There is something happening here but you don't know what it is, do you Mr.Schneider?.

An open letter to the cutting Mr. Schneider:

With a modicum of disbelief, I just finished reading Dan Schneider's review of T.S. Eliot's poem: Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service:

http://www.cosmoetica.com/TOP2-DES2.htm

Mr. Schneider,

To say the least and in the vernacular, I don't think that you quite get any of it. Then not everyone has had the benefit of a classical education, and without a guide, this work requires that as a bare minimum. One can only hope that you are not teaching poetry in some high school or college somewhere. It would be a real tragedy, if because of your ill formed opinion, any student missed out on the challenges and enjoyment of T.S. Eliot's work.

This poem is one that has continued to intrigue many learned people over the years, and it is worthy of praise not scorn. Of course, by attacking Mr. Eliot, you, Mr. Schneider may believe that you have put yourself on the same level as this nobel laureate - or indeed above him! In this respect, I know, Mr. Schneider, that you are even more mistaken than in regard to your analysis.

So, the epigram: The point you missed Mr. Schneider is transformation. That is to say that caterpillars become butterflies. Whether or not Mr. Eliot takes the same point of view on religion as Mr. Marlowe, surely, cannot be as pertinent to this piece as this blatant metaphor. Missing this suggests that you read something somewhere about Marlowe. It is a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. Doing a google search or reading an entry in a dictionary or encyclopedia does not always translate into understanding. Even so, in the way this poem appreciates the meaning of the service, it suggests Mr. Eliot does not have any ambiguity regarding religion. Try to see the whole construction - not just the parts.

Many critiques of this poem make the mistake of thinking this epigram is Mr. Eliot taking a poke at jews or the church. Clearly the jews represent anyone who is not baptized and therefore not free of original sin. They have, of course, the power to transform into butterflies. That is, they can be baptized and miraculously transform. Let's not forget after all that this poem was written before Mr. Eliot's conversion to Anglicanism. That is to say, it was written before Mr. Eliot was baptized and became warden of his parish church.

Now, the word "Polyphiloprogenative" has much more meaning than you ascribe to it. First of all, any definition without mentioning love shows a gross lack of understanding. It is the act of creation that is both multiple in its nature and loving.

Polyphiloprogenative is the verb, not the object. It is God.

So, the poem begins with the word "Polyphiloprogenative." And that word is God.

So it is at least a play on the words of the creation story in the Bible: John, Chapter One, Verse One:

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος, καὶ ὁ Λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν Θεόν, καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ Λόγος

This translates to:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Anyway, just so you won't miss the word play, let me spell it out a bit more. In the beginning of the poem is the word "Polyphiloprogenative" and that word is God.

Get it?

It is not just a flashy, "grabber" start. It is one of the very best flashy starts. It paraphrases John, 1, 1 succinctly and makes a joke at the same time. God is the one who loves to create, as he/she loves what has been created.

Moreover, "" does not refer to the "One" - Christ. It refers to the first word of John 1,1 - the preposition "In" - "Ἐν ἀρχῇ" - "en arche." Remember, the miracle of creation is the theme of this poem. It is what Mr. Eliot is experiencing during this service.

The phrase, "In the beginning" refers to the moment of creation. This is a transcendent, ongoing moment - the now. Superfetation means to conceive while pregnant; so, when referring to the superfetation of the preposition "In," Mr. Elliot refers to the transcendent nature of the time of creation. It is all of time - the ever present NOW! - the ongoing creation - the ongoing coming into being.

As Mr. Eliot's eyes scan the church, he sees the Apostles in the stained glass. These are the knowing servants of God. A look at the Oxford English Dictionary will show "servant" as a standard meaning of "sutler." Sutler is specific, but here, what is important is that they are not slaves. They follow because it benefits them, and they are sapient, wise enough to know it.

Mensual does mean monthly, but it has another meaning as well. It refers to a moment when circumstances are ripe. Here, when the time is ripe, the ongoing superfetative act of creation produce the laconic, neo-platonist Origen an early Christian scholar and theologian, and one of the most distinguished of the early fathers of the Christian Church who interpreted scripture allegorically. He wrote that the soul passes through successive stages of incarnation before eventually reaching God.

Perhaps more to the point, however, is the fact that anyone who reads poetry should not miss the obvious assonance with the word "origin," this suggests effortless, non-male, creation. It is a least a triple instance of more word play.

Mr. Elliot scans the church again. He sees the figures of the Trinity, the elders of the church, the supplicants, the spirits that inhabit the edifice, nature, indeed all the players in creation. Then there, at the baptismal font, there is an infant, both God's and man's creation, and Mr. Eliot compares himself to this helpless infant, as indeed all of us are nearer to this infant's state than to God's.

So then, there, in the end, and for one who has much less reason than many others, Mr. Eliot by raising the status of this infant to master and polymath shows us, his humility - a virtue you should learn to cultivate.

M.

Read the poem:

http://www.bartleby.com/199/23.html

My New Web Site

As a joke, I renamed my project Stanza Reader - after George Costanza on Seinfield. Then I saw that another reader program had that name. So I had to renamed it again. This time I chose Simultaneous Stanza Reader - which doesn't show-up in a google search:-). Additionally, I have set-up a new site:

https://sites.google.com/site/mikeybeesoftware/

So take a look, download the source or the binary, and try the program. It's free.

Free Reader for the Blind

I have written a simple program in xcode on Apple Mac OS X that reads text files out loud and displays the text line by line in a huge font. I want to make the program available free to people with sight problems - and everyone else for that matter. Please let me know if you have any interest in distributing the program from your site. Here is the source code:

-- HyperReader.applescript

-- Simultaneous Stanza Reader

-- Created by Mike Bee on 6/7/09.

on clicked theObject

tell window "hyperReaderMainWindow"

set theStartingParagraph to contents of text field "startingParagraph"

set theNumberOfParagraphsToRead to contents of text field "numberOfParagraphs"

-- set contents of text field "endingParagraph" to theStartingParagraph + theNumberOfParagraphsToRead

set theFileToRead to (choose file with prompt "SELECT A TEXT FILE:")

set contents of text field "myTextFile" to theFileToRead

end tell

tell application "TextEdit"

activate

open theFileToRead

set docName to name of document 1

set selDoc to document 1

set viewDoc to (make new document)

set viewWindow to the first window

set the bounds of viewWindow to {44, 44, 1900, 980}

set x to theStartingParagraph

set y to theNumberOfParagraphsToRead

end tell

repeat y times

tell application "TextEdit"

set text of viewDoc to get paragraph (x as integer) of selDoc

set size of text of viewDoc to 150

set font of text of viewDoc to "Arial"

say (get paragraph 1 of viewDoc) using "Alex"

set x to x + 1

end tell

tell window "hyperReaderMainWindow"

set contents of text field "endingParagraph" to x

end tell

end repeat

tell application "TextEdit"

close document 2 saving no

close document 1 saving no

quit

end tell

end clicked

Dark Matter

I thought that dark matter was matter not illuminated by light, but I was wrong. Dark matter is not visible to us, but for other reasons besides a paucity of photons. Dark matter remains, therefore, like every other part of nature, a mystery. We think it exists because nature acts strangely. A vortex at the center spins faster than its outer parts. As a skater pulls in her arms, her rotation quickens. In some spiraling galaxies, we have not observed this same expected phenomenon. Instead, the speed of the outside of the galaxy is the same as the speed at the center. To our minds, it seems that only additional unobserved mass could account for this strange behavior; hence scientists have hypothesized dark matter - strange unobservable mass. 

So then, why not believe that some essence that animates us exists in these ideas of the mind. Plato's rings or lapis philosophorum may indeed house the weight that, en fin, produces the music of the spheres.

Twin Tailed RAM

Hey! Why aren't computer manufacturers exploiting twin tailed technologies?  I'm waiting to see management functions and other parallel computing tasks built around twin-tailed RAM on a twin-tailed bus.  Moore's law must be fulfilled!

Why I like Stumbleupon

www.stumbleupon.com

For a longtime, I have been wondering why the browser builders have not started grabbing metadata from users.  It seems like a real waste that users can't add value to the internet by leaving data as they browse.  For example, how hard would it be to have two ways to move to a new location, browser back happy, and browser back unhappy.  By simply replacing a single back arrow on the browser with two, users could vote whether or not to include a site in the query results for a given search string.  If enough people return to say a google search result from a given site by hitting return unhappy, then, google could stop including that site in that particular search result.  A simple return bar could have multiple return to query back arrows to mark a site as commercial, academic, technological, or personal, etc.  Google, yahoo, and other search engines could capture this information and enhance the value of their databases by offering additional query filters like commercial , academic, tech...

Well, this hasn't happened exactly, but, stumbleupon has a browser add-on that does capture user input to rate sites.  This allows stumbleupon to know which sites users like best.  They can therefore present these sites by category for user random viewing.  

So, it doesn't seem like a perfect solution, but it's a start.  Maybe someday the browser builders and search engine providers will join together to use the whole hive.  In the mean time, we'll have to parse search results on our own, every-time, over and over.

P.S.  Maybe next time I'll rant about search engines and their lack of regular expression support:-( 

It's Late at Night. Do you Know Where your Emotions are?

So, I'm watching the television again - some insipid nonsense, and I'm not really paying too much attention.  What I'm really doing is wondering about how it is that I experience so many strong emotions while watching these programs.  Often, these are emotions that I don't experience with any frequency in my own life.  A good director takes me through states of pity, fear, compassion, love, hate, and a plethora of others.  Watching some insignificant shadow play, I am likely to be moved to weep or roar with laughter.  I seemingly form bonds of trust , affection, and even love with on-screen characters.  Seeing a celebrity on the street, I have spontaneously reacted as if I had just seen a great friend.  Then I realized it is someone who didn't even know me.  There was no recognition.  There had never been a real connection between us, but during some random program, I felt deeply connected.  

How often was I watching some show with intensity, when suddenly I was pulled back from deep within some television inspired, emotional epiphany?  In an instant, I was thrust back into my life by a phone call or a family member's strident voice.  In an instant I was angry, my warm glow of love disappearing in a flash of bad temper.  My perfect loving soul that was in perfect harmony with some divine selfless character had become once again ugly and pedestrian.  I was once again myself, a selfish child having a tantrum.  Wah!