phenomenology: September 2007 Archives

Christi imagined a piece of Alec's spirit in each balloon, including the parts of him held by and given to each person present. I thought of the pace of their departure, the wind picked them up so fast! I imagined their speed parallel with the way Alec lived, not that he was always in a rush, but once that boy had decided there was no hesitation. :-)

The weekend passed quickly, wedged between hectic work weeks for all of us. Yet the picnic at Alec's gravesite flowed leisurely. The steady stream of arrivals began at one pm and continued until the release an hour-and-a-half later.

The mood was at turns festive, contemplative, sad, and peaceful. The day itself was beautiful. Uncle Dick, all the way from Port Angeles, WA, offered some remarks. Many in the crowd were probably unaware that his daughter, our cousin Saundra, died of leukemia when she was twenty. (Her memory is celebrated annually by the Peninsula Tennis Club.)

Uncle Dick shared some thoughts with us from an article by Mark A. Lorenson, You Can Not Lose the Ones You Love, which challenges the "conventional wisdom" that "we miss the ones we love" (47). Applying the philosophy that "we, through our current beliefs, are actually creating our experience of 'missing'" (48), Lorenson proposes a reframing which Uncle Dick exhorted us all to try:

I love you and feel your presence.

In all ways, from everyone gathered and those whose thoughts were with us, a fitting tribute.

We had in time in College Writing (first year writing) on Thursday to do a round of check-ins, "What's best about this class, What's worst about this class, and something random." I had not thought about participating (duh) and felt as on-the-spot as some of the students may have when it came to the end and - as a few students insisted - my turn. Alec and this trip to Kansas City was high on my mind, but I was thinking to myself, "No, that's too personal; telling them might compromise the teacher/student boundary." The students are interacting well, there was teasing and a fair number of comments and teasing about some of the things people shared. A minute or two before my turn, two of the boys had an exchange and one of them said, "Oh Snap."

That was my sign to let them know.

Seriously! Roman Jakobson (Prague School Linguist, functionalist), describes a kind of aphasia that brings the distinctions between metaphoric and metonymic speech. Metaphoric speech operates by substitution - you say something, I say something about another thing that reminds me of that thing you said - it "re-fills" the same space by replacement of an equivalent. Metonymic speech jumps levels, instead of substitution, you say something, and I say something related in terms of meaning but operating at a different position within a realist hierarchy.

While reading The metaphoric and metonymic poles today (subsequent to a few other articles, too) I became convinced that simultaneous interpreters can orient themselves to the performance of interpretation as verbal art, possibly even a kind of poetry. Some already do, but I think these are possibly a minority? Or, perhaps the dominant paradigm prevents full admission of the poetic latitude often exercised. :-)

{I wrote most of this right after the blogpost linked below...so much of this line of thinking is percolating concerning my prospectus, grant proposal, teaching, interpreting physics....anyway, today is the Celebration Party for the Crew and Shore Support for Shemaya's Serenity Sail, 2007. More thoughts will follow, I'm sure!}

Just because sailing resists the dominant forces of modernity, does not necessarily make it postmodern, eh? I have continued to wonder if describing my deja vu moment (while sailing) as a "personal cosmology" (as I did on the boat) was the best framing, or if "personal ontology" (as I wrote in that blogpost) is most accurate.

I'm sure cosmology is what leapt to mind because of Laurence Bergreen's application of the term to those metaphysical thinkers trying to imagine the entire universe during Magellan's time. Interestingly, the wikipedia entry states that the first use of the term did not occur until 1730, more than two centuries after Magellan's voyage. Ontology, however, is more precise (for this particular usage) because the term is used to describe a set of concepts and the relationships among them. The "objects" (in this case) are myself (!), my conscious - as in deliberately chosen - epistemology, and the phenomenological experience known as deja vu.

I think the original philosophical definitions and use of "ontology" and the recent borrowing of the label by the field of Artificial Intelligence serve equally well to describe the (known, apperceived) structural framework of my personal consciousness. As John Gregg (who maintains a terrific site on consciousness) defines it, "Essentially, ontology is the study of what actually is. For most people, for most purposes, ontology ultimately comes down to physics." Yes. The structure of knowledge (paradigm) that I have adopted concerning the experience of deja vu emphasizes the aspect of its meaning which implies "remembering the future." Despite our conscious experience of time as linear (and all the physical evidence around us indicating that it only moves in one direction), the physics of temporality is much more complicated. This is related to Gregg's

"hard problem" of subjective consciousness. The hard problem is hard because it just does not seem amenable to the sort of analysis that modern science knows how to do.

The microsocial challenge is wrestling ourselves (individually, interpersonally, relationally) out of the dialectical grip of modernity's knowledge constructs; the macrosocial parallel is the institutionalization of paradigms based on the new knowledges gleaned (especially) from quantum physics, cognitive neuroscience, and language studies (e.g., voice, language-as-action).

A Wordpress blogpost categorized under "teaching" led me to this timely piece: Charlotte Mason on neuroscience.

Who has "the explanation" for the relationship between language and consciousness, philosophers or neuroscientists? This debate has been going on for a long time; its competitiveness ~ as if one side has an answer or can determine the truth ~ bothers me. :-/

Check out these two videos on waves and sound!

Meanwhile, Arturo sends the link to ScienceDaily, which he describes as " a humble contribution to your interdisciplinary thinking project:

This website has science related updates (in basically all disciplines!) in the form of brief summaries with links and full references. It refers to research as it happens or recently published. Thus it can be used as a very neat way to get everyone to learn about other disciplines works and spin new ideas.

Reunions with old friends and meeting new ones abound.

Last night, I had tears streaming down my cheeks during a good portion of Talk To Me, particularly through the civil rights movement portion of this film depicting Petey Greene's life as an entertainer. Not only does Don Cheadle bring Greene's uncompromising assertiveness to life, Director Kasi Lemmons does a great job with the tension of differential ambitions between Greene and his Manager, Dewey Hughes (outstandingly acted by Chiwetel Ejiofor).

After a quick debrief, Natalia split the scene. Jose, Sinead and I were joined by John at Amherst Coffee. What a talk we had! Movie culture, memories of the sixties in the US, life in Malawi and Mozambique, and interpreting. Sinead had seen me working at the Graduate Commencement last spring - which included a protest against Andrew Card.

Prior to the movie, Jose and I ate while Jin (the Muscle-Bound-Tough-Guy) exercised his qi.

Our conversation covered Tae Kwon Do, Ta'i Chi, and the cultural politics of marriage.

I was reminded of my role as "community redneck," because the previous evening a crew of Ever-Smiling Evil Indians regaled me with various responses to the typical American questions about arranged marriages. "He had two camels" is one answer to the decision-making process of the women/parents involved. We were eating at The Crazy Noodle, perhaps that inspired the round of sheer silliness? Next thing I knew there was a reprise of "we ride our elephants to school, they have their own parking lot," compete at "camel polo," and enjoy torturing valets with parking their mounts. You know they were getting to me because I became the "community ratkiller" in my notes (they give contracts to cats to kill the rats infesting every apartment) - perhaps a Freudian slip of my tendency to shine light into dark places? ;-) Is there really a sacred bull called Shambo? Maybe it was the Shiraz. Then Ambarish slipped, mentioning tunneling.

Quantum particles can penetrate into regions that are forbidden classically, leading to the phenomenon of tunneling.

We lost Ameya at this point - or did he lose us, kindof like the ball in soccer?! - and Supriya took off to find carryout containers. :-) by now, it's been ages since the Ever-Smiling Evil Indian admired my tennis shoes: "they're cool, with a hint of menace."

hehehe

Life follows language!

Ambarish added a cultural element while explaining arranged vs love marriages to a new friend a week or so ago, using me as his example: "We know there will be compromises. If I want to be friends with Steph, for instance, I know I'm going to have to make some compromises."

Laughter all around. :-)