What I Talk About When I Talk About Dogs

I spotted a good piece of advice in a magazine: "Get a dog. Even geniuses need some unconditional love." Not that genius warrants much love anyway. But in one of those rare moments of clarity, a hybrid of epiphany and prescience, I saw how it will all turn out:

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The grand narrative of progress is shoved in our faces wherever we go. Since consciousness is bound to the illusory arrow of time granted us by thermodynamic entropy, the existence of psychological phenomena such as memory and (apparent) free will leads us to adopt that grand narrative. That presupposes a certain principle that guides free will toward progress, but the grand narrative itself reinforces the existence of that principle in a positive feedback loop. Such a tripartite Escherian structure cannot exist without any pillar; the grand narrative is necessary to justify der Wille zur Macht, that driving force of life, and der Wille is required for progress.

Spiderman innamorato

Once upon a time, in one of the rare moments of peace known during Charlemagne's reign, a knight-errant was roaming the land. He had not had any deeds to perform for years, and was contemplating returning home that day as he rode towards the village. It was an average-looking village next to an average-looking forest, and his spirits fell at the thought of the deeds he would not be performing in this village.

Beware the Ideas of March

Un Petit Chinoiserie

If a Chinese man is trapped in a Chinese Room, how does he convince the outside world there is a Chinese man in the Chinese Room? 

Are matters complicated if the Chinese man is himself a Chinese Room?

Which contains a Chinese man/Room, Matryoshka-style ad infinitum?

Should he see the psychiatrist who tends to bipolar bears? 

If so, where can said psychiatrist be found, the Equator?

Who Questions the Questioners?

Where do you go if you need to get away but you're already on vacation?

If whatever land he treads on becomes his, must the self-imposed exile never stop walking?

Clothes are made for tall people, and tables for short people. What of tablecloths?

If I have no mouth and I must scream, will I sound nasal?

If the funniest jokes are often the truest, then is life the funniest of them all?

If on a winter's night a reader

I am presently drunk with euphoria after reading If on a winter's night a traveller, by Italo Calvino. As if a homeopathic dose of the proverbial 'Whatever the author is smoking (I want some of that)', amplified by serial draftings and editings, has overwhelmed me.

There are the works that arouse in my pen hand a wanderlust, a desire to once more take flight and set words on paper, knowing that my writing has improved by mere exposure to the author's shadow. And then there are the works so far beyond sublime they are lime; they paralyse that same hand into inaction, for no words I write can ever compare.

If on a winter's night a traveller is both.