Incomplete short prose.

Here is what i have been doing with my weekend. It is not yet completed; there are a bunch of stylistic errors, but enjoy if you like short stories. Oh yeah, i will something relevent for the class soon.

I remember the smell of the yellow flowers across the dewy grass when waking as a child, a breeze that fell upon my chest through the perched summer window. And I really remember hearing my grandmother in the kitchen—cooking pancakes with blueberry’s and chocolate chips. It was summer—always summer, these memories. For what is life without eternity—these small moments when we are truly awake, yet dreaming. A dream that displaces that feeling of being out in the distance (maybe not far enough)…

For there is a drunken Indian on my aunts reservation where she works, as a nurse, who has wet tears crusting around his eyes—his last drop of bourbon emptying out of an iridescent bottle, and burning his lips at 11:30 in the morning—for that last drop was never enough to console him about his dead wife, his obese children, and that worthless monthly government check that hardly bought him enough to drink as pleased…And there he is a few hours later as my aunt and I approach the park drunker than hell where it is still nice—nice with the yellow flowers, the sun at noon with the little clouds dancing through the sky, and a place to dream with the little Indian children who imagine fame and fortune rocking back and forth into the sky, on the new swing sets the federal government finally purchased. My aunt told me Elijah (the drunken Indian) was always sad like this. He was sadder than most she explained—for he had got in a car wreck a few years back breaking his wife’s neck, and shattering a few of his bones as well—that’s why when he was sober enough to stand straight, he walked with a limp, eternally reminding him of that scorching memory.

My aunt had been there when he woke a few hours after the incident, and how he learned the full details from the state trooper—who was the first to arrive on the scene, and see Elijah’s wife’s flipped dangling head, and crooked neck. The topper discontendly reposed when he was asked to give a full recount of what he saw—but, he grimly gave it out of the long nights stress, and the honesty it was worth to the fragment middle age man, on the white linen bed surrounded by hospital equipment. When he was about 100 feet out he quickly approached what he thought to be—a couple slow moving cars on the highway; when they did not move or appear to advance forward at any particular velocity he knew exactly what had happened. When coming upon the sight of the burning orange lights in the distance—he found that there was a flipped rear ended red dodge pickup truck on the side of the two lane highway, a green Honda civic totaled from hood to steering wheel, and a bleeding man kneeling next to the right front tire of the crushed green car with his head in his palms. My aunt said the man who was driving the civic had been drunk…

Something faded in Elijah’s brown eyes when he heard the officer finish recounting his nights duties, (which she reasoned broke him down so much he picked up drinking himself)…for he knew he owed the world at least that favor—pious sober living had brought him thus far, and he would rather see the rest his days in shade. A place like the one he found himself a few years later as my aunt and I approached the park; with the children who had not yet been thus far—that place where a butterfly could touch upon those yellow mariposa’s, and return to cover as the heavy summer rain soaked the grass, and Elijah’s clothes when he was too drunk to pick himself up, a place where rainbows formed with the low dark moisture and the sunshine, and a place where all who saw him really tried, but could never care for his well being.

Art History Exam and Memory

I do not know whether it is through the faith of god, or the good faith of earthly relations (as Kane coins it) that my classes seem to coincide with one another in intricate ways. I feel like this seems to happen every semester—perhaps it is that there is in fact a platonic plane of true knowledge that all the arts to try to attain and rekindle.
This morning I woke up in a daze adjacent to my alarm clock that blurted visually and audibly the striking iridescent yellow 7:04; I rested for a second, and continued on a course of minit long naps until I stumbled out of bed to a grey light that barely broke through the shutter covering my bedroom window. I was on a mission—I reconciled myself—art history, the first test of the semester. Previous to this morning I had been up all night pondering the relevance of this subject matter—and how I was becoming extremely impatient with dead Italian painters, and much to my surprise an hour after this pain in the ass test--I had the pleasure of hearing the name Bosch in an English class. It’s strange though—I did not really have the pleasure of enjoying this artwork until I put down Yates’s forth chapter a second ago.
What I found striking about this chapter is the ability for--a memory that is well endowed with images to have a profound effect personally and externally. In the words of Ong, “think memorable thoughts”, or: INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE VISIBLE: AT LEAST IF NO more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot”. (But now it is time for revelation and scholarly thought which I do not seem to do in an organized fashion.) I will start with a term that Yates seems to employ quite frequently, “corporeal similitude” or physical resemblance. This she states is inherent when studying the use of images in the artificial memory. Which makes sense, because when one is contemplating memory what is easier to remember the arbitrary use of signs such as words relating meaning, or images that are solid in a memory theatre relating meaning. This is why even for literate preachers of the Middle Ages memory was viewed as an important skill. Preachers In the middle ages sought to express the emotion of scripture emotionally to a largely illiterate audience. In order for the preacher to successfully do this he would have to have a detailed image theater within him, and the ability to produce it outside of himself. Particularly in the beginning of the renaissance with the salvage of the ancient teachers, “The moral man who wished to choose the path of virtue, whilst also remembering and avoiding vice, had more to imprint on memory than in earlier simpler times”. Thus a system was developed to help remember these virtues verses vices. But what I have found striking--is the interrelation between corporeal similitude of memory, and how the art of memory helped to contribute to major paradigm shift in the artwork of the time. This is Madonna enthroned by Cimabue:


This is Madonna enthroned by Giotto, notice how the image is deeper in this work, almost as if the “illusion of depth depends on the intense care with which the images have been placed on their backgrounds, or, speaking mnemonically, on their loci …It is true that giotto’s images are regularly placed on the walls, not irregular as the classical directions advise. But the Thomist emphasis on regular order in memory had modified that rule”


As is visible through Yates’s perspective “the art of memory was a creator of imagery which must surely have flowed out into creative works of art and literature”. Which I find fascinating; what I also find fascinating is the renaissance emphasis on the grotesque and the sublime which I can see now is in large part attributed to a memory theater (which was not mentioned in art history class) and the embellishing of these singular ideas that make them memorable in the artist mind, but also in the viewers mind. I really had not thought of this much before—this however makes clear why artist used allegory and metaphors as mnemonic tools of ideas that convey explicit and non explicit meaning to the masses—which is represented in an art piece like this for example:



I am officially appreciative of art history now, and I look forward to using my own mnemonic tools for the next art history test, and making the experience memorable.
P.S For furthuring viewing check each out each of this images in the peoples encylopedia wikipedia.

A poem for thought:
I figure I would just share things I like with class:

Hay for the Horses
by Gary Snyder

He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
---The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds---
"I'm sixty-eight" he said,
"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done."

Willsall Montana 2007:
Wet dirt becomes mud, and little grey stones resurface again after their docile winter. (I hardly ever think much of these types of things—you know—that place were you remember old friends, and remember when that fluttering butterfly finally touched upon that lone purple flower in the swaying cattails teaming with nectar. That place where you had been before—were the granite tumbled and mystified you—were the tectonic plates blistered—and were the sky became so big—we had known we found it—and that plane of eternity felt almost certain.)
Bleeding-red dying-orange swirls—the last of the sunlight—fluster in the clouds on the snowcapped mountains above the last of the evergreen and aspen trees. Daylight gives way to moon light and that blanket speckled with little white dots. And the coyote howls at 9 pm on the pastor, behind RJ’s fence—there we realize—we do not care what time it is, nor what year it is.

The School of Athens by Rapheal:


This is a perfect example of a frescoe that embodies the soul of the renaisnce and class discussion:

Notice Plato and Aristotle; Plato is the old man pointing up while aristotle is the young man:



Here is the link to more info on this painting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Athens

Piggie Smalls: Folklore of the streets and the trees.
In this blog I will give my homage to Ong—which could almost sound like a spiritual ohm. Sorry I like the way that sounded. I am chalk full irrelevant things. Oh wait maybe not, I just found a cliché in my writing (chalk full); what does that even mean.

Alright to start this blog off in a proper manner—which I have no notion of proper, for these blogs are all extremely informal—I will state that: after class today, and after finishing Ong’s third chapter in orality and literacy I feel much more appreciative toward rap music, and the oral culture in general.

Hip Hop music is something that is, and is not a part my identity. What makes Hip Hop a part of myself is that distinct African Diaspora sound that intertwines itself in a global psyche—particularly the psyche of those that live in the Americas. Perhaps why this is, and why music in general is so influential on people’s lives. When words are spoken they have direct oral reception, as do musical notes—thus creating more of a collective feeling and more of a real experience that is essential to a society’s conception of itself. Ong in chapter 3 contends that primary orality is much more of a community experience: “Because in its physical constitution as sound, the spoken word proceeds from the human interior and manifests human beings to one another as conscious interiors, as persons the spoken word forms human beings into close-knit groups”.

Pin pointing exactly were Hip Hop is a part of myself can be somewhat complicated. In terms of the broadest perspective, Hip Hop music is appealing to me because I am a young American, a narrower perspective would be that Hip Hop music is appealing because it rises emotions out of me that has the ability to make me feel oppressed, angry and in a sense rebellious, and what makes these feelings memorable is that all of the sounds are put in a metrical form. Hip Hop in my opinion reflects ancient poets and storytellers far more accurately in than the written tradition does. In primary Oral cultures attitude and embodiment are a part of the words being spoken, “were sight situates the observer outside what he views, at a distance, sound pours into the hearer... establishing…a kind of core sensation and existence”. This is extremely relevant to why when travelling to one of our nations metropolitan areas we here vibrant conversations that are both praising and antagonistic; I will use the city of Boston as example. The surviving elements of primary orality are perfect when mentioning this city; Boston is both the rudest and most passionate city in America—need proof—were a Yankee baseball cap at Fenway Park. How this relates to Hip Hop is that urban population tends to have more of an orally based lifestyle, and African Americans have retained much of this primary oral culture that is both representative in a large context, and a smaller context. The larger context being American culture in general and the smaller context being areas like Brooklyn New York that has unique identity within many unique identities. And this is where I am ostracized, for I am a person tainted by literary concepts and abstractions I am a white male, I am not from an urban environment and I do not participate in events that, “try to outdo the other in vilifying the others mother”.
But Piggie Smalls Does,
trust me this is a perfect example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hbwdAOogBw

What Makes Man Wise:
Strolling through campus one comes upon many bustling minds—each convinced that there is a sort of knowledge that makes their particular field of study the most valuable, and the closest to the truth. I start this discussion as such, for I have just put Yates’s book down, and there is a great deal of discussion to be had. I will start with a musing on the oral tradition itself; firstly: an argument against the written tradition is valid if it is accompanied by an argument against the artificial memory as well. They are one in the same in my opinion—they are both technologies, and require a refined skill to produce such. If Kane’s argument is against the writing tradition for its technological dominance—what does he suppose the oral tradition is (knowledge naturally assumed). On the contrary—he reveals it himself—that Orality is a reflection of environment, as is literacy; his version of Ludism only permits itself to strike the victim just before the fatal blow to the mind itself—which negates ludism.

So aside from these speculations, what has been on my mind primarily after putting down Yates is the question of truth, and the soul; perhaps this why I opened this blog entry up with “bustling minds”. I happen to ascribe to the school of destination—we are all headed on one—and each voyage seems to contemplate truth along the way. I do not consider myself a scholarly philosophy student—just an observer—who loves life. Any way putting aside these thoughts; I will continue upon the direction of this conversation.

Writing obviously falls into this realm of creation, for it is passed the development of artificial memory. Artificial memory as I have been reading in Yates is systematic, and has developed with a certain set of rules and methods to employ such as, “for ‘things’ virtue and vice are represented (valor and cowardice), also an art (metallurgy). They are depicted in memory with images of gods and men (Mars, Achilles, Vulcan, Epeus). In a sense, the mythic aspect of Orality is a sort of vocabulary, and a sort of grammar. The question from hence forth is: does this jade one from the truth, or does creation bring us closer to it.
Aristotle upon truth and argument for creation:

Aristotle contends in de anima that, “no one could ever learn or understand anything, if he had not the faculty of perception; even when he thinks speculatively, he must have some mental picture with which to think (32)”. This conception is therefore an argument for the legitimacy of the imitator, the artist; it is an argument for the varying forms of the arts as well, namely the poet, who achieves his art either with written skill, or the elaborate memory theater which orchestrates songs of myth. This why “For Aristotle such impressions are the basic source of all knowledge; though refined upon and abstracted by thinking intellect, there could be no thought or knowledge without them, for all knowledge depends on sense impression (36)”. Isn’t this wonderful—what we are all doing as English majors— it is not benign jargon like those damn scientist believe in the EPS building—are very souls are being discovered one book, one essay, and one literary thought at a time.

Plato and the Allegory of the cave:



There is another school of thought that is prevalent in western philosophy and philology—Plato and his teachings. I thought I would introduce this topic by first discussing the allegory of the cave, because it was mentioned in two of my classes today—redundant—I know. I am sure many of you are aware of the film “The Matrix”. At first this movie can be a turn off because of Keuna Reeves monotone dialogue, and the 90’s dot com boom references. But aside from these trivial things let’s think of the overall theme (man has a veil thrown over him, he can neither tell what is up and down, and he has an even harder time figuring out what is real and what is not). This borrowed platonic idea subsequently sets off a Hollywood action packed sci-fi thriller. What is important about mentioning this is that the concept of not knowing the truth and obscuring through art is an integral part of Plato’s philosophy regarding the creation of things. Yates in The Art Of Memory paraphrase Plato and states that, “True knowledge consists in fitting the imprints from sense impression on to the mould or imprint of the higher reality of which the things here below are reflections (36)”; if Plato is confident about this it would make sense stating that Plato neither believed in the use of artificial memory or the art of writing—these acts served no purpose in either society and especially in the domain of truth seeking. The only truth seeking that was to avail for Plato was—the recollection of knowledge when all things in the universe were a unified collective consciousness of truth.

On a lighter note for all those who do enjoy the occasional jab at literary persons here is a good Plato quote on the invention of writing, “you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise (38)”. It’s good esoteric joke in my opinion for all who claim to be English majors.

These musing do not even began to scratch the surface of anything—the art of orality thus for me seems to be similar to the art of literacy—they just employ different tools that seem to clash with one another that creates this odd thing; I might have to call, human experience. Here is to James Joyce: “A way a lone a last a loved a long the” Dr Sexson filled in the rest this morning or perhaps not—for everything intertwines like a river making its way from “swerve of shore to bend of bay” and I have a feeling it might all be truth.

Ineluctable Modality of Smell, and the memory of things past:

In class today we discussed ground hogs day for a length of time, and how the idea of it seemed less fictitious than once first imagined. Which presents my first mediation: what is the root of this cycle that seems to have planted itself underneath are skins; fluttering all awake at a blinking set of red digits, and the luring sirens voice that slips out of the radio and bounces through are head like a drum beat, that steadily swoons through each one of our consciousness—weather we were aware of it or not. Is this the end—will we retire our minds to become slaves, and prisoners of repetition and cheep clichés. I do not think so; awareness is half the battle.
So how does one start seeing the world as an extraordinary experience? If I knew I would reveal my secret—for I see myself everyday repeating my motions. But here, I will share something I know to be indefinitely true as extraordinary—the sense of smell. also check out this link:http://www.macalester.edu/psychology/whathap/ubnrp/smell/memory.html

I awoke in a four-poster bed with a thin mosquito net around it on December 29th—the day of my father’s birth—at 8:00 clock in the morning. The scene around me was a messed, white sheet, and linens that smelled fresh even after a night of sleep. The room was like some other rooms I had stayed in with my father, as we criss-crossed the globe in search of spiritual enlightenment, or the missing pieces his father had left him to construct a final memory--which perhaps for anyone is never enough, and I new that for my father it certainly wasn’t.
Lying there the ceiling fan above swirled around the type of air that only exists in tropical southeastern Asia—that thick tropical humid smell of oceans forests bamboo people cooking festering street and an ancient wisdom that propels one to never veer from purpose. We had come to Nha Trang Vietnam to see a hospital—the hospital my father’s father worked at during the war. He and I had been given special permission by the faithful Ho Chi Min followers to enter the compound and marvel at something—that I am not too sure of yet.
The instinctual urge of a complementary breakfast drew my father and I from that clean linen cabin by the beach and into the resorts restaurant that was collapsing with the weight of European tongues, and a few wealthy Japanese. I sipped coffee and let my hair draft in the moist breeze, which reminded me of something.
As I was walking back to our cabin grey-clouds started dropping small raindrops on the grass—it brought forth that feeling again--that feeling was a memory of me and my father long ago in Oregon—we played by the see on the mouth of a river; green grass curling at it’s bank, the forest all around, the salty sea and sand, and moisture that collected in the sky that brought forth another 30 days of rain.