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And the eyes of them both were opened
Jul. 6th, 2012 12:50 am
Currently at Toronto Pearson: 23. High today: 27, which would be five degrees off the EC forecast. A small wedge of very dry air poked down to Algonquin this afternoon; the dewpoint was down to 3 there at 2 p.m. (while the temperature was at 27, and it hit 30 there at 6 p.m. with a dewpoint of 7--funny thing, with a dewpoint of 3, you might well say that Algonquin was sitting in "an Arctic air mass", despite being warmer than Toronto; Pearson was at 26 at 2 p.m.), back up to 16 by 9 p.m. Almost as humid across the southwest as yesterday, when the dewpoint hit 26 in London, which equals the highest dewpoint I've ever seen in the EC reports, but it was hanging around 15 here this afternoon--as opposed to around 20 down the road in Hamilton. Temperature got a bit over 36 at Pearson yesterday afternoon, which is the hottest it's been since ... last July. Ho hum.
I happened to catch Glenn Gould playing the second and third movements of the Pathetique on some CBC internet channel last night, looked up the rest on youtube today--you know, you can say that this is an awful way to play it, but wow did it make me smile. I'm not saying you should play it that way--God knows I cannot play it that way, or even in any tenth-rate facsimile of that way--but Glenn Gould sure as hell should play it that way.
Last week on the subway I was listening to a presumable mother talk to, presumably, her small child in that sing-songy kindergarteny way that adults think they're supposed to talk to children, and it prompted me to wonder: what does it do to small children that adults are false with them constantly? Do they know it instinctively from the get-go, or do they only pick it up later? When I was an undergrad I had an English prof who said she thought we should congratulate children when they tell their first lie, because they've learned something very important about language. I dunno about that; I wonder whether it isn't the case that what you learn first is how to tell the truth. It's that question of Wittgenstein's: which is primary to language, picturing the world or getting things done? "Ontogenetically", you might say, getting things done obviously comes first; babies make noises to make things happen.
I was thinking sometime a while ago about varieties of "innocence". When you say someone's "innocent"--or, uh, "not that innocent"--what do you mean? I suppose that a lot of the useless "debate" about children I used to find myself sucked into was fueled by equivocation on "innocence". Partisans of children are very big on innocence. And of course there are senses of "innocence" in which children, or at least very small children, are necessarily or near-necessarily innocent--they are necessarily innocent as opposed to experienced.... There's a bit in Sam Mallin's Art Line Thought that I keep coming back to, where he compares two sculptures, the archaic Greek Peplos Kore and one from the dawn of ancient Greece, a century of less later. The Peplos Kore's eyes are wide and bright--like a child's?--while the ancient one's eyes are narrowed just slightly. Mallin points out there's a reflectiveness, a self-consciousness, about the ancient one that there isn't about the Peplos Kore. So: innocence as opposed to self-consciousness--Adam and Eve and the fall, of course. (Is there a necessary connection between sexuality and self-consciousness? Peplos Kore looks to me like an innocent sensualist--she may be "experienced" as hell, but innocent for all that.) It takes reflective self-consciousness to be guilty in any meaningful way--obviously to feel guilty, but also to be guilty, if guilt requires real moral responsibility. So, innocence as opposed to guilt.... The thing that sticks in my craw about the innocence of children, though, is innocence as opposed to guile. "Guile" itself is ambiguous, and in one sense you can't be guileful without being self-conscious, but in another sense you can't be guileless if you're manipulative, even if you're not self-consciously manipulative.
Trying to prepare the cottage for the arrival of my four-year-old nephew last week, thinking about how his mother would pretty much have to forbid him to touch anything because there's so much potentially harmful stuff lying around, prompted me to wonder something else about children: how do you grow out of this state of universal prohibition? As a very small child, your default situation is that you are not allowed to do anything; anything you are allowed to do is permission granted by exception to the general state of prohibition. (Hence (?) universal rebellion against universal prohibition--since there is no conceivable logic to prohibition, since everything is prohibited, there's no conceivable logic to rebellion, either; there's just a contest between power and counter-power.) I wonder whether there's any kind of psychoanalytic theory that casts this as the single most important problem you have to deal with in your psychological development.
( The goldfinches are getting bolder: )
Continuing to press my luck with stinging insects--( the first honeybees I've noticed this year showed up in the clover today: )
I think the pigeons have figured out that I'm the guy what brings the food. This afternoon, one of them landed on the empty feeder while I was crouching next to it; I stood right up and we had a little chat face-to-face. Then another pigeon landed on top of the feeder, and the first one wrestled it off, partly with its leg.
Jo(e) and/or Groundhog 3 were evidently out there sometime before me today--ate my only decent cauliflower plant (or broccoli; I have no idea which is which), and gave the squash a good pruning. At least they ate off most of the powdery mildew. No new tunnels anywhere, so I guess they're just climbing the fence now. And now I'm outta here for most of the next ten days; I'll be pleasantly surprised if there's anything much left when I get back....
I happened to catch Glenn Gould playing the second and third movements of the Pathetique on some CBC internet channel last night, looked up the rest on youtube today--you know, you can say that this is an awful way to play it, but wow did it make me smile. I'm not saying you should play it that way--God knows I cannot play it that way, or even in any tenth-rate facsimile of that way--but Glenn Gould sure as hell should play it that way.
Last week on the subway I was listening to a presumable mother talk to, presumably, her small child in that sing-songy kindergarteny way that adults think they're supposed to talk to children, and it prompted me to wonder: what does it do to small children that adults are false with them constantly? Do they know it instinctively from the get-go, or do they only pick it up later? When I was an undergrad I had an English prof who said she thought we should congratulate children when they tell their first lie, because they've learned something very important about language. I dunno about that; I wonder whether it isn't the case that what you learn first is how to tell the truth. It's that question of Wittgenstein's: which is primary to language, picturing the world or getting things done? "Ontogenetically", you might say, getting things done obviously comes first; babies make noises to make things happen.
I was thinking sometime a while ago about varieties of "innocence". When you say someone's "innocent"--or, uh, "not that innocent"--what do you mean? I suppose that a lot of the useless "debate" about children I used to find myself sucked into was fueled by equivocation on "innocence". Partisans of children are very big on innocence. And of course there are senses of "innocence" in which children, or at least very small children, are necessarily or near-necessarily innocent--they are necessarily innocent as opposed to experienced.... There's a bit in Sam Mallin's Art Line Thought that I keep coming back to, where he compares two sculptures, the archaic Greek Peplos Kore and one from the dawn of ancient Greece, a century of less later. The Peplos Kore's eyes are wide and bright--like a child's?--while the ancient one's eyes are narrowed just slightly. Mallin points out there's a reflectiveness, a self-consciousness, about the ancient one that there isn't about the Peplos Kore. So: innocence as opposed to self-consciousness--Adam and Eve and the fall, of course. (Is there a necessary connection between sexuality and self-consciousness? Peplos Kore looks to me like an innocent sensualist--she may be "experienced" as hell, but innocent for all that.) It takes reflective self-consciousness to be guilty in any meaningful way--obviously to feel guilty, but also to be guilty, if guilt requires real moral responsibility. So, innocence as opposed to guilt.... The thing that sticks in my craw about the innocence of children, though, is innocence as opposed to guile. "Guile" itself is ambiguous, and in one sense you can't be guileful without being self-conscious, but in another sense you can't be guileless if you're manipulative, even if you're not self-consciously manipulative.
Trying to prepare the cottage for the arrival of my four-year-old nephew last week, thinking about how his mother would pretty much have to forbid him to touch anything because there's so much potentially harmful stuff lying around, prompted me to wonder something else about children: how do you grow out of this state of universal prohibition? As a very small child, your default situation is that you are not allowed to do anything; anything you are allowed to do is permission granted by exception to the general state of prohibition. (Hence (?) universal rebellion against universal prohibition--since there is no conceivable logic to prohibition, since everything is prohibited, there's no conceivable logic to rebellion, either; there's just a contest between power and counter-power.) I wonder whether there's any kind of psychoanalytic theory that casts this as the single most important problem you have to deal with in your psychological development.
( The goldfinches are getting bolder: )
Continuing to press my luck with stinging insects--( the first honeybees I've noticed this year showed up in the clover today: )
I think the pigeons have figured out that I'm the guy what brings the food. This afternoon, one of them landed on the empty feeder while I was crouching next to it; I stood right up and we had a little chat face-to-face. Then another pigeon landed on top of the feeder, and the first one wrestled it off, partly with its leg.
Jo(e) and/or Groundhog 3 were evidently out there sometime before me today--ate my only decent cauliflower plant (or broccoli; I have no idea which is which), and gave the squash a good pruning. At least they ate off most of the powdery mildew. No new tunnels anywhere, so I guess they're just climbing the fence now. And now I'm outta here for most of the next ten days; I'll be pleasantly surprised if there's anything much left when I get back....
