reasoning happens on an individual level, it mimics the argumentative format that Sperber and Mercier theorized.  So when my friend does sit by himself, trying to reason things out, he almost imagines other interlocutors poking holes in his arguments, asking questions, taking his ideas apart; and then he either defends his theories against their counterpoints, or tries another strategy altogether.  While this might all take place in his head, it is clearly modeled on real social interactions.

El sueño de la razón produce monstruos,
Francisco Goya, Museo del Prado.

            I suspect that our friend Reason, just to the right, is not such a social creature.  In fact, were it not for his creeping and feathered (and interesting-looking, I might add!) friends, we might even guess he was lonely.  But I think Goya has captured the Cartesian view of reason quite well.  Solitary, masculine, and once it admits of a moment of human weakness, disaster seeps in around the edges.

            But really, this is a post about Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, I swear.
            To recap:  we have, in the fourth section/journey of the book, the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos.  The Houyhnhnms are talking horses, while the Yahoos are apparently human, but lacking in linguistic capabilities.  Gulliver's first encounter with the Yahoos disturbs him, to say the least:
            At last I beheld several animals in a field, and one or two of the same kind sitting in trees.  Their shape was very singular and deformed, which a little discomposed me, so that I lay down behind a thicket to observe them better...Their heads and breasts were covered with a thick hair, some frizzled and others lank; they had beards like goats, and a long ridge of hair down their backs and the fore-parts of their legs and feet, but the rest of their bodies were bare, so that I might see their skins, which were of a brown buff colour.  They had no tails, nor any hair at all on their buttocks, except about the anus; which, I presume, nature had placed there to defend them as they sat on the ground; for this posture they used, as well as lying down, and often stood on their hind feet...The females were not so large as the males; they had long lank hair on their heads, but none on their faces, nor any thing more than a sort of down on the rest of their bodies, except about the anus, and pudenda.  Their dugs hung between their fore-feet, and often reached almost to the ground as they walked.  The hair of both sexes was of several colours, brown, red, black, and yellow.  Upon the whole, I never beheld in all my travels so disagreeable an animal, nor one against which I naturally conceived so strong an antipathy (Swift 207).
            And later,
            By what I could discover, the Yahoos appear to be the most unteachable of all animals, their capacities never reaching higher than to draw or carry burdens.  Yet I am of opinion this defect ariseth chiefly from a perverse, restive disposition.  For they are cunning, malicious, treacherous, and revengeful.  They are strong and hardy, but of a cowardly spirit, and by consequence, insolent, abject, and cruel.  *ahem*  It is observed that the red-haired of both sexes are more libidinous and mischievous than the rest, whom yet they much exceed in strength and activity (Swift 249).
            Contrast this with Gulliver's descriptions of the Houyhnhnms, whose very name, albeit in their own language, means "perfection of nature":
            As these noble Houyhnhnms are endowed by nature with a general disposition to all virtues, and have no conceptions or ideas of what is evil in a rational creature, so their grand maxim is to cultivate reason, and to be wholly governed by it.  Neither is reason among them a point problematical as with us, where men can argue with plausibility on both sides of the questions; but strikes you with immediate conviction; as it must needs do where it is not mingled, obscured, or discoloured by passion and interest.  I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable; because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain, and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either.  So that controversies, wranglings, disputes, and positiveness in false or dubious propositions, are evils unknown among the Houyhnhnms (Swift 251).
            And just one more very important example:
            If they can avoid casualties, they die only of old age, and are buried in the obscurest places that can be found, their friends and relations expressing neither joy nor grief at their departure...I remember my master having once made an appointment with a friend and his family to come to his house upon some affair of importance, on the day fixed the mistress and her two children came very late; she made two excuses, first for her husband, who, as she said, happened that very morning to shnuwnh [that is, die]...Her excuse for not coming sooner was that her husband dying late in the morning, she was a good while consulting her servants about a convenient place where his body should be laid; and I observed she behaved herself at our house as cheerfully as the rest, and she died about three months after (Swift 258).

            Okay, now it's going to maybe feel like this is a u-turn, but bear with me.
            I'm currently reading a book by the late neurosurgeon Leonard Shlain, entitled The Alphabet Versus the Goddess.  I could say many, many things both inspired and enraged by Shlain's various assertions, but here is not the place to get into the pros and cons of his premise.  He does, however, use an image I currently cannot get out of my head, and I couldn't figure out how to perfectly replicate it without just quoting it outright.  Shlain describes how the Israelites, while Moses was away conversing with Yahweh, built the golden calf.  Moses comes down off Mount Sinai to discover them worshipping the idol:
            Enraged that his feckless charges had reverted to the worship of an image — a practice that Yahweh had expressly forbidden — Moses raised his arm as if to strike, and the stone tablets clattered to the ground and shattered.  Furious, Moses destroyed the golden calf, rebuked Aaron, and reprimanded the people.  When the Hebrews' first written words confronted their last image, the resulting collision destroyed them both.  The allegorical conflict between word and image could not have been more dramatically expressed (Shlain 100).

            Here is my idea:  When we combine the supposedly "Cartesian" (but really Platonic and everything after) version of ourselves as individually rational, with our desirous, needy animal nature, we get...well, a destructive collision called Lemuel Gulliver.  Or called Terra Leigh Bell.  Or called Friedrich Nietzsche or Richard Wagner or pick a name from your contacts list.
            Shlain's image gave me this idea not only because it demonstrates the way two different human aspects can explosively destroy one another, but it made me realize the moment when the two aspects were created as two different aspects.  Note that Moses catches the Hebrews worshipping an image, "a practice that Yahweh had expressly forbidden," but the Hebrew people didn't know that yet because they hadn't read the bloody Ten Commandments yet, had they?  I don't have the energy to get into a discussion of the history of Judaism, but my point is that the Law itself created the divide between word and image, between abstract juridical theory, and the almost desperate need humans have of envisionable deities and powers.
            I keep mentioning Plato because I don't like for us to think of the problems of modernity as recent seedings; this problem is old, by our standards.  Human beings have believed themselves divided ever since they became aware that they could be divided.  We've conceived of ourselves as "having" (note the division already in our language) a thinking, intellectual aspect which can and will come to the most accurate conclusions possible if given the chance, and another aspect which is, as Swift puts it, "mingled, obscured, or discoloured by passion and interest."
            I won't get into why I truly believe that humanity is doomed; it seems fairly obvious that our belief in the salvific power of war and technology hasn't done much more than create an unsustainable population just waiting to be wiped out by the next Black Death.  Or nuclear/chemical/biological warfare.  Or zombies.
            What I will say is I think that I'm not entirely imagining these connections and implications in Swift's work.  Obviously I'm taking it in my own direction, but note what happens when Gulliver tries to emulate the Houyhnhnms, his paragons of abstract reasoning.  Remember that the Houyhnhnms don't grieve when one of their own dies, even if it be a husband or wife or parent or child.  First off, I think it's questionable that Swift even meant this as a sincere ideal.  It sounds like another one of his ways of demonstrating the folly of an ideal, by making Gulliver set up something clearly preposterous as good and meet for humans.
            But secondly, and perhaps more darkly, observe the kind of person — either human or equine — that Lemuel Gulliver has become by the time he is forced to leave the land of the Houyhnhnms.  In preparation for his departure,
            I finished a sort of Indian canoe, but much larger, covering it with the skins of Yahoos well stitched together, with hempen threads of my own making.  My sail was likewise composed of the skins of the same animal; but I made use of the youngest I could get, the older being too tough and thick (Swift 265).
            That's right folks; in that pretty picture from last time, that sail is stitched together with the skins of "Yahoo" infants.  Since Gulliver accepts (though with chagrin) that he is himself a Yahoo, I think we could accurately say that the sail is made from the skins of human infants.  Gulliver has so much lost empathy for the animal-like beings he resembles most physically, and he has aspired so much to become one of the rational animals he resembles most spiritually, that he now feels comfortable using dead babies to make his sail, and "stopping all the chinks [of the canoe] with Yahoos' tallow" (Swift 265).
            Lemuel Gulliver is the collision we get when we combine the rationale with the mortale.  Homo est animal rationale, mortale, et risus capax.  Man is an animal rational, mortal, and capable of laughter.  It's nice of Swift to remember the Laughter part, because sometimes the Creepy gets a bit much.  Or wait; that Laughter makes the Creepy that much creepier, doesn't it now?



Swift, Jonathan.  Gulliver's Travels.  New York:  Penguin Books, 2010.  Print.
Shlain, Leonard.  The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: the Conflict Between Word and Image.  New York:  Penguin/Compass, 1998.  Print.

            

            

homo est animal rationale...

Lemuel Gulliver, sailing in despair away from the land of the Houyhnhnm's.
Artwork by Chris Riddell, © 2004, Candlewick Press.

            I sometimes wonder if people think the only place Gulliver went was Lilliput.  It seems odd to me that the last voyage Gulliver ventures — to the land of the Houyhnhnms, the talking horses — should get so little press.  So just to be clear, Lemuel Gulliver went on four major journeys, three of which I've written about already:

            1)  Lilliput, and its sister island Blefusco, where the people are approximately 6 inches tall;

            2)  Brobdingnag, land of giants;

            3)  a trip to Laputa, as well as Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan; and

            4)  the country of the Houyhnhnms, the subject of today's post.  I should note that, while I tried desperately to rein things in so I could do a single post on reason, it was to no avail.  This post is mostly about what we mean when we talk about "reason," and the next one will focus more on Gulliver's Travels itself, and what I think Swift is up to.

            As mentioned above, the Houyhnhnms are a race of talking horses, but importantly they are supremely rational.  For once, thank heavens, the scholarly consensus agrees with the author’s obvious intent:  Part 4 is about reason, and the Houyhnhnms represent reason itself.

            But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.  First, a brief rundown of the scenario:

            There are two major species in the land that Gulliver calls the country of the Houyhnhnms.  There are the Houyhnhnms, and then there are the Yahoos*.  The Yahoos are human, or humanoid, depending on how you look at it.  Their bodies resemble ours perfectly, except that they are hairier and they remain naked.  They are, however, clearly irrational, extremely violent, and quite filthy.  The Houyhnhnms, lovely, clean, thoughtful horse-like animals that they are, once they see Gulliver naked, are horrified to see how clearly he physically is a Yahoo.  But they remain puzzled as to how his mental capacities can so closely resemble their own.  Eventually, in a decision whose wisdom is obvious when you are dealing with just one "What is it?," but whose resemblance to the many expulsions of the Jews over the course of Europe's history renders it disturbing to say the least, Gulliver is told to leave.  He may, of course, opt to live with the "other" Yahoos of the island, but while his reasoning capabilities are impressive to the Houyhnhnms, he may not continue to live in their own intelligent midst.  After all, what is he?

            So there is your crash course in the plot of the last quarter of the book.  The bulk of that section is taken up by Gulliver’s rapturous descriptions of the supreme reasonable-ness and sanity of the Houyhnhnms' way of life and thought.  For example:

            I remember in frequent discourses with my master [the Grey Horse] concerning the nature of manhood in other parts of the world, having occasion to talk of lying and false representation, it was with much difficulty that he comprehended what I meant, although he had otherwise a most acute judgement.  For he argued thus:  that the use of speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive information of facts; now if any one said the thing which was not, these ends were defeated; because I cannot properly be said to understand him; and I am so far from receiving information, that he leaves me worse than in ignorance, for I am led to believe a thing black when it is white, and short when it is long.  And these were all the notions he had concerning that faculty of lying, so perfectly well understood among human creatures (Swift 223).

            In myriad ways, from diet to self-governance, the Houyhnhnms are exemplars of reason.  Oh, but wait...  What is reason again?

            Reason is one of those faculties that turns into smoke once you look at it too closely.  We talk about it as though we all knew what it was, but it seems obvious this isn’t the case.  After all, isn’t “it” somehow supposed to lead us to the “right” answer?  But when does reason ever do this?  Many atheists I've met are fond of labeling theists as irrational, but this is at least as true or false for atheists.  There are indeed many strange-sounding religious theories out there, with much circular reasoning, but I’ve encountered just as many atheists extrapolating from their experience, say, with a wicked pastor or religious family, to the idea that is no god.  And this can’t possibly be considered rational.  Or can it?

            The cognitive scientists Dan Sperber and Hugo Mercier have proposed what I think is a useful theory of reason, which is the argumentative theory of reasoning.  Mercier explains the more popular view:

            Current philosophy and psychology are dominated by what can be called a classical, or ‘Cartesian’ view of reasoning. Even though this view goes back at least to some classical Greek philosophers, its most famous exposition is probably in Descartes. Put plainly, it’s the idea that the role of reasoning is to critically examine our beliefs so as to discard wrong-headed ones and thus create more reliable beliefs—knowledge. This knowledge is in turn supposed to help us make better decisions. This view is hard to reconcile with a wealth of evidence amassed by modern psychology. Tversky and Kahneman (and many others) have demonstrated the failures of reasoning in decision making. Johnson-Laird and Evans (and, again, many others) have shown how fallible reasoning can be. Others have shown that sometimes reasoning too much can make us worse off: it can unduly increase self-confidence, allow us to maintain erroneous beliefs, create distorted, polarized beliefs and enable us to violate our own moral intuitions by finding handy excuses. Sperber claimed that the full import of these results has not been properly gauged since most people still seem to agree, or at least fail to question, the classical, Cartesian assumptions.
            In contrast, in Sperber and Mercier's theory, reason is a tool meant less for individuals and more for social groups:

            The theory Dan Sperber suggested—the argumentative theory of reasoning—proposes that instead of having a purely individual function, reasoning has a social and, more specifically, argumentative function. The function of reasoning would be to find and evaluate reasons in dialogic contexts—more plainly, to argue with others. Here’s a very quick summary of the evolutionary rationale behind this theory. Communication is hugely important for humans, and there is good reason to believe that this has been the case throughout our evolution, as different types of collaborative—and therefore communicative—activities already played a big role in our ancestors’ lives (hunting, collecting, raising children, etc.). However, for communication to be possible, listeners have to have ways to discriminate reliable, trustworthy information from potentially dangerous information—otherwise speakers would be wont to abuse them through lies and deception. Listeners must have mechanisms of epistemic vigilance. One way listeners and speakers can improve the reliability of communication is through arguments. The speaker gives a reason to accept a given conclusion. The listener can then evaluate this reason to decide whether she should accept the conclusion. In both cases, they have used reasoning—to find and evaluate a reason respectively. If reasoning does its job properly, communication has been improved: a true conclusion is more likely to be supported by good arguments, and therefore accepted, thereby making both the speaker—who managed to convince the listener—and the listener—who acquired a potentially valuable piece of information—better off. 

            I like this theory.  I like this theory very much.  This theory makes total and complete sense to me, and I'm sure that the members of my philosophy discussion group would enjoy its convenient justification for our habit of regularly getting together to yell drunkenly at one another about everything from primatology to atheism to theories of morality.  Sperber and Mercier's theory is great.  Sperber and Mercier's theory is the closest to what feels like a true explanation of reason I've ever heard.

            But the problem is that we've been operating with the Cartesian definition for hundreds of years.  Thousands, if you count Plato (which I would).  And ideas don't just go away.  They have shaped and insinuated themselves, and made things equally beautiful and hideous.  Sperber and Mercier make an apt comparison:  teaching the so-called Cartesian view has been done as though someone had decided that "hands were made for walking and that everybody should be taught that."  This walking on our hands may be wildly inefficient given our anatomy, but after hundreds of years you acquire a few cultural artifacts, not to mention a near-idolatrous worship of those who have a knack for walking on their hands.  They're called professors and scientists and theologians and businessmen.
            I think that Sperber and Mercier are probably right about how reasoning actually evolved, and what its function can and should be.  But while science may be able to tell us those things, it isn't much help when trying to understand the history of culture, and all that charming, awkward baggage it's given us.

*  Incidentally, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, Jonathan Swift invented the word "Yahoo."

Swift, Jonathan.  Gulliver's Travels.  New York:  Penguin Books, 2010.  Print.

Moon!

            Moon!
            Moons!  Around Mars, Jupiter, Neptune...
            Moon.  Lovely lady.
            Growing less so now?
                            _________________________

s m a i s m r m i l m e p o e t a l e u m i b u n e n u g t t a u i r a s
                                                                    - Galileo Galilei
                            _________________________

            The astronomers of the flying island of Laputa have advanced that most venerable science considerably further than those natural philosophers of Lemuel Gulliver's home, England.  The technology of their telescopes is more advanced; using them, the Laputan astronomers "have made a catalogue of ten thousand fixed stars, whereas the largest of ours do not contain above one third part of that number" (Swift 155).
            The known universe expands.  And in so doing, do we and our world shrink?
            Does a scientific understanding of life reduce its mystery?  Does the removal of the spiritual dimension/world reduce the beauty of the world?
            The idea of the God of the gaps implies that, to the theist, science threatens to remove something desirable from the world.  As soon as scientists give a material explanation for an observed phenomenon, theists effectively say, "Okay, okay, you can have that one over there.  But this unexplained phenomenon over here?  Totally God!"  The theological insistence that qualia present evidence of unexplainable phenomena continues to feel downright pathetic (and, as a quasi-theist, embarrassing).
            The theist who responds to science with, "Okay, you can have that, but we're keeping this," clearly implies that something has been lost.  I never hear of them responding with, "Yeah, you're right, neurons firing are the cause of conscious thought.  Still God."  Such a response wouldn't deal with all the accusations that anti-theistic philosophers level (often rightly) at people of faith.  But my point is, the response of those who believe in the spiritual demonstrates their anxiety.  There is a grasping quality to the God of the gaps, which feels much like a drowning man searching for a lifeboat.
                            _________________________

            They have likewise discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve around Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from the centre of the primary planet exactly three of the diameters, and the outermost five; the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty one and an half; so that the squares of their periodical times are very near in the same proportion with the cubes of their distance from the centre of Mars, which evidently shows them to be governed by the same law of gravitation, that influences the other heavenly bodies (Swift 155-156).
                            _________________________

            Jonathan Swift tells of two moons, orbiting Mars, 150 years before their actual discovery.  According to Wikipedia, their orbits are reasonably accurately described.
                            _________________________

Salue umbistineum geminatum Martia proles. “Hail, twin companionship, children of Mars”, or “I greet you, double knob, children of Mars.”
                      - 1610: Johannes Kepler makes a valiant attempt at decoding Galileo Galilei's anagram.
                            _________________________

            So did Swift read Kepler's mistake, which turned out in a weird way to be true?
            Or did Swift receive divine inspiration?  (See the very bottom of the page.)
            And how far have we come from the Moon (our moon mind you) as the celestial egg laid by the Goddess and her Serpent lover?
            Very, very far if you listen to either the atheists or the theists.  According to the atheists, we have come far, far away from untruth, and we daily approach closer to truth by means of science.
            And the theists...well, their version of events is quite far-removed from the picture painted by the scriptures of any known religion.  Most of what we call religion doesn't appear to have a drop of mystery or power or spirit anywhere in its obsessively defended and materialistic midst.
                            _________________________

            Saturn, of which Galileo really said:

Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi. “I have observed the highest (most distant) planet [Saturn] to have a triple form.”  

                      (Click on the link to see Saturn as Galileo would have seen it:  a giant Spirit Princess Leia ready to...well, sleep with Hans Solo.)

                            _________________________

            Yes, yes.  I have to acknowledge that the world is full of reasonable, well-informed people just waiting to dispel any and all romance.  Hence Steven Novella of the New England Skeptical Society:

"It is also possible that Swift followed the basic logic that Mercury and Venus have no moons, the Earth has one, and Jupiter and Saturn have many. Mars is between Earth and Jupiter, so maybe it has two. There is some sense to this logic as it is probable that the farther away a planet is from the sun the more likely it is to hold moons. Too close, and the sun will grab them. The Earth’s moon is likely the result of a chance collision. While Mars is far enough away, and close enough to the asteroid belt, to have picked up a couple of moons."

            *sigh*  Fine.
                            _________________________

            And the Moon itself?
            I take great comfort in the fact that the Moon is there, clouds or no, and takes no notice of any of this.  Though I think it might wonder why the hell did Galileo have to write his findings as a bloody anagram?




Swift, Jonathan.  Gulliver's Travels.  New York:  Penguin Books, 2010.  Print.

on Violence, Essay the 1st

            I would never have guessed that Gulliver's Travels would have led to Lenten musings.  But then, Lent is a fascinating time of year for Christians.  All this talk of guilt.  And now we have the more modern psychologizing of sin, which I am not necessarily opposed to; I only know that I have seen and felt evil cut to my heart, and describing it as the result of depression or mom-and-dad-issues doesn't seem to speak for the reality.  At peregrinations with st. chad, Dale Caldwell posted some thoughts on nostalgia in religious practice which I found very convicting — I suppose you can probably even see my little comment at the end of his post — and, well, murder is in the air.
            It's probably always in the air, but of course we now have the Newtown massacre, the still-hasn't-dawned-upon-America realization that we are actually owned by the likes of the NRA, and our supposedly liberal president's wanton use of drones to kill whoever conveniently places themselves in their path.  Financed by us.

            Before reading Gulliver's Travels, I had never heard anyone mention Lemuel Gulliver's voyage to Brobdingnag.  Brobdingnag, for those Northwesterners who didn't know it, is actually a large peninsular region extending westward from what we know as "Washington," and going as far north as maybe the southern quarter of "British Columbia."  The people of Brobdingnag are giants in comparison with our typical height, and their trees, horses, pigs, birds, rats, etc., are respectively enormous.  While in Brobdingnag, Gulliver works dilligently to curry favor with the King and the land's other inhabitants, to a great degree of success.  One day, however, he has an audience with the King where he perhaps goes too far.  I realize this section is fairly long, but I think it would be harder (not to mention less entertaining) for me to summarize Swift's tone:

            In hopes to ingratiate myself farther into his Majesty's favour, I told him of an invention discovered between three and four hundred years ago, to make a certain powder, into an heap of which the smallest spark of fire falling, would kindle the whole in a moment, althoug it were as big as a mountain, and make it all fly up in the air together, with a noise and agitation greater than thunder.  That a proper quantity of this powder rammed into an hollow tube of brass or iron, according to its bigness, would drive a ball of iron or lead with such violence and speed, as nothing was able to sustain its force.  That the largest balls thus discharged, would not only destroy whole ranks of an army at once, but batter the strongest walls to the ground, sink down ships, with a thousand men in each, to the bottom of the sea; and, when linked together by a chain, would cut through masts and rigging, divide hundreds of bodies in the middle, and lay all waste before them.  That we often put this powder into large hollow balls of iron, and discharged them by an engine into some city we were besieging, which would rip up the pavements, tear the house to pieces, burst and throw splinters on every sides, dashing out the brains of all who came near.  That I know the ingredients very well, which were cheap, and common; I understood the manner of compounding them, and could direct his workmen how to make those tubes of a size proportionable to all other things in his Majesty's kingdom, and the largest need not be above an hundred foot long, twenty or thirty of which tubes, charged with the proper quanity of powder and balls, would batter down the walls of the strongest town in his dominions in a few hours, or destroy the whole metropolis, if ever it should pretend to dispute his absolute commands.  This I humbly offered to his Majesty, as a small tribute of acknowledgement in return of so many marks that I had received of his royal favour and protection.
            The King was struck with horror at the description I had given of those terrible engines, and the proposal I had made.  He was amazed how so impotent and grovelling an insect as I (these were his expressions) would entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a manner as to appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of blood and desolation, which I had painted as the common effects of those destructive machines, whereof he said some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have been the first contriver.  As for himself, he protested that although few things delighted him so much as new discoveries in art or in nature, yet he would rather lose half his kingdom than be privy to such a secret, which he commanded me, as I valued my life, never to mention any more.
            A stronge effect of narrow principles and short views! that a prince possessed of every quality which procures veneration, love, and esteem; of strong parts, great wisdom, and profound learning, endued with admirable talents for government, and almost adored by his subjects, should from a nice unnecessary scruple, whereof in Europe we can have no conception, let slip an opportunity put into his hands, that would have made him absolute master of the lives, the liberties, and the fortunes of his people (Swift 120-121).

            At first glance, this section struck me as just another instance of Swift satirizing his own fellow humans' penchant for mass murder.  And it is that, of course.  In this passage Swift so successfully conveys horror to the reader that we must fall in line with him.  He makes it easy for us to see, yes, we do this, and yes, it is wrong.  The reader must, with the King, conclude that the inventor of gunpowder was an "enemy to mankind."
            All well and good.  But on second thought, there seemed to me something disingenuous about the King's response.  For, after all, the Brobdingnagians have military capabilities.  Their army is based on the old peerage system of England — landowners conscripted their tenants to fight when the King demanded an army — and as such is far from being a standing army or even a professional one, as the soldiers are clearly not paid.  (Killing for money clearly bothers Swift more than killing because your homeowner will kick you out of your home if you don't.)  While they are not a technical standing army, however, the men are regularly compelled to perform military drills and exercises.
            So if they have military capabilites, but the King is uncomfortable with gunpowder, presumably they have other weapons:  swords, maces, spears, bows and arrows, etc.
            Now I am more than permissive when it comes to little boys and girls fighting.  I wouldn't quite say that I encourage it, but I certainly don't stop them.  And while I let them go at it with all the imaginary swords and gadas they can conjure, I do let it be known that none of the real gods or heroes would ever sink to such cowardly depths as to use a gun.  The kids' own little bodies must strike the blows, and I want them to see the look of pain on their victims' faces.  Also, I want the assailant close enough that they run the risk of getting hit back; none of this Distinguished Warfare Medal bullshit.  So I get that the King of Brobdingnag sees a difference — an immense difference — between explosive weapons and weapons which rely on non-chemical mechanics for their force and velocity.
            And if we start talking about the differences between types of weapons and warfare, we can easily get into the subject of how many more people we can kill with explosive weapons, and isn't that really so much worse?  At least the old broadsword kept the number of dead much lower; it simply wasn't efficient enough.
            But as soon as the word "efficiency" comes up, I remember an argument in favor of the atomic bombs used on Japan:  that, yes, all those poor Japanese people died, and isn't it tragic that their children were dealing with the nuclear fallout for years to come, but if we hadn't used the bombs, then the war would have dragged on so much longer and then, actually, in all truth, experts are quite sure more people would have ended up dying.  So we were saving Japanese people by killing Japanese people.
            Ah.  I see.
            My point is, our violence knows no bounds, and we will find ways to justify our violence.  I am probably revealing my age a bit when I say I have never believed that world peace was possible; I was sort of shocked when I found out the creators of the UN had that as their goal.  Striving for world peace strikes me as similar to trying to wipe out human beings altogether.  I have never hoped or prayed or wished for it because, I confess, I think humans are very inventive apes, and apes show little inclination towards pacifism, the oversexed Bonobo notwithstanding.  We like war.  I am of the opinion that men like it slightly more than women do, but a mother who has lost her child to the other side can become an agent of vengeance in a heartbeat.
            The King of Brobdingnag deceives himself if he thinks that he does not "entertain such inhuman ideas," and isn't himself an enemy of mankind.  While I don't think this is where Swift meant us to go — his description of the old peer-based system of warfare is too nostalgic — it is where my thoughts have gone.  And I offer no resolution.  It is, after all, Lent.  And therefore a good time to confront the blower-upper of men, women, children, animals, and whatever else we feel like, within.



Swift, Jonathan.  Gulliver's Travels.  New York:  Penguin Books, 2010.  Print.

Hipsters Did Not Invent Irony

            I recently finished Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.  I sort of wish it had inspired me in the same writer-oriented fashion that Cervantes and Bunyan did.  Both of those writers led to research and LOTS of writing, which obviously translates well to blog format.  Gulliver's Travels, on the other hand, has led to a quite different project.  I've actually started making a little book that will be something along the lines of Gulliver and Bell's Travels.  I might make a couple versions, but roughly speaking I'll end up with a small accordion book that includes pictures, postcards, collage-work, and words relating to places Gulliver went, places I've gone, and thoughts on travel in general.  If I ever master the art of scanning things or taking pictures, I might post some of it here.  But in general, it's not a bloggy project.
            However, there still remains my obvious duty of convincing you that you should also read Gulliver's Travels.  For one thing, it's short and could be read very quickly if, unlike me, you are capable of reading without taking pages and pages of notes and looking up dozens of references every hour or so.
            Also, it's hilarious.  And so, in lieu of sharing my own literary thoughts and responses to Gulliver's Travels, I thought I'd instead share some excerpts over the next couple of weeks.  And trust me:  there is so, so much more where this came from.
            And so, without further ado, here is a section from the first Book, A Voyage to Lilliput.  For those who don't already know, Lilliput is an island roughly equidistant from India and Australia, inhabited entirely by people who stand about three inches high.  Gulliver, having spent some time in their illustrious though tiny company, is struck by the wisdom of many of their social institutions:


            Their notions relating to the duties of parents and children differ extremely from ours.  For since the conjugation* of male and female is founded upon the great law of nature, in order to propagate and continue the species, the Lilliputians will needs have it, that men and women are joined together like other animals, by the motives of concupiscence**; and that their tenderness towards their young proceeds from the like natural principle:  for which reason they will never allow, that a child is under any obligation to his father for begetting him, or his mother for bringing him into the world; which, considering the miseries of human life, was neither a benefit in itself, nor intended so by his parents, whose thoughts in their love-encounters*** were otherwise employed.  Upon these, and the like reasonings, their opinion is, that parents are the last of all others to be trusted with the education of their own children:  and therefore they have in every town public nurseries, where all parents...are obliged to send their infants of both sexes to be reared and educated when they come to the age of twenty moons...Their parents are suffered to see them only twice a year; the visit is to last but an hour.  They are allowed to kiss the child at meeting and parting; but a professor, who always stands by on these occasions, will not suffer them to whisper, or use any fondling expressions, or bring any presents of toys, sweetmeats, and the like.


The nanny in me sighs happily.  Finally, someone had the courage to say it.  And just to be sure you're also building your vocabulary...

conjugation:  a.  The inflection of a particular verb...  b.  Chromosome pairing in the first meiotic division...  c.  Getting it on.

concupiscence:  a.  Sexual desire; lust; sensuality.  SOMEONE PLEASE USE THIS WORD SOON!

love-encounters:  Okay, okay.  You get it.