Strange Night

such a strange night. its quiet, its hot. there is a humming from my computer that's filling the room.

i dont know why i dont want to sleep. i am up, sustained by this sense of sorrow.

what is this strange feeling? this sensation of implacable sorrow? why do i feel like i shouldnt sleep?

the only thing that could save me tonight, would be to suddenly blow out the window and drift far away, into the night sky, spending the entire night flying in the darkness, looking down at a quiet sleeping city.

Nothing is impossible to draw

This afternoon, I was sitting in a coffee shop, doodling, when suddenly, i felt this sentence very strongly:

nothing is impossible to draw

Later, while I was walking home, I became more and more interested in the idea and how it caused a lot of different things I am interested in to converge.

One of my main interests is the concept of impossibility - the idea of a limit to something. I think this is interesting as a way to understand infinity and endlessness, which to this day, I cant understand or visualize.

So I think about the notion of impossible things and why they are impossible. What laws make that thing impossible and what laws make those things laws.

Anyhow, in my profound lack of knowledge (seriously), I usually think that the physical laws of the universe, parts of which we understand as gravity, entropy, florescence, time, electrostatic attraction, radioactive decay etc, are what define and limit what can physically happen in the world.

I say this out of a profound profound ignorance, because

a) i dont know or understand all the laws humans already know and
b) i and even most humans donot understand how many different ways these laws can interact and influence each other and
c) there are probably a huge number of laws out there we dont know yet and
d) i dont know their relationships yet either).

Even with all that, the physical laws we do understand have such a wide parameter - such a wide set of limits - that when they interact with each other, a lot - perhaps everything we can can experience - occurs within them.

Still, there is a limit. Yes?

What this limit is, I, and maybe we as a species, don't know - but its trace is visible in the consistent structure and pattern of the world around us. To the extent that we experience the same phenomenon when the same thing happens, therein, somewhere (i wish i knew exactly where) lies the limit to the physical world.

On the other hand, what is the limit of an idea? What is the limit of what can be imagined? Isnt it nothing? Isn't anything possible to imagine? Or is there a limit to imagination - that is also defined by physical laws because our brains are physical objects?

Well, our ideas are not because of our brain cells. It is because of the connections - the relationships - the influence - between them.

Now, while the total number of possible connections between brain cells in a system is very much higher than the total number of brain cells in that system, if the overall number of brain cells is not infinite, then the total number of connections, however greater, cannot be infinite.

To put it another way, no two finite numbers can be multiplied together to give infinity. (Actually, the correct way to say this would be: no finite number of finite numbers can be multiplied together to give infinity).

So the question, and this is where it begins to relate to the topic of my post, is: are the total number of ideas possible in a nervous system greater than the total number of connections?

This is my guess: Yes.

I say: ideas in a brain > the possible connection between brain cells in a brain > the number of brain cells in a brain

I say this because I think ideas are not just generated by a brain but also by relation with the environment it is in - which is constantly changing.

So our brain is this system that has a huge number of possible connections, that keeps on coming across a different environment and therefore with new possible ideas.

I think ideas do not reside in the brain, but instead the brain simply contains processes that create ideas. ideas come from the brain. but they are not in the brain.

I guess, another question is, are the possible number of ideas, infinite?

I think I can disappear into this question too easily and I should stop. Especially since, here is where things get very interesting to me. Its what takes me back to the relationship between the physical laws and possibility and also to my original point:

if you can imagine something, you can draw it.

do you realize how incredible that is?

Is drawing a physical act? it is done with physical objects, on physical objects (and using a physical object like the brain)... yet it is not limited by physical laws.

drawing is done in the physical world but it is not a physical act.

it is the art of expressing an idea.

there is no image one cannot capture. you may not have the skill to capture that image, but you can develop the skill. i guess that is the key to this idea, you can develop it or it can be developed in someone else. the point is, it can be done.

nothing that can be pictured can not be made into a picture.

to me this idea goes to the very heart of the relation between the 'reality' and creativity - between 'life' and 'art'.

CAKE 1

From time to time, i just stay in, stop thinking and do the one thing i love on a consistent basis:

First up! Double Chocolate Pistachio Cake




I ground ~ 500 grams of british cadbury whole nut chocolate with ~300 grams of pistachios and mixed it into the batter of devil's food cake:





Then topped it off with a layer of fudge frosting!


FTW~ :D:D:D

Yukio Mishima

"Poetry Written With A Splash of Blood"

I've always loved the work of Yukio Mishima. He is the only writer whose work I've had to stop reading - putting down his book while on subway because the world he was creating, slowly and methodically, was too intense; too unbearable. When people read suspense novels and cant bear waiting to see what happens next, they can skip a few pages and sort of figure it out. Not with Mishima.

He builds and builds the suspense to a point of extreme anguish yet you never catch the tipping point - it just seems to rise queitly and irrevoacably - like smoke into the air - till the whole world around you is full of smoke.

Irrevocable. Mishima's stories are full of a deep sense of the irrevocable. While the typical Mishima character is INSANELY strong willed (and reserved), they all seem to propel themselves towards a (usually violent) destiny. Mishima is an expert at blurring the line between will and destiny. I suppose it is better to say, he is expert at showing just how smoky that line between the two is.

The best example of the irrevocable I can think of is his short story 'Patriotism'. The story is about a young liuetenant who commits hara-kiri along with his beautiful young wife in order to avoid betraying his fellow soldiers (they have rebelled against the reigning government and as an officer he was to be sent out to arrest them). Mishima makes it very clear from the very first paragraph that the lieutenant and his wife will kill themselves. Then he drags their last evening together over an excruciating 20 odd pages. They forgo eating supper and drink saki by the fire - in each other's arms. Then they go upstairs to the bedroom and make passionate love for last time (having decided to kill themselves first thing in the morning). To give you an extent of how deep into detail Mishima goes, he describes them going up to bed, the wife going to the washroom to shower while the lieutenant lies in bed, waiting for her - realizing 'that he had never felt so free as he did that night' waiting for his wife to come to bed (and havign resolved to die the next morning). He then describes the abandon with which they make love.

Realizing at that point that the couple will kill themselves the next morning was unbearable for me. All the while this is happening, Mishima goes to great lengths to show us how young and beautiful and fucking sexy this couple is. And then takes them and lets them kill themselves. In slow motion! The actual slitting of the stomach scene actually is almost two pages long! and unbearable.

I had to put this story down three times, taking a 15-20 minute break each time (the first when he was waiting for his wife) just so i could bear reading on.

I have to point out that Mishima wasnt only a literary masochist. At the same time as he is dragging you into an abyss of sorrow and shock, there is mesmerising profound poetry to his thoughts and feelings. Mishima really is a master at blending headspining thoughts with heart stopping moments and i can think of a number of lines that have frozen me dead in my tracks - amazed at what i have just read

One such set of lines is this:



One last thing, that I really love about Mishima's stories, are the fact that in almost all cases, (Spring Snow excepted), his stories are about someone trying to accomplish something. All his stories are about doing something and I have never read anyone who so perfectly captures the process of a idea (in his case, a wild idealism) turning into a reality

And while the the bright light of ideas often burns into ashes along the way to becoming real, all his characters ending up 'doing something' as a result of a thought, a feeling or an idea.

Some Building Designs (yeah I know)

Unintential Art at IKEA

the most artistic thing i saw at ikea 07/17/09

07/18/09

07/18/09