Friday, February 27, 2009

curve ball or winning hand

happy John Steinbeck's birthday! the start of Tibetan New Year happened a couple days ago, so i'll say Happy New Year again too. have put down The Grapes of Wrath for the time being, stopping at chapter 5 (of course i'll continue it and finish it later!) to read Daniel Tammet's memoir Born on a Blue Day.
the blog entry previous to this one ends in thunder. Daniel experiences the number 5 as loud like thunder. William Carlos Williams and Charles Demuth saw the figure 5 in gold accompanied by gong clangs, siren howls and wheels rumbling. in a still undeveloped photo, the 5 digits of my hand curve to hold an edible ball, an orange with a large patch of green mold. on a recent day when i got thrown a curve ball (unexpectedly finding the post office, the library and the bank all closed for President's Day) at home i put 6 of my hand self-portraits on a bulletin board along with other things;...

....(TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW 'CAUSE IT's LATE & I'M SLEEPY)...

Saturday, February 14, 2009

"tomorrow", huh?

....more like a week later! sheesh. St. Valentine recently won big points with me because i read in a local newspaper that (according to legend) he got executed for helping men avoid military conscription by getting them married.
oh and speaking of saints...Joshua Norton (Emperor Norton I) - peace to him - incarnated on this day in 1819. Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia!
on this day in 1876, both Alexander Bell and Elisha Gray - independently of and unbeknownst to eachother - applied for patents for the telephone, a device which truly has no single inventor. in fact, even before either of them, an Italian named Antonio Meucci invented a telephone.
oh and speaking of inventors...on this day in 1744, John Hadley died. he invented the octant, a measuring device...and so did someone named Thomas Godfrey!

TODAY'S WORDS

1. Manti
2. kellokult
3. i'll keep you in suspense about the third one.

i've recently learned about, and become enthused about, an English mathematician and linguist named Daniel Tammet. a savant blessed-cursed with Asperger's Syndrome, a high-functioning autism spectrum condition, and clearly blessed with synesthesia (perception of things in one sense modality accompanied by impressions in other sense modalities, such that to a synesthete, a sound may have a corresponding color and shape, etc.) Daniel has invented a language called Manti. in this language, the word "kellokult" means lateness (literally, "clock debt"). i have a long standing tendency to accrue clock debt, as the lateness of this blog entry demonstrates.
for Daniel, even abstractions such as numbers and days of the week have corresponding colors, shapes, textures and sounds. he experiences Pi as a majestic, rolling landscape and once famously recited the first 22,514 digits of Pi at a charity event for epilepsy.
i'd like to shift attention now to someone else who, like Daniel Tammet, also had all kinds of inventive fun with words: the writer James Joyce, whose birth anniversary occured this past February 2...when i had intended to post this present blog entry (see, i told you i drag my butt)! in his novel Finnegans Wake, Joyce uses the third of today's words that i wanted to introduce...this onomotopoeic neologism representing a thunderclap....

bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!

Saturday, February 7, 2009

CONTINUED

of the 5 photos i took of the Camera Van, 3 came out well. better than i expected! the Film Festival came and went. i didn't manage to see the other film i intended to see, a clay animation feature from Australia about some characters in an apartment complex titled $9.99.
i've reached chapter 5 of The Grapes of Wrath. saw Joe Woodard recently and he still hadn't started V.

today my brother Memo and expat Chilean film maker, theater director, cartoonist etc. Alejandro Jodorowsky have their birthday. i called Memo to wish him a happy birthday.

i'll have to continue this tomorrow because i must go to bed. good night.