http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(filesystem)
be saying more about this after i get some sleep!
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
En-closure: Consequences of Consciousness?
As we are asked to wrap-up a presentation of the consequences of this class on our thoughts, I am discovering that it is quite impossible to enclose everything, as even one idea absorbed from the class has taken on a life of its own and proliferated like mad throughout my system (really, an idea is a like a parasite! :)).
But I have come back often to the idea of art as luxury in my reflections. Of all the organisms on this planet, humans are the only ones who waste--irreparably so because this waste is produced in excess, and so cannot escape its enclosure as waste (in nature, decomposition would return the elements of waste to a form better capable of interaction). Waste, however, is a byproduct of the excess/luxury/opulence on which humans thrive. Professor Moss brought up an interesting point in a blog post--that the remnants of the Big Bang are essentially just waste.
If one takes this perspective, then humanity currently resides in one big wasteland--a vision quite fitting to what I'm about to discuss.
Of all the organisms on the planet, humans are also the only ones who make art. Yes, art occurs in nature too without intention, but nature doesn't dwell on it...nature uses it for practical purposes of survival. To illustrate:
The intricacy of design on the butterfly and flower might merely be a genetic accident. Beauty here is a tool for physical survival--no more, no less ostentatious. The lithe movements of the cheetah might be described as dance by a human observer, but is merely (here's that word again) a byproduct of a physical adaptation, an optimization for a player in the game of surviving. (The fact that we can view life as a game is both a testament to our consciousness and the room that this consciousness creates for indulgence in such luxurious views.)
Humans hoard art--look at all the fine art museums, private collections, architectural flamboyance that will sacrifice function for aesthetic form, "haute couture." Compare the excessiveness, in style, color, function, most of all, to the natural designs above. These clothes and buildings actually make it harder for people to physically function. But they serve as viewing pleasure, aesthetic stimulation, a drug that humans need as much as food and water; indeed, to feel that they are alive, to strip down and roll in evidence of excess, evidence of waste--evidence of life.
Is this all a product of vanity, yet at the same time, a by-product of consciousness--the awareness that we are Alive, that we have created this system call Time that seems to be running away with our Lives? Because we are aware of such phenomena (and while our more scientifically primitive cousins doggedly go about their business of survival, unquestioning, unwondering, and changing only per chance of mutation), we must devise these systems, indeed, enclosures in order to make sense, in order to process the stimuli that evoke something more than flat images, sounds, smells, textures alone. This is because while we waste, we cannot stand the sight of, the smell of, the idea of waste and consequent decay (landfills are probably the most avoided places on earth); we must not waste the stimuli that come to us, nor the cognitive faculties granted to our species; time is of the essence, and every opportunity must be taken--a consequence of the consciousness of mortality, of inevitable insignificance--to process, to preserve; to slow time down, we escape into the timeless dimension provided by the junction of consciousness with unconsciousness. An example of this junction (a wormhole?) occurs in lucid dreaming. Here's how to do it!
Music, paintings, dance, poems, POAMs; art is not why, but how we live. Art is the locomotive, the machine, the engine that encloses us are we bring ourselves back into reality. It might be one way we transport a piece of the unconscious into conscious life. In this way, art is also a bridge, an integrative tool. Science studies the evidence of this process of art. Do we try to enclose our lives into the poams that we make? Make something permanent of a thought, a fear?
These systems we devise stabilize us, and help us deal with the pain of ephemerality and the constant apprehension that follows. We lug around heavy thought orbits in the intricate systems we build: religions, symphonies, novels, even the scientific method. Though science might study the process of art, it is art itself (is this a consequence of studying art, to become art yourself?). They (and almost any human device) share the common goal of survival. It is just that human survival entails so much of this excessive system devising, the excessive search for Closure because humans recognize, but cannot accept the fact that closure is quite impossible.
Art is a luxury, and luxury is necessary to human subsistence. We are hedonists--creatures of pleasure and comfort, always looking for ways to minimize the greater pain (sometimes we'll even use pain--excessively--to diminish pain). What is the goal in most peoples' lives? To find happiness or contentment, probably. But is that possible with the symptoms of our consciousness already drawing consequences as heavy as art and science? Locusts, lions, bees live to deliver genes. They too know, somewhere up the ladders of their DNA, that their form is not meant to persist, yet the only behavioral sign that belies this fact is the sometimes frantic mating an animal near its time will engage in:
Humans need to be enclosed in order to survive:
The womb, the houses we build, the relationships we forge (expanding our skin through contact with others), and the skull that encloses our brain--the embodiment of our physical selves and those other impalpable selves--are all necessary forms of organization, protection, separation. Symphonies, paintings, and poems serve a similar function, allowing humans not only to survive but to live; for to survive is to live, for a person--and therein lies the difference between humans and animals: for an animal, surviving pertains to the physical; for people, to survive is to take care of the both physical and of the mental/spiritual. The desire to live catalyzes the desire to indulge, to engage systems of excess.
I have brought in many concepts that have been revolving like horses around a merry-go-around for days in my mind. This presentation is far from clear (quite, rare indeed, though I'm certain I burnt something in the process...what is that smell? it smells like...waste!), and the exact relationship between all of these points of light is something that will evolve with the mind that encloses them; a process of excess, I'm sure. I feel like I keep bringing in ideas, creating new interactions without following other interactions all the way down. But is there an all-the-way-down? Perhaps, at least, I owe to the interaction, the spark, to rub the substances more against each, warming myself in the combustion of idea. Ideally, I would love to explore this idea through multiple media--film, audio, written poems, website-building; each poam through each medium contributes to a clearer picture. (the most waste i make, the more enlightened I am?!) Here, though, I and the ideas I express are confined, yet defined by the borders of the written word, still images, and short motion picture clips. Without confinement, there can be no definition, without definition, limited interaction. The shape of the fork must become clear before its tines can be admired, utilized, perhaps even broken.
In this post, and in this blog as a whole, I have (attempted to) explore the different forms a poam can take on, as well as the internal structure of a poam once it has taken on a particular form. The concept of the Limited Fork is exciting and stimulating, as the best ideas always are. The thought system is the product of an act of making itself, evidence of a creator's need to indulge in excess. I've looked through a certain window, and can only wonder now from which window I'll exit or enter again.
To close, for now, a representation--a mapping, a visual enclosure--of my brain on art, my brain fueling creation, in particular, self-creation: I create my brain--
Thank you, for this induction into the Limited Fork locomotive.
But I have come back often to the idea of art as luxury in my reflections. Of all the organisms on this planet, humans are the only ones who waste--irreparably so because this waste is produced in excess, and so cannot escape its enclosure as waste (in nature, decomposition would return the elements of waste to a form better capable of interaction). Waste, however, is a byproduct of the excess/luxury/opulence on which humans thrive. Professor Moss brought up an interesting point in a blog post--that the remnants of the Big Bang are essentially just waste.
If one takes this perspective, then humanity currently resides in one big wasteland--a vision quite fitting to what I'm about to discuss.
Of all the organisms on the planet, humans are also the only ones who make art. Yes, art occurs in nature too without intention, but nature doesn't dwell on it...nature uses it for practical purposes of survival. To illustrate:
The intricacy of design on the butterfly and flower might merely be a genetic accident. Beauty here is a tool for physical survival--no more, no less ostentatious. The lithe movements of the cheetah might be described as dance by a human observer, but is merely (here's that word again) a byproduct of a physical adaptation, an optimization for a player in the game of surviving. (The fact that we can view life as a game is both a testament to our consciousness and the room that this consciousness creates for indulgence in such luxurious views.)
Humans hoard art--look at all the fine art museums, private collections, architectural flamboyance that will sacrifice function for aesthetic form, "haute couture." Compare the excessiveness, in style, color, function, most of all, to the natural designs above. These clothes and buildings actually make it harder for people to physically function. But they serve as viewing pleasure, aesthetic stimulation, a drug that humans need as much as food and water; indeed, to feel that they are alive, to strip down and roll in evidence of excess, evidence of waste--evidence of life.
Is this all a product of vanity, yet at the same time, a by-product of consciousness--the awareness that we are Alive, that we have created this system call Time that seems to be running away with our Lives? Because we are aware of such phenomena (and while our more scientifically primitive cousins doggedly go about their business of survival, unquestioning, unwondering, and changing only per chance of mutation), we must devise these systems, indeed, enclosures in order to make sense, in order to process the stimuli that evoke something more than flat images, sounds, smells, textures alone. This is because while we waste, we cannot stand the sight of, the smell of, the idea of waste and consequent decay (landfills are probably the most avoided places on earth); we must not waste the stimuli that come to us, nor the cognitive faculties granted to our species; time is of the essence, and every opportunity must be taken--a consequence of the consciousness of mortality, of inevitable insignificance--to process, to preserve; to slow time down, we escape into the timeless dimension provided by the junction of consciousness with unconsciousness. An example of this junction (a wormhole?) occurs in lucid dreaming. Here's how to do it!
Music, paintings, dance, poems, POAMs; art is not why, but how we live. Art is the locomotive, the machine, the engine that encloses us are we bring ourselves back into reality. It might be one way we transport a piece of the unconscious into conscious life. In this way, art is also a bridge, an integrative tool. Science studies the evidence of this process of art. Do we try to enclose our lives into the poams that we make? Make something permanent of a thought, a fear?
These systems we devise stabilize us, and help us deal with the pain of ephemerality and the constant apprehension that follows. We lug around heavy thought orbits in the intricate systems we build: religions, symphonies, novels, even the scientific method. Though science might study the process of art, it is art itself (is this a consequence of studying art, to become art yourself?). They (and almost any human device) share the common goal of survival. It is just that human survival entails so much of this excessive system devising, the excessive search for Closure because humans recognize, but cannot accept the fact that closure is quite impossible.
Art is a luxury, and luxury is necessary to human subsistence. We are hedonists--creatures of pleasure and comfort, always looking for ways to minimize the greater pain (sometimes we'll even use pain--excessively--to diminish pain). What is the goal in most peoples' lives? To find happiness or contentment, probably. But is that possible with the symptoms of our consciousness already drawing consequences as heavy as art and science? Locusts, lions, bees live to deliver genes. They too know, somewhere up the ladders of their DNA, that their form is not meant to persist, yet the only behavioral sign that belies this fact is the sometimes frantic mating an animal near its time will engage in:
Humans need to be enclosed in order to survive:
The womb, the houses we build, the relationships we forge (expanding our skin through contact with others), and the skull that encloses our brain--the embodiment of our physical selves and those other impalpable selves--are all necessary forms of organization, protection, separation. Symphonies, paintings, and poems serve a similar function, allowing humans not only to survive but to live; for to survive is to live, for a person--and therein lies the difference between humans and animals: for an animal, surviving pertains to the physical; for people, to survive is to take care of the both physical and of the mental/spiritual. The desire to live catalyzes the desire to indulge, to engage systems of excess.
I have brought in many concepts that have been revolving like horses around a merry-go-around for days in my mind. This presentation is far from clear (quite, rare indeed, though I'm certain I burnt something in the process...what is that smell? it smells like...waste!), and the exact relationship between all of these points of light is something that will evolve with the mind that encloses them; a process of excess, I'm sure. I feel like I keep bringing in ideas, creating new interactions without following other interactions all the way down. But is there an all-the-way-down? Perhaps, at least, I owe to the interaction, the spark, to rub the substances more against each, warming myself in the combustion of idea. Ideally, I would love to explore this idea through multiple media--film, audio, written poems, website-building; each poam through each medium contributes to a clearer picture. (the most waste i make, the more enlightened I am?!) Here, though, I and the ideas I express are confined, yet defined by the borders of the written word, still images, and short motion picture clips. Without confinement, there can be no definition, without definition, limited interaction. The shape of the fork must become clear before its tines can be admired, utilized, perhaps even broken.
In this post, and in this blog as a whole, I have (attempted to) explore the different forms a poam can take on, as well as the internal structure of a poam once it has taken on a particular form. The concept of the Limited Fork is exciting and stimulating, as the best ideas always are. The thought system is the product of an act of making itself, evidence of a creator's need to indulge in excess. I've looked through a certain window, and can only wonder now from which window I'll exit or enter again.
To close, for now, a representation--a mapping, a visual enclosure--of my brain on art, my brain fueling creation, in particular, self-creation: I create my brain--
Thank you, for this induction into the Limited Fork locomotive.
Time as a Runaway System!
Interesting article from the Telegraph online:
By Tom Chivers
Quite a curveball perspective. So what happens after "time" stops? It makes me think that time is activity-dependent. Without change, there exists no need for markers of progress, which is what time essentially serves as. Or is there a bigger time outside of this time? A piece of art then, a living "photograph" of sorts (in that it interacts with a subject in a time frame different from that which it was born), can no longer transcend time in this eternal, infinite state of stagnancy. It seems like such a waste of material...who's going to look at this cosmic snapshot? The system of time and all of the subsystems that humans devise, all of which depend on time as an enclosure, as a tether (in order to freeze, in order to examine later; as proof of prior existence), would...vanish? This takes the idea that time exists only to those who can understand it outside of that person; the idea/system is no longer only in the control of its maker (which, strangely, exists as a subsystem within a system born out of itself), but takes on a life of its own, and perhaps, even comes back to control the destiny of that very maker.
Time is running out - literally, says scientist
By Tom Chivers
Last Updated: 6:01am GMT 18/12/2007
It's the end of the world - but not as we know it.
A Spanish scientist suggests that the universe's end will come not with a bang but standstill - that time is literally running out and will, one day, stop altogether.
Professor Jose Senovilla, of the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, has put forward the theory as a rival to the idea of "dark energy" - the strange antigravitational force that is posited to explain a cosmic phenomenon that has baffled scientists. It was noticed ten years ago that distant stars - the ones on the very fringes of the universe - seemed to be moving faster than those nearer to the centre, suggesting that they were accelerating as they shot through space. Dark energy was suggested as a possible means of powering that acceleration. The problem is that no-one has any idea what it is or where it comes from. Professor Senovilla's theory does away altogether with dark energy. Instead, he says, the appearance of acceleration is caused by time itself gradually slowing down, like a clock that needs winding. "Our calculations show that we would think that the expansion of the universe is accelerating," said Senovilla. He takes the basis for his idea from the superstring theory, which suggests that dimensions of time and space can move around and change places. His suggestion is that our solitary time dimension is slowly becoming a new space dimension. In some number of billions of years, time would cease to be time altogether - and everything will stop. "Then everything will be frozen, like a snapshot of one instant, forever," Prof Senovilla told New Scientist magazine. "Our planet will be long gone by then." While the theory is outlandish, it is not without support. Prof Gary Gibbons, a cosmologist at Cambridge University, believes the idea has merit. "We believe that time emerged during the Big Bang, and if time can emerge, it can also disappear - that's just the reverse effect," he said. |
Monday, December 10, 2007
Infinite Fractionation?
I stumbled upon this interview with David Foster Wallace, author of Infinite Jest, a book I've been meaning to read for a while, but haven't quite gotten around to. I thought it was interesting for another writer to express the idea of branching we discussed in class in such familiar terms:
Totally cool! This reminds me of what I discussed one evening after class with Professor Moss about formlessness and attainment of such in the material world. It seems like in the language of mathematics, this ubiquity is not only permitted but prevalent. I like how Wallace translates/transcribes this body/instrument/illustration/poam of mathematics into the realm of language and an expression more relevant/ubiquitous (words keep branching off their neighbors) to general human living.
So with an infinite boundary, are dead ends possible? One could keep expanding forever, yet still be contained within this indescribable boundary...the end of infinity would be the dead end, an end one cannot technically reach.
MICHAEL SILVERBLATT: I don't know how, exactly, to talk about this book, so I'm going to be reliant upon you to kind of guide me. But something came into my head that may be entirely imaginary, which seemed to be that the book was written in fractals.
DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: Expand on that.
MS: It occurred to me that the way in which the material is presented allows for a subject to be announced in a small form, then there seems to be a fan of subject matter, other subjects, and then it comes back in a second form containing the other subjects in small, and then comes back again as if what were being described were -- and I don't know this kind of science, but it just -- I said to myself this must be fractals.
DFW: It's -- I've heard you were an acute reader. That's one of the things, structurally, that's going on. It's actually structured like something called a Sierpinski Gasket, which is a very primitive kind of pyramidical fractal, although what was structured as a Sierpinski Gasket was the first- was the draft that I delivered to Michael in '94, and it went through some I think 'mercy cuts', so it's probably kind of a lopsided Sierpinski Gasket now. But it's interesting, that's one of the structural ways that it's supposed to kind of come together.
MS: "Michael" is Michael Pietsche, the editor at Little, Brown. What is a Sierpinski Gasket?
DFW: It would be almost im- ... I would almost have to show you. It's kind of a design that a man named Sierpinski I believe developed -- it was quite a bit before the introduction of fractals and before any of the kind of technologies that fractals are a really useful metaphor for. But it looks basically like a pyramid on acid --
To answer Silverblatt's question, a Sierpinski Gasket is constructed by taking a triangle, removing a triangle-shaped piece out of the middle, then doing the same for the remaining pieces, and so on and so forth, like so:
The result is an object of infinite boundary and zero area -- almost literally everything and nothing at the same time. A Sierpinski Gasket is also self-similar...any smaller triangular portion is an exact replica of the whole gasket. You can see why Wallace would have wanted to structure his novel in this fashion.
Totally cool! This reminds me of what I discussed one evening after class with Professor Moss about formlessness and attainment of such in the material world. It seems like in the language of mathematics, this ubiquity is not only permitted but prevalent. I like how Wallace translates/transcribes this body/instrument/illustration/poam of mathematics into the realm of language and an expression more relevant/ubiquitous (words keep branching off their neighbors) to general human living.
So with an infinite boundary, are dead ends possible? One could keep expanding forever, yet still be contained within this indescribable boundary...the end of infinity would be the dead end, an end one cannot technically reach.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Playdoh Forking
Our group came up with a good two pages--front and back--packed solid with words pertaining to and describing the fork. I would never have thought such a feat could be accomplished, but, as Professor Moss elucidated for me (and indeed as the process of this class demonstrates (for I think the best of classes, or rather, the best of students, should always approach an item as a process...always absorbing, digesting)), creativity is truly the state of open-mindedness, receptivity, or, as I like to think of it, mental fluidity. I do notice that in my most creative states (and they are becoming increasingly rare as the end of the semester approaches...), I am at ease, in tune with both the landscape of my mind and that of the environment/how my body interacts with the environment/how my body interacts with my mind. I am not afraid to welcome obscurities in thought, inconsistencies in sensual perception; I am perhaps at my most calm. Maybe this is close to lucid dreaming? I find that right when I am about to fall asleep (indeed, it feels like "slipping"), I see montages of very strange imagery in my mind, and associations that sometimes don't make dimensional sense. A computer cursor might suddenly evoke the same visceral response as someone's face, or I might decide to go off in four directions at the same time. These images remain as mere traces of fascinating shadow-shows in the waking mind, and can serve as catalysts for something more. What is that something more? I'm not really sure, and feel lacking in the tools necessary to translate them into accessible form.
Wow, I meant to talk about the in-class fork observation. Such unintended digression happens a lot for this class, and I must express how glad that students are given the freedom to explore branches, bubbling, the surface of all things (I love what one of my classmates brought up earlier in the semester--that everything we can see is a surface. Even the core is another surface; this is particularly true when one applies the concept of mathematics to this idea: a solid is the integration of infinitesimal "ribbons," not really "solid" at all). Indeed, indeed, how can one concern herself only with substance when the surface of that very substance remains occluded? Perhaps we should strive always for that strange dream-state association and processing; combine the productive power of the unconscious with the analytical power of the conscious. Is (what we call) genius, then, the ability to maintain this constant level of receptivity, hypersensitivity to stimuli? Is it genius that can seamlessly integrate the many faces of the mind?
There I went again. Seriously, back to forks (although, now that I look at it, those paragraphs above are instances of forking themselves. And so too everything in parentheses. I love parentheses. My writing would be even more of a mess without them!). Our group pounced on the single fork that had some distinguishing characteristic: the one that was aligned upside-down next to its fork-clone brothers. It just made it easier for us, made us feel like we had some reason for picking that particular fork. (It was a necessary tether.) Once we had it, the most obvious place to start was with what we could see. It was clear, plastic, the tines were curved. It was remarkable how those three visual characteristics alone propelled us onto far-off cousin branches, and we were soon speaking in abstract tongues ("the fact that the light bounces most off of the curves of the tines describes the idea that intrusions into uniformity are the most illuminating") that 9-5 mode passerbys would have checked off as hallucinogenically-induced babble. So what's the use of all this up-and-out-the-tree thinking if people get by in life without it? The truth is, everyone probably does it to some degree anyway (I know I did, but just never thought of it within the frame of the forking concept)--it makes life richer, the mind stronger, and the inpalpables of the Being a little more stable.
A week or so later, we got to play around with PLAY-DOH!! This substance was probably my favorite toy in grade school. I could never get enough of the colors, the smell, the nude cylinder out of the plastic cup, pregnant with possibility, the promise of discovery (and hours of fun! until it dried out and married itself to one form). Our group spelled out the word "fork" using letters from four different languages. Language is playdoh (if you take playdoh to be the formless mind) put into form, and consequently becomes a type of playdoh itself. Playdoh offers premium grade forkability, but by itself it is powerless. Quite like an idea. Both need an external force to impress a form upon it. To clarify, take the word "digestion" into account. If you physically digest playdoh, the material will conform to the shape(s) of your digestive tract. To digest an idea, perhaps encapsulated/expressed in a work of art like a poem, one takes it deeper and deeper into the mind via the gravity of thought; until the idea becomes may thoughts, one or several of them novel. It travels down the interborough fissures (Hart Crane's "The Tunnel" I credit for that phrase, which, being a neuroscience/english major, I simply adore and return to often) of the mind, and as it does so, conforms not only to the shape of the existing mind (for the extent of digestion depends on the dimensions of the processor), but also deforms it by creating new connections [there is this GREAT animation/concept I saw in a Brain, Learning, and Memory class last year, but fail to find now: it illustrates how, if the mind were a landscape, learning occurs when that landscape becomes impressed; thus, the more convolution, the more evidence of learning and memory there are (this leads me to wonder, what if the landscape was deformed in a way that two distal ends are brought together, much like a wormhole in space? Is this an instance of forking? We discussed in class how the tines of a fork remained eternally parallel. It looks like a wormhole would be the place where these tines met.).]. It's very fresh and exciting to look at the mind as an "external force!"
Wow, I meant to talk about the in-class fork observation. Such unintended digression happens a lot for this class, and I must express how glad that students are given the freedom to explore branches, bubbling, the surface of all things (I love what one of my classmates brought up earlier in the semester--that everything we can see is a surface. Even the core is another surface; this is particularly true when one applies the concept of mathematics to this idea: a solid is the integration of infinitesimal "ribbons," not really "solid" at all). Indeed, indeed, how can one concern herself only with substance when the surface of that very substance remains occluded? Perhaps we should strive always for that strange dream-state association and processing; combine the productive power of the unconscious with the analytical power of the conscious. Is (what we call) genius, then, the ability to maintain this constant level of receptivity, hypersensitivity to stimuli? Is it genius that can seamlessly integrate the many faces of the mind?
There I went again. Seriously, back to forks (although, now that I look at it, those paragraphs above are instances of forking themselves. And so too everything in parentheses. I love parentheses. My writing would be even more of a mess without them!). Our group pounced on the single fork that had some distinguishing characteristic: the one that was aligned upside-down next to its fork-clone brothers. It just made it easier for us, made us feel like we had some reason for picking that particular fork. (It was a necessary tether.) Once we had it, the most obvious place to start was with what we could see. It was clear, plastic, the tines were curved. It was remarkable how those three visual characteristics alone propelled us onto far-off cousin branches, and we were soon speaking in abstract tongues ("the fact that the light bounces most off of the curves of the tines describes the idea that intrusions into uniformity are the most illuminating") that 9-5 mode passerbys would have checked off as hallucinogenically-induced babble. So what's the use of all this up-and-out-the-tree thinking if people get by in life without it? The truth is, everyone probably does it to some degree anyway (I know I did, but just never thought of it within the frame of the forking concept)--it makes life richer, the mind stronger, and the inpalpables of the Being a little more stable.
A week or so later, we got to play around with PLAY-DOH!! This substance was probably my favorite toy in grade school. I could never get enough of the colors, the smell, the nude cylinder out of the plastic cup, pregnant with possibility, the promise of discovery (and hours of fun! until it dried out and married itself to one form). Our group spelled out the word "fork" using letters from four different languages. Language is playdoh (if you take playdoh to be the formless mind) put into form, and consequently becomes a type of playdoh itself. Playdoh offers premium grade forkability, but by itself it is powerless. Quite like an idea. Both need an external force to impress a form upon it. To clarify, take the word "digestion" into account. If you physically digest playdoh, the material will conform to the shape(s) of your digestive tract. To digest an idea, perhaps encapsulated/expressed in a work of art like a poem, one takes it deeper and deeper into the mind via the gravity of thought; until the idea becomes may thoughts, one or several of them novel. It travels down the interborough fissures (Hart Crane's "The Tunnel" I credit for that phrase, which, being a neuroscience/english major, I simply adore and return to often) of the mind, and as it does so, conforms not only to the shape of the existing mind (for the extent of digestion depends on the dimensions of the processor), but also deforms it by creating new connections [there is this GREAT animation/concept I saw in a Brain, Learning, and Memory class last year, but fail to find now: it illustrates how, if the mind were a landscape, learning occurs when that landscape becomes impressed; thus, the more convolution, the more evidence of learning and memory there are (this leads me to wonder, what if the landscape was deformed in a way that two distal ends are brought together, much like a wormhole in space? Is this an instance of forking? We discussed in class how the tines of a fork remained eternally parallel. It looks like a wormhole would be the place where these tines met.).]. It's very fresh and exciting to look at the mind as an "external force!"
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