Prof. Dr. Laszlo Jamf (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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dear_mun2015-02-28 08:45 am
laszlo_jamf) wrote in dear_mun2015-02-28 08:45 am
Entry tags:
To All Former Cityzens and Polyites; c/o Caru
[A (tl;dr) message to all former Citizens and Polyites, from one, Prof. Dr. Laszlo Jamf, C/O Caru, late herself of POLYchromatic:]
Dear Madam--
We send to you, on this peculiar anniversary, greetings--in the hopes that these greetings and this message will be further spread hereby. Tristero and his Brother- and Sisterhood will, no doubt, find some means by which to deliver this. There will probably be rude things written on the envelope. I know you won't mind. He and they have their ways and means and will probably look to the Animal Trinity in their temple of concrete and steel for the first step. If you are reading this, then know that the message made it through those Barriers. But here is what I--what we wish to say:
We are well.
We are well, such as we can be. It is a peaceful time but, as the poets said, Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens, and this is not Heaven. Not by a long and arcing and parabolic shot. We have endured tasting of sweets, a brief profusion of candy flowers, and there was a rain of cakes perhaps a week ago, with a non-zero number of them being lemon, at which we all looked to Adrastus, who answered in his way, which told us nothing. But it was all so damn thematic that we had to at least glance that way. So know that, though we are well, we still endure the curses. I think that, were we to do without them at this point, it would be something like going without weather. What would there be instead? A blank sky like an endless ream of blank paper? A desert sun? Nothing? Stars? But we are well.
Blackdog is stretched not quite at my feet as one would expect it to go in a letter like this, but on the sofa in my office--my new office, seeing as the former was quite thoroughly destroyed. (Do not think the irony is lost on me that I, respected researcher myself and spiritual obstetrician to the theories of some of the better latter-day Pavlovians, am now colleague to one dog and subordinate to another.) I can't quite tell if he's sleeping, dreaming of chasing rabbits or skirts or whatever it is he dreams of, but I seem to hear him humming "Misty Mountain Hop" to himself from time to time. Tristero is making deliveries, likely with Kat underfoot as ever. I owe Virginia a drink (or ten). A. keeps her meditations. Lena carouses, raucous as ever. You know these names, and more and others. We are well.
Nosce te ipsum, so I'll just talk about myself, like the old man I'm becoming. I am told that I myself have mellowed in the past months--that I am almost "avuncular," which is amusing. But perhaps it's true. Sensibly speaking, it's certainly plausible. We see to the infrastructure of the City and the Anonymous Movement (who still call themselves such, despite everything, but who are we if we cannot identify ourselves and others? It's a psychological need, sometimes. Recall always that Mother is the First Other) see to the well-being of the Citizens themselves. If anything, if I have mellowed, it's not so unlike the calm that comes to one upon stepping down as chair of one's university department, to return to the research and the laboratory which began the whole love affair of which the chair of the department was to be the culmination of one's effort. Which ends up a bitter disappointment a good 99.99999% of the time, let me tell you. Metaphorically speaking, I'm back in the lab. It's a good thing to return thereby to what was once, however much that thing has changed. ∆t, as always.
On that note: a concern was raised that, within a "closed system" such as the City is now, wouldn't there be a risk of the entire population becoming completely inbred (to say nothing of issues of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, &c)? We took that concern to the Animal Trinity who smiled at us and looked to the sky, which suggests to me that there are more things in Heaven and Earth, &c &c. They have suggested as much before, that though the way is shut (to us), they are not governed by the same rules of "open" and "shut" as we are. To be fair, your own existence and this very letter suggests more and other--pity I could not speak of you (among others) more freely before the Great Departure (that's what we're calling it now, I guess). But you (plural) exist out there suspended over even the Animal Trinity. I'll go on and say what you're thinking: "the artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails." You just like the meta-experience, I know, which is perfectly fine. Better than acid, man. Acknowledge it. Roll around in it. Electric Kool-Aid Meta Test. Know that your knowing it and my knowing it and our knowing one another complicates matters. Have a peach, by the way, and disturb the universe. I'm winking at this note as if you'll see that; I suspect you will. And this is how you can be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all. Congratulations.
You should know that today is not quite a public holiday nor quite a day of mourning but the day is certainly Observed--it is recalled, the near Apocalypse (why that one and not any of the others, because there's only about two dozen at least, I don't know) the story of the Ring of Doors is told again, the Great Departure is reflected upon, the remembrances begin. Yes, there is drinking, all right? But it is my studied opinion that this observance is not likely to cease. Children are born and they will be told the stories. One year is hardly enough whereby to judge the whole of time stretching forward and backward as it does to its vanishing-points (I could lecture you on space-time). But one year speaks of many things.
The trees in Xanadu, the parts where the seasons flow as they do in the whole of the City otherwise, are beginning to swell. Sabine is tending to them. We had a late cold spell and a heavy snow, a curse, but they prevail. Am I being metaphorical? Am I, heaven forbid, in my old age dabbling in nigh-alchemical symbolism? I've mastered that in these latter years. Shall I talk of green lions and of snakes?
You know Kekulé dreamed the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But also the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, "The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning," is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that "productivity" and "earnings" keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity--most of the World, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to being with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which must sooner or later crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life.
The City--that bicameral being, that parallel parallax of meaning, so do I mean the people or the place, I ask you?--observes the departures hereby a year after. But it also spins on: the Carousel, the Clock. Eppur si muove.
It's been a prevalent notion for the last months. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment. But I tell you there is no such message, no such home--only the millions of last moments, nothing more. Our history is an aggregate of last moments.
It is a curve each of us feels, unmistakably. It is the parabola. We must have guessed, once or twice--guessed and refused to believe--that everything, always, collectively, had been moving toward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of no surprise, no second chance, no return. Yet we do move forever under it, reserved for its own black-and-white bad news certainly as if it were the rainbow, and we its children.
Now: recall, if you will, that obit around some larger body (the Moon, the Earth, a Star) is nothing but perpetual falling. To orbit the planet is to fall forever and never touch ground. The greatest parabola lies there in curved, reddening space. And that is the curve along which we shall send this letter.
There is no ill-will. We were not fated, because there is no fate and the future is malleable and even every word here is mutable, but we were bound--thought, word, and deed. And so we did as we were bound. Orders, hierarchy, neurology, psychology--the chemical dancers along the neural pathways and the glimmering electricity of the neurons themselves, flashing like lightning or constellations there in the hidden dark of the skull, they all had their parts to play in the sum of the whole. Milgram will drink to that. Perhaps we are all just prisoners here of our own device. But that which has been done is the aggregate egregore of that which was. So be it.
We are well. And we hope that you are the same. All of you.
Remember that there is no difference between the behavior of a god and the operations of pure chance.
And I shall remain, as always,
Yours very sincerely,
Prof. Dr. Laszlo Jamf
Dear Madam--
We send to you, on this peculiar anniversary, greetings--in the hopes that these greetings and this message will be further spread hereby. Tristero and his Brother- and Sisterhood will, no doubt, find some means by which to deliver this. There will probably be rude things written on the envelope. I know you won't mind. He and they have their ways and means and will probably look to the Animal Trinity in their temple of concrete and steel for the first step. If you are reading this, then know that the message made it through those Barriers. But here is what I--what we wish to say:
We are well.
We are well, such as we can be. It is a peaceful time but, as the poets said, Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens, and this is not Heaven. Not by a long and arcing and parabolic shot. We have endured tasting of sweets, a brief profusion of candy flowers, and there was a rain of cakes perhaps a week ago, with a non-zero number of them being lemon, at which we all looked to Adrastus, who answered in his way, which told us nothing. But it was all so damn thematic that we had to at least glance that way. So know that, though we are well, we still endure the curses. I think that, were we to do without them at this point, it would be something like going without weather. What would there be instead? A blank sky like an endless ream of blank paper? A desert sun? Nothing? Stars? But we are well.
Blackdog is stretched not quite at my feet as one would expect it to go in a letter like this, but on the sofa in my office--my new office, seeing as the former was quite thoroughly destroyed. (Do not think the irony is lost on me that I, respected researcher myself and spiritual obstetrician to the theories of some of the better latter-day Pavlovians, am now colleague to one dog and subordinate to another.) I can't quite tell if he's sleeping, dreaming of chasing rabbits or skirts or whatever it is he dreams of, but I seem to hear him humming "Misty Mountain Hop" to himself from time to time. Tristero is making deliveries, likely with Kat underfoot as ever. I owe Virginia a drink (or ten). A. keeps her meditations. Lena carouses, raucous as ever. You know these names, and more and others. We are well.
Nosce te ipsum, so I'll just talk about myself, like the old man I'm becoming. I am told that I myself have mellowed in the past months--that I am almost "avuncular," which is amusing. But perhaps it's true. Sensibly speaking, it's certainly plausible. We see to the infrastructure of the City and the Anonymous Movement (who still call themselves such, despite everything, but who are we if we cannot identify ourselves and others? It's a psychological need, sometimes. Recall always that Mother is the First Other) see to the well-being of the Citizens themselves. If anything, if I have mellowed, it's not so unlike the calm that comes to one upon stepping down as chair of one's university department, to return to the research and the laboratory which began the whole love affair of which the chair of the department was to be the culmination of one's effort. Which ends up a bitter disappointment a good 99.99999% of the time, let me tell you. Metaphorically speaking, I'm back in the lab. It's a good thing to return thereby to what was once, however much that thing has changed. ∆t, as always.
On that note: a concern was raised that, within a "closed system" such as the City is now, wouldn't there be a risk of the entire population becoming completely inbred (to say nothing of issues of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, &c)? We took that concern to the Animal Trinity who smiled at us and looked to the sky, which suggests to me that there are more things in Heaven and Earth, &c &c. They have suggested as much before, that though the way is shut (to us), they are not governed by the same rules of "open" and "shut" as we are. To be fair, your own existence and this very letter suggests more and other--pity I could not speak of you (among others) more freely before the Great Departure (that's what we're calling it now, I guess). But you (plural) exist out there suspended over even the Animal Trinity. I'll go on and say what you're thinking: "the artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails." You just like the meta-experience, I know, which is perfectly fine. Better than acid, man. Acknowledge it. Roll around in it. Electric Kool-Aid Meta Test. Know that your knowing it and my knowing it and our knowing one another complicates matters. Have a peach, by the way, and disturb the universe. I'm winking at this note as if you'll see that; I suspect you will. And this is how you can be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all. Congratulations.
You should know that today is not quite a public holiday nor quite a day of mourning but the day is certainly Observed--it is recalled, the near Apocalypse (why that one and not any of the others, because there's only about two dozen at least, I don't know) the story of the Ring of Doors is told again, the Great Departure is reflected upon, the remembrances begin. Yes, there is drinking, all right? But it is my studied opinion that this observance is not likely to cease. Children are born and they will be told the stories. One year is hardly enough whereby to judge the whole of time stretching forward and backward as it does to its vanishing-points (I could lecture you on space-time). But one year speaks of many things.
The trees in Xanadu, the parts where the seasons flow as they do in the whole of the City otherwise, are beginning to swell. Sabine is tending to them. We had a late cold spell and a heavy snow, a curse, but they prevail. Am I being metaphorical? Am I, heaven forbid, in my old age dabbling in nigh-alchemical symbolism? I've mastered that in these latter years. Shall I talk of green lions and of snakes?
You know Kekulé dreamed the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But also the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, "The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning," is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that "productivity" and "earnings" keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity--most of the World, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to being with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which must sooner or later crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life.
The City--that bicameral being, that parallel parallax of meaning, so do I mean the people or the place, I ask you?--observes the departures hereby a year after. But it also spins on: the Carousel, the Clock. Eppur si muove.
It's been a prevalent notion for the last months. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment. But I tell you there is no such message, no such home--only the millions of last moments, nothing more. Our history is an aggregate of last moments.
It is a curve each of us feels, unmistakably. It is the parabola. We must have guessed, once or twice--guessed and refused to believe--that everything, always, collectively, had been moving toward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of no surprise, no second chance, no return. Yet we do move forever under it, reserved for its own black-and-white bad news certainly as if it were the rainbow, and we its children.
Now: recall, if you will, that obit around some larger body (the Moon, the Earth, a Star) is nothing but perpetual falling. To orbit the planet is to fall forever and never touch ground. The greatest parabola lies there in curved, reddening space. And that is the curve along which we shall send this letter.
There is no ill-will. We were not fated, because there is no fate and the future is malleable and even every word here is mutable, but we were bound--thought, word, and deed. And so we did as we were bound. Orders, hierarchy, neurology, psychology--the chemical dancers along the neural pathways and the glimmering electricity of the neurons themselves, flashing like lightning or constellations there in the hidden dark of the skull, they all had their parts to play in the sum of the whole. Milgram will drink to that. Perhaps we are all just prisoners here of our own device. But that which has been done is the aggregate egregore of that which was. So be it.
We are well. And we hope that you are the same. All of you.
Remember that there is no difference between the behavior of a god and the operations of pure chance.
And I shall remain, as always,
Yours very sincerely,
Prof. Dr. Laszlo Jamf
no subject
[OoC: WHOOPS well better late than never just saw this now. I think it's adorable, Demyx thinks it's confusing. HELLO.]