Log24

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Labyrinth 23

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

The title refers to a search (see below)
suggested by three things—

  1. David Foster Wallace biographer D. T. Max
    "There's a note in one of my files where he says something like,
    'Infinite Jest  was just a means to Mary Karr's end, as it were.' "

  2. "There is a body  on  the cross in my church ." —Mary Karr

  3. A body.

The search Labyrinth 23.

(Within the search results, note particularly the post "The Infinity Point.")

Monday, September 9, 2024

For “The Perfect Couple” —  Facets and Labyrinth

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 5:58 am

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

For a Labyrinth of Solitude

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:24 am

Sunday, September 10, 2023

Mythspace Architecture: Labyrinth and Lychgate

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:28 pm

"Having seen Labyrinth  at St. Mark's-in-the-Valley Episcopal Church,
it's time to have a rest at this restaurant."

— https://restaurantguru.com/Bar-Le-Cote-Los-Olivos-California
 

"It's wine country , after all." — "All the Old Knives"

Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Mathematical Labyrinth

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:20 pm

Princeton mathematician Elias Stein died Dec. 23, 2018, at 87.

See as well Stein in posts tagged Narrative Labyrinth.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Labyrinth of the Line

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 11:24 am

“Yo sé de un laberinto griego que es una línea única, recta.”
—Borges, “La Muerte y la Brújula”

“I know of one Greek labyrinth which is a single straight line.”
—Borges, “Death and the Compass”

Another single-line labyrinth—

Robert A. Wilson on the projective line with 24 points
and its image in the Miracle Octad Generator (MOG)—

IMAGE- Robert Wilson on the projective line with 24 points and its image in the MOG

Related material —

The remarks of Scott Carnahan at Math Overflow on October 25th, 2010
and the remarks at Log24 on that same date.

A search in the latter for miracle octad is updated below.

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110302-MOGsearch.jpg

This search (here in a customized version) provides some context for the
Benedictine University discussion described here on February 25th and for
the number 759 mentioned rather cryptically in last night’s “Ariadne’s Clue.”

Update of March 3— For some historical background from 1931, see The Mathieu Relativity Problem.

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Depth

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 3:08 am

James Hillman
EGALITARIAN TYPOLOGIES
VERSUS THE PERCEPTION OF THE UNIQUE

“The kind of movement Olson urges is an inward deepening of the image,
an in-sighting of the superimposed levels of significance within it.
This is the very mode that Jung suggested for grasping dreams —
not as a sequence in time, but as revolving around  a nodal complex.”

See as well "True Grids" (Log24, August 9, 2018).

The Wikipedia "Truchet tiles" article shown above illustrates Hillman's
"superimposed levels of significance."

For more levels, see Wang on Gõdel and other posts tagged For Stella Maris.

Friday, September 27, 2024

To Phrase a Coin

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , , — m759 @ 9:15 am

(Continued from May 2, 2023 and December 18, 2022)

https://www.armstrong.edu/history-journal/history-journal-myth-ritual-and-the-labyrinth-of-king-minos

Harmonic analysis based on the circle involves the
circular  functions.  Dyadic  harmonic analysis involves 

Cullinane Square Model

 

Summary, as an illustration of a title by George Mackey

Sunday, May 19, 2024

Appalachian Metadata

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:45 pm

Reba's 'Seven Minutes in Heaven'

Meanwhile . . .

Thursday, May 9, 2024

Hollywood Epistemology

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:54 pm

New teaser trailer . . .

Earlier teaser trailer . . . October 7, 2023 . . .

This  journal on the above 2023 trailer date . . .

Tuesday, May 2, 2023

To Phrase a Coin

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 11:49 pm

In lieu of a Fields medal . . .

https://www.armstrong.edu/history-journal/history-journal-myth-ritual-and-the-labyrinth-of-king-minos

Wednesday, December 28, 2022

The Santa Fe Institute as Magisterium Wannabe

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:23 am

"The novelist Cormac McCarthy has been a fixture around
the Santa Fe Institute since its embryonic stages in the
early 1980s. Cormac received a MacArthur Award in 1981
and met one of the members of the board of the MacArthur
Foundation, Murray Gell-Mann, who had won the Nobel Prize
in physics in 1969. Cormac and Murray discovered that they
shared a keen interest in just about everything under the sun
and became fast friends. When Murray helped to found the
Santa Fe Institute in 1984, he brought Cormac along, knowing
that everyone would benefit from this cross-disciplinary
collaboration." — https://www.santafe.edu/news-center/news/
cormac-and-sfi-abiding-friendship

Joy Williams, review of two recent Cormac McCarthy novels —

"McCarthy has pocketed his own liturgical, ecstatic style
as one would a coin, a ring, a key, in the service of a more
demanding and heartless inquiry through mathematics and
physics into the immateriality, the indeterminacy, of reality."

A Demanding and Heartless Coin, Ring, and Key:
 

COIN
 

https://www.armstrong.edu/history-journal/history-journal-myth-ritual-and-the-labyrinth-of-king-minos
 

RING


"We can define sums and products so that the G-images of D generate
an ideal (1024 patterns characterized by all horizontal or vertical "cuts"
being uninterrupted) of a ring of 4096 symmetric patterns. There is an 
infinite family of such 'diamond' rings, isomorphic to rings of matrices
over GF(4)."
 

KEY


"It must be remarked that these 8 heptads are the key to an elegant proof…."

— Philippe Cara, "RWPRI Geometries for the Alternating Group A8," in 
Finite Geometries: Proceedings of the Fourth Isle of Thorns Conference 
(July 16-21, 2000), Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001, ed. Aart Blokhuis,
James W. P. Hirschfeld, Dieter Jungnickel, and Joseph A. Thas, pp. 61-97.
 

For those who prefer a "liturgical, ecstatic style" —

Wednesday, December 23, 2020

Facets . . .

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 2:19 pm

Continued.

The book by Hesse has many facets ….” (Link added.)

— V. V. Nalimov, In the Labyrinths of Language ,
Ch. 1, “What Language Is,” p. 22.

Related philosophical speculation —

Friday, March 17, 2017

To Coin a Phrase

(A sequel to the previous post, Narrative for Westworld)

"That corpse you planted last year . . . ." — T. S.  Eliot

Circle and Square at the Court of King Minos

Harmonic analysis based on the circle involves the
circular  functions.  Dyadic  harmonic analysis involves

For some related history, see (for instance) E. M. Stein
on square functions in a 1982 AMS Bulletin  article.

Saturday, May 14, 2016

The Hourglass Code

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 1:28 pm

version of the I Ching’s Hexagram 19:

I Ching Hexagram 19, 'Approach,' the box-style version

From Katherine Neville's The Eight , a book on the significance
of the date April 4 — the author's birthday —

Axe image from Katherine Neville's 'The Eight'

The Eight  by Katherine Neville —

    “What does this have to do with why we’re here?”
    “I saw it in a chess book Mordecai showed me.  The most ancient chess service ever discovered was found at the palace of King Minos on Crete– the place where the famous Labyrinth was built, named after this sacred axe.  The chess service dates to 2000 B.C.  It was made of gold and silver and jewels…. And in the center was carved a labrys.”
… “But I thought chess wasn’t even invented until six or seven hundred A.D.,” I added.  “They always say it came from Persia or India.  How could this Minoan chess service be so old?”
    “Mordecai’s written a lot himself on the history of chess,” said Lily…. “He thinks that chess set in Crete was designed by the same guy who built the Labyrinth– the sculptor Daedalus….”
    Now things were beginning to click into place….
    “Why was this axe carved on the chessboard?” I asked Lily, knowing the answer in my heart before she spoke.  “What did Mordecai say was the connection?”….
    “That’s what it’s all about,” she said quietly.  “To kill the King.”
 
     The sacred axe was used to kill the King.  The ritual had been the same since the beginning of time. The game of chess was merely a reenactment.  Why hadn’t I recognized it before?

Related material:  Posts now tagged Hourglass Code.

See also the hourglass in a search for Pilgrim's Progress Illustration.

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Reappearing All Over Again

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 2:02 pm

For the title, see the phrase "reappearing number" in this journal.

Some related mathematics—

the Greek labyrinth of Borges, as well as…

IMAGE- Robert Wilson on the projective line with 24 points and its image in the MOG.

Note that "0" here stands for "23," while corresponds to today's date.

Friday, March 16, 2012

For the Clueless

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 7:11 am

"And she provided him besides with a ball of thread,
bidding him to fasten the end of it to the entrance
of the Labyrinth, and unwind it as he went in, that
it might serve him as a clue to find his way out again."

— "Theseus and Ariadne," by Charles Morris

From "Ariadne's Clue," a post of March 1 last year—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110301-DeathlyHallows759.jpg

The Watson here is not Emma, but Victor—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120316-Watson7detail.jpg

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

The Infinity Point

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:20 pm

From Labyrinth of the Line (March 2, 2011)—

"… construct the Golay code by taking the 24 points
to be the points of the projective line F23 ∪ {}…."

— Robert A. Wilson

A simpler projective line— a Galois geometry
model of the line F2 ∪ {}—

Image- The Three-Point Line: A Finite Projective Geometry

Here we may consider  to be modeled*
by the third square above— the Galois window .

* Update of about 1 AM Jan. 25, 2012—
  This infinity-modeling is of course a poetic conceit,
  not to be taken too seriously. For a serious 
  discussion of points at infinity and finite fields,
  see (for instance) Daniel Bump's "The Group GL(2)."

Friday, January 20, 2012

Cock Tale

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:00 pm

(Continued from November 12, 2005 and June 7, 2011)

IMAGE- 1970 photo used in New Yorker of Jan. 23, 2012, with added photo credit information from a Philippe Sollers website

Related material— "Labyrinth," a fiction
by the late Roberto Bolaño
in the current New Yorker 

"There's no photo credit."

Friday, March 11, 2011

Now Lens

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:00 am

A Story in Pictures

Errol Morris in The New York Times  on March 9

"If everything is incommensurable, then everything is seen through the lens of the present, the lens of now ."

"Borges concluded by quoting Chesterton, 'there is nothing more frightening than a labyrinth that has no center.' [72]"

Now Lens

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110311-NowLens.jpg

Uncertified Copy

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110311-UncertifiedCopy.jpg

Del Toro

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110311-delToro.jpg

Plato's Diamond

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110311-LychePlatosDiamond256w.jpg

Portrait of an Artist

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110311-JosefineLyche.jpg

Meanwhile, back at the Times

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110311-CertifiedCopy.jpg

Friday, December 4, 2009

And continued…

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Glory Road postgraduate curriculum–

"Learning has always been a major part of Catholic tradition."

Related material:

The Labyrinth of Solitude
entry in this journal,
The Harvard Crimson on the
Harvard FML Video Contest,
and the winning video

http://www.log24.com/log/pix09A/091204-HUTV.jpg

Another view of Harvard–

St. Paul's RC Church and the Harvard Lampoon building, photo from MSPdude at Flickr

Photo from MSPdude at Flickr

"Let Noon Be Fair."
— Novel title, Willard Motley.

See also Soul at Harvard.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Tuesday May 27, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:02 pm
For Sydney Pollack
(See last night’s entry.)

“Now, gentlemen,
I give you
our latest acquisition
from the enemy.”

Paths of Glory   

Final scene from 'Paths of Glory'

Note the number, 701,
on the colonel’s collar.

Adapted from Log24,
February 19-22, 2008:

“‘This is the last call for Jaunt-701,’
 the pleasant female voice echoed
 through the Blue Concourse
of 
New York’s
     Port Authority Terminal….

Images of time and eternity in memory of Michelangelo
See 2/22/08,
 4/19/08,
and 5/22/08.

….’What happened?’
one of the scientists shouted….

‘It’s eternity in there,’ he said,
and dropped dead….”


— Stephen King, “The Jaunt

Die Liebe nahm kein Ende mehr.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Thursday May 22, 2008

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 9:00 am
The Undertaking:
An Exercise in
Conceptual Art

I Ching hexagram 54: The Marrying Maiden

Hexagram 54:
THE JUDGMENT

Undertakings bring misfortune.
Nothing that would further.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix08/080522-Irelandslide1.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Brian O’Doherty, an Irish-born artist,
before the [Tuesday, May 20] wake
of his alter ego* ‘Patrick Ireland’
on the grounds of the
Irish Museum of Modern Art.”
New York Times, May 22, 2008    

THE IMAGE

Thus the superior man
understands the transitory
in the light of
the eternity of the end.

Another version of
the image:

Images of time and eternity in memory of Michelangelo
See 2/22/08
and  4/19/08.


Related material:

Michael Kimmelman in today’s New York Times

“An essay from the ’70s by Mr. O’Doherty, ‘Inside the White Cube,’ became famous in art circles for describing how modern art interacted with the gallery spaces in which it was shown.”

Brian O’Doherty, “Inside the White Cube,” 1976 Artforum essays on the gallery space and 20th-century art:

“The history of modernism is intimately framed by that space. Or rather the history of modern art can be correlated with changes in that space and in the way we see it. We have now reached a point where we see not the art but the space first…. An image comes to mind of a white, ideal space that, more than any single picture, may be the archetypal image of 20th-century art.”

An archetypal image

THE SPACE:

The Eightfold Cube: The Beauty of Klein's Simple Group

A non-archetypal image

THE ART:

Jack in the Box, by Natasha Wescoat

Natasha Wescoat, 2004
See also Epiphany 2008:

How the eightfold cube works

“Nothing that would further.”
— Hexagram 54

Lear’s fool:

 …. Now thou art an 0
without a figure. I am better
than thou art, now. I am a fool;
thou art nothing….

“…. in the last mystery of all the single figure of what is called the World goes joyously dancing in a state beyond moon and sun, and the number of the Trumps is done.  Save only for that which has no number and is called the Fool, because mankind finds it folly till it is known.  It is sovereign or it is nothing, and if it is nothing then man was born dead.”

The Greater Trumps,
by Charles Williams, Ch. 14

* For a different, Jungian, alter ego, see Irish Fourplay (Jan. 31, 2003) and “Outside the Box,” a New York Times review of O’Doherty’s art (featuring a St. Bridget’s Cross) by Bridget L. Goodbody dated April 25, 2007. See also Log24 on that date.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Sunday February 24, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm
Labyrinth of Solitude

http://www.log24.com/log/pix08/080224-Chapel.jpg

Chapel, Cuernavaca, Mexico

“A labyrinthine man never seeks
the truth, but always, only, his Ariadne….
Who besides myself knows what Ariadne is?”

Nietzsche,
epigraph to Ariadne’s Lives,
by Nina daVinci Nichols
(See yesterday’s entry.)

Related material:

Entries of Feb. 13
and Feb. 19 at Log24
and the entry of Feb. 13 at

Ariachne’s Broken Woof

Troilus and Cressida in Act 5, Scene 2:

“And yet the spacious breadth of this division
Admits no orifex for a point as subtle
As Ariachne’s broken woof to enter.
Instance, O instance! strong as Pluto’s gates;
Cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven:
Instance, O instance! strong as heaven itself;
The bonds of heaven are slipp’d, dissolved, and loosed….”

See also Slipstream: “We’ve lost the plot!

Friday, February 8, 2008

Friday February 8, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:06 am

Prizes and Rewards

"… like the victors in the games   
collecting their prizes,
    we receive our reward…."
— Conclusion of
Plato's Republic

From The Harvard Crimson
front page on
Mardi Gras, 2008:

Harvard senior Matthew Di Pasquale
plans a new campus magazine called
"Diamond"–

New magazine 'Diamond' planned at Harvard
Click to enlarge
.

Related material:

The Crimson Passion:
 Drama at Mardi Gras

Friday, April 20, 2007

Friday April 20, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:31 pm
Speech

In Grand Rapids today

"… Bush spoke and answered audience questions for nearly 90 minutes inside East Grand Rapids High School in suburban Grand Rapids….

After leaving the school, Bush's motorcade stopped at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in downtown Grand Rapids, where he stood silently for a few moments after placing a bouquet of white roses at Ford's burial site on the museum grounds. The 38th president, who grew up in Grand Rapids, died Dec. 26 at age 93."

Multispeech

Mich. Lottery Apr. 20, 2007: Day 019, Night 001

 

For the meaning of the lottery icons
above, see this morning's entry and
an entry that it links to —
Time's Labyrinth continued
of March 8, 2007.

For the meaning of multispeech,
see the entries of
All Hallows' Eve, 2005:

Tesseract on the cover of The Gameplayers of Zan
 
"There is such a thing
as a tesseract."
A Wrinkle in Time 
 

Friday April 20, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:07 am
Icons

Part I

The Library of Congress
Today in History, April 20:

“American sculptor Daniel Chester French was born in Exeter, New Hampshire on April 20, 1850. His colossal seated figure of Abraham Lincoln presides over the Lincoln Memorial.

Reared in Cambridge and Concord, Massachusetts, he was embraced by members of the Transcendentalist community including Ralph Waldo Emerson. Author and fellow Concord resident Louisa May Alcott encouraged young French to pursue a career as an artist. Louisa’s sister, artist May Alcott, was his early teacher.

French studied in Boston and New York prior to receiving his first commission for the 1875 statue The Minute Man. Standing near the North Bridge in Concord, in the Minute Man National Historical Park, this work commemorates events at the North Bridge, the site of ‘the shot heard ’round the world.’ An American icon, images derivative of The Minute Man statue appeared on defense bonds, stamps, and posters during World War II.”

Part II:

Entertainment Weekly,

November 7, 2003

Keanu Reeves, Entertainment Weekly, Nov. 7, 2003

Part III:

Log24 on the anniversary of
Lincoln’s assassination —

Saturday, April 14, 2007  4:30 AM

The Sun Also Sets, or…

This Way to
the Egress

Continued from April 12:

“I have only come here 
seeking knowledge,
 Things they would not   
       teach me of in college….”
 
— Synchronicity
lyrics

Quoted in Log24,
Time’s Labyrinth continued:

“The sacred axe was used to kill the King. The ritual had been the same since the beginning of time. The game of chess was merely a reenactment. Why hadn’t I recognized it before?”

— Katherine Neville,
The Eight,

Ballantine reprint, 1990,


“Know the one about
the Demiurge and the
Abridgment of Hope?”

— Robert Stone,
A Flag for Sunrise,
Knopf, 1981,
the final page

Part IV:

Log24 entry of

November 7, 2003

Nixon's the One button

— and a
student play from
Virginia Tech:

Play by Virginia Tech student

Part V:


Symmetry
for Beavis and Butt-Head

and
The Rhetoric of Scientism:

It’s a very ancient saying,
But a true and honest thought,
That if you become a teacher,
By your pupils you’ll be taught.

— Oscar Hammerstein,
“Getting to Know You”

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Thursday March 8, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 9:00 am
Dia de la
Mujer Trabajadora

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070308-Aldecoa.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“Yo es que nací un 8 de marzo,
Día de la Mujer Trabajadora,
y no he hecho más que
trabajar toda mi vida.”

Josefina Aldecoa

For background on Aldecoa,
see a paper (pdf) by
Sara Brenneis:

“Josefina Aldecoa intertwines
history, collective memory
and individual testimony in her
historical memory trilogy…”

HISTORICAL MEMORY–

History:

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was the largest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York, causing the death of 146 garment workers who either died in the fire or jumped to their deaths.

Propaganda, March 1977:

“On March 8, 1908, after the death of 128 women trapped in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City, 15,000 women workers from the garment and textile industry marched echoing the demands of their sisters 50 years earlier…”

Propaganda, March 2006:

“First of all, on March 8th, 1857, a large number of factory workers in the United States took to the streets to demand their economic and political rights. The owners called the police who arrived immediately and opened fire, engaging in blind repression… Later on, in 1908, the same date of March 8th was once again a memorable date of struggle. On this day, capitalist bosses in Chicago set fire to a textile factory where over a thousand women worked. A very large number was terribly burnt. 120 died!”

Propaganda disguised as news, March 2007:

From today’s top story in 24 HoursTM, a commuter daily in Vancouver published by Sun Media Corporation:

Fight still on for equality

By Robyn Stubbs and Carly Krug

“International Women’s Day commemorates a march by female garment workers protesting low wages, 12-hour workdays and bad working conditions in New York City on March 8, 1857.

Then in 1908, after 128 women were trapped and killed in a fire at a New York City garment and textile factory, 15,000 women workers again took their protests to the street.”

Related historical fiction:

A version of the
I Ching’s Hexagram 19:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051202-Hex19.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Log24 12/3/05:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051202-Axe.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Katherine Neville, The Eight

    “What does this have to do with why we’re here?”
    “I saw it in a chess book Mordecai showed me.  The most ancient chess service ever discovered was found at the palace of King Minos on Crete– the place where the famous Labyrinth was built, named after this sacred axe.  The chess service dates to 2000 B.C.  It was made of gold and silver and jewels…. And in the center was carved a labrys.”
… “But I thought chess wasn’t even invented until six or seven hundred A.D.,” I added.  “They always say it came from Persia or India.  How could this Minoan chess service be so old?”
    “Mordecai’s written a lot himself on the history of chess,” said Lily…. “He thinks that chess set in Crete was designed by the same guy who built the Labyrinth– the sculptor Daedalus….”
    Now things were beginning to click into place….
    “Why was this axe carved on the chessboard?” I asked Lily, knowing the answer in my heart before she spoke.  “What did Mordecai say was the connection?”….
    “That’s what it’s all about,” she said quietly.  “To kill the King.”
 
     The sacred axe was used to kill the King.  The ritual had been the same since the beginning of time. The game of chess was merely a reenactment.  Why hadn’t I recognized it before?

Perhaps at the center of
Aldecoa’s labyrinth lurk the
  capitalist bosses from Chicago
who, some say, set fire
to a textile factory
on this date in 1908.

For a Freudian perspective
on the above passage,
see yesterday’s entry
In the Labyrinth of Time,
with its link to
John Irwin‘s essay

The False Artaxerxes:
Borges and the
Dream of Chess
.”

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070307-Symbols.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Symbols
S. H. Cullinane
March 7, 2007

Today, by the way, is the
feast of a chess saint.

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Wednesday March 7, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 8:24 am
In the Labyrinth
of Time:


8:24:48
AM EST


Related material–


Symbols:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070307-Symbols.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

and

The False Artaxerxes:
Borges and the
Dream of Chess

This entry was inspired by
Xanga footprints yesterday
from Virginia:

 
1. Virginia
Weblog
ART WARS:
Time and the Grid
3/6/2007
9:48 AM
2. Virginia
Weblog
Sequel
3/6/2007
11:38 AM
3. Virginia
Weblog
Games and Truth
3/6/2007
1:25 PM
4. Virginia
/item.aspx?user=m759&ta…
The Transcendent Signified
3/6/2007
5:15 PM
5. Virginia
/item.aspx?user=m759&ta…
Zen and Language Games
3/6/2007
5:16 PM
6. Virginia
/item.aspx?user=m759&ta…
Balanchine’s Birthday
3/6/2007
6:12 PM
7. Virginia
/item.aspx?user=m759&ta…
The Agony and the Ya-Ya
3/6/2007
6:12 PM
8. Virginia
/item.aspx?user=m759&ta…
Directions Out
3/6/2007
6:13 PM
9. Virginia
/item.aspx?user=m759&ta…
The Four Last Things
3/6/2007
6:13 PM

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Wednesday January 3, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:32 am
The Wanderer:
 
11:32:56

“What on earth is
a concrete universal?”
Robert M. Pirsig  

Hexagram 56

“James Joyce meant Finnegans Wake to become a universal book. His universe was primarily Dublin, but Joyce believed that the universal can be found in the particular. ‘I always write about Dublin,’ he said to Arthur Power, ‘because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world’ (Ellmann 505). He achieved that goal in Ulysses by making Bloom a universal wanderer, the everyman trying to find his way in the labyrinth of the world.” —The Joyce of Science

Related material:

From A Shot at Redemption

The Past as Prologue:
Grand Rapids Revisited

Constantine (cartoon) and Donald Knuth

John Constantine,
cartoon character, and
Donald E. Knuth,
Lutheran mathematician

“…. recent books testify
further to Calvin College’s
unparalleled leadership
in the field of
Christian historiography….”

“I need a photo opportunity,
I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard.”

A photo opportunity —

Photo op for Gerald Ford

and a recent cartoon:

Cartoon of Gerald Ford with halo

History, said Stephen….

From Calvin College,
today’s meditation:

Monday, May 22, 2006

Monday May 22, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:04 am
A Labyrinth
for Penelope

Wednesday, December 7, 2005

Wednesday December 7, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 pm
Magical Thinking
 
(continued)

1:00:19 EST

The Lion, the Witch
and the Wardrobe

premieres tonight at
 the Royal Albert Hall.

Log24 Dec. 2:

Hexagram 19 in the
Cullinane series:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051202-Hex19.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Log24 Dec. 3:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051202-Axe.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Katherine Neville, The Eight

    “What does this have to do with why we’re here?”
    “I saw it in a chess book Mordecai showed me.  The most ancient chess service ever discovered was found at the palace of King Minos on Crete– the place where the famous Labyrinth was built, named after this sacred axe.  The chess service dates to 2000 B.C.  It was made of gold and silver and jewels…. And in the center was carved a labrys.”
… “But I thought chess wasn’t even invented until six or seven hundred A.D.,” I added.  “They always say it came from Persia or India.  How could this Minoan chess service be so old?”
    “Mordecai’s written a lot himself on the history of chess,” said Lily…. “He thinks that chess set in Crete was designed by the same guy who built the Labyrinth– the sculptor Daedalus….”
    Now things were beginning to click into place….
    “Why was this axe carved on the chessboard?” I asked Lily, knowing the answer in my heart before she spoke.  “What did Mordecai say was the connection?”….
    “That’s what it’s all about,” she said quietly.  “To kill the King.”
 
     The sacred axe was used to kill the King.  The ritual had been the same since the beginning of time. The game of chess was merely a reenactment.  Why hadn’t I recognized it before?


“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.

“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”

 

Sunday, May 22, 2005

Sunday May 22, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:09 pm

The Diamond in the Labyrinth

From the labyrinth of Solitude:

  1. An Invariant Feast
  2. Columbia News obituary of Robert D. Cumming
  3. Solitude

    (Phenomenology and Deconstruction, Vol 4
    by Robert Denoon Cumming)

    On page 13 of Solitude —

    From Heidegger’s “Letter on Humanism” —
    “… so long as philosophy merely busies itself with continually obstructing the possibility of admission to the subject of thinking– that is, the truth of being– it escapes the danger of ever being broken against the hardness of that subject.  Thus ‘philosophizing’ about the shattering is separated by an abyss from a thinking that is shattered.”

    This suggests a search for
    “Heidegger” + “diamond,” which yields —

  4. The Diamond at the End of Time,
    which leads to
  5. Orson Welles Interviews Jilly Dybka,
    which leads to
  6. Poetry Hut Blog,
    which leads to

  7. Fair Territory, by Jilly Dybka,
    which contains the following —
  8. The Quickening

    I hold my breath, the plane’s
       wheels under me
    still suspended in the minutes after
    takeoff, when the planet’s brute gravity
    statistically can cause a disaster.
    We are flying low enough that I scan
    civilization in miniature.
    Blue pill swimming pools, and
       roadways that fan
    out like ribbons in the wind. On the sure
    crust, too, a baseball diamond.
       Young boys race
    across the tilted surface, mute and small,
    kicking up red dust. First base, Second base,
    Third Base, Home. We ascend into nightfall
    and beneath the broken stars one kid bunts.
    I remember I was a rookie once.

  9. From yesterday’s online New York Times:

    The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050521-ConeyIslandCrash.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Nine is a Vine.

Sunday May 22, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:25 pm
The Shining
of Friday the 13th

From Margalit Fox in today’s New York Times:

“Eddie Barclay, who for three decades after World War II was arguably the most powerful music mogul in Europe and inarguably the most flamboyant, died on [Friday] May 13 in Paris. He was 84….

… Mr. Barclay was best known for three things: popularizing American jazz in France in the postwar years; keeping the traditional French chanson alive into the age of rock ‘n’ roll; and presiding over parties so lavish that they were considered just the tiniest bit excessive even by the standards of the French Riviera….

Among the guests at some of his glittering parties… Jack Nicholson….”

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050522-Jack.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Related material:

“Joyce’s confidant in Zurich in 1918, Frank Budgen, luckily for us described the process of writing Ulysses…. ‘Not Bloom, not Stephen is here the principal personage, but Dublin itself… All towns are labyrinths…’  While working… Joyce bought a game called Labyrinth, which he played every evening for a time with his daughter, Lucia. From this game he cataloged the six main errors of judgment into which one might fall in seeking a way out of a maze.”

quoted by Bruce Graham from The Creators by Daniel Boorstin

“We’ll always have Paris.”

An Invariant Feast, Log24, Sept. 6, 2004

Wednesday, January 8, 2003

Wednesday January 8, 2003

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:17 pm

In the Labyrinth of Memory

Taking a cue from Danny in the labyrinth of Kubrick's film "The Shining," today I retraced my steps.

My Jan. 6 entry, "Dead Poet in the City of Angels," links to a set of five December 21, 2002, entries.  In the last of these, "Irish Lament," is a link to a site appropriate for Maud Gonne's birthday — a discussion of Yeats's "Among School Children."

Those who recall a young woman named Patricia Collinge (Radcliffe '64) might agree that her image is aptly described by Yeats:

Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
And took a mess of shadows for its meat

This meditation leads in turn to a Sept. 20, 2002, entry, "Music for Patricias," and a tune familiar to James Joyce, "Finnegan's Wake," the lyrics of which lead back to images in my entries of Dec. 20, 2002, "Last-Minute Shopping," and of Dec. 28, 2002, "Solace from Hell's Kitchen."  The latter entry is in memory of George Roy Hill, director of "The Sting," who died Dec. 27, 2002.

The Dec. 28 image from "The Sting" leads us back to more recent events — in particular, to the death of a cinematographer who won an Oscar for picturing Newman and Redford in another film — Conrad L. Hall, who died Saturday, Jan. 4, 2003. 

For a 3-minute documentary on Hall's career, click here.

Hall won Oscars for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "American Beauty," and may win a posthumous Oscar for "Road to Perdition," last year's Irish-American mob saga:

"Tom Hanks plays Angel of Death Michael Sullivan. An orphan 'adopted' by crime boss John Rooney (Paul Newman), Sullivan worships Rooney above his own family. Rooney gave Sullivan a home when he had none. Rooney is the father Sullivan never knew. Too bad Rooney is the

Rock Island
branch of Capone's mob."

In keeping with this Irish connection, here is a set of images.

American Beauty
© Suzanne Harle 1997

Conrad L. Hall

 

A Game of Chess

I need a photo-opportunity.
I want a shot at redemption.
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard.
— Paul Simon

"Like a chess player, he knows that to win a tournament, it is sometimes wise to offer a draw in a game even when you think you can win it."

Roger Ebert on Robert Duvall's character in "A Civil Action"

Director Steven Zaillian will take part in a tribute to Conrad L. Hall at the Palm Springs International Film Festival awards ceremony on Jan 11.  Hall was the cinematographer for Zaillian's films "A Civil Action" and "Searching for Bobby Fischer." 

"A Civil Action" was cast by the Boston firm Collinge/Pickman Casting, named in part for that same Patricia Collinge ("hollow of cheek") mentioned above.

See also "Conrad Hall looks back and forward to a Work in Progress."  ("Work in Progress" was for a time the title of Joyce's Finnegans Wake.)

What is the moral of all this remembrance?

An 8-page (paper) journal note I compiled on November 14, 1995 (feast day of St. Lawrence O'Toole, patron saint of Dublin, allegedly born in 1132) supplies an answer in the Catholic tradition that might have satisfied Joyce (to whom 1132 was a rather significant number): 

How can you tell there's an Irishman present
at a cockfight?
     He enters a duck.
How can you tell a Pole is present?
     He bets on the duck.
How can you tell an Italian is present?
     The duck wins.

Every picture tells a story.

Hall wins Oscar for "American Beauty"

 

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