Seahorse

Wazæt? A Speech Act.

2009-06-12T17:07:00.023+10:00

A tale of two Johns: Austin and Searle, a Brit and a Yank, don and disciple; just two ordinary Oxford philosophers named John with an extraordinary knack for thinking about "ordinary" language.

A singular Seahorse, Cereus Spectrum, whose early experiments in ordinary language have rallied around an extraordinary word--a polysyllabic, monomorphemic beast of a word. A word John & John would deftly dub a "speech act".

The two Johns volunteered for cleanup duty after Frege, Moore, Russell, Ayer and the early Wittgenstein left positivistic nuclear fallout under the Christmas tree for Aristotle's sleeping children. Nevermind that, though, thought John & John with stiff upper lips: if only we can understand what ordinary people do with words when they talk, we could still probably solve most of the problems of Western philosophy.

As for the Seahorse, she began volunteering herself as an ever-ready audience for book reading well before she could even eat her instant barley. One of her favorites turned out to be a quirky volume with pullout tabs written by someone named Harry Stevens. As you can see, the book starts with a simple question. Inside, it continues: "Who grunts while he's eating and snores while he's sleeping?" "Pig." "Who growls as he prowls through the jungle?" "Tiger."

. . .

Of the many incurable problems in Western philosophy, ambition is among the most chronic. As so often happens with bold endeavors, John & John misgauged the fruits of their labors. The balm they intended as a panacea for analytic philosophy is now neglected by philosophers. Linguists, on the other hand, apply it with enthusiasm--functional linguists and communication theorists in particular.

The Seahorse was captivated by Steven's book from her first encounter--even if she did find the metamorphosing pullout tabs to inspire low-grade terror for the first few dozen reads or so. Our intended questions also metamorphosed: "Who's that?" > "What's that?" > "Wasszat?" And then fusion happened. Electricity. Three ordinary morphemes blended into one--an interrogative relative, a reduced copula and a distal demonstrative--all for one, one for all, and they just stuck that way: "wɜ'zæt?"

But wait. Is that a word? It's not in the dictionary. What are words? What are they up to? How do they mean what they mean? Do they just encode information? Are they only allowed to point to things? If so, we are left with some really sticky problems--but . . . more on that some other day.

Words aren't so much about sending information or naming things, the two Johns argued; no, words are for doing things. That's it! said John & John: that's how we heal philosophy and reveal language. In the timeless words of John Austin:

Ordinary words are much subtler in their uses and mark many more distinctions than philosophers have realized.

Well, the Seahorse began trying her new morpheme on for size: [wazæt]--an ordinary word, much subtler in its uses and marking many more distinctions than philosophers have realized. From January 2009 to the present it has functioned daily as a multi-purpose power tool for eliciting language data, attention, help, conversation, interaction, names for objects, repetitions of actions or forms of play.

Depending on circumstances, [wazæt] might seem to mean what we would naturally associate with any of the following:

Hey, what do you call this?
Play with me.
Do it again!
My, oh my, well, isn't this just fascinating.
Hey, ho, it's the little stuffed pig again!

Pay attention to me.
Talk to me about this again.
Let's stop right now and rejoice over this together.
Read this book to me.
Wouldn't you know it, my bear blankie has fallen into the crib again, so come in here with your long gangly arms and pluck her out for me.

and more.

WAZZAAT?!

The two Johns would be proud. Whatever else it is, the Seahorse's most productive, meaningful utterance thus far is an undeniable speech act. Turns out John & John put their finger on something important. Speech acts happen a lot. Speech acts happen whenever we use words to get things done.

Speech acts usually involve other acts. One is the phonetic act. In the timeless words of John Searle,

The speaker will characteristically have moved his jaw and tongue and made noises.

Um, thank you, John.

An under-acknowledged feature of first language acquisition is the remarkable variation of the phonetic act. In her phonetic act, "wazæt", the Seahorse continues to experiment with gradient, whimsical alterations. Here's a selection in IPA:

[ʔɑʔˈzæːː], [ʔɜˈzæːːːː], [ʔɜˈzɪ.zæː], [ʔɜˈzæ.t͡ɬɪ],
[ʔɑˈtɑː], [ʔɜˈtɑ], [ʔɜˈzæ.d̩͡ɮ], [ʔɜˈzæ.t͡ɬ̩ʰ],
[ʔɜˈzætʰ], [ʔɜˈzatʰ], [zætʰ]
(often said with laryngealized voice quality
and/or dramatic shifts in intonation)

What is the phonetic act? Whatever it is, it isn't fixed. Her production of the word changes at whim, regardless of context. How do we trace its origins? Well, how we trace it, how she alters it and how we interpret it all point back to analogy--poetic association, but more on that another day . . . (and forever more).

First, wait: she can twist it and say it and and we can untwist it and interpret it, but what does she mean when she says it, and how does she mean it? These are some of life's cosmic questions.

According to the two Johns, what she means is what she intends to accomplish. They call it illocution. Illocutionary meaning is strongly tied to practical intent.

Illocution:
intention to persuade,
intention to recruit,
intention to involve,
intention to declare,
intention to celebrate,
intention to evoke.

But, in light of illocution, we have to revise some of our old assumptions about language--we have to give up some of our old habits. When the Seahorse says "wazæt", we can no longer appeal to the circular claim that what she means is simply some under-evolved form of the abstract question, "what is that?"

What she means is not a proto-sentence. What she means is not baby talk. What she means is not fixed. What she means is not in need of fixing. As with all who speak themselves free, what she means is tangled up with what she intends her words to accomplish.

What she means is not words at all.

_____________

Quotes:

Austin, John L. 1959. Sense and sensibilia
Searle, John R. 1965. "What is a speech act?"
Stevens, Harry. 1983. Who's that?

18 Mo.

2009-06-02T17:15:00.004+10:00

Here's something to smile about: the night blooming hippocampus rainbow portent cactus flower, conqueror of idle fancies, creature from the sea depths of being and becoming, turned the 18 month corner today.

One year and six months; and two parents sunk so deep in love mire, so tied up in the shades and tales of the girl, that their chests hurt sometimes from the weight of the delight of the thing. And with more textures every day.

'Specially now that she's talking.

Talking herself free.

And, well-behaved linguists that the Seahorse Parents are . . .

. . . well, anyway, we've been documenting her progress and are now ready to start sketching the unfolding of her fresh sprung freedom. We should note in advance that some details of her progress have, how shall we say this discreetly, a prodigious scent.

But first, in honor of this threshold:

Happy babel holophrastic
babble scrabble big bombastic
year and a half hop pop fantastic
birthday,

Seahorse.

Talks.

2009-05-31T12:48:00.009+10:00

Speaking is freedom;
the word is freedom itself.

--Ludwig Feuerbach (1841)

The Seahorse speaks.
She speaks it. The word.
Speaks herself free.

Words speak her freedom.
She speaks. Speaks and free.
Freedom itself. Speaks it free.

Passion is speechless,
Ludwig.
Excess of Joy.
Chained without words.
Excess of Pain.
Slave:
no flame to express it.

Then, wordspeak. Come.
Speak to be free. Speak it free.
Spoken and free. It's freedom.

It's freedom. Free. It's freedom.
It's freedom. It's freedom.
It's freedom. Himself.

(as with words so with life):

The deepest irony is accident itself;
Profound association is windfall.

________________

Text (from Das Wesen des Christentums): "Das Wort macht den Menschen frei. Wer sich nicht äußern kann, ist ein Sklav. Sprachlos ist darum die übermäßige Leidenschaft, die übermäßige Freude, der übermäßige Schmerz. Sprechen ist ein Freiheitsakt; das Wort ist selbst Freiheit."
Translation (by George Eliot, 1881): The word makes man free. He who cannot express himself is a slave. Hence, excessive passion, excessive joy, excessive grief, are speechless. To speak is an act of freedom; the word is freedom [[sic.]itself].
Opening Feuerbach quote translated by Mario Pei; discovered in his classic The Story of Language.
Thanks for the book, Dad.
Top Photo: Curls at Mealtime
Bottom Photo: Mt. Baker from the Fraser River

Mamma Day

2009-05-11T08:01:00.003+10:00

Yesterday, O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! , 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves , did scathe the knobes, by gyro-gimbling in the wabe.

Having done so, and with ample decorum, the Seahorse invited her mother (receiving no small help from her father) to the local A&W for a Mama Burger.

All mimsy, and in uffish thought, the Seahorse has been making use of [ma ma]--those fondest of all reduplicated syllables--for months immemorial:

At first, only in great distress and pain; later, also when afraid or alone; but just recently, to identify a relationship. Curious thing: an admission of human connection--a nod to the greatest companion--a reflection on the color of "together-I-am-more-myself-than-apart-from-you-even-if-that-means-I-have-to-admit-I-need-you-even-when-things-are-going-pretty-good".

[ma ma]: even when she's not afraid or sleepy or alone or in pain at all--even when together and glad and unharmed.

[ma ma],

Mamma.

Glad to say so.

And thus, upon this day, all whiffling by the Tumtum tree, she decided, of her own accord (this being the first time she'd even tried one at all), in an act of filial celebration, to dip her french fry into ketchup . . .

and partake.

_____________
with no small apologies to the Jabberwocky.

Christmas Convergence

2009-05-10T06:03:00.000+10:00

'tis a little known fact, firm and fast, subject only to such shades of interpretation as others of their kind, that about five months ago, in the dwindling days of 2008, the improbable Seahorse, restless, curious, sitting on the laps of aunties in a damp nappy after a brisk mid-morning crawl, was asked to pose as a polar elf.

The jolly, condescending frontispiece had been bearable--'twas the season, after all--but the itchy, too tall hat . . . um, no. That would not do. That would not do at all.

Five months and then a Christmas post? Whatever for, and why so silent? Several breeds of -ession, ma'am, that's all (depression, oppression, concession, impression, recession, and others, but mainly the former). No German mercenaries at least.

Beyond walks and jives, many Seahorse shifts in style, not least of all linguistic, plus a shift in the weather of the mind and a shift in habitat, have the Seahorse father in better position for framing notes again.

First this: Christmas '08.

Events hosted by Seahorse paternal Aunt and Uncle Amy & Greg Brake and Seahorse paternal grandparents Rob & Joan Pelkey in Springfield, MO.

Web Album here:

enjoy..

Jives.

2009-02-25T18:44:00.001+11:00

Walks.

2009-02-08T10:11:00.000+11:00

Father of the mother of the father of the

2009-02-07T10:16:00.004+11:00

Henceforth let it be known to all that on this day in human history early in the twentieth century, William C. Dunlap, Seahorse paternal great grandfather, whose wisdom and generosity are matched only by his wholesome fascination with life, parted the ghastly veil, emerged from the saltwater underworld of being and becoming and was forever severed from his secret mother.

Happy Birthday, Grandpa Dunlap,

We love you!

.

Mother of the mother of the mother of the

2009-01-13T12:06:00.001+11:00

Henceforth let it be known to all that on this day in human history, in the year 1913, Madie Sanders, Seahorse maternal great grandmother, elegant matron of good sense; capable beauty of brilliant poise, parted the ghastly veil, emerged from the saltwater underworld of being and becoming and was forever severed from her secret mother.

Happy Birthday, Grandmother Sanders,

We love you!

.

Year.

2008-12-02T14:04:00.019+11:00

On this day in human history, just twelve months ago today,

Quynh Iris
the Seahorse

parted the ghastly veil,

emerged from the saltwater underworld of being and becoming

and was forever severed from her secret mother.

So, now.

Thank you, Appop: God,

for earth to grow the flour and cane,
for air to stretch the red balloons,
for fire to melt the wax string stalk,
for water to wet the cake-face rag,

and for the
singular Seahorse,

who came to us from salt water,
announced to us by dawn fire,
refracted for us through dew air,
to make for us on ash earth

a muse to celebrate.

Amen.

________
'Appop': 'Papa' in Seahorse speak.

Truth as paradox

2008-12-01T18:48:00.003+11:00

From a letter to his class, on the eve of his daughter's first birthday:

I keep thinking about our 'final' conversation in class last Thursday, and it occurs to me: of all the directions we could have gone, we should have gone the way of paradox. I mentioned paradox early in the semester when trying to contrast philosophical attitudes toward meaning and truth, but we haven’t discussed it much since then.

We should have mentioned paradox, because it’s too easy to slip up when we try to talk about truth meaningfully without talking about paradox. In fact, I would argue, the most glaring reason we slip up is because truth without paradox is itself a paradox—in other words, truth without paradox turns into it’s opposite: a lie.

This semester we discussed how the either/or reductionists (rationalists and empiricists) both see truth in binary terms (true/false) and both end up with something that looks suspiciously like self-referential tautology. Interestingly enough, this also tends to be the underlying attitude toward truth that is rehearsed, formulized and circulated among evangelicals.

Here's Evangelicalism in a nutshell: have true scriptural beliefs so you can go to heaven when you die and help other people to have true scriptural beliefs so that they too can go to heaven when they die. What are true scriptural beliefs? Well, here is a condensed list of propositions. What do the propositions mean? Well, they mean what they say and they say what they mean. After all, anything else would be relativism (Ye Gads! Run for the HILLS!!).

Relativism. In fact, this is the current attitude of foment in society at large introduced by existential nihilism and socio-political deconstructionism—everything is true according to some (that’s the optimistic spin), and nothing is true according to others (that’s the pessimistic spin), but we should note that either position leaves us in a state of absurdity where meaning and truth are dead or, at least, alienated from each other.

So politicians and the masses seem content with non-committal absurdities and scientists and evangelicals seem content with binary tautologies, and all believe they have a bearing on the truth. Note that for both groups truth is considered to be a simple matter—a simple matter of disinterested deference for the former and a simple of matter of passionate reduction for the latter. But neither group gives us much hope for reconciling meaning with truth. Either the two are in a master-slave relationship or they are separated (by death or divorce).

Isn’t there a third attitude toward truth? Yes, but few like it: It’s troubling. It’s embarrassing. It’s playful. It’s fleshy. It’s like poetry. It’s like the Gospel. It’s like the seasons. It's like meaning kissing truth beneath the mistletoe of metaphor. It’s unprofessional. It’s unpredictable. It’s unfettered. It’s uncharted. It requires interpretation. It requires relationships. It requires humility. It requires love. It reveals duplicity. It reveals complexity. It reveals sheer beauty. Everywhere.

Jesus introduces himself as the truth. What does he mean?

_____________
The end of the first Seahorse year:
The end of the first semester of Philosophy of Language.

3rd brother of the mother of the

2008-11-16T18:11:00.005+11:00

Let it be known to all that on this day in the early 1970s, Seahorse Maternal Uncle Matt parted the ghastly veil, emerged from the saltwater underworld of being and becoming and were forever severed from his secret mother.

Happy Birthdays, Matt!

Love, the Seahorse Parents

Chitown Convergence

2008-11-09T19:00:00.025+11:00

Late non-breaking news:

This time last week, the Rainbow Seahorse, the Saltwater Invader, the Idle-Fancy Demolition Crackerjack, had only just returned from the land of Chicago to the arms of her improbable father. Chicago--a land to which she had been taken by her secret mother. Chicago--a land flowing with aunts, uncles, cousins, mothers of mothers and mothers of mothers of mothers--not to mention the father of her mother (all maternal). Chicago--home of the newest President of the United States. Chicago--a land to which she had flown in celebration of her maternal grandmother's landmark birthday celebration.

There was Claire and Jack and Justin and Nathan . . .

and the Hopkins Grandparents and Uncle Matt and Aunt Ruthanne and Uncle Curt and Aunt Janice and Uncle Brad and Great Grandmother Sanders:

Even the Paternal Pelkey Grandparents swung by to play:

There was Grandma Pelkey and, um . . .

and Grandpa Pelkey,

who brought . . .

Aunt Amanda,

who brought . . .

Cousin Felix!

All in all, if asked to make a public statement, I suppose we'd say that, um, the Seahorse's sphere of influence has expanded considerably.

Welcome back, Seahorse

(and Happy 11 Month Birthday).

______________________
First four photos in this post taken by Ruthanne Hopkins
Last four photos in this post taken by Amanda Scherbakoff, et al.

-

Types.

2008-11-09T14:19:00.000+11:00

And now for a message from the (palms of the) Seahorse's own hands:

;q qcm, ,nckmyjcxkmjhvc nnnnnnnn l.[lUK<-0p
}|;]\
X dC 6CCMN M TUY8R*G V VBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBG
]

{f#
}
}+{}
'Z 0PQD VCF VV14 N|
z*

I think my keyboard is broken now.

Brother of the father of the

2008-11-08T12:38:00.004+11:00

Let it be known to all that on this day in the year 1987, Nathan Edward Pelkey, Seahorse paternal uncle the-one-and-only, parted the ghastly veil, emerged from the saltwater underworld of being and becoming and was forever severed from his secret mother.

Nathan Edward

Always has lived from an intense imagination
Always has seen into the heart of things.

Happy Birthday, Edward,

We love you!

.

Mother of the mother of the father of the

2008-10-30T19:53:00.001+11:00

Henceforth let it be known to all that on this day in human history early in the twentieth century, Dorothy Dunlap, Seahorse paternal great grandmother, spunky matron of capable courage; sensible beauty of bouyant brilliance, parted the ghastly veil, emerged from the saltwater underworld of being and becoming and was forever severed from her secret mother.

Happy Birthday, Grandma Dunlap,

We love you!

.

Mother of the Mother of the (redux)

2008-10-16T23:00:00.004+11:00

May it be known to all that on this day in human history early in the twentieth century, Marilyn Hopkins, Seahorse maternal grandmother, matron of unsinkable hope, whose capabilities are always dependable, whose smile is always available, parted the ghastly veil, emerged from the saltwater underworld of being and becoming and was forever severed from her secret mother.

Happy Birthday, Mom Hopkins,

We love you!

Teef.

2008-10-05T18:30:00.015+11:00

The Seahorse has a secret.

She's kept it well.

She's nurtured it with patience.

She's tended it through pain.

She's not even so sure she wants to let go of it.

After all, what if going public stopped the magic?

What if the tender, slow porcelain-steel nuggets just . . .

froze in the limelight?

I mean, what if they just stopped appearing?

We can't cite a deductive reason for expecting that they won't.

And, let's face it: the ones already in there are darn useful:

especially for gripping,

and for piercing things that need tasting,
and for shredding things that need swallowing,

and for exploring things that, well, need exploring,

and, you know, stuff like that.

But that's not the only secret in the Seahorse mouth.

Not by far.

In fact, the Seahorse mouth has prepared a statement.

Not a stump speech, though; not a maxim,
not a theorem, not a proposition,
not really an utterance at all;

more like a cross between the first few stanzas of Wordsworth's "Mutability"
and a swing era Kansas City jazz solo.

Most any guide to infant wellness will play you the head arrangement:

From the Parent's Canada Baby and Child Care Encyclopedia 16.2:40
(colored elements added)

You won't hear it riffing though the air waves, though;

to get it, you have to pay attention.

Here:

let's catch the Seahorse in a smile and point you to her mouth:

There we go.

Now, let's map her iron-white root tenders onto our theme
using the chord changes and time signature sketched out in the baby book above.

Here's how the head arrangement would play out
(which it apparently does sometimes)
if it happened to happen in the Seahorse's mouth
(which it didn't):

Note the anticipated chiastic structure.

Note that the arrangement progresses according to the familiar empirical order of things:

bottom up.

Then it moves from center to periphery.

Now, how do you guess the Seahorse riffed off that progression?

Here, let's show you:

Well, she started off with a clean echo of the timeless theme.

Then she tipped her hat to the melody line
with an innovative left-shifted transposition
on the empirical-order motif.

But from there on . . .

how shall we say it?

Well, she has played it pure improv.

Nice solo, Seahorse.

Keep it up.

Your little glazed nerve nuggets should stay for six or seven more years they say.

Then there will be more pain.

Then there will be a new head arrangement.

But, meantime, chin up.

Your secret's out,
but there's still more to play on this piece of improv.

And even the ones you already have are good for a lot.

Sure they're good for shredding and piercing and
gripping and exploring and

. . . and biting,

But, um,

We think they're specially good for . . .

grins.

Box.

2008-09-28T12:16:00.002+10:00

Sometimes the Seahorse gets a box.

A box is good. The Seahorse likes a good box.

Sometimes a box comes with clothes. Sometimes a box comes with clues (the Seahorse parents promise this: one clue that came in a box this past July is so resonant and so cosmic and gives birth, in turn, to so many other clues that you'll never guess it; you'd be crazy to guess it).

Sometimes a box comes from friends. Sometimes a box comes from the mother of the mother of the. Sometimes a box comes from sisters of the father of the. Like this one.

Thank you aunt Becky.
Thank you cousin Gretel.

Hats and boots and shirts and socks and sweaters and blouses and wash towels.

Not to mention diaper rash cream from Switzerland.

Be clothed, Seahorse.

Dry or wet. In pain or comfort. In curiosity or ennui.

Grow, drink, learn, notice, relax, babble, drool, smile, leap, crawl, squirm, cuddle, poop, pinch, daydream, turn pages, hear the antics of Harry McLarry, eat, pull up.

And be clothed.

Ei#002: Bechet & Cockatoo talk defiance

2008-09-14T05:01:00.013+10:00

Pelkey 2008

You worship me in vain; your teachings are mere rules taught by humans . . . you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do so many things like that.

--Jesus the Christ (early 1st century)
Palestine, the Lavant
As quoted by his followers

I'm going to give you one note today. See how many ways you can play that note--growl it, smear it, flat it, sharp it, do anything you want to it. That's how you express your feelings in this music. It's like talking.

--Sidney Bechet (1897-1959)
New Orleans, Louisiana
As quoted in Gioia's History of Jazz

__________________

2 of 8 in the Early Influences series--monochrome watercolors by Seahorse father hinting at some ways Oz fauna fused with jazz and poetry to mark the Seahorse's early life.
The Sulphur-crested cockatoo cry defies all conventional propriety in birdsong.
Sidney Bechet denies us a single untroubled escape route from Gershwin's once tame ballad "Summertime".
Seahorse father first smitten by Bechet's spirit in Melbourne during Seahorse mother's pregnancy after hearing a local ensemble play a lengthy meditation on Bechet's "Dans Les Rue D'antibes".
The Seahorse began listening to Bechet's interpretation of "Summertime" in eutero soon afterwards every night at bedtime.
Mk.7, Mt.15

Second sister of the father of the

2008-09-08T04:53:00.003+10:00

Amy Rachel

Always has been vivacious,
Always has been (acutely) aware

Let it be known to all that on this day in the year 1975, Amy Rachel Pelkey Brake, Seahorse paternal aunt the-second, parted the ghastly veil, emerged from the saltwater underworld of being and becoming and was forever severed from her secret mother.

Happy Birthday, Amy,

We love you!

________
Thanks for the photo Jody & Dexter!

Peacay slips a second clue

2008-09-02T23:45:00.019+10:00

by May Gibbs

Clues. Until now, the Seahorse parents had not known the pleasure of receiving a second citing from a single informant, but Sydney's Phantom of the Optical, Peacay, has now scored two. The first lay hinged on the Seahorse's birth in the Land of Oz, hidden on every page. The second, pictured above, was slipped on the sly with a wry foreshadowing, and it landed with a rather uncanny twist. What's more, it arrived just in time for the Seahorse's 9-month birthday celebration:

Nine months in saltwater, nine in vapor. Alive now for 18 months, today marks a time threshold beyond which the Seahorse will have breathed more hours through her 'nose' than through her 'navel'.

How better to mark the passage than with Snugglepot and Cuddlepie--another classic example of the Oz imagination at its finest and most playful. Peacay's recent review of May Gibbs' (1877-1969), flora-inspired creation is a caper we hope you don't miss.

In fact, the Seahorse parents have received a few tips over the past year that the adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie should be in their home library. Either the bookmoney boat never came in, or they simply procrastinated, or both, but they still have not read the complete adventures.

Well, upon arriving in Canada, the parents received a note from Peacay congratulating them on their recent journey with instructions to trawl for inscape. The parents followed the trawling link and hooked the bright image below from Peacay's photostream:

"Why! How very delightful," thought the Seahorse father in a British accent, "I do look forward to Peacay's post on Snugglepot et al., and I shall post a link to this image when I set up an inscape column; afterall, seadragons are surely close cousins to seahorsies."

Then, more than two months later, and on the very day the Seahorse father finally felt he had recovered enough from transition overload that he could start checking blogs again, Peacay posted his fated post (no kidding).

Instead of Riding Home on seadragons in Peacay's post, though, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie are riding home on . . . well . . .

Sly.

And the twist?

Well, yes, the Oz origin of the author is always a useful link, as we noted in the Graeme Base post when describing a complex clue from Karen more than four weeks ago. . .

but note something else at the very end of the same post. The last line in the post reads thus,

The Seahorse turns homeward.

right?

Well, how intrusively alike:

on seahorse back.

from Oz.

and the complex timing unaccountable.

1918. June 2008, a journey. August,

homeward.

Words.

meaning.

_________________
Excuse me, I think I need to be alone for a while.

Crawls.

2008-08-31T20:00:00.011+10:00

and

.
Sits.

(too!)

Before the Seahorse could eat, she could sit.
Before the Seahorse could crawl, she could eat.
Before the Seahorse could eat she could pushup.
Before the Seahorse could pushup she could not sit.
Before the Seahorse could crawl, she could lunge.
Before the Seahorse could lunge she could sway (on all fours).
Before the Seahorse could sway (on all fours) she could eat.
Before the Seahorse could lunge, she could sit.

THEREFORE:
BEFORE THE SEAHORSE COULD LUNGE, SHE COULD EAT.

__________________

Scientific Principle: For some x, x precedes y in which x is greater than or equal to infant gastronomic advancement beyond post-partum fluid-exclusive sustenance and y is equal to (or more than equal to) self-prompted infant bodily projectile locomotion in which the knees act as launch pad for the abruptly hurtling torso after which the torso lands with a thud on the floor.

Moral: Digestion first, dangerous stunts later.

Plain speech for modern young people: Eat before you leap.

. . . . . ._____________________

"And in much the same way," said Acidophel to Estrangus, "has human thought always moved from wonder to logic to principia mathematica, to an ill-digested moralism, to a malaise-braised chicken soup for the false and hollow soul.

"Oh," said Estrangus, "what's wrong with wonder?"

"It doesn't last."

Eats.

2008-08-16T07:39:00.023+10:00

Who'd have thought it?

Swimming in our vapor world, sitting in air:

the Seahorse . . .

eats.

She likes it.

Eats with abandon.

She eats rice cereal.

She eats oatmeal.

She eats cheese.

She eats barley and apples and pears and watermelon and avocado and peas and zucchini and bananas and broccoli and rice and potatoes.

She eats spinach.

She eats cucumbers.

She eats pumpkin.

She eats most anything, except cooked animals.

Too early for that.

At first she tried chopsticks.

Too early for that.

She sits in air.

She eats in air.

She feels full.

Hippocampe Improbable
(in mid May 2008 after her first meal (from a spoon*))

________________________
*During her first month of eating in the vapor world, the two middle fingers of her right hand seemed to be conflated in the Seahorse's imagination with the source of her food.

Wild ride

2008-07-01T06:55:00.003+10:00

On Monday, June 6, the Seahorse received a book by Oz post:

Another book from kind Auntie Karen of Queensland. . .

Kind Auntie Karen of Queensland knew the Seahorse would soon board her first plane. Five days later, in fact, the Seahorse would be swept off on a dark ride across the ghastly Pacific.

She would cross the guarded borders of three mighty nation states, trespass the tidy boundary of the International Date Line, charm the murky wits of strangers in the space of three aircraft and six cities and finally find herself in antipodes experiencing summer in the place of winter, night in place of day, day in place of night and 'yesterday once more.'

A 'wild ride'? Hmm, yes.

Farewell, Land of Oz.

We miss you already.

We'll be how you've changed us and keep what you've taught us.

For now, still on sojourn, the Seahorse finds herself in a new land:

Canada.

Karen cites a clue

2008-06-30T13:33:00.000+10:00

So begins The Sign of the Seahorse: A Tale of Greed and High Adventure in Two Acts told and illustrated by Graeme Base and first hinted at by the improbable parents here and here.

Four features set this clue from Karen apart from Seahorse inscape at large and make it one of the most complex we have encountered:

1. Graeme Base in his anguished delight chose to knit together the complex characters and expansive geography of his book by using a Seahorse sign, hidden in the details of every painting. Hidden in the details. Like the Seahorse herself, of course, who came to us in our delighted anguish accompanied by a sign. Knitting all together.

2. Base is from the land of Oz, where his book was birthed--as was the improbable hippocampus herself.

3. On the inside cover Base stamps his Seahorse sign in the center of a painted compass--an uncanny link with the cognitive cartographer, hippocampus of the brain.

4. The Seahorse sign is inscribed using the shape of a treble cleft--a musical allusion to the Seahorse Cafe, the cultural hub of Base's book--a symbol of home and all that is whole. The Seahorse Cafe swings with references that evoke early jazz, and as it turns out, the Seahorse father first learned the meaning of early jazz by hearing it live week after week in Melbourne, Oz, during the months leading up to the Seahorse's birth. The balm of the music proved itself an antidote to a terrible poison.

Great sea monsters turn cowards in the presence of greater sea monsters.

The seahorse turns homeward.

________________

Base's illustrated book is available through Amazon
Permissions pending to post the low resolution image crops above.

First sister of the father of the

2008-06-27T12:05:00.004+10:00

Leah Marie:
Always has been eager, always has been earnest.

Let it be known to all that on this day in the year 1972, Leah Marie Pelkey Smith parted the ghastly veil, emerged from the saltwater underworld of being and becoming and was forever severed from her secret mother.

Our love, Leah, and Happy Birthday!

Father of the mother of the

2008-06-14T23:55:00.000+10:00

May it be known to all that on this day in human history early in the twentieth century, Dr. B. W. Hopkins, Seahorse maternal grandfather, bastion of quiet confidence, reservoir of wisdom and dignity, parted the ghastly veil, emerged from the saltwater underworld of being and becoming and was forever severed from his secret mother.

Happy Birthday, Dad Hopkins,
We love you.

Fourth sister of the father of the

2008-06-08T18:46:00.009+10:00

Amanda Rae

Always has been calm and competent

Let it be known to all that on this day in the year 1982, Amanda Rae Pelkey Scherbakof, Seahorse paternal aunt number four, parted the ghastly veil, emerged from the saltwater underworld of being and becoming and was forever severed from her secret mother.

Happy Birthday, Mandy,

We love you!

Offline

2008-05-06T16:51:00.007+10:00

by Graeme Base

The Seahorse will be offline for a few weeks.

Sleepy Seahorse Father off to China.

Many clues backlogged.
Many meditations on hold.
Much meaning in waiting.

But Phula is defined.

.

Mother of the Father of the Father of the

2008-05-05T23:58:00.005+10:00

Hereby let it be known that on this day 85 years ago in human history, the ordinary-extraordinary Betty Pelkey, silk-covered will of iron, survivor, mother of the father of the father of the Seahorse, parted the ghastly veil, emerged from the saltwater underworld of being and becoming and was forever severed from her secret mother.

Happy Birthday Grandma!

We love you.

.

Grace, Hopping

2008-05-02T23:30:00.001+10:00

Today the helpless bargain, the saltwater invader, the improbable hippocampus portent night blooming celestial cereus underworld teething rolling rainbow patron turned five months old.

Five.

Grace.

Or so they tell me.

Grace.

And today marks one full week of grace acts from the joy-sloshed imagination of one Karen Hopping from Queensland-- just when the Seahorse parents have needed it most.

The Seahorse mother has been exhausted from unexpected changes brought on by Seahorse discomfort from wind and tooth. The Seahorse father has been working through the nights trying to conjure up a tome that will define Phula and turn him into a language doctor . . . or a toad (Fizishin heel thyeself).

Karen Hopping from Queensland.

Thank you, Karen Hopping from Queensland.

Thank you for helping the Seahorse Mother float.

Thank you for helping with meals.

Thank you for teaching us the finer points of . . .

curry-chicken-and-sweet-potato pizza.

Thank you for loving our Seahorse.

And thank you for buying her books!

So many books!

And not just any books:

Oz books.

Real Oz books. Some of the best we've seen.

But most of all . . .

thank you for citing . . .

. . . a new clue.

(more to come)

Meditation on Week 21: (love)

2008-04-28T00:03:00.009+10:00

In the past four weeks the Seahorse has managed the following free-form, conclusively novel, and otherwise remarkable feats:

Rolling over.

Sleeping on her side.

The budding of her first tooth.

A seeming ceaseless queue of painful poots.

An episode of squealing laughter shared with her father.

Admission to the citizenship of the United States of America.

A decided preference for playing with a tea box rather than her toys.

The acquisition of a US passport complete with remotely readable computer chip.

A lingering glance at the latest edition of Image Journal--which somehow keeps getting better with each printing--this issue taking as its central theme the only verb in this blog post placed in parentheses.

(not here, silly)

.

Gas.

2008-04-22T00:15:00.000+10:00

In Oz, the Seahorse has wind.

In Oz, the Seahorse does not have gas.

In Oz, gas does not hurt when it stays in.

In Oz, gas is not funny when it comes out.

In Oz, wind is funny when it comes out.

In Oz, wind does hurts when it stays in.

In Oz, gas drops are maybe for the oven.

In Oz, wind drops are only for the infant.

Where the Seahorse parents were born,
only gas can fuel a car,

but gas can also make sounds like

*pfffvfvfvfvfvfvfvfvfvfvfvfvffffft*
that smell rotten.

Where the Seahorse was born,
only petrol can fuel a car,

but petrol can not also make sounds like

*pfffvfvfvfvfvfvfvfvfvfvfvfvffffft*
that smell rotten.

Where the Seahorse parents were born,
wasn't gas a liquid and wind a vapor?
Or was it gas that was a vapor
and wind that was caused by low pressure systems?

Where the Seahorse was born,
is gas a vapor and wind a liquid?
Or is it liquid that's a gas
and wind that is the cause of high pressure systems?

In Oz, are the drops for the wind or is there wind in the Drops?

In Oz, if there's wind in the drops do the drops have gas?

In Oz, if the drops are for the wind, is the wind a gas?

In Oz, the Seahorse does not have gas.

In Oz, the Seahorse has wind.

In Oz, wind hurts.

And for her wind, we give her gas?

Citizen Quynh

2008-04-16T19:57:00.019+10:00

Today the Seahorse had some serious business.

Serious.

More serious than all milk and ryhmes and ditties and hands and toots and spasms and gurgled intonations and high contrast toys and curdled lactoglobulin belches.

Serious.

Today the Seahorse had an appointment

with the U.S. Department of State.

She sent her parents through metal detectors, past armed guards, into barcode scans, I.D. checkpoints, security doors, bulletproof glass, and technical interviews concerning the contents of their bags and pockets.

Height: 2 feet 1 inches.

Hair: Brown.

Eyes: Blue.

Occupation: Baby.

Date of Trip: June 10, 2008.

Reason for Trip: Going home.

Citizen Quynh

________

The Seahorse's visit with the U.S. Department of State was not granted to her on merit or credit. She did not know the way to the U.S. Department of State. Nor was the trip her idea. She did not sign any documents or fill out any forms in a bid to convince the U.S. Department of State to allow her entry. She did not say the pledge of allegiance or submit a resume in order to impress the U.S. Department of State with her patriotic intentions or exemplary potential. She did not even smile at the clerk. Her citizenship was settled, in fact, while she was working on a decidedly complex gastroenteric puzzle.
Wardrobe by Ruthanne and Mom Hopkins.

Father of the Father of the

2008-04-14T23:50:00.001+10:00

Let it be known to all that on this day in the year 1949, Robert James Pelkey, Seahorse paternal grandfather, parted the ghastly veil, emerged from the saltwater underworld of being and becoming and was forever severed from his secret mother.

Rob Pelkey, whose taste for all things purely quirky is surpassed only by his love for the knowledge of him in whom are hid all treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Both are contagious.

(or do they mingle)

I love you, Dad.

Happy Birthday.

___________
Col 2:3

1st & 2nd Brothers of the Mother of the

2008-04-12T23:24:00.007+10:00

Let it be known to all that in the years 1966 and 1968, respectively, in the early days of April, Seahorse uncles Stephen Bradley (April 12) and Curtis Daniel (April 10) parted the ghastly veil, emerged from the saltwater underworld of being and becoming and were forever severed from their secret mother.

Happy Birthdays, Brad and Curt!

Love, the Seahorse Parents

Ei#001: Magpie & the Duke talk Freedom

2008-04-10T16:47:00.035+10:00

The Duke and the Magpie

Thank you very much, Mr. President.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

This is the Presidential Medal of Freedom . . . And, of course, we speak of freedom of expression, and we speak of freedom generally as being something very sweet and fat and things like that. In the end when we get down to the payoff, what we actually say is . . . the four major freedoms that my friend and writing-and-arranging composer, Billy Strayhorn, lived by and enjoyed:

freedom from hate, unconditionally;
freedom from self-pity;
freedom from fear of possibly doing something that may help someone else more than it would him; and
freedom from the kind of pride that could make a man feel that he is better than his brother.

--Edward Kennedy (Duke) Ellington

April 29, 1969
Presidential Medal of Freedom
acceptance speech
White House, Washington D.C.

If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love.
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. . . .

This is my command: Love each other.
If you hold to my teaching, you really are my disciples.

Then you will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free. . .
I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.
If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

--Jesus the Christ

3rd Decade, 1st Century
Conversations with followers
as recalled by John the Mystic
Palestine, The Levant

_______________

Magpie introduces "Newport Up" clip and plays duet with Paul Gonzalves.
Mixed by Seahorse father from magpie warbles recorded two weeks ago at Kangaroo Ground, VIC.
"Newport Up" composed by Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington for Newport Jazz Festival, 1956 (clip seems brief enough for non-commercial mixing . . . um, ok, Columbia?).
More here on the 1969 Presidential Medal of Freedom. Speech first discovered on Ken Burns' Jazz documentary.
Jn 15:10, 17; 8:31-32, 36.
Watercolor: first in planned monochrome series by Seahorse father to illustrate poets and musicians who morphed with Oz fauna to mark Seahorse's earliest months.

W.H. Auden gasps, grasps (again)

2008-04-09T23:13:00.015+10:00

. . .

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

. . .

--W.H. Auden

_______________

That would be me.
et tu?
Crude, man, crude.
Lines from "September 1, 1939"; one of Auden's best loved poems, though he later came to dislike it himself. First discovered in W.H. Auden Selected Poems.
The entire poem is available here.
Photo: "To market to market to sell a fat hawg" taken by Seahorse mother during a rural traffic jam in southeastern Yuanjiang County, Yunnan, China, July 2005.
Home again home again, jiggety jawg.
What?

"ironic points of light",

That's what.

Mother of the

2008-04-06T12:38:00.008+10:00

On this day in human history unnumbered ranks of ordinary people parted the ghastly veil, emerged from the saltwater underworld of being and becoming and were forever severed from their secret mothers.

Some of the most curious:

Raphael (1483-1520): Italian humanist renaissance orphan painter/architect.
Jean-Baptiste Rousseau (1671-1741): French exile lyrical poet/playwright.
Nadar (1820-1910): French balloonist/caricature artist/novelist/photographer.
Gustave Moreau (1826-1898): French symbolist painter/surrealist inspiration.
Stephanie Jill Hopkins-Pelkey (1975): First human mother ever to birth a Seahorse.

Happy Birthday, Stephie.

I Love you.

Shirts

2008-04-03T21:43:00.004+11:00

The Seahorse has a thing for shirts.

She has worn a range of shirts.

Some of her shirts have big letters.

Most of her shirts with big letters are from Aunt Amy.

Thank you, Aunt Amy!

_________________

All worn shirts were gifts.
The Seahorse earned none of the shirts.
Nor was the wearing of the shirts her idea.
Nor were the letters on the shirts her idea.
One shirt's letters were altered.
Happy 4-Month Birthday (yesterday), Seahorse.

Meditation on Week 17: Love??

2008-03-30T19:23:00.023+11:00

Does love belong in a box with all that is nice and tame and sterile and pretty?

Is love always proper? Always polished? Always blithe? Always comfy?

Hearts and roses, smiles and jokes, puppies and bunnies, candy and cupids, coolness and enthusiasm . . .

Is love all about saying just the expected thing in just the expected way?
Doing just the expected thing in just the expected way?

Is love all about being upbeat and inspirational?

Is love all about becoming a better you?

Is love all about smoothing over things so I can have more influence?

Is love a form of self-fulfillment?

Curious thing:

The culture tells me so, but Jesus the Christ, Paul the Zealot and John the Mystic beg to differ. Jesus talks about me loving my enemies, for example; Paul says that Love cares more for others than for self; and John says that love has to do with laying down my life for those around me.

Self-realization and self-fulfillment? Well, no, sounds more like self-forgetfulness, and self-death to me.

I don't care how we slice it, self-abandon is not nice or tame or sterile or pretty or cool and self-mortification is not inspirational or upbeat or smooth or comfortable or expected.

How do we like that?

Love is not cool and not necessarily inspirational.

But it is commanded.

Now, I can take embarrassment--never have been a kool kat, never will be--so this part about losing myself in someone or something, it happens to me--not constantly, I'm still a failure at it all things considered--but I can stand it when it happens. No big deal.

But self-death?

Well, all I know is that if I feel insulted or slighted or abused or ignored or overlooked or snubbed or misunderstood or misrepresented or mocked or marginalized or scorned or trivialized or dismissed or patronized or used or deceived or manipulated, everything shatters.

That's death for me. That's like being nailed to a cross by other people. That's like dying for other people, and I hate that; and I think,

Love? Ha.

Forget it.

_____________

Mt 5:44, 1Cor 13:4ff. MSG, 1Jn 3:16
Becoming a Better You: best-selling book title by motivational coach J. Osteen.
Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Thanks for the helpful conversation, Russ.

Hand.

2008-03-27T23:06:00.013+11:00

QUASI-COMPREHENSIVE REPORT REGARDING RECENT PARABOLIC ACCRETION IN PRACTICAL DISCOVERY OF HERETOFORE UNRECOGNIZED CAPACITY AND EXISTENTIAL VITALITY OF METACARPAL AND PHALANGEAL NEXUS BY HIPPOCAMPE IMPROBABLE CORRELATED WITH INCREASED MANUAL DEXTERITY AND THE ASSERTION OF ANALOGOUS LEFT-RIGHT/TIME-SPACE RECONCILIATION VIA FINGERTIPS FOLLOWED BY PREDICTION REGARDING DEXTROUS POLARITY OF AFOREMENTIONED SUBJECT.

TIME

. . A. Day 1.
. . B. Week 4.
. . C. Week 8.
. . D. Week 12.
. . E. Week 15.
. . F. Week 15, ~Day 3
. . G. Week 16, ~Day 1
. . H. Week 16, ~Day 2
. . I. .Week 16, ~Day 3

EVENT

Begins 'rooting': both fists placed firm against mouth.
Begins sucking her fists.
Begins sucking her left fingers: unevenly, clumsily.
Begins reaching: weak grasp on contact, unaware.
Begins sucking left fingers easily, like a pro (see photo below).
Grasp improves upon reaching.
Begins to notice her left hand and starts gazing at it (see photo above).
Grasp becomes tighter with left hand: able to rip down technicolor velcro elephant with crinkling ears.
Begins bringing left and right hands together repeatedly to clasp each other--fingertip to palm in arc-like pattern over chest in apparent amazement.

__________________
Prediction:

Lefty.

Meditation on Week 16: >Love<

2008-03-23T14:29:00.019+11:00

Easter in Oz.
The Land Downunda.

The Life-from-death holiday.

Didn't think about it much until now, but Easter here happens smack at the beginning of Autumn.

Hmmm.

The pivotal event in human history: the historical resurrection of the Christ. Anticipated by ancient mythology and the cycle of the temperate seasons for millennia--traditionally celebrated at the beginning of Spring--just when the dead corpse of winter starts to erupt into life again.

Can we seriously celebrate Easter at the archetypal decline of the year? Oz is antipodes: so, well, shouldn't seasonal celebrations happen at antipodal times? Just another example of how human thought defaults to form (in this case, the calendar year) instead of meaning (in this case, the seasonal year).

We all default to form, don't we? We find comfort in structure. Just give us the rules; let's do it by the book; just show us the padded loopholes of legal comfort. Just show us what it looks like in the raw so we can make a replica and be done with it. Just show us what it's got in its guts so we can reproduce it or at least explain how it works.

But we ignore meaning. Meaning is too invasive, too evasive. Meaning is playful, sly, terrifying, difficult, complex, alarming, embarrassing. Meaning makes us squirm because meaning requires pondering and pondering leads to forgetting about ourselves and self-forgetfulness leads to love and love is dangerous. Love is the most dangerous verb.

The seasons cycle.

So does love if we force the issue.

John the Mystic picked up on this in the teachings of the Beloved--Jesus. Jesus, who summed up all the ancient rules and traditions and all the commandments and predictions and portents and precepts in a single verb:

JESUS: Love.

US: But isn't there a structure to it? Can't you give us a legal network to plug into, some extra social commandments maybe? Some basic divine reinforcement of universal politeness? Something we can cling to just in case we're ever accused?

JESUS: Ok, sure. It works like this: If you love me, keep my commandments.

US: Ah, yes. Just like we thought. That's more like it. Now for the good part. The list. This we can replicate. This we can deal with. Ok, let's have it. Shear your sheep, lord, dags and all.

JESUS: My commandments are these: love the people around you with the same intensity of attention that you have for yourself and, more importantly, love God with the intense attention of your whole person--all your brains, all your brawn and all your being.

US: Oh.

JESUS: Any questions?

US: Um, but isn't there a 'to-do' list? Isn't there a legal structure? I mean, just in case.

John the Mystic picks up on the problem:

So you want a legal statement?

Well, ok:

________________

I am not writing you a new command
but one we have had from the beginning.
I ask that we love one another.
And this is love:
that we walk in obedience to his commands.
As you have heard from the beginning,
his command is that you walk in love.
________________

>Life to death to Life<

>Season to calendar to Season<

>Content to form to Content<

>Purpose to rule to Purpose<

>Meaning to structure to Meaning<

>Love to law to Love<

______________

The Seahorse's favorite wall hanging: Journey of the Coastal Kooris by Ron Potter.
" . . . the cloud climb of the exhaling tomb and the bidden dust upsailing . . . " --Dylan Thomas
Mt 22:37-40, Jn 14:21, 2Jn 5-6

Life

2008-03-21T09:16:00.007+11:00

. . .

. . . The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

--T.S. Eliot

_____________

Lines from Eliot's "East Coker, IV" in Four Quartets
Rockwell advertisement from Time Magazine: Sept. 15, 1958 (Thank you for the link, Peacay).
Transposed Messiah from Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece.
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 1Jn4:9-10

3rd sister of the father of the

2008-03-16T23:00:00.001+11:00

Hey, watch it! This here's mah prizner.

Rebecca Soozanne Pelkey Hix
Always has been happy,
no matter where she's happened to be

On this day in the year 1980, Rebecca Susanne parted the ghastly veil, emerged from the saltwater underworld of being and becoming and was forever severed from her secret mother.

Happy Birthday, Becky!

We love you.

Meditation on Week 15: {Love}

2008-03-16T15:29:00.014+11:00

“God is love.”

( wait, what ? )

Whoever lives in love . . .

. . . lives in God,

. . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . and God in him.

--John the Mystic

wait.

What!?

wait.

what?

Yeah, just like that:

________________

“If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God,
God lives in him and he in God.
And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love.

Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”
_______________

Just like that.

What was that second definition of fear again?
_____________

1Jn 4:15-16
Implications. implications. the I M P L I C A T I O N S . . .
15th c. painting of St. Augustine in the 'region of dissimilarity' discovered on the jacket of Henry Chadwick's 1991 Oxford translation of Confessions.

Got any extra protection?
Need some new distractions?

Hunger?

2008-03-14T20:32:00.013+11:00

The Seahorse parents must make a confession.

The Seahorse parents face a daily temptation.

The Seahorse parents are daily tempted to eat their child.

Sometimes the temptation is intense.
Sometimes it hurts.

Sometimes it is too much.
Sometimes they have to give in.

Sometimes their mouths leap out
on the shafts of their necks.

Sometimes they grab mouthfuls with their lips:
Seahorse cheeks, shoulders, forearms, knees.

Well, are they hungry?
But when they are hungry, they do not want to eat their child.

When they are hungry, they want to eat food.

The Seahorse has a pal-to-be, Isaiah: the new toddling son of a here-confidential couple living near York, PA. The PA confidential father has also confessed to odd hungers. He once confided in the Seahorse father: ["I . . . want to eat him with my heart"], he said.

Not the stomach; the heart: that's helpful.

But why do the Seahorse parents' mouths
still act like their stomachs are hungry?

And what of their lips protecting their child from their teeth?
And why are her legs and cheeks and arms their choicest morsels?

The mouth knows it must obey.
The mouth leaps out on the neck.

The bites are hungry bites.
The appetite is real.

The lips do not trust the teeth.
The teeth do not want to be involved.

But the Seahorse parents wonder:

Why do mouths obey a hungry stomach and a hungry heart?

What does it all mean?

Luci Shaw gasps, grasps

2008-03-12T23:06:00.005+11:00

Perfect love banishes fear
1John 4:18 (NEB)

The risk of love
is that of being unreturned.

For if I love too deep,
too hard, too long
and you love little
or you love
me not at all
then is my treasure given,
gone,
flown away lonely.

But if you give me back
passion for passion,
return my burning,
add your own
dark fire to flame my heart
then is love perfect
hot, round, augmented,
whole, endless, infinite,
and it is fear
that flies.

--Luci Shaw

_________________

Reprinted from Polishing the Petoskey Stone, Copyright Luci Shaw 2003, Regent College Publishing, Vancouver.
Used by permission of the author. Thank you, Luci.
First discovered in Listen to the Green (1971).
Photo: hiking home from Daheineng (Mengzi County, Yunnan, China), March 2003.

Meditation on Week 14: 'Love'

2008-03-09T15:55:00.016+11:00

Face it.

We all want it. The real thing. Please sustain some intense attention in my direction. Right now. The real thing.

But one way or another, we're all afraid of it.

Why?

Isn't it because sustained intensity of attention, even when moral and genuine, inevitably results in situations that are at first embarrassing, soon inconvenient, eventually humiliating, and ultimately devastating?

Scary stuff, Love. The devourer. The shirt of flame. The trap. We don't get out alive.

What do we risk when we love?

At first we risk the embarrassment of bliss. Love happens best out of a childlike state of wonder, right? We forget ourselves. We love best once we've lost ourselves in the beloved. But that's undignified. Show me a true lover and I'll show you someone who is out of control: a frightening prospect.

Then, if we persist, our wonder turns to awe, and our life will need to be reorganized by the beloved. We know this. The joy will be urgent--so urgent that we will need to reshuffle everything just to accommodate the beloved. Renovations are not convenient. Frightfully inconvenient in fact.

Then, we risk the chance of being ignored or shunned by the beloved. This could happen at any time. Maybe even when we least expect it. If the beloved is a memory or a piece of music or a mountainscape, or a pattern of light, we may sense that our love is never returned. If the beloved is human, s/he may suddenly be unable or unwilling to be intensely attentive to us--or she may become so, and that's even worse. In fact, that could be devastating. Horrific.

Then, even if what we love actually loves us back, the beloved will soon insist on exposing our secrets one by one--the beloved will want the truth about us. No more pretending. The good, the bad and the ugly. That's dangerous. If we haven't been shunned already, it's more likely than ever to happen at this stage, right? Oops, a phoney. Who knows, we might even have to grovel or bargain or manipulate to stay on top of things. That would be dreadful.

Then, even if we survive the exposé--once we've been disassembled, humiliated, crushed and remade, we run the constant risk of losing what we love forever. And that's unbearable, because we know that part of us will die with the beloved, and we hate death--especially our own. We hate death so much that we fear love.

Risky stuff, Love.

Dangerous scenarios. But each one is inevitable, if we really love. Intensely sustain your attention toward something or someone in particular, and you risk it all.

So we find ways of protecting ourselves: casual encounters, safe distances, polite chit chat, unquestioned conventions, chanted slogans, presumptuous airs, smug independence, easy answers, hypocrisy, abstractions, the list goes on. And we find ways of distracting ourselves: popular culture, polarized controversies, pre-packaged techniques, idols, fun stuff, cute stuff, mockery, the party line, the list goes on. There's never enough protection and distraction to shield ourselves from Love.

But John the mystic can't get enough of Love itself. Can't say enough about it. Can't emphasize it enough. But he can't box it in, so he says it all over the place. Keeps insisting that we have to participate in it, but also keeps insisting that even if we do love, we can be sure that we did not invent it. Love wasn't our idea. Never was. A product of natural selection? Bah.

John the mystic also claims that when love is perfect, complete, mature, it banishes fear.

What?

Yeah. Just like that:

. . . perfect love drives out fear . . .

Fear: n.
The sudden, intense loss of ease associated with one's anticipation of being smashed like a cockroach.
Flat-out awe arising from Schleiermacher's feeling of absolute dependence.
--Jp's Idiolectal Dictionary

Of course, John the mystic means definition #1:

__________

There is no fear in love.
But [mature] love drives out fear,
because fear has to do with punishment.
The one who fears is not [mature] in love.

__________

So, wait: From our experience, fear of being smashed goes hand-in-hand with our understanding of love, right? So immature love at least will still have fear? Ok, so even if mature Love drives out fear, what do we do with our immature fear of Love until we grow up?

Do we . . .

Deny it? Just think positive? Make excuses? Substitute a protection technique? Quote verses just to prove us wrong? Substitute a distraction maneuver? Adopt a new party line to deal with the inconsistencies? Punish all dissenters? Scorn the honest people? Pretend our love is already perfect (*falsetto*: I am not afraid!)? Chant a new slogan so we can forget the fear (*Beatles*: Love is all ya need . . .)? Wish it away? Develop a 12-step program to brainwash ourselves against the inebriating presence of paradox?

I hope not.

_______________
1Jn 4:18

Melatonin

2008-03-07T21:07:00.020+11:00

Hereby let it be known to all that on the night preceding the morning of this day, March 07, 2008, the helpless bargain, the saltwater invader, the improbable rainbow portent hippocampus cactus flower creature slept no less than 13 hours.

Let it furthermore be known to all that for full well nigh unto three full weeks her sleep has lasted through the night entire--from the setting of the sun to the rising of the same.

Let it be furthermore known to all that neither the advent of her long night sleeps nor the increased quality and duration of her daytime sleep are thanks to the book pictured in this post.

In fact, we reserve the following sentiments as an expression of our experience with this book:

(read: um, humor)

_____________________

Important Message:

The Seahorse parents do not intend these fiery images to be taken as a snub toward any friends or other folk who admire the method outlined in the above book:

Hey, when it comes to infant sleep and feeding, we're glad if anything works for anyone.

On the other hand, the Seahorse mother points out that the book added extra layers of fear and anxiety to what was already an extremely trying season. That stuff is for the flames. Among other things, the Seahorse parents also question the idea of enforcing a wake-sleep-feed-wake-sleep pattern for every child.

In the words of William Blake (1790),

One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression.

______________

Further Notes on this post:

Post revised on March 9, 2008 after Seahorse blog traffic tripled in two days. Affiliated names and titles removed. Intentions clarified. The Seahorse doesn't care to generate extra traffic by participating in polarized controversies (distractions).

We disagree with the author, but one could also admire his courage and singlemindedness.

If forced, we would recommend a book by Marc Weissbluth (thank you, Ruthanne!) as a replacement, but we recognize, above all, the function of prayer, the need for wisdom and the mysterious Grace of melatonin produced by the pineal gland in dramatically increased quantities around the three-month mark of an infant's life.

______________

William Blake gasps, grasps

2008-03-05T09:38:00.004+11:00

The Clod and the Pebble

“Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a heaven in hell's despair.”

So sung a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet,
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:

“Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a hell in heaven's despite.”

--William Blake (1794)

______________

From Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.
Watercolor by Seahorse father.
Blake's original along with his own watercolor illustrations can be viewed here.

Meditation on Week 13: \Love\

2008-03-02T21:40:00.010+11:00

What was that other thing about love?

Oh yeah, it devours us.

It sets us up for agony. Ruin. It doesn't ask permission.

It wrecks everything. It shatters us. It pulverizes us. It disregards our imagined identities. It destroys our lives. It rakes us off to the side and starts us over from scratch.

Don't take my word for it, listen to John the mystic:

This is how we know what love is:

Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.

Mystery:

We lead ourselves to the white hot core of love incarnate.

There we find pain, torture and death.

Bland, unaffected self-sacrifice?

Well, that other mystic, the writer of Hebrews, how did he say it?

Oh yeah:

. . . for the joy set before him . . .

Hilda Doolittle's line from a few weeks back comes to mind:

. . . yet to sing love, / love must first shatter us.

Michael Clarke Duncan as John Coffee comes to mind--in the most arresting two minutes of film I've ever witnessed.

Here's the passage from The Green Mile film script:

Wild Bill looms over the terrified little girls like a
horrendous boogeyman, whispers to Kathe:

BILLY
You lover your sister? You make
any noise, know what happens? I'll
kill her instead of you.
(to Cora)
And if you make any noise, I'll
kill her.

And he drags them out into the coming dawn...

...as Coffey lets Paul go. Paul is gasping, back in the real
world where his men are staring at him with wide eyes.

COFFEY
He kill 'em with they love. They
love for each other. You see how
it is?

Paul nods, numb. Tears are flowing down Coffey's face. Softly:

COFFEY
That's how it is ever' day. That's
how it is all over the worl'...

Ah, let theological debates prattle and rattle on the systematic implications of possible interpretations of the allegory implied, but in the end any tidy summary only becomes a distraction.

Because we all know it:

true love in any form--

whether friendly, family, divine, erotic, mundane--

any true instance of intensely sustained attention--

will eventually pulverize us.

Dabblers beware.

________

He kill 'em with they love.
They love for each other.
You see how it is?
That's how it is ever' day.
That's how it is all over the worl' . . .

_________

Dylan Thomas speaks of it:

. . . the soft, / Unclenched, armless, silk and rough love that breaks all rocks.

W.H. Auden warns of it:

Let no one say I Love until aware
What huge resources it will take to nurse
One ruining speck, one tiny hair
That casts a shadow through the universe

T.S. Eliot sings of it:

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.

_______________

Top photo: a bas relief of 'nine dragons' in the courtyard of Kongzi temple in Guangnan County seat, Yunnan, China; taken in 2005.
Scripture refs from 1Jn 3:16, Heb 12:2
H.D. lines from her poem "Eros"
Green Mile screenplay by Frank Darabont (adapted from a novel by Stephen King) Film script posted here.
Dylan Thomas lines from his poem "There was a Saviour"
W.H. Auden lines from his poem "In Sickness and in Health"
T.S. Eliot lines from "Little Gidding" in Four Quartets
Bottom photo taken on 6th wedding anniversary of Seahorse parents of cave patterns inside the rock formation London Bridge on a beach south of Melbourne in June, 2007.

Happy 3 month birthday, Seahorse.

Hats

2008-03-01T11:00:00.014+11:00

The Seahorse has a thing for hats.
She has worn a range of hats.
Three months of her hat wearing will soon have elapsed.

The full range of her three months of worn hats
has never been documented.

Until now.

_________________
All worn hats were gifts. The Seahorse earned none of the hats--nor did she earn the wearing of the hats--nor was the wearing of the hats her idea. Worn hats listed in chronological order of documented evidence; any resemblence to other worn hats whether by humans or other creatures either historical or fictional is unintened and shall not be the liability of the wearer or the wearee, the giver or the givee.

Backyard parable #002

2008-02-26T21:39:00.007+11:00

Last week, the Seahorse family peach tree was attacked by birds.

▲
One peach sustained two bites.

The peach biting bird was a rainbow lorikeet.

▼
(This image, credit: Danny Yee)

Selah.

_____________
Eight peaches sustained bites.
Seahorse mother draped a mosquito net over tree to save peaches.
Seahorse father still trying to get a good shot of a rainbow lorikeet;
until then, thanks for the loan, ok, Mr. Danny Yee?

Meditation on Week 12: /Love/

2008-02-24T20:20:00.018+11:00

A dozen weeks,

two dozen caverns.

This:

the three dozen clues that blossom to the right,
the four dozen marvels that crouch to the left,
the five dozen layers that blanket every hull.

Sir,

Meaning like dust,
dozen-layered, thick.
Meaning draped thick
as quilted dust; but,

sir,

your layers are fine, or knotty, and we can't bother.
your clues are sly, or childish, and we don't play.
your marvels intoxicate, or terrify, and must be reduced.

So this:

You give us caverns,

and weeks.

___________________

Hey, I keep being reminded of a quote from W.H. Auden that I came across while reading the Humphrey Carpenter biography last year:

The first criteria for success in any human activity, the necessary preliminary, whether to scientific discovery or artistic vision is intensity of attention or, less pompously, love.

That's it, isn't it? Well, surely that's a lot of it. Love: ‘intensity of attention’ that impels us to creative service. The classic love chapter by Paul the zealot affirms it. We can't reduce love to anything else. We can't reduce it to action. We can't reduce it to emotion. We can't reduce it to intention. We can't reduce it to will power. We can't reduce it to sentiment. We can't reduce it to romance. We can't reduce it to self-sacrifice. We can't reduce it to poetry. We can't reduce it to altruism. We can't reduce it to generosity. We can't reduce it to the lover-subject. We can't reduce it to the beloved-object. We can't reduce it to economics. We can't reduce it to mathematics. We can't reduce it to politics. We can't reduce it to biology. We can't reduce it to chemistry.

So what happens when real love happens? Doesn't the lover's imagination become so focussed on the beloved that the lover becomes self-forgetful? Doesn't this self-forgetfulness naturally result in creative service on behalf of the beloved? If we condensed Paul's love chapter and turned it into a positive statement, maybe we would get something a lot like Auden's musing above.

Don't we best love those people and things that we lose ourselves in? Don't we lose ourselves in those people and things that we are most intensely attentive to? If so, to be intensely attentive to anything in particular--whether to a fellow human, to well sung lyrics, to the bark of a tree, to the wind, to a drum solo, to light playing on the skin of a fish, is to love.

Of course, this still leaves at least two raging questions unanswered:

How do we keep love from stopping short in abstractions or the creation?
How do we cultivate an intensely attentive imagination toward the unpleasant particulars?

My guess in two words:

Caverns.

Weeks.

________________

Poem draft by Seahorse father, Feb. 24, 2008; revised Feb. 25, 2008.
Auden quote from Humphry Carpenter's (1981) W. H. Auden: A Biography. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Auden photo from here.

Mother of the Father of the

2008-02-22T13:38:00.011+11:00

Let it be known to all that on this day in history the following ordinary humans parted the ghastly veil, emerged from the saltwater underworld of being and becoming and were forever severed from their secret mothers:

General George Washington (1732): Powder haired rebel commander; first president of the United States of America
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892): Bohemian poet playwright; first female winner of the Pulitzer prize for poetry
Robert Pershing Wadlow (1940): Tallest person in human history ever to be photographed; grew to be 8'11.9".
Joan Marie Pelkey (1949): Prototype of human love; mother of the first human ever to father a Seahorse.
Seahorse Father (1974): Born on his mother's birthday 34 years ago today.

♪ ♫ And Many More . . .

Happy Birthday, Momma.

I love you.

Backyard parable #001

2008-02-21T16:48:00.012+11:00

Seahorse family backyard fence two weeks ago

▼

▲
Seahorse family backyard fence this morning

Booger

2008-02-19T16:33:00.004+11:00

Breathe easy, Seahorse

_____________
Picked by Seahorse mother at 2:00 p.m. on this day, Tuesday, February 19, 2008 from Seahorse nostril; first booger on record.
Coin pictured for perspective only; no value or other association is implied.

Meditation on Week 11: Love. . .

2008-02-17T13:57:00.033+11:00

Week eleven ushered in a handful of landmarks. This time last week saw the Seahorse family at Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary enjoying the presence of wild Oz fauna to fuse with their earlier visions of wild Oz flora. Too bad, Seahorse: you slept through tasmanian devils, black vultures, furry wombats, prickled echidnas, wedge-tailed eagles, sleek-skinned platypuses, lanky emus, ubiquitous ibises, frozen treefrogs, paunchy koalas, shy wrens, lazy kangaroos galore and more.

Since then Mom Hopkins has sighed her way back across the ghastly Pacific to the drifts of snowbound Chicago; the Seahorse neighbors have visited with dramatic stories concerning their bowels, their tomato plants and their broken relationships; the Seahorse father has been denied a much-hoped-for fellowship he'd applied for; the Seahorse mother has rediscovered the joys of family grocery shopping; the Seahorse parents have engaged in more quarrels and laughter; and the Seahorse herself has started sleeping through the night. All of which brings us right back to a stubborn theme--a theme that will not be ignored and cannot be exhausted: Love.

Forget all the endless broken-record prattle about eros, phileo, and agape. We only like to make boxes for love because love is so embarrassing. Let it be embarrassing. The Greek word eros never appears in the New Testament and phileo appears only a handful of times. Instead phileo and agape are usually used interchangeably and agape is used in all three senses: erotic, friendly, divine. Of course we love with different levels of intensity at different times in different relationships, but isn't the larger point about love that it is complex, befuddling, pulverizing and delicious? Can't there be something sensual about loving God just like there can be something divine about loving another human? No need to deny either in either case. Instead, why not be shattered by both?

Much more important are distinctions between moral love, immoral love, genuine love and fake love. Seems like Jesus and the New Testament writers keep rubbing our noses in basic dichotomies like these instead of squandering time pondering the nuances of related entries in the Helenistic Greek lexicon. Here's a sampling:

These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, Jesus laments. If I give all I possess to the poor . . . but have not love, I gain nothing, Paul points out. Paul also makes a distinction between lovers of pleasure and lovers of God. James makes a distinction between lovers of influential community members and lovers of poor community members. Peter makes a distinction between sincere love and insincere love. And John brings the dialogue back to echo the words of Jesus: Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

It's safe to say that when Wendell Barry says "Love is never abstract" he is talking about genuine love; so we could qualify his statement to read, "True love is never abstract". Are there other loves that are abstract? Yes. An infinite supply. Here's a sampling:

Burning passions for ‘democracy’, ‘equality’, ‘the Ezzo method’, ‘human rights’, ‘truth’, ‘the environment’, ‘the purpose driven life’, ‘the sublime’, ‘humanity’, ‘the unchurched’, ‘beauty’, ‘Vision 2025’, ‘goodness’, ‘the emergent church’, ‘art’, ‘leadership’, ‘endangered languages’, ‘patriotism’, ‘postcolonialism’, ‘style’, ‘justice’, ‘endangered species’, ‘the poor’, ‘Calvinism’, ‘Armenianism’, ‘liberalism’, ‘conservatism’, ‘immigration reform’, ‘the 10-40 Window’, ‘the common man’, ‘unreached peoples’, new movements, new strategies, new visions, new techniques, urgent motivations, bold innovations, broad globalization, advance! achieve! alarm! afresh! aspire!

Idols.

Do we dig em wif passion?

Ok, so we dig idols wif passion.

Eugene Peterson throws these punches:

[Antichrists] . . . tell us that mere people, ordinary people, aren't all that important--it’s big ideas and urgent causes and stirring visions that real Christians are concerned with, not these dull and obnoxious people who pull us down . . .

A dehumanized Jesus allows us to develop a practice of love that has nothing to do with actual people. We are free to practice a love of God that consists of a mix of music, mountains, and stories that fills our hearts with inspiring thoughts and feelings without all the distraction and bother of people. A dehumanized Jesus is a dehumanized God-with-us that gives us license to customize a life of love entirely to our own convenience, without involving us in sacrifice or patience. Loving a dehumanized Jesus means loving in a way that has nothing to do with [what] any particular men and women are doing in our community. We become lovers of ideas and feelings, lovers of ecstasy and novelty. But certainly not lovers of the God who so emphatically revealed himself in human flesh and blood. And certainly not lovers of our brothers and sisters, at least the ones who don’t provide us with intimations of sublimity or ecstasy.

We cannot love impersonally; we cannot love by abstractions; we cannot love by acquiring information; we cannot love by completing a project. The person has to be involved in these persons: Father, Son, Holy Spirit; and in these persons: Herman, Abigail, Adolph, Jennifer.

Peterson wonders about the quirky ending of the first letter of John the mystic which reads:

Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.

What? John said nothing about idolatry elsewhere in the letter--the whole letter was about love and sin--nothing in there about idols, right? So where does this idle idol talk come from? Peterson answers: "The essence of idolatry is depersonalization." John spends his entire letter urging us not to ignore our humanity or the humanity of Jesus. Now he warns us not to take the 'personal' out of the 'relationship'. In Peterson's words:

The idol is a form of divinity that requires no personal relationship.

The idol is a form of divinity that I can manipulate and control.

. . . principles, abstractions, causes and programs . . .

substitutes for love . . .

_____________
Peterson quotes: Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (2005).
Scripture refs: Mat 15:8, 1Cor 13:3, 2Tim 3:4, 1Pet 1:22, 1Jn 3:18.

George Herbert gasps, grasps

2008-02-14T22:18:00.011+11:00

Love
(III)

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

“A guest,” I answer'd, “worthy to be here”;
Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”

“Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat.

—George Herbert (1633)

____________________

Herbert poem from The Temple

Improbable tree frog sighted on an excursion with Seahorse, Seahorse Mother and Seahorse Maternal Grandmother to the Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary on Sunday, February 10--photo taken through aquarium glass at 1/10s.

Meditation on Week 10: Love.

2008-02-10T20:57:00.001+11:00

Here is a remarkable secret:The Seahorse is loved because she is helpless and unashamed.

She is not loved because she is useful but because she is useless--and because she is relaxed about being useless. Her parents are pleased to serve her not because she is powerful but because she is powerless--and because she is unwilling to grovel.

She is not famous or influential or stylish or popular or suave or clever or deep or polite or patient or tactful or even down-to-earth. She is not a good conversationalist or a good listener or a good humorist or a good musician or a good storyteller or a good thinker or a good craftsman or even a good girl.

She is inappropriate, insubordinate, inconsiderate, inconsistent, intractable and incontinent. She has no self-image, no self-control, no self-respect, no self-composure and no self-regard. She is uncoordinated, undignified, unconventional, unlawful, uncouth and uncooperative.

As far as we can tell, she has no sense of ethics or aesthetics or metaphysics or mathematics or economics or the sublime--or any other contemplative sense. Come to think of it, she doesn't even seem to have much common sense.

Yet when she is in need, she does not cower or shuffle or flatter or try to barter her way back into our favor. She cuts straight to the chase. She states her case incoherently with great emotion and volume. And on these grounds, we are pleased to meet her needs-- not like skinflint patrons reluctant to oblige, but swiftly, decisively, without question-- providing immeasurably more than she could ask or imagine.

This is a great mystery.

In the words of W.H. Auden,
she offers her helplessness as a good bargain.

Audacious move, Seahorse.

Do we dare call it home and live in it?

In the words of John the mystic,

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us . . .

Of course, if she never changes, we will be concerned.

Of course, if the conditions of our love for her ever change,

the entire world should be concerned.

______________________
Auden quote from his poem "Mundus et Infans" (1942)
Other quotes from Eph 3:20 and 1Jn. 4:10

Year of the rat

2008-02-08T22:44:00.000+11:00

_________________

“Yet to sing love, love must first shatter us.”
_________________

--H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
"Fragment Forty"

Today was hard. Let's talk about yesterday:

Yesterday was the first day of Chinese New Year.
Yesterday was the birthday of Seahorse paternal great grandfather William C. Dunlap.*
Yesterday was the birthday of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Sir Thomas More, Charles Dickens, Sinclair Lewis, Empress Matilda and John Deere.
Yesterday was the second week anniversary of the arrival of Seahorse maternal Grandmother Marilyn Hopkins in the Land of Oz. Her help has been key.

The Seahorse parents have successfully convinced MommyHop to sojourn one week longer and are currently considering other means of persuasion--such as accidental loss of passport.

______________
*The Seahorse parents failed to tell Great Grand in their greeting to him that his birthday this year fell on the first day of the year of the rat.

Oz Flower Speaks

2008-02-06T23:59:00.000+11:00

Say what you will, think what you will. Frown. Be afraid. Yawn. You have not seen me, and you do not know my name. Out for an evening stroll along the oak-lined walks of Lloyd Street, an eager matron from Chicago plucked me from my living vine just yesterday. Today I crouch small, sealed into the shelter of my milkskinned arms. My life, my death, my revelation to her, my appearance here to you: none are without meaning (nor are the dandelions, nor the leaves about us, nor the grass).

W.H. Auden gasps, grasps

2008-02-05T22:47:00.000+11:00

Watercolor by Jane Mollison 2006

. . .

“O plunge your hands in water
Plunge them up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.”

“The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

"Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer
And Jill goes down on her back.”

“O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress;
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.”

“O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbor
With your crooked heart.”

. . .

--W.H. Auden (1937)

_______________

Poem: From Auden's poem "As I walked out one evening" Discovered in W.H. Auden Selected Poems. The poem is also available online in its entirety here.

These lines are spoken by the clocks of the city over the syrupy song of a 'lover' who had earlier belted out such embarrassing declarations as these: "I'll love you dear, I'll love you / till China and Africa meet / And the river jumps over the mountain / and the salmon sing in the street." After both the lover and the clocks are silent, the river runs on . . .

Watercolor: By British artist Jane Mollison from her 2006 exhibition at Wenshan Teacher's College, Wenshan, China. The Chinese characters on the banana plant read, ai si ni (translation: 'I love you to death').

Meditation on Week 9: Love?

2008-02-03T19:40:00.001+11:00

"Love."
      --Jesus

"Love is never abstract."
      --Wendell Berry

"Dear children, keep yourselves from idols."
      --1Jn 5.21

"The essence of idolatry is depersonalization."
      --Eugene Peterson

One of my favorite passages in Walker Percy's novel The Moviegoer features Binx Bolling the conflicted stockbroker describing his evening bedtime routine. He likes to listen to This I Believe, a radio program providing an outlet for nice, warm, high-minded, intelligent people to give speeches on their personal cherished beliefs (the program has recently been revived on NPR).

"Their lives are triumphs of niceness," Binx the broker muses with a cool undercurrent of irony, but the reader is kept guessing at Binx's approval, and Binx doesn't seem so sure himself.

"I believe in people," says one warm, generous commentator, "I believe in tolerance and understanding between people. I believe in the uniqueness and the dignity of the individual--."

Then comes a classic, precision-timed Walker Percy gut-jab:

Everyone on This I Believe believes in the uniqueness and dignity of the individual. I have noticed, however, that the believers are far from unique themselves, are in fact alike as peas in a pod.

I believe in music. I believe in a child's smile. I believe in love. I also believe in hate.

This is true. I have known a couple of these believers . . . On This I Believe they like everyone. But when it comes to this or that particular person, I have noticed that they usually hate his guts.

It's easy to believe in the magic of smiling children and the uniqueness of the individual and the power of love in the abstract; it's simple stuff to believe in the dignity of all cultures and the value of the common man and the wonders of humanity broadly conceived.

Why then, is it so difficult to forgive Patrice, to excuse Travis, to keep from judging Zora, to enjoy the company of Frederick, to invite Carlos for a meal, to talk to Sheila in front of Rhonda and Nigel, to offer more than a wincing nod to the nameless man in the turban that we pass three times a week, to gladly make time for an interruption from one's spouse? Why is it so hard to be enthralled by the annoying habits of those we're close to even though we might consider them endearing eccentricities if observed at a distance in a stranger or mere acquaintance?

Wendell Berry is a farmer poet in rural Kentucky whose faith is nurtured by the land and a surprisingly honest approach to his relationships with specific humans and creatures. Let me continue his quote from above and provide it with a bit more context:

Only love can bring intelligence out of the institutions and organizations, where it aggrandizes itself, into the presence of the work that must be done . . . Love is never abstract. It does not adhere to the universe or the planet or the nation or the institution or the profession, but to the singular sparrows of the street, the lilies of the field, “the least of these my brethren.” . . . It exists by its willingness to be anonymous, humble, and unrewarded . . . The older love becomes, the more clearly it understands its involvement in partiality, imperfection, suffering, and mortality.

This musing comes from Berry's essay, "Word and Flesh" included in his collection What are People For? The description doesn't resemble me. I've been a sucker for the abstract and the grandiose for as long as I can remember. Maybe the Seahorse is changing some of that. On the other hand, the quote does remind me of some friends and family members--like the husband of the Seahorse Faerie Songmother, for example: Jonathan Parlane.

Eugene Peterson takes this musing in an even more astonishing direction--hinted at above; but that connection will wait for a future meditation.

"Against such things there is no law."

_______________
Wendell Berry photo from this page

Rejoyce.

2008-02-02T16:01:00.000+11:00

Portait of the Artist as a Young Dad

____

Happy 2 month birthday, Seahorse.

Pre-trembling

2008-02-01T20:23:00.000+11:00

( Just now, alone, alarmed, I kissed your tears to dry them. )

“. . . Little [Quynh],

I would blow the flame out of your silver cup,
I would suck the rot from your fingernail,
I would brush your sprouting hair of the dying light,
I would scrape the rust off your ivory bones,
I would help death escape through the little ribs of your body,
I would alchemize the ashes of your cradle back into wood,
I would let nothing of you go, ever,
until washerwomen
feel the clothes fall asleep in their hands,
and hens scratch their spell across hatchet blades,
and rats walk away from the cultures of the plague,
and iron twists weapons toward the true north,
and grease refuses to slide in the machinery of progress,
and men feel as free on earth as fleas on the bodies of men,
and lovers no longer whisper to the presence beside them in the
dark, O corpse-to-be . . .

And yet perhaps this is the reason you cry,
this the nightmare you wake screaming from:
being forever
in the pre-trembling of a house that falls.

--Galway Kinnell (1971)
From "Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight"

__________________
Kinnell addresses the poem to his own Maud.
Published in The Book of Nightmares (1971) Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Posted elsewhere online.

Oz Flora Supplanted

2008-01-31T22:37:00.000+11:00

Yesterday, the Seahorse family felt curious.

Could they be missing something?

They set off to see the flora
(the wonderful flora of Oz).

They boarded a train.

They walked and walked.

They found a garden.

The plants were in earnest.

All the plants tried hard.

But none tried harder than the trees.

The trees should be applauded.

Some showed astonishing trunks:

Sag-bellied trunks and trim-girdled trunks.

Some showed preposterous hair:

poof-prattled hair,

long-necked hair,

goat- whiskered hair.

Some asserted their extremities:

grump-knuckled hands
and whip-wooly tails.

No, none tried harder than the trees.

But in the end all were supplanted . . .

. . . by a simple smile.

The Locomotive.

2008-01-29T20:50:00.001+11:00

It's loco. It's got motives. It's from Savers. It cost $39.99. It had flat tires. It was muddy. It's fixed. It's the gusto. Its name is El Chariot Locomotor Para el Rearranger Extraordinario Ordinario la Trituradora de la Marcha Lenta Desea la Flor Floreciente del Cacto de la Noche Portent del Arco Iris del Invasor de la Agua Salada.

or El Locomotor, for short.

Compliments of Babel Fish, its name is mech-translated from the original English which reads:

The Locomotive Chariot for the Ordinary Extraordinary Rearranger, the Crusher of Idle Fancies, the Saltwater Invader Rainbow Portent Night-Blooming Cactus Flower.

Which when mech-translated back into English from the Spanish reads,

Chariot locomotive rearranger extraordinary ordinary the crushing machine of the idling at night wishes the flourishing flower of the cactus portent of the rainbow of the invader of salt water.

Which when mech-translated once again into the Spanish reads,

El ordinario extraordinario del rearranger locomotor del chariot la máquina machacante de holgar en la noche desea la flor que prospera del cacto portent del arco iris del invasor del agua salada,

Which when mech-translated back into the English reads,

The extraordinary ordinary of locomotive rearranger of chariot the machacante machine to idle at night wishes the flower that prospers of the cactus portent of the rainbow of the invader of salt water.

Which misses the original point.

The original point being that one Matt Rojahn, a Spanish teaching novelist mystic seer philosophy instructor living near York, PA once warned the Seahorse father during the advent of the Seahorse mother's second trimester that the father's idle fancies about what to expect would be, in no uncertain terms, crushed by the birth and its aftershocks. "[You will be like a child playing on the train tracks with a toy train enjoying yourself and your ideas of trains when you start to feel the ground rumble and hear a loud blast. Then you will turn around to look behind you just in time to face your doom]," he said.

Bucka up,

yo.

_________________
A question for Matt: El Locomotor? La Locomotor?

Meditation on Week 8: Space

2008-01-27T23:27:00.000+11:00

As it turns out, Immanuel Kant had nothing to say about seahorses. But little did the wiry German bachelor genius know as he walked about in the shadow of Königsberg Castle that his ideas on the nature of three dimensional space would someday help us understand the significance of the hippocampus--a structure in the middle of the brain that curls up from the temporal lobe to the frontal lobe in the shape of a seahorse.

The big questions for Kant were "what is real?" (metaphysics) and "how do we know?" (epistemology). He revolutionized our answers to both. One of his key insights was related to space. Imagine a human body. Now imagine taking away all of its qualities: imagine it colorless, weightless, without hardness; imagine it being able to pass through walls; imagine it not existing at all. We can imagine all these things, but what we can't imagine is the non-existence of the space the body occupied after the body itself has vanished.

Most things we know about the physical world seem to come through experience and our five senses, but our knowledge of space has to be there as a prerequisite to all experience: Space is Semester 1 of Knowledge 101.

Knowledge 101: that sounds simple enough, but when did we sign up for the course? Have any of us taken Knowledge 101? Is Quynh the Seahorse enrolled in the course right now? Kant says no. Impossible. Unless the saltwater creature was born with a knowledge of three-dimensional space pre-installed, she would be unable to gain any further knowledge from experience--in short, she would have no experience--she would have no use for the five senses.

This seems reasonable enough, but look where it puts us: This means that space as we know it exists only in our minds. This means that space as we know it does not exist in the real, physical world. So what is space? Is it an utter illusion? Kant argues that whatever it is, ultimately, is unknowable to us. Our understanding of it is only a crude representation.

O'Keefe's surprising article, "Kant and the Sea-horse" presents evidence from non-Euclidean geometry and quantum mechanics [I know little about either] in support of Kant's position. He then moves on to discuss the hippocampus itself-- the seahorse of the brain.

The hippocampus is the brain's cartographer (and here we have clue upon clue: the Seahorse father happens to delight in making maps). The hippocampus orients the conscious person in "space". In fact, it gives us our concept of space. Without it, O'Keefe argues, there would be no consciousness.

But even with our limited insight, we already know that the assumptions the hippocampus makes about the world are not entirely accurate. It tells us, for example, that the shortest distance between two points is always a straight line; it tells us that the sum of the angles of a triangle will always be 180° and other purely intuitive claims that are not watertight.

Don't worry, little seahorse, in some ways, for practical life at least, you're still roughly right; and, in fact, you only help to strengthen Kant's argument: whatever space is, it's a brazen mystery, and even what we seem to know about it is pre-installed with bizarre intuitions. Knowledge of space does not come through the five senses.

O'Keefe plunges his exploration into discussions of hippocampal mechanics, vector arithmetic and macro-evolution. These I must let lie. Other unanswered questions remain that are even more urgent. Here is a sampling:

What is space? What are the ultimate implications of having three-dimensional Euclidean space pre-installed in our consciousness? If space as we know it is only a crude representation at best, what lies beyond? If space as we know it exists only in our minds, are the distances and the boundaries we perceive between objects much more flexible in the real physical world? Why is the hippocampus also crucial for short term memory and the memory of complex events? Since our knowledge of time is equally problematic, how do the two interact? What does it all mean?

Clue from the brain

2008-01-26T15:33:00.001+11:00

One thing about clues: they could be anywhere. The Seahorse father learned this from the Hardy Boys as a kid.

"So," he thinks a few weeks back after posting a meditation on reason from Immanuel Kant, "old Kant is one of my favorites, what a mind; but I've only read a wee slice of all he wrote . . . I wonder if he had anything to say about seahorses." Up comes the Google search page, in go the words [Kant seahorse], *chakeh* goes the Enter key and up come the results.

Hits 3-7 all cite the same article [or so they did at the time of this post].

Published in a 1993 volume of research essays called Spatial Representation: Problems in Philosophy and Psychology (Blackwell: Oxford) editted by Naomi Eilan, Rosaleen McCarthy and Bill Brewer, pp. 43-64.*

The Seahorse father laughed and shook his head. The next day he found the volume in the La Trobe library and returned home with a new secret.

________

*Apparently republished in 1999 by OUP

Mother of the Mother of the

2008-01-24T21:33:00.001+11:00

Today Quantas Airlines delivered a great boon--a boon for saltwater Seahorse and improbable parents alike. On this day--Thursday, January 24, 2008--the mother of the mother of the Seahorse touched down at Melbourne International Airport, disembarked at Gate 23, filtered her way through the dazed, shuffling crowd and scooped up her prize. The Seahorse Mother's Mother, Marilyn Hopkins (a.k.a: Mom, Mommy, Mommyhop, Mom Hopkins, etc.) braved the deep darkness of the ghastly Pacific at 33,000 feet. She now finds herself in antipodes with a grateful daughter & son-in-law and a saltwater granddaughter who is fascinated already.

Of course, the improbable parents are also grateful to Dr. B. Wayne Hopkins, Seahorse Maternal Grandfather, for colluding in this match made in Oz.

Mom Hopkins will grace the Seahorse home for two weeks as parent, grandparent, expert, counselor, confidante, tourist and nanny--after which time she will be requested, a la the sensible custom of the Chinese, to remain in the Land of Oz as a member of the Seahorse household and not return to the northwestern hemisphere until she may be accompanied by her dependents.

To celebrate her arrival, the Maternal Grandmother was fed a meal of snow peas, cherry tomatoes, lamb & cheese rissoles, and kangaroo steak. For dessert, the roo and lamb were chased with Tim-Tam Slams--a messy, hilarious Oz dessert custom difficult to describe (or resist).

Levertov gasps, grasps

2008-01-23T22:52:00.000+11:00

Primary Wonder

Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; caps and bells.
And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng's clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, 0 Lord,
Creator, Hallowed one, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.

--Denise Levertov (1996)

_______________________
First published in The Sands of the Well (1996).
Also in The Stream and the Sapphire (1997).
Posted elsewhere online.

Nap & Curds

2008-01-22T21:11:00.000+11:00

QUASI-COMPREHENSIVE REPORT ON SLEEP PATTERN DURATION FOR HIPPOCAMPE IMPROBABLE WITH ADDITIONAL NOTES ON NATURE OF WAKING NOISES FOR THIS NAP TIME, 2:00PM, TUESDAY THE 22ND OF JANUARY, YEAR OF OUR LORD 2008 ARE HEREBY LISTED IN SUCCESSION INASMUCH AS THEY MAY BE REQUIRED FOR FUTURE REFERENCE BY ALL PARTIES TO WHICH THEIR CONTENTS MAY BE OF BENEFIT.

2:00pm Down: Melodramatic Whimperings and Wailings; Much whining; Some Grunts and Squeaks.
2:10pm Ends Cry 1: Long Silence.
2:13pm Begins Cry 2: Primarily Grunts and Squeaks; A Few Chirps, Squeals and Whines.
2:18pm Ends Cry 2: Nap Begins in Earnest (Sleep Cycle One).
2:45pm Begins Cry 3: One Brief Grunt Followed by Silence.
2:49pm Continues Cry 3: More Grunts and Chuckle-fussing Building to Elongated Whines Interspersed by Improbable Attempts at Speech, Tapering off Into Long Silences Sprinkled With Grunts and Whines Building Intermittently to More Frequent Angry Barks and Long Whines and Abrupt Snorts.
3:06pm End of cry 3: Nap Abandoned by Parental Consent Prior to Advent of Sleep Cycle Two.

Condition Upon Discovery: Curdles About the Mouth; Curdles Upon the Sleeping Blanket; Curds and Whey Upon the Chin and Neck.

Judgment: Poor Nap.

Diagnosis: Reflux.

End Report.

Meditation on Week 7: Elfland

2008-01-20T21:43:00.001+11:00

Week seven ends today. Seven: perfection, completion, rest? Well, the saltwater creature almost sleeps through the night--almost--but not quite; this hasn't been a week of rest by any stretch. She's learning to burp without vomiting, but the lazy sphincter still gives her trouble. She's started smiling, but doesn't seem to use it as a response. She babbled her first full syllable (consonant initial+vowel nucleus+consonant coda) earlier this week, but she still has consonant clusters to tackle, and then there's that part about semantics and intent. So, no perfect landmarks this week. No, nothing seems complete yet for the Seahorse.

Instead, we swing back full circle ourselves--full circle to week one and our first mention of Elfland. We haven't discussed Elfland itself for seven weeks, but actual field notes on Elfland have been multiplying out of control. Elfland: the home of the emerging navel, the articulating mouth, the hidden colors of white light, eyes in search of other eyes, flowing milk, unbearable gazes, songs from nowhere, impressionistic 'accidents', the intentional coincidence, reason over the abyss, perplexing dissonance between perspective and nature, the home of vapor, hiccups, water, hats, sonograms, poetry, poop, laughter, terror, and all that is ordinary--but especially home to humans. Elfland: wild, present, unmistakable and haunted thick with horror and glory.

Elfland. Is the word embarrassing? Well, it doesn't give us much to hide behind. It's hard to say "Elfland" and still be pretentious--hard to talk about Elfland with academic flair or a sense of self importance or the smug safety of the party line. Maybe Elfland is too silly for discussion-- not fit for conversation between rational, educated, intellectually consenting adults. Here the wisdom of C.S. Lewis offers help:

To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development . . . When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

So, let's say we set out to try being responsible, clear-thinking adults: as long as our conclusions and observations along the way are justifiable, should we be concerned about whether or not they seem childish? Ultimately, aren't there only two approaches to the mystery of conscious existence? Either we recognize that the world is in some pervasive sense quite literally enchanted or we decide that it is an infinitely absurd mechanical farce. If so, one of these positions must be more justifiable than the other. Is there really any room for responsible middle ground? If not, either everything is a mindless accident or everything is alive with meaning. Either way I'm a hypocrite, but back to that in a bit.

First, in order to mark the seventh week of the saltwater Seahorse's vapor existence (and in order to cement some of the founding assumptions of her namesake blog), we will now splurge on another long quote from the "Ethics of Elfland" by the patron of paradox himself, G.K. Chesterton:

We cannot say why an egg can turn into a chicken any more than we can say why a bear could turn into a fairy prince. As ideas, the egg and the chicken are further off from each other than the bear and the prince; for no egg in itself suggests a chicken, whereas some princes do suggest bears. Granted, then, that certain transformations do happen, it is essential that we should regard them in the philosophic manner of fairy tales, not in the unphilosophic manner of science and the "Laws of Nature." . . . All the terms used in the science books, "law," "necessity," "order," "tendency," and so on, are really unintellectual, because they assume an inner synthesis, which we do not possess. The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, "charm," "spell," "enchantment." They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched.

I deny altogether that this is fantastic or even mystical. We may have some mysticism later on; but this fairy-tale language about things is simply rational and agnostic. It is the only way I can express in words my clear and definite perception that one thing is quite distinct from another; that there is no logical connection between flying and laying eggs. It is the man who talks about "a law" that he has never seen who is the mystic. Nay, the ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations. He has so often seen birds fly and lay eggs that he feels as if there must be some dreamy, tender connection between the two ideas, whereas there is none. A forlorn lover might be unable to dissociate the moon from lost love; so the materialist is unable to dissociate the moon from the tide. In both cases there is no connection, except that one has seen them together. A sentimentalist might shed tears at the smell of apple-blossom, because, by a dark association of his own, it reminded him of his boyhood. So the materialist professor (though he conceals his tears) is yet a sentimentalist, because, by a dark association of his own, apple-blossoms remind him of apples. But the cool rationalist from fairyland does not see why, in the abstract, the apple tree should not grow crimson tulips; it sometimes does in his country.

Bewitched rationalism or absurd sentimentalism. Hmmm . . .

One significant atheist movement now calls itself Beyond Belief--an organized attempt by scholars of superior intellect to patch up the first Enlightenment and expose what they perceive to be the foolishness of faith. One fascinating talk at their last annual meeting was given by Professor Edward Slingerland from the University of British Columbia. His lecture seemed to stick in the craw of some participants.

Slingerland points out that in order to be consistent with the framework of their bold new movement, participants need to admit that metaphysical ideals such as free will, the value of the individual, intention, purpose, human rights, justice, moral emotions, theory of mind, responsibility, love, truth, freedom, etc. are all fake-- illusions-- fictitious fabrications of the human 'mind'. He argues that we deceive ourselves into believing them either by accidents of evolution or for practical ends. Slingerland insists that our lives and work are empty of meaning, but he also allows that ". . . thoroughgoing nonbelief is actually impossible for creatures like us--for psychologically healthy human beings."

He later goes on to clarify the new Enlightenment position: ". . . we are robots that are built to believe we are not robots and that we don't live in a robotic world . . ." As for free will, purpose, dignity, meaning, truth, goodness, beauty and the like, he simply makes the following analogy: ". . . you have to believe that they're there in order for the ritual to work. . ."(i.e., even though they're not).

The new Enlightenment position is very sophisticated--very grown up, and infinitely . . . um, robotic. For the absurd sentimentalist, Elfland does not exist, but the bewitched rationalist denies the existence of the sentimental robot--cause and effect themselves are enchanted. She is not only glad to admit that trees grow fruit because they are magic, she is also glad to affirm that the stuff of Elfland is quilted thick with meaning.

"I tell you the truth,
unless you change and become like little children . . ."

_________________________

Lewis Photo from this webpage.
Lewis Quote from On Stories ; discovered in the Lewis anthology, A Mind Awake
Chesterton Photo from this archive.

Ordinary.

2008-01-18T21:05:00.000+11:00

Ordinary things are more valuable than extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary. Man is something more awful than men; something more strange. The sense of the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization. The mere [person] on two legs, as such, should be felt as something more heartbreaking than any music and more startling than any caricature. Death is more tragic even than death by starvation. Having a nose is more comic even than having a Norman nose.

. . . the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary [people] themselves--the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young . . .

--G.K. Chesterton (1908)
Orthodoxy (Chp. 4: The Ethics of Elfland)

Pointless Pain

2008-01-16T18:58:00.000+11:00

Faces of reflux:

So sorry little Seahorse.
Your invisible stomach takes it down smooth and sends it up acid.
Improbable us: we're as helpless as you are.
Friendly advice all conflicts, and professionals stick to statistics.
"She goes through trauma every time she eats", we point out.
"We'll, she's gaining weight," comes the calculated reply.

No wonder is hiding here--
Nothing sacred about an immature stomach sphincter.
Nothing meaningful about confusing agony and nourishment .
Nothing subtle about the inadequate ability of the collective experience of a myriad folk and professional caregivers to solve a simple problem of pointless pain.

Meditation on Week 6: Reason

2008-01-13T20:19:00.000+11:00

Who can satisfy himself with mere empirical knowledge in all the cosmological questions of the duration and of the quantity of the world, of freedom or of natural necessity, since every answer given on principles of experience begets a fresh question, which likewise requires its answer and thereby clearly shows the insufficiency of all physical modes of explanation to satisfy reason? Finally, who does not see in the thoroughgoing contingency and dependence of all his thoughts and assumptions on mere principles of experience, the impossibility of stopping there? And who does not feel himself compelled, notwithstanding all interdictions against losing himself in transcendent ideas, to seek rest and contentment beyond all the concepts which he can vindicate by experience, in the concept of a Being, the possibility of which we cannot conceive, but at the same time cannot be refuted, because it relates to a mere being of the understanding, and without it reason must needs remain forever dissatisfied?

--Immanuel Kant (1783)
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, "Conclusion: On the Determination of the Bounds of Pure Reason"

So the Word became human and made his home among us . . . No one has ever seen God. But the unique One, who is himself God, is near to the Father’s heart. He has revealed God to us.

John 1:14, 18 (NLT)

__________________
Kant's Prolegomena available here
Paul Carus, translator (1902);
James Fieser, editor (1997)

PK Cites a Clue

2008-01-11T23:49:00.000+11:00

What gives a clue more flavor when it is sighted and cited by an outside observer?

Ok, here are two Americans, not exactly from Kansas, on sojourn in the land of Oz searching for seahorse inscape on BibliOdyssey where they discover a blogpost "An Original Oz": PK's review of a first edition printing of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, illustrated by William Wallace Denslow, scanned in its entirety, and available online in the Library of Congress archives.

Denslow's signature, PK notes, is genus: hippocampus.

In fact, the secret parents admired Denslow's seahorse sig. way back in late October, but the obvious clue itself didn't dawn on them until yesterday when Optical Ozzie Phantom PK was kind enough to point out the obvious:

Oz.

Here we are.

Here she was born, against all odds.

And there it is:
(there she is)

On almost every illustrated page.

And not until returning to look, yesterday, did the secret parents realize: practically every print he published after 1894, Denslow signed with a seahorse insignia--his own secret trademark.

Photo courtesy: Oz-Central.com

According to PK's research, Denslow was likely influenced by:

. . . monogram signatures on Japanese prints (an international fad in the 1890's). . . As Denslow used his seahorse more and more, he realized that a distinctive signature not only identifies an artist, but also contributes to the overall design of the picture. He wrote to his friend, the photographer Alfred Steiglitz, "It is well to have a sign or totem, as my hippocampus has saved many a composition for me, and I hold him in reserve for that purpose."

So, of course, Denslow's hippocampus also appears in many other works.

His Seahorse in Oz is only the beginning.

Pillard-Verneuil's Clue

2008-01-10T23:59:00.000+11:00

Behold: A fated image.

Today the Seahorse Blog was visited by offbeat print-to-digital media curator "PK" from Sydney, Australia. He has been dubbed Phantom of the Optical. The Seahorse parents agree that his contribution comprises one of the most bizarre, enchanting bright spots on the world wide web. The Seahorse father first learned about the Phantom website through a 3 Quarks Daily interview in late October 2007--just when he had begun looking for visual interpretations in preparation for the arrival of the improbable event.

Recently posted on PK's windfall BibliOdyssey, at the time, was his entry Design Nouveau--a bright review of organic-inspired prints from the year 1900 by French artist Maurice Pillard-Verneuil. Naturally, the Seahorse father was particularly astonished to find the fated print above. A few evenings later, he sketched out a portion as a simple study and filled it with watercolor.

A touch slavish? Ok, but the Seahorse father has little training in such matters. The watercolor was then rendered with a shadow and tweaked to a rustier red in Photoshop . . . and the improbable infant's first portrait emerged. The differences are subtle and perhaps also influenced by Thai temple architecture.

Little did the old nouveau master know that his unassuming seahorse print would someday inspire the first portrait for one of the most unlikely events ever to occur to human parents . . .

. . . thanks to PK's introduction.

More tomorrow on another key postpartum clue from PK.

(hinted at in the sketchbook above)

A Quarrel

2008-01-08T21:22:00.000+11:00

Characters: Seahorse (SH), SH Father (SHF), SH Mother (SHM).

Act 1, Scene 1

A quiet evening at home, yesterday.
SHM is holding SH stage left.

SH: WAAAAaaaaa! WAAAaaaa!
(SHF enters quietly stage right)
SHF: Can I hold her for a while?
SHM: Shhh. She's going to sleep.
SH: AwaaaAAA! AwaaaAAA!
SHF: Can I hold her for a while? Maybe I can help.
SHM: You don't know how to read her right now. She's almost asleep. I need to sleep too.
SH: WaaaaaaAAhaaaAA! WaaaaaAAhaaaAA!
SHF: Let me help. I'll get her to sleep while you lay down and rest.
SHM: You don't know what she needs right now.
SH: WAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
SHF: I could take her for a walk. That would put her to sleep then you could rest.
SHM: No. Just let me get her to sleep; then I can rest.
SH: AhwaaaHAAAA! AhwaaaHAAAA!
SHF: I'm her father. I should be allowed to hold her.
SHM: No, please: you don't know what to do!
SH: (many whimpering noises, sobs and fuss-grunts in the background until next cue).
SHF: (Tries to take SH unsuccessfully) You let me hold her.
SHM: No. Just go back to what you were doing! Please! I'm so tired.
SHF: (Pulls SH out of SHM's arms) Then let me help!
SHM: Give her back to me.
SHF: You lay down and go to sleep. I will bring her in later when she's asleep.
SHM: I am so tired! If she doesn't sleep I don't sleep. Give her back to me.
SHF: I'm her father. Let me help!
SHM: Give. Her. Back. To. Me.
(a small struggle ensues)
SHF: Go lay down. You are too tired.
SHM: Give her back or I will kick you in the b[censored]s.
SH: (Silence with wide eyes and pursed lips)
(a second struggle ensues)
SHF: Don't! Watch out.
(SHF surrenders control of SH to SHM)
SHM: Leave us alone.
SHF: I am the biological father of this child. Remember me??

* * * *

Act 2, Scene 3

Evening, the next day (today).
SHF and SHM are center stage eating evening tea together. SH is sound asleep stage left.

SHM: It's been a good day. She slept three times.
SHF: Yeah, (Enjoys a fit of silent laughter) so . . . where did you say you would kick me?
SHM: (laughs) So . . . you're the 'biological' father of our child?
(much laughter as lights dim)

Curtains down.

House lights up.

End

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Illustrations compliments of BibliOdyssey:
Woodcuts by François Desprez from the 1656 edition of François Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel.