Prologue
She was still lucid when I spoke to her. Days later, she would slip out of consciousness and a few days after that, she would pass away.
At the moment she died, when her heart stopped beating, there were only two other people in the room. My mother and one of my aunts - two daughters by marriage only.
But when I saw her she could still speak and understand. Grandmother, I told her, I am getting married. You have to get out of this stupid hospital so you can come to my wedding.
"That's wonderful news. I'm so happy for you...so happy. But how will I travel? The doctor says I have to be in a wheelchair for months!"
It was then that one of my uncles laughed. "Don't be silly! People in wheelchairs travel on airplanes all the time. We're not letting you get out of this one that easily!" Laughter in the hospital room. A rare thing in those last days.
Her funeral was two weeks later. The attendance, so I heard. was in the hundreds. She had eight living children. And each of them had procreated several times. Add to that her great-grandchildren, her living siblings and their enormous families. Add to that a lifetime of friendships.
She was born in 1920 on a small farm in California. Soon after her birth, her family emigrated to Mexico. At the age of 18 she married an older man, Tomas, my grandfather, the man she would remain with for the rest of her life. He still lives and is approaching the age of 100. In a few years they were looking forward to celebrating their 75th wedding anniversary.
When my grandfather visited her in the hospital, together, they would laugh and play like children. My uncles had to grab my grandfather, like policemen grasping a bandit, to prevent him from lifting his wife out of the bed and taking her home.
At the funeral, it was decided that the oldest child of each of her children would be the coffin-bearers. I am my father's oldest child. But my place was taken by my younger brother Tomas (named after our grandfather) who with a black suit and white gloves, with my cousins David and Enrique and Amador and Stephen and Jesse solemnly carried my grandmother's body to her grave.
I was not at the funeral. I was five thousand miles away, getting married.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
This last week I have been paying a round of goodbye visits, for I think it will be some time before I see Alexandria again. It has become stale and profitless to me. And yet how can we but help love the places which have made us suffer? Leave-takings are in the air; it's as if the whole composition of our lives were being suddenly drawn away by a new current. For I am not the only person who is leaving the place - far from it. Mountolive, for example, will be leaving in a couple months; by a great stroke of luck he has been given the plum post of his profession, Paris! With this news all the old uncertainties seem to have vanished; last week he was secretly married! You will guess to whom...
There are a hundred things to attend to before I start the bore of packing. As for you, wise one, I have a feeling that you too perhaps have stepped across the threshold into the kingdom of your imagination, to take possession of it once and for all. Write and tell me - or save it for some small cafe under a chestnut-tree, in smoky autumn weather, by the Seine.
-From Clea, Lawrence Durell
There are a hundred things to attend to before I start the bore of packing. As for you, wise one, I have a feeling that you too perhaps have stepped across the threshold into the kingdom of your imagination, to take possession of it once and for all. Write and tell me - or save it for some small cafe under a chestnut-tree, in smoky autumn weather, by the Seine.
-From Clea, Lawrence Durell
Sunday, July 01, 2007
The Broken Mirror: III
Building better Mirrors
The fall of Parity triggered the question: If our Universe does not obey simple mirror-symmetry, then what kind of symmetry does it obey? In other words, perhaps we were looking in the wrong mirror.
P-symmetry is a mirror of parity, reversing left and right. We can think of it also as a transformation: It is an exchange of every Left-handed interaction with a Right-handed interaction.
C-Symmetry
Let's consider other types of mirrors. Physicists also examined another mirror called C-symmetry, or Charge symmetry. C Symmetry is a mirror which exchanges every positively charged particle with a negatively charged particle. In the world of physics this essentially means that the C mirror transforms particles into anti-particles and vice-versa. A proton and electron become an anti-proton and a positron.
So, what happens when we use the C Mirror, when we swap particles for anti-particles? Do the anti-particles obey the same laws of physics? The answer is No. C-symmetry is not a property of this Universe.
T-symmetry
Ok, let's consider another abstract mirror. What if we take all particles and interactions in the Universe and move them backwards? Shown a film of a particle interaction, can we tell whether the film had been reversed? (Note to all clever folks: This is not the same as the question addressed by the Second Law since that applies only to macroscopic systems.)
Is our Universe symmetric in Time? This question is known as that of T-symmetry. The answer is...mostly yes. That is, we cannot detect a reversed film unless it contains some particular time-asymmetric interactions. This all comes down to the interactions of one particle: The Kaon. I summarize here from a physics abstract:
Most fundamental physical processes are symmetric in time. The motion of the planets in the gravity field of the sun is reversable- a film of the motion of a planet around its sun can be shown backwards without anyone being able to tell. Similarly to gravity, the strong nuclear and electromagnetic forces are also time-symmetric. Only the weak nuclear force appears to violate this symmetry, and this so far only in the behavior of the neutral kaon.
We'll return to discuss the Kaon, later.
Combining symmetries
If I reflect a mirror image of a mirror image, I get the original. Mirrors can be combined to produce more mirrors.
The failure of P and C and T symmetry in our Universe is confounding. Recall that P symmetry is closest to what we consider a classic mirror, reversing left and right. What if we combine two mirrors (or more), combining the C mirror with the P mirror?
What this means in practice is that the mirror on the wall does show a valid Universe if we also exchange particles for anti-particles. The resulting symmetry is known as CP symmetry.
In 1980, James Cronin and Val Fitch earned the Nobel prize in physics for demonstrating that CP symmetry is not conserved. It was mostly conserved but violated in some interactions of the Kaon.
CPT: the Ultimate Mirror
The CP violation of the Kaon and the T violation of the Kaon are in fact related. They can be canceled out by throwing togther CP and T to make CPT: antiparticles in a mirror going backwards in time.
There is every reason to believe that CPT symmetry holds for our Universe. Even the Kaon (so far) obeys CPT symmetry. But what exactly does CPT symmetry imply? And what makes the Kaon such an anomaly?
The fall of Parity triggered the question: If our Universe does not obey simple mirror-symmetry, then what kind of symmetry does it obey? In other words, perhaps we were looking in the wrong mirror.
P-symmetry is a mirror of parity, reversing left and right. We can think of it also as a transformation: It is an exchange of every Left-handed interaction with a Right-handed interaction.
C-Symmetry
Let's consider other types of mirrors. Physicists also examined another mirror called C-symmetry, or Charge symmetry. C Symmetry is a mirror which exchanges every positively charged particle with a negatively charged particle. In the world of physics this essentially means that the C mirror transforms particles into anti-particles and vice-versa. A proton and electron become an anti-proton and a positron.
So, what happens when we use the C Mirror, when we swap particles for anti-particles? Do the anti-particles obey the same laws of physics? The answer is No. C-symmetry is not a property of this Universe.
T-symmetry
Ok, let's consider another abstract mirror. What if we take all particles and interactions in the Universe and move them backwards? Shown a film of a particle interaction, can we tell whether the film had been reversed? (Note to all clever folks: This is not the same as the question addressed by the Second Law since that applies only to macroscopic systems.)
Is our Universe symmetric in Time? This question is known as that of T-symmetry. The answer is...mostly yes. That is, we cannot detect a reversed film unless it contains some particular time-asymmetric interactions. This all comes down to the interactions of one particle: The Kaon. I summarize here from a physics abstract:
Most fundamental physical processes are symmetric in time. The motion of the planets in the gravity field of the sun is reversable- a film of the motion of a planet around its sun can be shown backwards without anyone being able to tell. Similarly to gravity, the strong nuclear and electromagnetic forces are also time-symmetric. Only the weak nuclear force appears to violate this symmetry, and this so far only in the behavior of the neutral kaon.
We'll return to discuss the Kaon, later.
Combining symmetries
If I reflect a mirror image of a mirror image, I get the original. Mirrors can be combined to produce more mirrors.
The failure of P and C and T symmetry in our Universe is confounding. Recall that P symmetry is closest to what we consider a classic mirror, reversing left and right. What if we combine two mirrors (or more), combining the C mirror with the P mirror?
What this means in practice is that the mirror on the wall does show a valid Universe if we also exchange particles for anti-particles. The resulting symmetry is known as CP symmetry.
In 1980, James Cronin and Val Fitch earned the Nobel prize in physics for demonstrating that CP symmetry is not conserved. It was mostly conserved but violated in some interactions of the Kaon.
CPT: the Ultimate Mirror
The CP violation of the Kaon and the T violation of the Kaon are in fact related. They can be canceled out by throwing togther CP and T to make CPT: antiparticles in a mirror going backwards in time.
There is every reason to believe that CPT symmetry holds for our Universe. Even the Kaon (so far) obeys CPT symmetry. But what exactly does CPT symmetry imply? And what makes the Kaon such an anomaly?
Friday, May 11, 2007
The Broken Mirror: II
II Through the Looking-Glass
"One hopes that nature possesses an order that one may aspire to comprehend. When we arrive at an understanding, we shall marvel how neatly all the elementary particles fit into the great scheme."
-Madame Chien-Shiung Wu
If you look into a mirror, you look out into a reversed world. Left and Right are interchanged but otherwise the world in the mirror looks much like our own.
What about the Laws of Physics? Are they the same in the mirror-world? It appears so. If I throw a ball in the air, my double in the mirror also throws up a ball and both fall according the same law of gravity. I can play with magnets or tops or engines and again the actions of my double are also possible in this world.
Chemists work with the notion of Chirality. The left-right orientation of molecules has a profound impact on their properties. So a left-hand molecule in our world becomes its right-hand counterpart in the mirror world which, according to chemical precepts, is an entirely different molecule. But all of this is surprisingly irrelevant. Since every other molecule in the mirror-world has also changed its handedness, any chemical experiments our double performs are also possible in our world.
So it would seem that if we, like Alice, were unsure whether we were inside a mirror there would be no way for us to discover the truth. Or so it seemed, even to physicists, who refer to this mirror-symmetry property of the Universe as "Parity Conservation."
In 1956, an incredible (and vastly under-appreciated) experiment was performed whose purpose was in fact to determine on which side of the Looking-Glass we live in. The more prosaic intent was to determine the Question of Parity Conservation. The experimenter was a Chinese-born woman - Madame Chien-Shiung Wu.
Her fellow physicists, T.D. Lee and C.N. Yang, had predicted that there might be certain interactions among subatomic particles whose mirror was improbable or did not exist at all. Parity tests such as these had already been performed for a wide variety of interactions and so most physicists were dubious but intrigued.
It was Madame Wu, setting up a laboratory at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, who set out to confirm or disprove their hunch. The key was in how one particular atom, cobalt-60, decayed. Unlike other atoms studied it decayed (ejecting pieces of itself in the form of beta particles) in an asymmetric manner. The mirror-image of this process was not one that was observed.
If you had placed a large mirror against one wall of Madame Wu's laboratory, her double in the mirror was performing a similar experiment but obtaining results which do not appear in our Universe. The mirror world is not our world merely reconfigured, it is a distinct and alternate reality. Deep within the subtle textures of the Universe there is indeed a small asymmetry, a telltale, a crack, which can be used to distinguish ourselves from the mirror world.
The result was completely unexpected. Mirror-symmetry appeared to be true and appeared to continue to hold true across thousands of other experiments. Looking upon this event, the fall of Parity, the physicist I. Rabi remarked "A rather complete theoretical structure has been shattered at the base and we are not sure how the pieces will be put together"
"One hopes that nature possesses an order that one may aspire to comprehend. When we arrive at an understanding, we shall marvel how neatly all the elementary particles fit into the great scheme."
-Madame Chien-Shiung Wu
If you look into a mirror, you look out into a reversed world. Left and Right are interchanged but otherwise the world in the mirror looks much like our own.
What about the Laws of Physics? Are they the same in the mirror-world? It appears so. If I throw a ball in the air, my double in the mirror also throws up a ball and both fall according the same law of gravity. I can play with magnets or tops or engines and again the actions of my double are also possible in this world.
Chemists work with the notion of Chirality. The left-right orientation of molecules has a profound impact on their properties. So a left-hand molecule in our world becomes its right-hand counterpart in the mirror world which, according to chemical precepts, is an entirely different molecule. But all of this is surprisingly irrelevant. Since every other molecule in the mirror-world has also changed its handedness, any chemical experiments our double performs are also possible in our world.
So it would seem that if we, like Alice, were unsure whether we were inside a mirror there would be no way for us to discover the truth. Or so it seemed, even to physicists, who refer to this mirror-symmetry property of the Universe as "Parity Conservation."
In 1956, an incredible (and vastly under-appreciated) experiment was performed whose purpose was in fact to determine on which side of the Looking-Glass we live in. The more prosaic intent was to determine the Question of Parity Conservation. The experimenter was a Chinese-born woman - Madame Chien-Shiung Wu.
Her fellow physicists, T.D. Lee and C.N. Yang, had predicted that there might be certain interactions among subatomic particles whose mirror was improbable or did not exist at all. Parity tests such as these had already been performed for a wide variety of interactions and so most physicists were dubious but intrigued.
It was Madame Wu, setting up a laboratory at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, who set out to confirm or disprove their hunch. The key was in how one particular atom, cobalt-60, decayed. Unlike other atoms studied it decayed (ejecting pieces of itself in the form of beta particles) in an asymmetric manner. The mirror-image of this process was not one that was observed.
If you had placed a large mirror against one wall of Madame Wu's laboratory, her double in the mirror was performing a similar experiment but obtaining results which do not appear in our Universe. The mirror world is not our world merely reconfigured, it is a distinct and alternate reality. Deep within the subtle textures of the Universe there is indeed a small asymmetry, a telltale, a crack, which can be used to distinguish ourselves from the mirror world.
The result was completely unexpected. Mirror-symmetry appeared to be true and appeared to continue to hold true across thousands of other experiments. Looking upon this event, the fall of Parity, the physicist I. Rabi remarked "A rather complete theoretical structure has been shattered at the base and we are not sure how the pieces will be put together"
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
The Broken Mirror: I
The Broken Mirror
I. The Shape of Space
I don't recall the name of the professor who taught the course on Cosmology. I do recall he wore stiff suits and large spectacles and that he was British. Also, he kept his upper body completely fixed when he moved about. Scratching out equations on the chalkboard, for example, he would raise one hand and then bend his knees up and down to write. The effect, as seen from behind, was as if a large frog was anxiously stretching its legs against the front wall of the classroom. Meanwhile the professor/frog was also sagely informing us about the nature of stars and galaxies.
We were discussing the shape of space. Space can be negatively curved, positively curved or it can be flat. The verdict relies on understanding how much matter is in our Universe and whether it exceeds a theoretical critical number. This grand ratio is known as Omega. If Omega is greater than 1, then space is positively curved and the Universe is headed toward collapse. If Omega is less than 1, space is negatively curved and will expand forever.
The discussion turned philosophical. Astronomers had tried to measure Omega and values ranged from 0.001 to 1.2. Surely, our professor argued, this meant that the value was likely to be exactly 1. His argument was an aesthetic argument. An Omega of 1 was perfectly symmetrical. And if it were not 1, why would it be so tantalizingly close to 1? Omega could have been measured to be in the billions or a mere tiny billionth. But it was not.
The argument is alluring but it also recalls the struggle between idealizations of the natural world and the true natural world, that is bare reality, which obeys symmetry from a rough distance but, when magnified, obeys its own impenetrable logic. Planets do not move in perfect circles in a Ptolemaic harmonic symphony. They move in wobbly ellipses, tugged constantly in their orbits. The Earth is not a perfect sphere but an oblate spheroid, tilted sideways, drawn off-center by a heavily cratered moon.
Symmetry as an ordering principle is a rough guide. Inspected more closely, the Universe is riddled with tiny asymmetries. This seems obviously true on the larger scale; we all know there is no perfect circle or straightedge.
But it is also true in the idealized world of natural laws. Just when we believe we have fully understood some force or interaction or particle, just at the moment we are ready to formulate a Universal Law or Rule, we find one or two exceptions. Not thousands or millions of exceptions, but just a couple, a few... sometimes only one. But only one exception is needed to invalidate the rule altogether. It is a confounding feature of our world that every symmetry is broken, but only barely broken, it is like an otherwise perfect mirror with a hairline crack. A broken mirror, nonetheless.
With what I know now, it is obvious, contrary to what the professor was saying, that Omega may be slightly less than 1 or slightly greater than 1 but it is certainly not 1. That would make the Universe perfectly symmetrical in that respect. Such symmetry, as far as I know, is forbidden in this world.
I. The Shape of Space
I don't recall the name of the professor who taught the course on Cosmology. I do recall he wore stiff suits and large spectacles and that he was British. Also, he kept his upper body completely fixed when he moved about. Scratching out equations on the chalkboard, for example, he would raise one hand and then bend his knees up and down to write. The effect, as seen from behind, was as if a large frog was anxiously stretching its legs against the front wall of the classroom. Meanwhile the professor/frog was also sagely informing us about the nature of stars and galaxies.
We were discussing the shape of space. Space can be negatively curved, positively curved or it can be flat. The verdict relies on understanding how much matter is in our Universe and whether it exceeds a theoretical critical number. This grand ratio is known as Omega. If Omega is greater than 1, then space is positively curved and the Universe is headed toward collapse. If Omega is less than 1, space is negatively curved and will expand forever.
The discussion turned philosophical. Astronomers had tried to measure Omega and values ranged from 0.001 to 1.2. Surely, our professor argued, this meant that the value was likely to be exactly 1. His argument was an aesthetic argument. An Omega of 1 was perfectly symmetrical. And if it were not 1, why would it be so tantalizingly close to 1? Omega could have been measured to be in the billions or a mere tiny billionth. But it was not.
The argument is alluring but it also recalls the struggle between idealizations of the natural world and the true natural world, that is bare reality, which obeys symmetry from a rough distance but, when magnified, obeys its own impenetrable logic. Planets do not move in perfect circles in a Ptolemaic harmonic symphony. They move in wobbly ellipses, tugged constantly in their orbits. The Earth is not a perfect sphere but an oblate spheroid, tilted sideways, drawn off-center by a heavily cratered moon.
Symmetry as an ordering principle is a rough guide. Inspected more closely, the Universe is riddled with tiny asymmetries. This seems obviously true on the larger scale; we all know there is no perfect circle or straightedge.
But it is also true in the idealized world of natural laws. Just when we believe we have fully understood some force or interaction or particle, just at the moment we are ready to formulate a Universal Law or Rule, we find one or two exceptions. Not thousands or millions of exceptions, but just a couple, a few... sometimes only one. But only one exception is needed to invalidate the rule altogether. It is a confounding feature of our world that every symmetry is broken, but only barely broken, it is like an otherwise perfect mirror with a hairline crack. A broken mirror, nonetheless.
With what I know now, it is obvious, contrary to what the professor was saying, that Omega may be slightly less than 1 or slightly greater than 1 but it is certainly not 1. That would make the Universe perfectly symmetrical in that respect. Such symmetry, as far as I know, is forbidden in this world.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Paintings of Paintings: Teniers and the Archduke's cabinet
I first discovered Teniers because I had a fondness for his paintings of alchemists. Teniers (the Younger, not the older or Teniers III) paintings are of daily life, peasants in the field and in the kitchen, 17th century snapshots.
His paintings of alchemical laboratories depict the alchemist at work. Rooms cluttered with books, creatures - stuffed on hooks, perched on tables, jars with murky and mysterious contents. The painting The Alchemist from 1645 is typical. He returned to this theme several times: The Alchemist, Teniers as an Alchemist, The Alchemist, An Alchemist in his Workshop and many more.
One of Teniers' patrons was the Archduke Leopold William, an aristocrat and art collector. His collection of over a thousand paintings included Titian, Breugel, Van Eyck, Raphael, Veronese and Giorgione. In the series of paintings Archduke Leopold William in his Gallery, Teniers set out to document this collection - or at least its greatest stars.
The painting above shows not only these paintings but also Teniers (on the far left) and the Archduke, prominent with his hat and cape. Another version of this painting appears here along with clickable identifications of many of the paintings.
The painting can be considered a catalog of sorts. The intention of the work is to showcase the Archduke's treasures. The collection is oriented on one wall and toward the viewer. The Archduke stands regally in the middle with Teniers, his humble curator and assistant off to the side.
This piece is in fact a direct precursor to the first Art catalog - Teniers' Theatrum Pictorium. Teniers employed engravers to reproduce the greatest works of the ArchDuke in miniature. These engravings were used to print the Theatrum Pictorium, a book of reproductions, the antecedent of photographic plates. The engravers worked off of small oil reproductions produced by Teniers himself. That is, the images in the catalog are copies of copies, an engravers take on a Teniers oil copy of a painting by Giorgione for example. In a few cases, the original paintings have either been lost or altered, making the Theatrum Pictorium illustration more real than the painting itself.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Flight and Pursuit
When I was at the MFA in Boston last month, I was traveling idly through rooms content to let paintings catch my gaze rather than hunting for specific works. The MFA is oddly organized, a patchy quilt of rooms where it is easy to walk from 19th Century Continental European into Egyptian relics without the benefit of any transitive space.
It was walking through one of these rooms that I noticed and was drawn to William Rimmer's Flight and Pursuit. Unlike the surrounding paintings, it is not immediately clear what is going on here. A man is running through the scene, about to exit on the left. Behind him, not directly behind him but parallel, is a robed and transparent figure also running in the same direction. They appear to be inside a palace. The running man casts a shadow and a shadow appears to be directly behind him as well, cast, presumably, by something outside the painting to the right.
After my visit, I decided to learn more about the painting and the man who painted it. I assumed that I was ignorant of some crucial element of mythology or history upon which the painting was based. However, it appears that this particular painting is puzzling for many more reasons and, so far, has resisted attempts at decipherment.
The painter, William Rimmer, was a well-known mid-19th century English-born American painter. He practiced Medicine. He taught Art classes. He was mainly a sculptor, creating a statue of Alexander Hamilton for the city of Boston, but also produced lithographs and paintings.
But this abbreviated biography leaves out some of the more interesting aspects of Rimmer. Rimmer's father was an emigrant from France and believed that his son William was the lost Dauphin. It appears that William Rimmer believed this too, that he had been usurped of his royal role.
Also, Rimmer not only taught Art but specialized in Art and the human anatomy, and became a professor of Anatomy and Sculpture. He even published several well-received books on Art and Anatomy.
In Flight and Pursuit, we have an anatomical puzzle. The running man is in an unbalanced position. His left arm and left foot are thrust forward. This is not how someone appears in the act of running. It is also not a mistake a professor of Art Anatomy would make.
The title of the painting, Flight and Pursuit, is the painting's second title. The original title was On the Horns of the Altar. This has led several scholars to surmise that this painting is about a Biblical tale of usurpment.
In Kings 1, we find the tale of Adonijah:
1 Then Nathan asked Bathsheba, Solomon's mother, "Have you not heard that Adonijah, the son of Haggith, has become king without our lord David's knowing it?
But Solomon soon regains his throne from Adonijah and Adonijah is left fearing for his life:
49 At this, all Adonijah's guests rose in alarm and dispersed. 50 But Adonijah, in fear of Solomon, went and took hold of the horns of the altar. 51 Then Solomon was told, "Adonijah is afraid of King Solomon and is clinging to the horns of the altar. He says, 'Let King Solomon swear to me today that he will not put his servant to death with the sword.' "
Here, the "horns of the altar" is synonymous with sanctuary. The usurper fears for his life. This does very little to clear up the painting's mysteries for me. Is this a painting of the usurper running from his assassins? Is this Rimmer and his ghost, a Boston painter and the Dauphin? I was initially drawn to the urgency and motion in this painting. It is impossible to look at this painting and not believe that the painter drew with intent and purpose. This is why I at first felt that this was an illustration of a common myth that had eluded me. The painters purpose may have been clear, but the painting, it appears, will continue to mystify.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
The Obscene Bird
A new project, one which allows me to revisit my favorite works and make some small attempt at unraveling them.
The initial novel is one of my old favorites, Jose Donoso's El Obsceno Pajaro de la Noche (The Obscene Bird of Night), a little known masterpiece of Spanish literature.
The trail begins here.
A new project, one which allows me to revisit my favorite works and make some small attempt at unraveling them.
The initial novel is one of my old favorites, Jose Donoso's El Obsceno Pajaro de la Noche (The Obscene Bird of Night), a little known masterpiece of Spanish literature.
The trail begins here.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Writers of the No
Writers of the No
The haunting words of von Hofmannsthal's Lord Chandos: "I have completely lost the ability to think or speak in a connected manner about anything.", this rejection of expression, this acceptance of the futility of mere words, is adopted by Enrique Vila-Matas as the theme of his book/novel/fiction Bartleby & co.
Bartleby of course is Melville's Bartleby, a copy clerk whose passivity becomes the means by which he unshackles from the world, retreating into nothingness, into inexpression. As Vila-Matas writes:
"...for some time now I have studied the illness, the disease...the negative impulse or attraction towards nothingness that means that certain creators...never manage to write...or...one day they become literally paralysed for good."
Paradoxically, Vila-Matas believes that the impulses which belies this sudden silence is the highest form of expression itself, the writing of the No - an unwritten creation by unwilling creators. He continues:
"Only from the negative impulse, from the labyrinth of the No, can the writing of the future appear."
The haunting words of von Hofmannsthal's Lord Chandos: "I have completely lost the ability to think or speak in a connected manner about anything.", this rejection of expression, this acceptance of the futility of mere words, is adopted by Enrique Vila-Matas as the theme of his book/novel/fiction Bartleby & co.
Bartleby of course is Melville's Bartleby, a copy clerk whose passivity becomes the means by which he unshackles from the world, retreating into nothingness, into inexpression. As Vila-Matas writes:
"...for some time now I have studied the illness, the disease...the negative impulse or attraction towards nothingness that means that certain creators...never manage to write...or...one day they become literally paralysed for good."
Paradoxically, Vila-Matas believes that the impulses which belies this sudden silence is the highest form of expression itself, the writing of the No - an unwritten creation by unwilling creators. He continues:
"Only from the negative impulse, from the labyrinth of the No, can the writing of the future appear."
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Hong Kong Wedding
Hong Kong Wedding
-Elevator at L'Hotel. Photo by Claudia.
Our recollections, our sense of history and time, exist as a series of moments, well-polished episodes we cherish and recount to others with exclamation. They are typically moments in which order seems suspended, life becomes promise or possibility or danger, and we swerve into the unpredictable.
Last week I was at the wedding of PK in Hong Kong. He and I go back to college and so he appointed me as his best man. My own responsibilities were minimal since this opulent wedding had already been meticulously planned. PK had hired a wedding planner who, along with PK, gave form to the week which preceded the wedding, creating and inventing distractions for us guests.
The week adhered closely to the classic narrative, a worthy descendant of a Greek play. Early in the week, wedding guests were taken on private tours of Hong Kong and China. Nightly rooftop cocktail parties introduced new characters into the drama - guests who had just flown in Paris or New York. We chatted and laughed and screened films. As is typical of weddings, I didnt get to spend much time with either the bride or groom (saddled as they are with obligations) but did go exploring with PK's extended family, many whom I met for the first time.
The wedding day of course was the prolonged climax. Early in the day I took part in a ritual in which us, the groomsmen, accompanied the groom to fetch the bride. In preparation for our quest the five of us filled our stomachs with a banquet of dim sum at The Verandah. Nourished, we went off to seek the bride. Our first task was to bribe the bride's maids to let us into the brides apartment. They attempted to extort us. We paid them off in cash and trinkets.
Once inside we were given a new task: The bride had hidden her shoe somewhere inside the apartment and we were to find it. The four of us threw up seat cushions and pushed over tables like four tuxedo'ed thieves. The shoe was discovered above a kitchen counter.
The last trial was for PK himself. He had to recite his love for the bride in language he could not speak - the Wu dialect.
The remainder of the day included the formal wedding at an Anglican church, a lawn cocktail party with overflowing, multi-colored drinks and, finally, the reception, with long tables adorned with flowers, a small army of chefs manning buffets and a band which played into the night. Music was played, toasts were made, and the bride and groom underwent three costume changes.
The next morning was the denouement. A family brunch. A polite exchange of photos and goodbyes.
The wedding had a theme and logo: "Meeting is Destiny" which was printed in books given to guests and, rendered in Chinese characters, flown from banners posted around the reception. The reference was to the meeting of PK and Windy via a series of unlikely events.
Several speakers, including myself, mentioned an episode which was crucial to PK and to his bride Windy. They were survivors of the Asian Tsunami. At one point, trapped in their bungalow in Thailand, as the waters rose above their necks, they were both mere inches from Death. If not for a conjunction of small miracles, they would not have survived. And so this wedding was a celebration too of order, of rituals which bind us, of a cherished victory over the indifferent forces of chance.
-Elevator at L'Hotel. Photo by Claudia.
Our recollections, our sense of history and time, exist as a series of moments, well-polished episodes we cherish and recount to others with exclamation. They are typically moments in which order seems suspended, life becomes promise or possibility or danger, and we swerve into the unpredictable.
Last week I was at the wedding of PK in Hong Kong. He and I go back to college and so he appointed me as his best man. My own responsibilities were minimal since this opulent wedding had already been meticulously planned. PK had hired a wedding planner who, along with PK, gave form to the week which preceded the wedding, creating and inventing distractions for us guests.
The week adhered closely to the classic narrative, a worthy descendant of a Greek play. Early in the week, wedding guests were taken on private tours of Hong Kong and China. Nightly rooftop cocktail parties introduced new characters into the drama - guests who had just flown in Paris or New York. We chatted and laughed and screened films. As is typical of weddings, I didnt get to spend much time with either the bride or groom (saddled as they are with obligations) but did go exploring with PK's extended family, many whom I met for the first time.
The wedding day of course was the prolonged climax. Early in the day I took part in a ritual in which us, the groomsmen, accompanied the groom to fetch the bride. In preparation for our quest the five of us filled our stomachs with a banquet of dim sum at The Verandah. Nourished, we went off to seek the bride. Our first task was to bribe the bride's maids to let us into the brides apartment. They attempted to extort us. We paid them off in cash and trinkets.
Once inside we were given a new task: The bride had hidden her shoe somewhere inside the apartment and we were to find it. The four of us threw up seat cushions and pushed over tables like four tuxedo'ed thieves. The shoe was discovered above a kitchen counter.
The last trial was for PK himself. He had to recite his love for the bride in language he could not speak - the Wu dialect.
The remainder of the day included the formal wedding at an Anglican church, a lawn cocktail party with overflowing, multi-colored drinks and, finally, the reception, with long tables adorned with flowers, a small army of chefs manning buffets and a band which played into the night. Music was played, toasts were made, and the bride and groom underwent three costume changes.
The next morning was the denouement. A family brunch. A polite exchange of photos and goodbyes.
The wedding had a theme and logo: "Meeting is Destiny" which was printed in books given to guests and, rendered in Chinese characters, flown from banners posted around the reception. The reference was to the meeting of PK and Windy via a series of unlikely events.
Several speakers, including myself, mentioned an episode which was crucial to PK and to his bride Windy. They were survivors of the Asian Tsunami. At one point, trapped in their bungalow in Thailand, as the waters rose above their necks, they were both mere inches from Death. If not for a conjunction of small miracles, they would not have survived. And so this wedding was a celebration too of order, of rituals which bind us, of a cherished victory over the indifferent forces of chance.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Hinton's Cubes Redux
Hinton's Cubes Redux
- Hinton's Tesseract
One of the few entries on this weblog that I get regular email about is the one concerning Charles Hinton's cubes (Apparently it comes up high on Google searches for seekers of this particular information.) The entry gives a short overview of the cubes, which Hinton designed as an aid to visualizing the fourth dimension, as well as some compelling information.
Unfortunately, the actual instructions for constructing and using the cubes is only in Hinton's 1906 book The Fourth Dimension which, despite being now in the public domain, is not available online.
Fortunately, I own a copy of the book, a 1912 edition I obtained years ago online from a London bookshop. I've wanted to make my copy somehow publicly available but didn't know how to do so.
Well, a few weeks ago, I got an unexpected offer of help from a man who works at the Internet Archive which is based here in San Francisco, in the Presidio. He took my book, scanned the various hundred pages and the result is --- Hinton's book is now completely available online!
Enjoy, cube-lovers! But, I take no responsibility for anyone going insane....
- Hinton's Tesseract
One of the few entries on this weblog that I get regular email about is the one concerning Charles Hinton's cubes (Apparently it comes up high on Google searches for seekers of this particular information.) The entry gives a short overview of the cubes, which Hinton designed as an aid to visualizing the fourth dimension, as well as some compelling information.
Unfortunately, the actual instructions for constructing and using the cubes is only in Hinton's 1906 book The Fourth Dimension which, despite being now in the public domain, is not available online.
Fortunately, I own a copy of the book, a 1912 edition I obtained years ago online from a London bookshop. I've wanted to make my copy somehow publicly available but didn't know how to do so.
Well, a few weeks ago, I got an unexpected offer of help from a man who works at the Internet Archive which is based here in San Francisco, in the Presidio. He took my book, scanned the various hundred pages and the result is --- Hinton's book is now completely available online!
Enjoy, cube-lovers! But, I take no responsibility for anyone going insane....
Thursday, October 26, 2006
The Guatemalan Fabulist
The Guatemalan Fabulist
The writer Augusto Monterroso, who died in 2003, is known for being the author of the micro-story known as "The Dinosaur" which I reproduce here in its entirety, both in the original Spanish and followed by my English translation:
Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí.
When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there.
Monterroso devoted himself to the study of the short form. Several of his other short fables can be found on this page, taken from larger published collections such as The Black Sheep and other Fables. I will also offer my clumsy translation of "The Burro and the Flute":
Out in the middle of the country there had been, for a long time, a Flute, which nobody played, until one day when a Burro which was passing by, gave it a forceful blow and produced the sweetest sound of its life - that is to say, the life of the Burro and of the Flute.
Incapable of understanding what had happened, since rationality was not their strong point and both believed in rationality, they went their own ways, embarrassed of the best thing that either one had done during their unhappy life.
The writer Augusto Monterroso, who died in 2003, is known for being the author of the micro-story known as "The Dinosaur" which I reproduce here in its entirety, both in the original Spanish and followed by my English translation:
Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí.
When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there.
Monterroso devoted himself to the study of the short form. Several of his other short fables can be found on this page, taken from larger published collections such as The Black Sheep and other Fables. I will also offer my clumsy translation of "The Burro and the Flute":
Out in the middle of the country there had been, for a long time, a Flute, which nobody played, until one day when a Burro which was passing by, gave it a forceful blow and produced the sweetest sound of its life - that is to say, the life of the Burro and of the Flute.
Incapable of understanding what had happened, since rationality was not their strong point and both believed in rationality, they went their own ways, embarrassed of the best thing that either one had done during their unhappy life.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
A Lip-Reading Puzzle
I've been going through Sam Loyd's Cyclopedia of Puzzles and marveling at their diversity and their ingenuity.
Ed Pegg Jr also provides an overview of this early Bible of Puzzles, some so famous that you already know them. Others, like this lip-reading puzzle, are simply innovative and fun:
"Here is a class of a dozen boys, who, being called up to give their names were photographed by the instantaneous process just as each one was commencing to pronounce his own name. The twelve names were Oom, Alden, Eastman, Alfred, Arthur, Luke, Fletcher, Matthew, Theodore, Richard, Shirmer, and Hisswald. Now it would not seem possible to be able to give the correct name to each of the twelve boys, but if you practice the list over to each one, you will find it not a difficult task to locate the proper name for every one of the boys."
Ed Pegg Jr also provides an overview of this early Bible of Puzzles, some so famous that you already know them. Others, like this lip-reading puzzle, are simply innovative and fun:
"Here is a class of a dozen boys, who, being called up to give their names were photographed by the instantaneous process just as each one was commencing to pronounce his own name. The twelve names were Oom, Alden, Eastman, Alfred, Arthur, Luke, Fletcher, Matthew, Theodore, Richard, Shirmer, and Hisswald. Now it would not seem possible to be able to give the correct name to each of the twelve boys, but if you practice the list over to each one, you will find it not a difficult task to locate the proper name for every one of the boys."
Friday, October 13, 2006
Bailar la Cumbia
Bailar la Cumbia!
This past weekend was the wedding of my cousin Sonia. I dont know her very well but I grew up with her older sisters. Also, her father, my uncle Antonio - kind, witty, gregarious - is one of my favorite relatives. He knew that I was a rare sight at family weddings and, for this one, had good-naturedly demanded my presence. When I kissed and greeted Sonia at the wedding she whispered to me: "It means so much to me that you came." These statements mean much in a family with about 20 aunts and uncles and over 40 cousins.
In enormous families, such as mine, the act of planning a wedding, already a convoluted affair, must bear additional complications. The first is how to manage the guest list. An "intimate wedding", such as Sonia's was, including only close family and friends of the bride and groom and their families still could not be reduced below 300-400 people. As might be imagined, a received wedding invitation within the family creates a reciprocal contract and this obligation only serves to fatten up the wedding lists, lest someone accidentally be slighted.
The second obstacle is planning a date that doesn't collide with other family obligations. This includes baby showers, baptisms, funerals and of course, other weddings. It's an impossible art. The day of Sonia's wedding several family members had traveled South, just past the Mexican border to attend the wedding of another distant cousin.
For Sonia's reception, my uncle had booked the band La Sonora Dinamita. They are a well-known Colombian band, famous for their Cumbias. Although Cumbias originated in Colombia, they are popular all over Latin America. The music has a driving, irresistible beat. As soon as La Sonora Dinamita started playing, half the guests, young and old, crowded the dance floor. I danced for a couple hours straight among my aunts and uncles, my cousins and their children, among familiar strangers.
I've included an mp3 file of Sonora Dinamita performing a medley of some of their more popular Cumbias:
La Sonora Dinamita: Cumbia Mix (mp3)
The reception was well-attended - more so than the wedding itself. Exactly 350 of us packed the dance hall. I know this is the number because thats what the owners of the venue pointed out to us as the maximum we could have before violating the fire code. Wedding Guests #351 and onwards had to wait outside.
This past weekend was the wedding of my cousin Sonia. I dont know her very well but I grew up with her older sisters. Also, her father, my uncle Antonio - kind, witty, gregarious - is one of my favorite relatives. He knew that I was a rare sight at family weddings and, for this one, had good-naturedly demanded my presence. When I kissed and greeted Sonia at the wedding she whispered to me: "It means so much to me that you came." These statements mean much in a family with about 20 aunts and uncles and over 40 cousins.
In enormous families, such as mine, the act of planning a wedding, already a convoluted affair, must bear additional complications. The first is how to manage the guest list. An "intimate wedding", such as Sonia's was, including only close family and friends of the bride and groom and their families still could not be reduced below 300-400 people. As might be imagined, a received wedding invitation within the family creates a reciprocal contract and this obligation only serves to fatten up the wedding lists, lest someone accidentally be slighted.
The second obstacle is planning a date that doesn't collide with other family obligations. This includes baby showers, baptisms, funerals and of course, other weddings. It's an impossible art. The day of Sonia's wedding several family members had traveled South, just past the Mexican border to attend the wedding of another distant cousin.
For Sonia's reception, my uncle had booked the band La Sonora Dinamita. They are a well-known Colombian band, famous for their Cumbias. Although Cumbias originated in Colombia, they are popular all over Latin America. The music has a driving, irresistible beat. As soon as La Sonora Dinamita started playing, half the guests, young and old, crowded the dance floor. I danced for a couple hours straight among my aunts and uncles, my cousins and their children, among familiar strangers.
I've included an mp3 file of Sonora Dinamita performing a medley of some of their more popular Cumbias:
La Sonora Dinamita: Cumbia Mix (mp3)
The reception was well-attended - more so than the wedding itself. Exactly 350 of us packed the dance hall. I know this is the number because thats what the owners of the venue pointed out to us as the maximum we could have before violating the fire code. Wedding Guests #351 and onwards had to wait outside.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Shakespeare in the Stars
Shakespeare in the Stars
1. When I was an undergraduate in astrophysics i used to spend hours in the CfA library poring over their star atlases. Millions of stars and galaxies, entire worlds, each identified only by a series of arbitrary letters and digits. You could gaze at a little clump of galaxies and realize that you may have been the first person to ever give them much attention. The largest atlas occupied about ten volumes each volume covering some portion of the sky.
Unfortunately these atlases - a collection of thousands of individual photographic plates - are only accessible to research institutions. The best a layman can do is possibly the Millennium Star Atlas which contains approximately one million stars and thousands of galaxies. But even the Millennium has been out of range for most budgets - the cost of the hardback collection approaching $1,000. This February a softcover edition was finally released for considerably less. And, I've just ordered it!
In the extract from the catalog above, the only star that might be faintly visible to the naked eye would be the one on the lower left. The lines emerging from a few stars are indicators of its motion, ending at where the star will be when it is viewed in 1,000 years. A reminder that the night sky is dynamic.
2. In the first Act of Hamlet, Bernardo says:
Last night of all,
When yond same star that's westward from the pole
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one,--
But what star is he talking about? This question was pursued by Owen Gingerich (who was at the CfA at the same time as I was) and others. The conclusion is that Bernardo is referring to Supernova 1572A, so named because 1572 is the year in which it was observed.
The Supernova SN1572A is better known as Tycho's Supernova. The astronomer Tycho Brahe provided detailed observations of this new bright light in the nightsky. Since Hamlet was written around 1600, Shakespeare would have been familiar with this recent star as well and, accordingly, would have been a small boy when it first appeared.
There is another curious relation between Brahe and Shakespeare. In one portrait of Brahe, he is surrounded by the Coat-of-Arms of his ancestors. One of them is Rosencrans and another is Gyldenstern. It remains unclear as to whether this was a coincidence or something more.
A certain Eric Altschuler has used much of the above information to argue, in a physics paper titled Searching for Shakespeare in the Stars that Shakespeare must have lived earlier than thought since he references this astronomical event of 1572 but not equally important ones in 1609 and 1610. So this leans the evidence toward Shakespeare being Edward de Vere, he argues, who lived from 1550-1604.
Perhaps. Eric is familiar to me too. Not only was he a student at the same time I was...he was my study partner. Sometimes I'd see him in the CfA library too, like myself, paging through star atlases.
1. When I was an undergraduate in astrophysics i used to spend hours in the CfA library poring over their star atlases. Millions of stars and galaxies, entire worlds, each identified only by a series of arbitrary letters and digits. You could gaze at a little clump of galaxies and realize that you may have been the first person to ever give them much attention. The largest atlas occupied about ten volumes each volume covering some portion of the sky.
Unfortunately these atlases - a collection of thousands of individual photographic plates - are only accessible to research institutions. The best a layman can do is possibly the Millennium Star Atlas which contains approximately one million stars and thousands of galaxies. But even the Millennium has been out of range for most budgets - the cost of the hardback collection approaching $1,000. This February a softcover edition was finally released for considerably less. And, I've just ordered it!
In the extract from the catalog above, the only star that might be faintly visible to the naked eye would be the one on the lower left. The lines emerging from a few stars are indicators of its motion, ending at where the star will be when it is viewed in 1,000 years. A reminder that the night sky is dynamic.
2. In the first Act of Hamlet, Bernardo says:
Last night of all,
When yond same star that's westward from the pole
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one,--
But what star is he talking about? This question was pursued by Owen Gingerich (who was at the CfA at the same time as I was) and others. The conclusion is that Bernardo is referring to Supernova 1572A, so named because 1572 is the year in which it was observed.
The Supernova SN1572A is better known as Tycho's Supernova. The astronomer Tycho Brahe provided detailed observations of this new bright light in the nightsky. Since Hamlet was written around 1600, Shakespeare would have been familiar with this recent star as well and, accordingly, would have been a small boy when it first appeared.
There is another curious relation between Brahe and Shakespeare. In one portrait of Brahe, he is surrounded by the Coat-of-Arms of his ancestors. One of them is Rosencrans and another is Gyldenstern. It remains unclear as to whether this was a coincidence or something more.
A certain Eric Altschuler has used much of the above information to argue, in a physics paper titled Searching for Shakespeare in the Stars that Shakespeare must have lived earlier than thought since he references this astronomical event of 1572 but not equally important ones in 1609 and 1610. So this leans the evidence toward Shakespeare being Edward de Vere, he argues, who lived from 1550-1604.
Perhaps. Eric is familiar to me too. Not only was he a student at the same time I was...he was my study partner. Sometimes I'd see him in the CfA library too, like myself, paging through star atlases.
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