Log24

Thursday, November 10, 2022

“What are we supposed to learn?”

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:39 pm

From a search in this journal for "Hexagram 61" —

“‘Oracle, why did you write
The Grasshopper Lies Heavy?
What are we supposed to learn?'”

— Philip K. Dick

“She began throwing the coins.“

I Ching Hexagram 61: Inner Truth

Sixty-one years ago . . .

Click to enlarge.

Saturday, February 5, 2022

Hexagram 61 Revisited

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:10 pm

The online New York Times  today  reporting a  Jan. 29 death:

"Mr. Dylan asked Mr. Lay to back him on the title track
of his album “Highway 61 Revisited.” In addition to
playing drums, Mr. Lay played a toy whistle on the song’s
memorable opening."
— Richard Sandomir, Feb. 5, 2022, 2:06 p.m. ET

The above link yields a March 11, 2019, YouTube upload:

Some may prefer the theology of Hexagram  61.

“‘Oracle, why did you write
The Grasshopper Lies Heavy?
What are we supposed to learn?'”

— Philip K. Dick

“She began throwing the coins.“

I Ching Hexagram 61: Inner Truth

Other remarks from the above
YouTube upload date — March 11, 2019 —

Saturday, July 27, 2019

Make America Strange Again

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:59 pm

Suggested by the previous post, "The Swarm" —

“‘Oracle, why did you write
The Grasshopper Lies Heavy?
What are we supposed to learn?'”

— Philip K. Dick

“She began throwing the coins.“

I Ching Hexagram 61: Inner Truth

Monday, October 16, 2017

Highway 61 Revisited

Filed under: G-Notes,General,Geometry — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 10:13 am

"God said to Abraham …." — Bob Dylan, "Highway 61 Revisited"

Related material — 

See as well Charles Small, Harvard '64, 
"Magic Squares over Fields" —

— and Conway-Norton-Ryba in this  journal.

Some remarks on an order-five  magic square over GF(52):

"Ultra Super Magic Square"

on the numbers 0 to 24:

22   5   18   1  14
  3  11  24   7  15
  9  17   0  13  21
10  23   6  19   2
16   4  12  20   8

Base-5:

42  10  33  01  24 
03  21  44  12  30 
14  32  00  23  41
20  43  11  34  02
31  04  22  40  13 

Regarding the above digits as representing
elements of the vector 2-space over GF(5)
(or the vector 1-space over GF(52)) 

All vector row sums = (0, 0)  (or 0, over GF(52)).
All vector column sums = same.

Above array as two
orthogonal Latin squares:
   
4 1 3 0 2     2 0 3 1 4
0 2 4 1 3     3 1 4 2 0 
1 3 0 2 4     4 2 0 3 1         
2 4 1 3 0     0 3 1 4 2
3 0 2 4 1     1 4 2 0 3

— Steven H. Cullinane,
      October 16, 2017

Thursday, July 13, 2017

Dead at 61

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:22 am

I Ching Hexagram 61: Inner Truth

See also Hexagram 61 in this journal.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

A6!

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 9:57 am

The title refers to a line by Louis Menand quoted
at the end of the previous post.

There "a6!" refers to the chessboard square in
column a, row 6.  In Geometry of the I Ching,
this square represents Hexagram 61, "Inner Truth."

See also "inner truth" in this journal.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Thursday June 4, 2009

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 1:24 pm

The Grasshopper
Lies Heavy

David Carradine dies at 72

“‘Oracle, why did you write
The Grasshopper Lies Heavy?
What are we supposed to learn?'”

— Philip K. Dick

She began throwing the coins.

I Ching Hexagram 61: Inner Truth

Click on image
for further details.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Tuesday September 26, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:48 am
Today’s Birthdays:
T. S. Eliot and Linda Hamilton

From Eliot’s
Ash Wednesday“–

“Prophesy to the wind,
    to the wind only for only
The wind will listen.
    And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper,
    saying….”         

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060926-Eliot.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

From The Man in the High Castle:

“Juliana said, ‘Oracle, why did you write The Grasshopper Lies Heavy? What are we supposed to learn?’

‘You have a disconcertingly superstitious way of phrasing your question,’ Hawthorne said. But he had squatted down to witness the coin throwing. ‘Go ahead,’ he said; he handed her three Chinese brass coins with holes in the center. ‘I generally use these.’

She began throwing the coins; she felt calm and very much herself. Hawthorne wrote down her lines for her. When she had thrown the coins six times, he gazed down and said:

‘Sun at the top. Tui at the bottom. Empty in the center.’

‘Do you know what hexagram that is?’ she said. ‘Without using the chart?’

‘Yes,’ Hawthorne said.

‘It’s Chung Fu,’ Juliana said. ‘Inner Truth. I know without using the chart, too. And I know what it means.'”

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060926-Lady.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Our Lady of
Judgment Day

“One of the illusions is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly until he knows that every day is Doomsday.”

Emerson, Ch. VII, “Works and Days,” in The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Vol. VII, Society and Solitude (1870)

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Wednesday April 26, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:09 pm
Charm
At Decision Time,
Colleges Lay On Charm
– Today’s New York Times

Also in today’s Times:

“‘Lestat,’ the maiden Broadway production of Warner Brothers Theater Ventures, is the third vampire musical to open in the last few years, and it seems unlikely to break the solemn curse that has plagued the genre. Directed by Robert Jess Roth from a book by Linda Woolverton, the show admittedly has higher aspirations and (marginally) higher production values than the kitschy ‘Dance of the Vampires’ (2002) and the leaden ‘Dracula: The Musical’ (2004), both major-league flops.” — Ben Brantley

Related material:

See Log24,
St. Patrick’s Day 2004:

“I faced myself that day with
the nonplused apprehension
of someone who has
come across a vampire
and has no crucifix in hand.”

— Joan Didion, “On Self-Respect,”
in Slouching Towards Bethlehem

“For every kind of vampire,
there is a kind of cross.”

— Thomas Pynchon,
  Gravity’s Rainbow

Hexagram 61: Inner Truth

Inner Truth,
Hexagram 61

See also

  Transylvania Bible School.

Sunday, June 6, 2004

Sunday June 6, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:29 pm
From
The Man in
the High Castle

by Philip K. Dick

Juliana said, “Oracle, why did you write The Grasshopper Lies Heavy? What are we supposed to learn?”

“You have a disconcertingly superstitious way of phrasing your question,” Hawthorne said. But he had squatted down to witness the coin throwing. “Go ahead,” he said; he handed her three Chinese brass coins with holes in the center. “I generally use these.”

She began throwing the coins; she felt calm and very much herself. Hawthorne wrote down her lines for her. When she had thrown the coins six times, he gazed down and said:

“Sun at the top. Tui at the bottom. Empty in the center.”

“Do you know what hexagram that is?” she said. “Without using the chart?”

“Yes,” Hawthorne said.

“It’s Chung Fu,” Juliana said. “Inner Truth. I know without using the chart, too. And I know what it means.”

From
The Book of
Ecclesiastes

12:5 … and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets

 

Saturday, February 28, 2004

Saturday February 28, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:00 pm

Inner Truth
and Outer Style

Inner Truth:

Hexagram 61: Inner Truth

Outer Style:


Joan Didion

“Everything I learned,
I learned at Vogue.”

Joan Didion, Nov. 2001 interview
with Amy Spindler.

Spindler died on Friday, Feb. 27, 2004.

For related material, see

Truth and Style: ART WARS at Harvard

and

blogs.law.harvard.edu/m759/.

Friday, December 5, 2003

Friday December 5, 2003

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:06 pm
Number 61    Hexagram 61: Inner Truth

For Joan Didion on her birthday

From “On Keeping a Notebook” (1966)
in Slouching Towards Bethlehem:

How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth about a notebook. I sometimes delude myself about why I keep a notebook, imagine that some thrifty virtue derives from preserving everything observed.  See enough and write it down, I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I am only going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do, which is write- on that bankrupt morning I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest, paid passage back to the world out there: dialogue overheard in hotels and elevators and at the hatcheck counter in Pavillon (one middle-aged man shows his hat check to another and says, “That’s my old football number”)….

I imagine, in other words, that the notebook is about other people. But of course it is not. I have no real business with what one stranger said to another at the hat-check counter in Pavillon; in fact I suspect that the line “That’s my old football number” touched not my own imagination at all, but merely some memory of something once read, probably “The Eighty-Yard Run.”

From a 1994 interview with Tommy Lee Jones by Bryant Gumbel:

Gumbel: While majoring in English, Jones was also an offensive guard on the Harvard football team. Number 61 in your program, his last game, against Yale, proved to be one of the most famous games every played. Harvard scored 16 points in the last 42 seconds to gain a 29-all tie. (Photo of Jones in football uniform, footage of 1968 football game.)

Mr. J: It couldn’t have been a more spectacular way to leave the game that had been so important to me all my life. The grass had never looked that green, nor the sky that blue.

Gumbel: That lucky game was for Jones a precursor of good fortune to come. It seems Harvard´s team doctor, Thomas Quigley, had caught some of Tommy Lee’s off the field plays and come away impressed. (Photo of Jones at rehearsal)

Mr. J: And when I was about to graduate, he asked if I had thought about going to New York, and I said I didn’t know. He said, “Well, if you do, take this letter and give it to my daughter, she’s doing a play.”

Ms. Jane Alexander (Actress): And I opened it. It was from my father, and it said: “This young man excels at Harvard. He is a good football player, but he wants to be an actor. Take care of him.” So I introduced him to a few agents, and right away he got a job.

Mr. J: And I had one line…. The line was five words long.

Gumbel: Were this a fairy tale, it would be….

Joan Didion: “That’s my old football number.”

Saturday, November 15, 2003

Saturday November 15, 2003

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:26 pm

From the
Empty Center:

From Friday's 2:56 AM entry —

Philip K. Dick,
The Man in the High Castle:

"Sun at the top.
Tui at the bottom.
Empty in the center."

"Do you know
what hexagram that is?"
she said.
"Without using the chart?"

"Yes," Hawthorne said.

"It's Chung Fu," Juliana said.
"Inner Truth. I know
without using the chart, too.
And I know what it means."

Margo Jefferson in
today's NY Times
:

"When a classical text is modernized,
what matters is imaginative logic.
Is the transformation coherent?
Does it enhance the power
of the past and present?
I say yes to both questions."

Today's previous entry, "Aes Triplex," is actually from 1:48 PM EST yesterday.  (It was posted to my alternate site, log24.com, since log24.net was down for Xanga maintenance.)  "Aes Triplex" deals with image and reality.

Its final link, to the heart of Rome, leads to Julius Caesar.

A related review in today's New York Times:

The opening paragraph:

"We live in a media maelstrom, and the Moonwork theater company's 'Julius Caesar' comes hurtling toward us right from its center. This production, at the Connelly Theater in the East Village through Nov. 23, is set in the here and now.

Shakespeare's

'Julius Caesar' is about politics, rhetoric and power; about manipulation of a nation's image and its people; about conspiracy, murder and the war that leads to a new regime. What play is better suited for our times?"

Margo Jefferson

Friday, November 14, 2003

Friday November 14, 2003

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:56 am

Philip K. Dick Meets Joan Didion

From the ending of
The Man in the High Castle:

Juliana said, “I wonder why the oracle would write a novel. Did you ever think of asking it that?” ….

“You may say the question aloud,” Hawthorne said. “We have no secrets here.”

Juliana said, “Oracle, why did you write The Grasshopper Lies Heavy? What are we supposed to learn?”

“You have a disconcertingly superstitious way of phrasing your question,” Hawthorne said. But he had squatted down to witness the coin throwing. “Go ahead,” he said; he handed her three Chinese brass coins with holes in the center. “I generally use these.”

She began throwing the coins; she felt calm and very much herself. Hawthorne wrote down her lines for her. When she had thrown the coins six times, he gazed down and said:

“Sun at the top. Tui at the bottom. Empty in the center.”

IMAGE- Hexagram 61

“Do you know what hexagram that is?” she said. “Without using the chart?”

“Yes,” Hawthorne said.

“It’s Chung Fu,” Juliana said. “Inner Truth. I know without using the chart, too. And I know what it means.”

From the ending of
Play It As It Lays:

I lie here in the sunlight, watch the hummingbird.  This morning I threw the coins in the swimming pool, and they gleamed and turned in the water in such a way that I was almost moved to read them.  I refrained.

One thing in my defense, not that it matters.  I know something Carter never knew, or Helene, or maybe you.  I know what “nothing” means, and keep on playing.

Why, BZ would say.

Why not, I say.

Powered by WordPress