Here's something I'm quite sick of hearing from all kinds of people who really should know better, but I have to admit I've made the same mistake. Anyways, here it is:
The argument goes that biofuel, specifically grain-based ethanol, is a Bad Thing for developing countries because it hikes the price of food, causing people to starve.
That was pretty simple. Now, I don't believe in biofuel as an answer to global warming or foreign dependence on oil, or really for any such solution. But the argument that it raises food prices is wrong. At least, in the very short run, it is wrong. This is something I learned in first year economics. So let's see if I can get this right. When prices go up, they don't just stay up. When prices go up due to an increase in demand, suppliers benefit. Suppliers make more dollars per unit sold in a market with increasing prices. So what do they do with the extra money? They invest it (What if they choose not to invest the extra gains? They get out-competed by producers who do go ahead and make those smart investments), and they develop cheaper and more efficient ways to grow crops. They buy new machines, or develop new land, or invest in biotechnology such as disease-resistant crops. The result of this is more supply at lower cost to the suppliers, which results in a downward pressure on prices.
Now, the only negative thing I could think of would be that volatility in the price of fuel will have an effect on the price of food. Because things like global turbulence and wars and stuff tend to throw things like fuel prices into wild fluctuations of peaks and troughs of demand. However, the principle of risk management has taught me that amalgamating the food and fuel markets should actually have a mediating effect on the volatility of both markets, resulting in an amalgamated market that is more stable than either of the two component markets. Thus, food prices should actually remain more stable than before the advent of biofuel. Of course, wars and other international crises could, in some special cases, have an amplifying effect on the volatility of both markets, creating super-waves and super-troughs, but I don't see this as an argument against biofuel, but as something for national governments to watch out for and create contingency plans for, just as they currently have contingency plans in case of food or fuel shortages.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
The Cosmic Poem, or My Fear of Plagiarism
I don't know if this should be one post or two, because the first idea I have had for a while, and I've been meaning to write it down somewhere I can access it again. And that place is here:
The Cosmic Poem
This is a new approach (for me) to writing poetry, and it has something to do with Plato, but I'm not going to explain that connection except that it means I draw my poems from the ideal realm, the realm of pure thought and ideas. When I say I want to write the cosmic poem, or that I want all my poems to be Cosmic (with a capital "C"), I'm saying that my poems ought to be the physical manifestation, on paper or on the screen, taking the form of letters in the English language, of some greater poem that exists in the Platonic realm of ideals.
Part of my inspiration comes from the various attempts throughout history of generating the cosmic religious text. This includes the Bible in English, most pertinently, because there seems to be an ongoing attempt to match the earthly published version of the Bible with some perfect, ideal version that Gleebzod has in his library in Heaven. It is not even certain whether the original written version of the books of the Bible in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek are the correct versions either. They do contain some spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, stylistic errors. So over the years, and into the modern age, it has been incumbent on Bible translators to make decisions as to the most correct version of the Bible.
This is how I feel it is with every poem that I write. I feel that I am writing down cosmic ideas onto an English page. Like the Bible translators, I do this with two states of mind held in suspension in my head as I write. I have hope that I can correct it to the point of perfection, otherwise why would I try? But at the same time I am utterly hopeless that the task will ever be completed. Let's be realistic, the Bible changes from year to year, and so will my poems as long as I allow myself to be obsessed by them. Do you see how I have two diametrically opposed ideas in my head, and yet I require both of them in order to be a Cosmic Poet?
Let me give you an example. A while back I was thinking about haikus, and I had been reading about haikus. And as I was thinking, a cosmic haiku just sort of popped into my head. The problem was, it was so perfect and so alien to me that I was sure I must have read it somewhere and just forgot I read it. Well, maybe this did happen, but I have not been able to find the original poem anywhere. In case you're curious, here is the haiku:
Pretty standard imagistic haiku, if you ask me. I do tend to leave out season words from my haikus, but that's my own stylistic choice. The point is, as soon as I wrote this poem down, I was sure I had read it elsewhere. It was just too perfect. It was alien. It was cosmic.
And this is where my fear of plagiarism comes in. What if I did read this poem somewhere and simply internalized it? It really feels like someone else's poem, but as far as I can remember, I wrote it.
Anyways, if it is indeed my own poem, this is actually an effect I feel sort of good about, because it would indicate that I have reached a cosmic level with my poetry. I have come across a combination of words that the universe intended to be together, and I was merely the person who figured it out. This is my definition of Cosmic Poetry. And even if it does turn out that this really was someone else's poem that I happened to remember, I can still see the experience as something to look for in writing future poems.
The Cosmic Poem
This is a new approach (for me) to writing poetry, and it has something to do with Plato, but I'm not going to explain that connection except that it means I draw my poems from the ideal realm, the realm of pure thought and ideas. When I say I want to write the cosmic poem, or that I want all my poems to be Cosmic (with a capital "C"), I'm saying that my poems ought to be the physical manifestation, on paper or on the screen, taking the form of letters in the English language, of some greater poem that exists in the Platonic realm of ideals.
Part of my inspiration comes from the various attempts throughout history of generating the cosmic religious text. This includes the Bible in English, most pertinently, because there seems to be an ongoing attempt to match the earthly published version of the Bible with some perfect, ideal version that Gleebzod has in his library in Heaven. It is not even certain whether the original written version of the books of the Bible in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek are the correct versions either. They do contain some spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, stylistic errors. So over the years, and into the modern age, it has been incumbent on Bible translators to make decisions as to the most correct version of the Bible.
This is how I feel it is with every poem that I write. I feel that I am writing down cosmic ideas onto an English page. Like the Bible translators, I do this with two states of mind held in suspension in my head as I write. I have hope that I can correct it to the point of perfection, otherwise why would I try? But at the same time I am utterly hopeless that the task will ever be completed. Let's be realistic, the Bible changes from year to year, and so will my poems as long as I allow myself to be obsessed by them. Do you see how I have two diametrically opposed ideas in my head, and yet I require both of them in order to be a Cosmic Poet?
Let me give you an example. A while back I was thinking about haikus, and I had been reading about haikus. And as I was thinking, a cosmic haiku just sort of popped into my head. The problem was, it was so perfect and so alien to me that I was sure I must have read it somewhere and just forgot I read it. Well, maybe this did happen, but I have not been able to find the original poem anywhere. In case you're curious, here is the haiku:
So many coins lie
at the bottom of the pool;
one is made of gold.
Pretty standard imagistic haiku, if you ask me. I do tend to leave out season words from my haikus, but that's my own stylistic choice. The point is, as soon as I wrote this poem down, I was sure I had read it elsewhere. It was just too perfect. It was alien. It was cosmic.
And this is where my fear of plagiarism comes in. What if I did read this poem somewhere and simply internalized it? It really feels like someone else's poem, but as far as I can remember, I wrote it.
Anyways, if it is indeed my own poem, this is actually an effect I feel sort of good about, because it would indicate that I have reached a cosmic level with my poetry. I have come across a combination of words that the universe intended to be together, and I was merely the person who figured it out. This is my definition of Cosmic Poetry. And even if it does turn out that this really was someone else's poem that I happened to remember, I can still see the experience as something to look for in writing future poems.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Marriage as Slavery
Our modern Western concept of "marriage" is an aberration. Christians claim that marriage is ordained by God to be between a man and a woman. One man, one woman. But our modern concept of marriage doesn't really have much relationship to the concept of marriage as given in the Bible, especially when we consider how accepting we are of divorce as a fact of life. Even Christian sects who are ostensibly anti-divorce are forced to accept members who have been divorced, because it's just one of those unavoidable facts of life in our modern world.
I started to get a picture of what marriage really is when I was listening to a broadcast talking about the minimum legal age of marriage in various Middle Eastern countries. In some of those countries, not too long ago, the minimum age of marriage was as young as 9 years old. I don't know how old the grooms have to be, but I'm assuming that they have to be older. I do know that in the Prophet Muhammad's case, he was a middle-aged man when he took his youngest wife, who was 9 years old at the time of their marriage. So regardless of whether or not they consummated their marriage, there remained about a 30-year difference in ages, and the child bride, if held to our standards, would not have had the capacity to make the kind of decision as choosing a husband. We would not have granted her that legal capacity.
So it was in the Bible times, from whence we get our ideas of what the definition of marriage is. And this is where I want to declare that marriage is slavery. The Bible didn't have anything bad to say about the institution of slavery, nor does it have anything bad to say about the institution of marriage. In the Bible times, marriage was a transfer of property. In our times, marriage is still symbolic of a transfer of property, even if that's not the legal reality.
In the modern age, we began to assign rights to all people, or rather, after 10,000 years of barbarism, we finally decided to recognize the inherent human rights and dignity of every individual human being. So it became immoral to be able to own another human being, which is to say, to control every aspect of their lives. So slavery fell out of favor. Except that in some places, slavery was an entrenched part of the economic way of life. Slavery was the foundation of the economy of the Southern United States of America, for example. They (possibly partly rightly) argued that removing the institution of slavery would disrupt the economy of the South. So it took a war to decide the issue. And it did hurt the South. Of course, the ending of slavery was a relatively insignificant factor next to the devastation of the civil war, but the abolition of slavery did destroy a way of life. An extremely flawed way of life, but it did function on some level.
Now, looking at marriage as analogous to slavery, it is also apparent that marriage is taken as a part of the foundation of a way of life. Our modern society is (or was, but I would contend that it still is) based on the nuclear family. Like slavery, the origins of marriage would have the woman function as an item of property. Over the years, women's movements have softened the "slave" aspect of the role of the wife, but the root remains in property, in one person owning another person.
Unlike slavery, there was never a state or country that was able to build an economic base without relying on the marriage unit. (that I am aware of) So marriage has always remained. It has been twisted over the years, almost re-invented, really, as a contract between consenting adults. Divorce became acceptable when marriage was seen as a contract between the man and the woman, rather than a transaction between the groom and the bride's father.
And yet, despite the contractual changes of marriage, the ritualistic aspects of it somehow remained a part of our society, which is why I say that marriage today is an aberration. In today's marriage ceremonies, the bride gets dressed up like some kind of object of desire. The father still gives away the bride, even though he has no legal say in the matter. In essence, the legal aspect of a marriage in the modern world is a partnership between two equal, rational, consenting human beings. But the ritualistic aspect remains a kind of transfer of property.
Unlike the American South, there is no crusading nation that can come and enforce the abolition of marriage on our society, because all nations in the world today are built on the nuclear family. The Christian right argues that society will fall if marriage falls. And for the most part, women seem to be accepting of their symbolic role as objects and property. At least, they accept it in certain contexts.
Until the marriage ceremony is altered to look like a partnership between equal parties, we will never have a psychological attitude of equality toward women, no matter how much we change the laws.
The whole institution of marriage is corrupt and out-dated, just like slavery. Admirable attempts have been made to salvage marriage as a partnership between equals, but all of these attempts are doomed to failure, because these people don't realize that the core concept of marriage is the ownership and power over another human being.
That said, there is something of value in what people have tried to turn marriage into. That is, partnerships between two equal parties, for the purpose of taking care of each other and creating a stable home in which to raise children. Just lose the marriage part.
But I'd also like to speak in favor of religious marriage for a moment. That is, because it seems to have worked so well for thousands of years, maybe it's not such a bad thing for a woman to be owned by a man. Maybe marriage really should be more like slavery. But in that case, I'd say quit pretending to be modern about it. Admit that marriage is a transaction of property, and make the bride feel psychologically elated at the prospect. Obviously marriage as a transfer of property would not be legally enforceable in a country that recognizes the human rights of women, but I say if a man wants to pretend to take a woman from her father, let him do so.
I started to get a picture of what marriage really is when I was listening to a broadcast talking about the minimum legal age of marriage in various Middle Eastern countries. In some of those countries, not too long ago, the minimum age of marriage was as young as 9 years old. I don't know how old the grooms have to be, but I'm assuming that they have to be older. I do know that in the Prophet Muhammad's case, he was a middle-aged man when he took his youngest wife, who was 9 years old at the time of their marriage. So regardless of whether or not they consummated their marriage, there remained about a 30-year difference in ages, and the child bride, if held to our standards, would not have had the capacity to make the kind of decision as choosing a husband. We would not have granted her that legal capacity.
So it was in the Bible times, from whence we get our ideas of what the definition of marriage is. And this is where I want to declare that marriage is slavery. The Bible didn't have anything bad to say about the institution of slavery, nor does it have anything bad to say about the institution of marriage. In the Bible times, marriage was a transfer of property. In our times, marriage is still symbolic of a transfer of property, even if that's not the legal reality.
In the modern age, we began to assign rights to all people, or rather, after 10,000 years of barbarism, we finally decided to recognize the inherent human rights and dignity of every individual human being. So it became immoral to be able to own another human being, which is to say, to control every aspect of their lives. So slavery fell out of favor. Except that in some places, slavery was an entrenched part of the economic way of life. Slavery was the foundation of the economy of the Southern United States of America, for example. They (possibly partly rightly) argued that removing the institution of slavery would disrupt the economy of the South. So it took a war to decide the issue. And it did hurt the South. Of course, the ending of slavery was a relatively insignificant factor next to the devastation of the civil war, but the abolition of slavery did destroy a way of life. An extremely flawed way of life, but it did function on some level.
Now, looking at marriage as analogous to slavery, it is also apparent that marriage is taken as a part of the foundation of a way of life. Our modern society is (or was, but I would contend that it still is) based on the nuclear family. Like slavery, the origins of marriage would have the woman function as an item of property. Over the years, women's movements have softened the "slave" aspect of the role of the wife, but the root remains in property, in one person owning another person.
Unlike slavery, there was never a state or country that was able to build an economic base without relying on the marriage unit. (that I am aware of) So marriage has always remained. It has been twisted over the years, almost re-invented, really, as a contract between consenting adults. Divorce became acceptable when marriage was seen as a contract between the man and the woman, rather than a transaction between the groom and the bride's father.
And yet, despite the contractual changes of marriage, the ritualistic aspects of it somehow remained a part of our society, which is why I say that marriage today is an aberration. In today's marriage ceremonies, the bride gets dressed up like some kind of object of desire. The father still gives away the bride, even though he has no legal say in the matter. In essence, the legal aspect of a marriage in the modern world is a partnership between two equal, rational, consenting human beings. But the ritualistic aspect remains a kind of transfer of property.
Unlike the American South, there is no crusading nation that can come and enforce the abolition of marriage on our society, because all nations in the world today are built on the nuclear family. The Christian right argues that society will fall if marriage falls. And for the most part, women seem to be accepting of their symbolic role as objects and property. At least, they accept it in certain contexts.
Until the marriage ceremony is altered to look like a partnership between equal parties, we will never have a psychological attitude of equality toward women, no matter how much we change the laws.
The whole institution of marriage is corrupt and out-dated, just like slavery. Admirable attempts have been made to salvage marriage as a partnership between equals, but all of these attempts are doomed to failure, because these people don't realize that the core concept of marriage is the ownership and power over another human being.
That said, there is something of value in what people have tried to turn marriage into. That is, partnerships between two equal parties, for the purpose of taking care of each other and creating a stable home in which to raise children. Just lose the marriage part.
But I'd also like to speak in favor of religious marriage for a moment. That is, because it seems to have worked so well for thousands of years, maybe it's not such a bad thing for a woman to be owned by a man. Maybe marriage really should be more like slavery. But in that case, I'd say quit pretending to be modern about it. Admit that marriage is a transaction of property, and make the bride feel psychologically elated at the prospect. Obviously marriage as a transfer of property would not be legally enforceable in a country that recognizes the human rights of women, but I say if a man wants to pretend to take a woman from her father, let him do so.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
New Tarot Suits
I set myself a task the other day, to try and come up with possible new suits for the Tarot. This was not an easy task, because the way I see the Tarot, is that it is by definition iconic and universal. But I think it is a useful exercise for understanding the tarot, and it is also a good way to tease more meaning out of the existing suits.
Every thing that exists in the universe ought to be able to be expressed in some way by one or more concepts of the tarot. In the case of the "suits" every iconic concept you can think of should be able to be finessed into the four existing tarot suits. Any dichotomy you can think of, should be expressible in terms of the suits of tarots.
What I noticed about the tarot, however, was that there are sometimes trinities that seem marginalized. That is to say, I wanted to see if I could imagine how a pseudo-Hindu worldview might be expressed, specifically the Hindu trinity: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Creator, Sustainer, and Destroyer. Of course, I have no background in Hinduism, but that hasn't stopped me from attempting to conceptualize how such a trinity might function in a variety of contexts, one of which is the Tarot. I am not ashamed that I take elements of a religion I know little about as seeds for my own ideas.
And here's how that relates to the Tarot. I see in the tarot the creative aspect expressed in the suits of cups and pentacles, while I see a destructive aspect in the suits of swords and wands. This idea is probably strongest in the suit of cups, which is associated with water and creation. Cups are also often expressed as hearts, and the secret meaning of the suit is the womb, and other female reproductive organs. So in this light, we can interpret the other suits as creative or not, and a pattern does seem to emerge. The "red suits" are creative, while the "black suits" are destructive. (Keep in mind that individual cards and individual cases can be reversed, so while the card might be a creative card, in context, its meaning is not always creative, or can be creative in a negative way.) Pentacles are a symbol of industry and production, so while they don't spontaneously generate spiritual matter, they are just as much about creation and growth as the suit of cups, because they take existing matter and add value and meaning to it.
Meanwhile, its not hard to make the connection between swords and destruction (though swords can have other, positive meanings in certain contexts). So I won't say anything more about swords.
Wands are less clearly about destruction, except that they are expressed as clubs, which suggests that they are another kind of weapon used for subjugation and/or destruction. A club is a weapon born of inequality, used by a superior knight against his unarmed servant; or used by a peasant mob that cannot afford or is not legally permitted to use edged weapons. Wands are also sometimes interpreted as torches, especially when the tarot suits are compared to the elements, since wands seem to be stuck with fire. And wands are sometimes represented as a shepherd's staff or crook, implying a connection to the pastoral life. Of the four suits, wands are probably the closest to being associated with the Sustaining power of Vishnu. So if my goal was to express the creative, sustaining, and destroying aspects in the tarot, perhaps I have my answer in this:
cups create
wands sustain
swords destroy
But what about pentacles? If I throw pentacles onto the creative side of the scale, doesn't that leave the tarot unbalanced? Well here's the thing about the tarot. To be useful, the tarot must be balanced so that whatever you input into it, you will receive a meaningful answer. So pentacles can be placed in either the creative or the sustaining category, and it depends on the context of the reading whether they are tipped into one or the other. Likewise, wands can be destructive in some cases, but their primary function is to sustain. If we place both pentacles and wands into the Sustaining category, then we have a system that is balanced at first, but can react to the inputs of the reading. So wands, normally sustaining, can become destructive (fire, club, weapon), while pentacles, also normally sustaining (stability, posterity, equilibrium, trade, barter, system, bureaucracy), can become productive (building, creating, buying, adding value, growing, earning interest, aging as wine or cheese). So we end up with something like this:
cups create
pentacles sustain (or create)
wands sustain (or destroy)
swords destroy
All of this is just one aspect through which to view the tarot, and there are many others. But now that I've established this pattern of creation and destruction, I start to wonder how I might go about adding purely sustaining suits. That is, I want to create suits that can be taken as unambiguously sustaining, with no suggestion of creation or destruction. Unfortunately, I really don't think this is possible. What ends up happening when I try to create new sustaining suits, is that I design alternatives for wands and pentacles. And maybe this is not a bad thing. Maybe alternate tarot decks could be created in which pentacles and wands are much more likely to be taken as Sustaining suits.
For example, I came up with the suit of Bands. The suit of bands is supposed to represent a binding together. It includes the idea of ropes and strings, and even textiles and clothing. It might appear in a modern-style playing card deck as Ribbons, or possibly Knots. Bands can represent defense, in that they are equated with clothing, which can be equated with armor. Some cultures in history even made armor out of tightly wound rope or twine. The problem with Bands as a suit is that it starts to overlap with Pentacles. Pentacles include discs, which can be interpreted as shields, which is a similar concept to the armor of Bands. Pentacles also include signs warding against spirits, which is once again reflected in Bands. Pentacles can be used to bind and control elemental spirits, and so can Bands. Finally, pentacles have been interpreted as Rings, and what is a ring except for a metal band?
So I'm throwing out Bands as a brand-new suit, but keeping it as a useful alternate reading for Pentacles.
I still want to see if I can't create entirely new suits to add to the tarot, though, whether to make it five or six suits, I don't know if I can say.
My next thought was whether I could create a hybrid between two of the suits. First I thought of the black suits, and how they are both weapons: swords and staves. So what other kind of weapon would make for a decent new suit? How about an axe? An axe is made of both wood and metal. But an axe is pretty warlike, not exactly fitting as a sustaining suit. So what if I go with hatchets instead? In fact, what if I go with cross-hatches, or just plain crosses? Hatchets represent the woodsman, but could also represent some kind of wood-carving tool.
As a profession, here's how the woodcutter might fit into the tarot:
swords = spears = nomads and hunter-gatherers
(hatches = hatchets = woodcutters, guides, hermits)
wands = crooks = shepherds and ranchers
cups = bushels = farmers
pentacles = coins = city-dwellers and merchants
So this is a possible method of creating new suits out of hybrids of existing suits, but I feel like a bit of a fraud using this method, since I really haven't created anything new in terms of meaning. A hatchet reading could just as easily come up by having a sword and a wand card come up in succession.
Every thing that exists in the universe ought to be able to be expressed in some way by one or more concepts of the tarot. In the case of the "suits" every iconic concept you can think of should be able to be finessed into the four existing tarot suits. Any dichotomy you can think of, should be expressible in terms of the suits of tarots.
What I noticed about the tarot, however, was that there are sometimes trinities that seem marginalized. That is to say, I wanted to see if I could imagine how a pseudo-Hindu worldview might be expressed, specifically the Hindu trinity: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Creator, Sustainer, and Destroyer. Of course, I have no background in Hinduism, but that hasn't stopped me from attempting to conceptualize how such a trinity might function in a variety of contexts, one of which is the Tarot. I am not ashamed that I take elements of a religion I know little about as seeds for my own ideas.
And here's how that relates to the Tarot. I see in the tarot the creative aspect expressed in the suits of cups and pentacles, while I see a destructive aspect in the suits of swords and wands. This idea is probably strongest in the suit of cups, which is associated with water and creation. Cups are also often expressed as hearts, and the secret meaning of the suit is the womb, and other female reproductive organs. So in this light, we can interpret the other suits as creative or not, and a pattern does seem to emerge. The "red suits" are creative, while the "black suits" are destructive. (Keep in mind that individual cards and individual cases can be reversed, so while the card might be a creative card, in context, its meaning is not always creative, or can be creative in a negative way.) Pentacles are a symbol of industry and production, so while they don't spontaneously generate spiritual matter, they are just as much about creation and growth as the suit of cups, because they take existing matter and add value and meaning to it.
Meanwhile, its not hard to make the connection between swords and destruction (though swords can have other, positive meanings in certain contexts). So I won't say anything more about swords.
Wands are less clearly about destruction, except that they are expressed as clubs, which suggests that they are another kind of weapon used for subjugation and/or destruction. A club is a weapon born of inequality, used by a superior knight against his unarmed servant; or used by a peasant mob that cannot afford or is not legally permitted to use edged weapons. Wands are also sometimes interpreted as torches, especially when the tarot suits are compared to the elements, since wands seem to be stuck with fire. And wands are sometimes represented as a shepherd's staff or crook, implying a connection to the pastoral life. Of the four suits, wands are probably the closest to being associated with the Sustaining power of Vishnu. So if my goal was to express the creative, sustaining, and destroying aspects in the tarot, perhaps I have my answer in this:
cups create
wands sustain
swords destroy
But what about pentacles? If I throw pentacles onto the creative side of the scale, doesn't that leave the tarot unbalanced? Well here's the thing about the tarot. To be useful, the tarot must be balanced so that whatever you input into it, you will receive a meaningful answer. So pentacles can be placed in either the creative or the sustaining category, and it depends on the context of the reading whether they are tipped into one or the other. Likewise, wands can be destructive in some cases, but their primary function is to sustain. If we place both pentacles and wands into the Sustaining category, then we have a system that is balanced at first, but can react to the inputs of the reading. So wands, normally sustaining, can become destructive (fire, club, weapon), while pentacles, also normally sustaining (stability, posterity, equilibrium, trade, barter, system, bureaucracy), can become productive (building, creating, buying, adding value, growing, earning interest, aging as wine or cheese). So we end up with something like this:
cups create
pentacles sustain (or create)
wands sustain (or destroy)
swords destroy
All of this is just one aspect through which to view the tarot, and there are many others. But now that I've established this pattern of creation and destruction, I start to wonder how I might go about adding purely sustaining suits. That is, I want to create suits that can be taken as unambiguously sustaining, with no suggestion of creation or destruction. Unfortunately, I really don't think this is possible. What ends up happening when I try to create new sustaining suits, is that I design alternatives for wands and pentacles. And maybe this is not a bad thing. Maybe alternate tarot decks could be created in which pentacles and wands are much more likely to be taken as Sustaining suits.
For example, I came up with the suit of Bands. The suit of bands is supposed to represent a binding together. It includes the idea of ropes and strings, and even textiles and clothing. It might appear in a modern-style playing card deck as Ribbons, or possibly Knots. Bands can represent defense, in that they are equated with clothing, which can be equated with armor. Some cultures in history even made armor out of tightly wound rope or twine. The problem with Bands as a suit is that it starts to overlap with Pentacles. Pentacles include discs, which can be interpreted as shields, which is a similar concept to the armor of Bands. Pentacles also include signs warding against spirits, which is once again reflected in Bands. Pentacles can be used to bind and control elemental spirits, and so can Bands. Finally, pentacles have been interpreted as Rings, and what is a ring except for a metal band?
So I'm throwing out Bands as a brand-new suit, but keeping it as a useful alternate reading for Pentacles.
I still want to see if I can't create entirely new suits to add to the tarot, though, whether to make it five or six suits, I don't know if I can say.
My next thought was whether I could create a hybrid between two of the suits. First I thought of the black suits, and how they are both weapons: swords and staves. So what other kind of weapon would make for a decent new suit? How about an axe? An axe is made of both wood and metal. But an axe is pretty warlike, not exactly fitting as a sustaining suit. So what if I go with hatchets instead? In fact, what if I go with cross-hatches, or just plain crosses? Hatchets represent the woodsman, but could also represent some kind of wood-carving tool.
As a profession, here's how the woodcutter might fit into the tarot:
swords = spears = nomads and hunter-gatherers
(hatches = hatchets = woodcutters, guides, hermits)
wands = crooks = shepherds and ranchers
cups = bushels = farmers
pentacles = coins = city-dwellers and merchants
So this is a possible method of creating new suits out of hybrids of existing suits, but I feel like a bit of a fraud using this method, since I really haven't created anything new in terms of meaning. A hatchet reading could just as easily come up by having a sword and a wand card come up in succession.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
My Favorite Sound
What's your favorite sound, someone asked once. This is not a question that I was able to answer easily, but I heard it again today, and that's when I realized: that's my favorite sound. I don't know how to embed audio files in a blog yet, and I don't know of any sounds on the web that I have permission to use, so I won't do that. I'll simply have to describe it for you.
It's the sound of a bite. The moment of my favor begins with the very rapid intake of breath, barely audible, as the mouth is opened. There's probably also a very small moistening noise as the lips part. Then, the teeth come down on the item in question, which should be somewhat brittle, but not too brittle. Think oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. Apples are too moist. Chips/nachos are too crunchy. As the mouth is closed, some air is forced out of the mouth, and the back of the palette vibrates at a low frequency. I don't know why the palette is vibrating the way it does, but I think it has something to do with the change in moistness due to the proximity of food. Like Pavlov's dog, if you know you're biting into a cookie, your mouth automatically salivates. Once the teeth make contact, a crunching noise begins as the slightly brittle morsel is broken up into large chunks with regions of crumbs and smaller chunks in the areas of separation, especially where the hard teeth have gone to work. The first part of the crunch is audible directly through the air, but the majority of the sound is heard through the medium of the fleshy face and cavity of the mouth as well as other acoustical properties of the human head. This transition is very pleasing to me. I should mention here that I most favor this sound when it comes from an external source. I actually find it less pleasing to hear from within my own head. I don't think the acoustics are quite right. Also, when it's me doing the crunching, there are other senses competing with the audible sound, so I think it clutters my perception. Now, the reason I prefer something like a cookie to an apple or a chip, is that I favor a certain degree of complexity in the sound of the morsel breaking up. I don't want to hear too many crackles and pops, as with a chip, but I do need a bare minimum of crunches. Maybe this has to do with my brain's ability to process distinct crunches. When there's a lot going on, it just sort of all gets jumbled up in my brain, and it becomes "noise." But when there are fewer, clearer, crunches, my brain can sort them out. That's not to say "the fewer the better," because there have to be a lot of crunches present just to make the sound interesting. I don't particularly like the sound of subsequent chewing. The second bite might be of interest, but beyond that, my interest drops off rather rapidly. I'm really only interested in the initial bite. However, if you can fit in a swallowing sound almost immediately after the initial crunch, I find that quite satisfying also. I like to imagine the cookie being pulverized almost immediately, mixed with saliva, turned into a sludge, and washed down, all in one smooth motion.
So for an example, this is a sound often made by characters in The Simpsons, particularly Homer. My favorite Homer moments are when Homer is eating a number of items in rapid succession. At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that I heard it recently, and that's where it was. Cookie monster also makes this sound. This sound also comes up in television commercials, especially for crunchy snacks, and especially with kids in mind. Kids seem to especially enjoy this sort of sound. I guess it's taught to them by their moms very early on, when they're learning to eat. It's pretty natural to use this noise when trying to entice them to eat their dinner. But that could just be my family.
What I find interesting about this sound is that it's almost a word, and there are a number of words trying to get at the concept.
Crunch
Munch
Nom
Om nom nom
Num
Yummy
Yum
Chomp
I could even make reference to the sacred sound of Hindus, which is "Ohm," but maybe that would be going too far?
Do you have a favorite sound?
It's the sound of a bite. The moment of my favor begins with the very rapid intake of breath, barely audible, as the mouth is opened. There's probably also a very small moistening noise as the lips part. Then, the teeth come down on the item in question, which should be somewhat brittle, but not too brittle. Think oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. Apples are too moist. Chips/nachos are too crunchy. As the mouth is closed, some air is forced out of the mouth, and the back of the palette vibrates at a low frequency. I don't know why the palette is vibrating the way it does, but I think it has something to do with the change in moistness due to the proximity of food. Like Pavlov's dog, if you know you're biting into a cookie, your mouth automatically salivates. Once the teeth make contact, a crunching noise begins as the slightly brittle morsel is broken up into large chunks with regions of crumbs and smaller chunks in the areas of separation, especially where the hard teeth have gone to work. The first part of the crunch is audible directly through the air, but the majority of the sound is heard through the medium of the fleshy face and cavity of the mouth as well as other acoustical properties of the human head. This transition is very pleasing to me. I should mention here that I most favor this sound when it comes from an external source. I actually find it less pleasing to hear from within my own head. I don't think the acoustics are quite right. Also, when it's me doing the crunching, there are other senses competing with the audible sound, so I think it clutters my perception. Now, the reason I prefer something like a cookie to an apple or a chip, is that I favor a certain degree of complexity in the sound of the morsel breaking up. I don't want to hear too many crackles and pops, as with a chip, but I do need a bare minimum of crunches. Maybe this has to do with my brain's ability to process distinct crunches. When there's a lot going on, it just sort of all gets jumbled up in my brain, and it becomes "noise." But when there are fewer, clearer, crunches, my brain can sort them out. That's not to say "the fewer the better," because there have to be a lot of crunches present just to make the sound interesting. I don't particularly like the sound of subsequent chewing. The second bite might be of interest, but beyond that, my interest drops off rather rapidly. I'm really only interested in the initial bite. However, if you can fit in a swallowing sound almost immediately after the initial crunch, I find that quite satisfying also. I like to imagine the cookie being pulverized almost immediately, mixed with saliva, turned into a sludge, and washed down, all in one smooth motion.
So for an example, this is a sound often made by characters in The Simpsons, particularly Homer. My favorite Homer moments are when Homer is eating a number of items in rapid succession. At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that I heard it recently, and that's where it was. Cookie monster also makes this sound. This sound also comes up in television commercials, especially for crunchy snacks, and especially with kids in mind. Kids seem to especially enjoy this sort of sound. I guess it's taught to them by their moms very early on, when they're learning to eat. It's pretty natural to use this noise when trying to entice them to eat their dinner. But that could just be my family.
What I find interesting about this sound is that it's almost a word, and there are a number of words trying to get at the concept.
Crunch
Munch
Nom
Om nom nom
Num
Yummy
Yum
Chomp
I could even make reference to the sacred sound of Hindus, which is "Ohm," but maybe that would be going too far?
Do you have a favorite sound?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
