Category Archives: El Aleph

On beauty

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It’s all been said before, but maybe this term means more or less than you think it does. Philosophers have driven themselves (and their readers) mad in labyrinthine rhetorical treatises on the subject without ever (re)solving anything. One man’s pleasure is another’s pain. Most essays on beauty are fruitless, thornless, roses that neither praise nor defend any particular position, or perhaps not. The rose has been over-utilized as a metaphor for beauty, but dissolving the concept of beauty in an ironic metaphorical rose soup does nothing to define what makes something or someone beautiful. Some roses are ugly, too. A lot of beauty is about what looks good now–a fad, a passing moment, an ephemeral moment in time, a wisp of smoke, a shadow, nothing. People have fought over what is beauty, but in the long term their explanations are hollow, vacuous, superficial, focusing on the physical, which may be beautiful or may be ugly. Who knows? Some would have you think that they know. I would suspect that they are worried about being found out as fakes and phonies. An idea might be beautiful, or it may deserve to be on the hash-heap of history. We fill museums with beautiful things–paintings, sculptures, and the like, and then we charge admission to see them. Are they more beautiful because one must pay to see them? One might acquiesce to the idea that certain aesthetic structures are more pleasing to look at than others, that colors may go together, that this painting is more pleasing to look at than that sculpture, but again, is beauty a learned concept or are some things innately beautiful? As is the case with all human constructions, beauty is a contrivance, a convention based on what the hierarchy says is beautiful. Beauty is constructed, but I often wonder to what end. Nothing, it seems, is more inherently beautiful than anything else. I suppose that it boils down to what we have learned to love, and that is what we find beautiful.

On shopping

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It is that time of year when societal pressure turns us all into shop-aholics–not because we want to be, but because it’s what everyone expects. So we buy a bunch of stuff that no one really wants and give it to people who already have everything that they already want. The traffic is terrible, the stores are jammed, everyone is short-tempered, they don’t have what you want, you are running short of funds, and you are creating of crisis of both financing and conscience at the same time. We over-consume on a regular basis without giving it much thought. We hurt ourselves because we are only thinking of ourselves and our tremendous righteousness as consumers who have everything: we don’t consider the poor or the hungry–we have met Scrooge and he is us, to paraphrase Pogo. We lead cushy lives, totally intent on satisfying our every need, but we build our castles on the sinking sand of materialism without the foggiest idea that this is not solid rock. We obsess about who might be doing what with whom, which is a total and complete waste of time when we don’t even know how to lead our own pathetic lives. If fact, I always suspect those who complain the loudest without keeping their own doorsteps clean. If we think our materialism will save us, we are so sadly wrong.

On shopping

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It is that time of year when societal pressure turns us all into shop-aholics–not because we want to be, but because it’s what everyone expects. So we buy a bunch of stuff that no one really wants and give it to people who already have everything that they already want. The traffic is terrible, the stores are jammed, everyone is short-tempered, they don’t have what you want, you are running short of funds, and you are creating of crisis of both financing and conscience at the same time. We over-consume on a regular basis without giving it much thought. We hurt ourselves because we are only thinking of ourselves and our tremendous righteousness as consumers who have everything: we don’t consider the poor or the hungry–we have met Scrooge and he is us, to paraphrase Pogo. We lead cushy lives, totally intent on satisfying our every need, but we build our castles on the sinking sand of materialism without the foggiest idea that this is not solid rock. We obsess about who might be doing what with whom, which is a total and complete waste of time when we don’t even know how to lead our own pathetic lives. If fact, I always suspect those who complain the loudest without keeping their own doorsteps clean. If we think our materialism will save us, we are so sadly wrong.

On "La muerte y la brújula" (by Borges)

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“Death and the Compass” is a strange tale of problem-solving gone crazy and revenge. A weird riff on the stories of Sherlock Holmes, this is the detective story turned on its head. Both the detectives and the reader fall into the same preconceived concept that if a crime has been committed that the clues will point to a solution. What would happen if the the clues are false and create the illusion of a crime, but not the crime which is really being committed? What if the real crime behind the clues is invisible to everyone except the criminal? Except for the final paragraphs where the story goes off the rails, Borges’s strange detective tale starts out being a pretty standard whodunit taking place in urban Buenos Aires. Clues are strewn about the story as if they were going out of style. An old rabbi, who was working on some arcane Jewish mysticism, is murdered. It looks as though diamonds and sapphires might be involved, but everything is murky. The detective, Eric Lonnröt, is on the case, reading the rabbi’s research and tracking down clues. There are two more murders, and Lonnröt thinks he has the case solved, working his way through a labyrinth of strange clues, arcane literature, and geographic locations, using his compass to come up with the location of the fourth, and final, crime. He is hard on the heals of Red Sharlock, a criminal mastermind of organized crime in the city. Borges really knows how to suck in his readers, counting on reader expectations regarding the genre to put down a path of clues that can only lead to disaster. I could write out the solution, but then again, why let the cat out of the bag? The very story, the details, the clues, the characters all form a perfectly designed and orchestrated trap into which both the detective and the reader falls. The best part of all is that Borges gives the reader the solution from the very beginning. What neither detective nor reader understand is the difference between the real world and a simulacra of the world–Borges’s words, not mine. The solutions to most problems are usually the most simple ones which are linked in a direct line from problem to solution, and there is nothing either arcane or obscure about a true solution.

On "La muerte y la brújula" (by Borges)

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“Death and the Compass” is a strange tale of problem-solving gone crazy and revenge. A weird riff on the stories of Sherlock Holmes, this is the detective story turned on its head. Both the detectives and the reader fall into the same preconceived concept that if a crime has been committed that the clues will point to a solution. What would happen if the the clues are false and create the illusion of a crime, but not the crime which is really being committed? What if the real crime behind the clues is invisible to everyone except the criminal? Except for the final paragraphs where the story goes off the rails, Borges’s strange detective tale starts out being a pretty standard whodunit taking place in urban Buenos Aires. Clues are strewn about the story as if they were going out of style. An old rabbi, who was working on some arcane Jewish mysticism, is murdered. It looks as though diamonds and sapphires might be involved, but everything is murky. The detective, Eric Lonnröt, is on the case, reading the rabbi’s research and tracking down clues. There are two more murders, and Lonnröt thinks he has the case solved, working his way through a labyrinth of strange clues, arcane literature, and geographic locations, using his compass to come up with the location of the fourth, and final, crime. He is hard on the heals of Red Sharlock, a criminal mastermind of organized crime in the city. Borges really knows how to suck in his readers, counting on reader expectations regarding the genre to put down a path of clues that can only lead to disaster. I could write out the solution, but then again, why let the cat out of the bag? The very story, the details, the clues, the characters all form a perfectly designed and orchestrated trap into which both the detective and the reader falls. The best part of all is that Borges gives the reader the solution from the very beginning. What neither detective nor reader understand is the difference between the real world and a simulacra of the world–Borges’s words, not mine. The solutions to most problems are usually the most simple ones which are linked in a direct line from problem to solution, and there is nothing either arcane or obscure about a true solution.

On unpacking my library

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Dedicated to the memory of Walter Benjamin. I moved from one office to another last week, which means I had to take down all my books, put them on carts, and unpack them in my new office. A simple enough task, but handling each book, picking a new location for it, tugs at the heartstrings and stirs old ideas from hibernation. You see, no one remembers all of the books that they have. This particular copy of “1984” was left on my desk in chemistry by someone–never knew who–in the spring of ’76. They had written my name it. My copy of “Ghost Story” came from the English book section of Casa de Libro in Madrid in 1979. Over the course of even a few years, one forgets individual volumes that were acquired in odd ways in dark, smelly, book shops off of equally dark and smelly streets deep inside a grimy urban setting. A copy of Borges’ short stories was a birthday gift from a beloved friend and still bears her dedication. I found a copy of Dante’s “Inferno” which was inscribed “To Helen, completely unforgettable, London, 1961.” I had completely forgotten several titles which I had never gotten around to reading, but I was warmly surprised to see old friends that I had indeed read, albeit decades ago. Having an analogue library, though quite superfluous today, appeals to my medieval sensibility of scribe. The physical presence of the books reminds me of how much there is to think about just being human. Flipping through familiar pages, reading familiar passages, gazing on forgotten book covers, I am often reminded of other periods, other times in my life when I lived in other towns and knew other people. My worries and concerns were different when I first read “Don Quixote” or “The Name of the Rose.” While I was unpacking I was assailed by both nostalgia and pathos, remembering a warm rainy afternoon in Madrid when I found that one book about Cervantes that I always wanted to read. Or perhaps it was a copy of “Cien años de soledad” that I found abandoned in a train station in Toledo (Spain). Some books had been gifts, and others had been borrowed by me, but never returned. I found an old, beat-up paperback of “Dr. Zhivago” that I bought for fifty pesetas from an outdoor vendor in the plaza of Alonso Martínez, which I read during the winter of ´84′-’85, one of the coldest winters in Madrid’s history. My copy of Shakespearean sonnets which was bought for less than a dollar out of a remainders bin at a mall in Mankato, Minnesota over thirty years ago which still bears my innocent marginalia of my youth. I had to throw away, with much regret, several books with broken spines and molding pages. At one time this would have horrified me, but these works are easily recovered given the digital nature of the internet. I noticed that I now have two copies of “The Lord of the Flies,” but that I still haven’t read it after all these years–I suspect I know what it’s about and don’t want to stare at the horror of humanity unleashed. I have dropped an ancient copy of “Beowulf” on my desk–a discard from my high school library. I first read this book when I was fifteen, so it will be a new read for me when I pick it up later this week. I will donate three boxes of books to the local library sale to make way for new titles because space is always finite for a book lover.

On unpacking my library

Posted on by

Dedicated to the memory of Walter Benjamin. I moved from one office to another last week, which means I had to take down all my books, put them on carts, and unpack them in my new office. A simple enough task, but handling each book, picking a new location for it, tugs at the heartstrings and stirs old ideas from hibernation. You see, no one remembers all of the books that they have. This particular copy of “1984” was left on my desk in chemistry by someone–never knew who–in the spring of ’76. They had written my name it. My copy of “Ghost Story” came from the English book section of Casa de Libro in Madrid in 1979. Over the course of even a few years, one forgets individual volumes that were acquired in odd ways in dark, smelly, book shops off of equally dark and smelly streets deep inside a grimy urban setting. A copy of Borges’ short stories was a birthday gift from a beloved friend and still bears her dedication. I found a copy of Dante’s “Inferno” which was inscribed “To Helen, completely unforgettable, London, 1961.” I had completely forgotten several titles which I had never gotten around to reading, but I was warmly surprised to see old friends that I had indeed read, albeit decades ago. Having an analogue library, though quite superfluous today, appeals to my medieval sensibility of scribe. The physical presence of the books reminds me of how much there is to think about just being human. Flipping through familiar pages, reading familiar passages, gazing on forgotten book covers, I am often reminded of other periods, other times in my life when I lived in other towns and knew other people. My worries and concerns were different when I first read “Don Quixote” or “The Name of the Rose.” While I was unpacking I was assailed by both nostalgia and pathos, remembering a warm rainy afternoon in Madrid when I found that one book about Cervantes that I always wanted to read. Or perhaps it was a copy of “Cien años de soledad” that I found abandoned in a train station in Toledo (Spain). Some books had been gifts, and others had been borrowed by me, but never returned. I found an old, beat-up paperback of “Dr. Zhivago” that I bought for fifty pesetas from an outdoor vendor in the plaza of Alonso Martínez, which I read during the winter of ´84′-’85, one of the coldest winters in Madrid’s history. My copy of Shakespearean sonnets which was bought for less than a dollar out of a remainders bin at a mall in Mankato, Minnesota over thirty years ago which still bears my innocent marginalia of my youth. I had to throw away, with much regret, several books with broken spines and molding pages. At one time this would have horrified me, but these works are easily recovered given the digital nature of the internet. I noticed that I now have two copies of “The Lord of the Flies,” but that I still haven’t read it after all these years–I suspect I know what it’s about and don’t want to stare at the horror of humanity unleashed. I have dropped an ancient copy of “Beowulf” on my desk–a discard from my high school library. I first read this book when I was fifteen, so it will be a new read for me when I pick it up later this week. I will donate three boxes of books to the local library sale to make way for new titles because space is always finite for a book lover.

On almost nothing at all

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There are times in every writer’s life when s/he has nothing to say, but there is no way to express five minutes of dead silence on a blank piece of paper. To write about nothingness is a strange paradox which entails expressions of emptiness that thoroughly contradict the impossibility of words signifying nothing because a word does not exists that doesn’t signify something even when that signified is nothing. “Nothing” is still something. It’s like trying to clear your mind and encountering a series of images that invade the space regardless of how hard you try to make your mind blank. The space in an empty box is still space even when it is not filled with anything. In music, silence is signified by rests, and rests are something. The number zero, though it signifies no quantity still has the value of nothing. What is really weird about zero is that you cannot divide another number by it, which means zero signifies a very singular number or quantity. Often, those who say they have nothing to say just don’t want to talk about what is happening, so their silence is a metaphor for all of the things they would like to say: silence may be golden but it also speaks volumes. Perhaps the real question is why we have so many signifiers for expressing emptiness, but this is not a simple conundrum or enigma. When counting down, we count down to zero, which means no time is left, but how do you know you have arrived at zero, at lift off unless the zero is saving another “second” which serves as the temporal space in which lift-off occurs. On the other hand, stop watches start at zero, marking no time before the gun sounds and the runners are off. After you take a picture off of the wall, it will often leave a mark which now indicates that the wall is empty, even though it is still a wall. A blank wall is not the same as a empty wall. From an existential viewpoint is an elevator ever really empty? I’m not going to mention a glass which may or may not be half full or half empty of water, being neither an optimist nor a pessimist at the moment. We talk about “space” but really mean “empty space” which is an interesting redundancy. Any attempt and creating nothingness out of writing must be necessarily end in frustration, which is, on a Friday night in late November, just fine, realizing, of course, that some things are impossible to do even when they are both uncountable and unmeasurable. Nothingness is an exercise in futility, futility being the outcome of immobility or immutability, either one. So the next time you empty a bottle and you look into the bottom, you have to ask yourself, is this bottle really empty? My point is this: expressing nothing has to mean you expressing something, even when that is nothing. The metaphysics of non-existence are sublime, enigmatic, and ambiguous, devolving into discussions best left to philosophers and saints, mostly because the idea of non-existence or nothingness is ephemeral, fleeting, dark. Who could guess that the problem of (non)existence could be at once a question of linguistic inexactness and structural polemics. You can’t prove non-existence, which is a bit like dividing by zero. If something is missing, even its empty space is perceivable. So the question remains, then, do we actually understand nothing at all?

On almost nothing at all

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There are times in every writer’s life when s/he has nothing to say, but there is no way to express five minutes of dead silence on a blank piece of paper. To write about nothingness is a strange paradox which entails expressions of emptiness that thoroughly contradict the impossibility of words signifying nothing because a word does not exists that doesn’t signify something even when that signified is nothing. “Nothing” is still something. It’s like trying to clear your mind and encountering a series of images that invade the space regardless of how hard you try to make your mind blank. The space in an empty box is still space even when it is not filled with anything. In music, silence is signified by rests, and rests are something. The number zero, though it signifies no quantity still has the value of nothing. What is really weird about zero is that you cannot divide another number by it, which means zero signifies a very singular number or quantity. Often, those who say they have nothing to say just don’t want to talk about what is happening, so their silence is a metaphor for all of the things they would like to say: silence may be golden but it also speaks volumes. Perhaps the real question is why we have so many signifiers for expressing emptiness, but this is not a simple conundrum or enigma. When counting down, we count down to zero, which means no time is left, but how do you know you have arrived at zero, at lift off unless the zero is saving another “second” which serves as the temporal space in which lift-off occurs. On the other hand, stop watches start at zero, marking no time before the gun sounds and the runners are off. After you take a picture off of the wall, it will often leave a mark which now indicates that the wall is empty, even though it is still a wall. A blank wall is not the same as a empty wall. From an existential viewpoint is an elevator ever really empty? I’m not going to mention a glass which may or may not be half full or half empty of water, being neither an optimist nor a pessimist at the moment. We talk about “space” but really mean “empty space” which is an interesting redundancy. Any attempt and creating nothingness out of writing must be necessarily end in frustration, which is, on a Friday night in late November, just fine, realizing, of course, that some things are impossible to do even when they are both uncountable and unmeasurable. Nothingness is an exercise in futility, futility being the outcome of immobility or immutability, either one. So the next time you empty a bottle and you look into the bottom, you have to ask yourself, is this bottle really empty? My point is this: expressing nothing has to mean you expressing something, even when that is nothing. The metaphysics of non-existence are sublime, enigmatic, and ambiguous, devolving into discussions best left to philosophers and saints, mostly because the idea of non-existence or nothingness is ephemeral, fleeting, dark. Who could guess that the problem of (non)existence could be at once a question of linguistic inexactness and structural polemics. You can’t prove non-existence, which is a bit like dividing by zero. If something is missing, even its empty space is perceivable. So the question remains, then, do we actually understand nothing at all?