July raw notes
Focussed work
Back deck in the July sun.
July was another stay at home month. My wife spent time in Tokyo for family matters. I was focussed on work. Few social encounters other than at work and the people I meet out walking.
Method: A seed (usually a text but I am working on ways to use images as seeds) is used together with a frame (an ontology of the types of possible links between two notes) to select notes from a collection and put them into a sequence. Notes are what I am sharing here: three line poems, fragments, proto poems that are haiku adjacent but not haiku.
I am getting a better understanding of how seeds and frames work together to select and sequence notes. I am not happy with my current fames and plan to do a lot of work on this in August and September. There will be two vectors for this. I am going to move to simpler frames that use only one organising metaphor. The current frames are all mashups in one way or another. Threads will likely get shorter, but a sequence may include and contrast more than one frame. I am also working on a frame or frames that will work better with images. Seeds don’t need to be text. I tried a couple of experiments in early July with some of Eric Selland’s brush work. See Collaboration One with Eric Selland and Collaboration Two with Eric Selland. These used two different frames. In both cases though, the frames overwhelmed the images, and the threads are more about the frame than the images. The sequences are interesting but they don’t really draw out the collaboration. I have a different approach for a frame that I am working on.
The piece on Ownership from early in the month is part of my effort to understand my own ethics and how ethics will have to change in response to climate change and demographic change. In a 1919 letter to Ludwig von Ficker, Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote "Der Sinn des Buches ist ein ethischer... Es wird nämlich das Ethische durch mein Buch gleichsam von innen her begrenzt".English translation: "The book's point is an ethical one... My book draws limits to the sphere of the ethical from the inside as it were." Wittgenstein was primarily an ethical philosopher.
I also leaned into translation, doing some Yoshida Issui 吉田 一穂 translations and working a lot on Fujiwara Teika 藤原 定家. See Preparing to translate Fujiwara Teika 藤原 定家 and Fujiwara Teika 藤原 定家 first translation attempts. This will occupy me for the next few years.
My study of the Yoneda Lemma and its use as a seed text is also something I want to continue. There are some, for me, surprising connections between this Lemma and Madhyamika माध्यमिक thought experience that I want to go deeper on. The Yoneda Lemma - phase transition frame. The Yoneda Lemma - musical transitions.
Back in spring, while in Paris, I committed to writing a book with Michael Mansard and Wolfgang Ulaga (a professor at INSEAD in Paris). The book Pricing for the Agent Economy, is moving forward quickly.
August will be a family month, with some trips within BC.
July Notes
For Žāle
The mirror born
Of water in paradise
Completely still
-
In old age the mirror
Talks of tomorrow a pale
Breath on the glass
—
Birch died yellow green
Fifty years ago in Sweden
The colour holding fast
-
Live bark simmered
More hours to bring out
Darker greens
-
Fixed with alum brightening
The birch die into warm soft
Golden orange
-
Iron saddening the
Tannins into charcoal
Slate and olive green
-
A copper mordant shifts
Extracted pigments toward rich
Earth greens and deep bronze
—
First breath of
Water rippling dampened
By its surface tension
—
Waves build height
And length slowing
With their weight
—
As cold water is heated
It shrinks becomes less compressible
And conducts heat better
-
As hot water is heated above 40°C
It expands becomes more compressible
Conducts heat less efficiently
—
White radish sliced
Very thin a slow
Sunday afternoon
—
Construction next door
Mice try to move into our house
To find a home
—
Brain tired I
Concentrate on slicing
Fresh garlic thin
—
Early morning
Watering the garden while
Tea steeps
—
Brain plasma
Simmering with
Awareness of others
—
Water’s mix of
Order and disorder
Define its properties
-
Water sliding along
The border of chaos always
Sliding back into order
-
Surface tension pulls
Water into droplets keeps
Dust on the surface
—
Forest cooled in
The heat dome fades as
Trees breath
—
Stroking the skin
Between her wrist and elbow
She smiles
—
At the critical point (373.946°C and 220.64 bar)
The density of water and
Steam converges as surface
Tension falls to zero
-
With the heat of vaporization
At zero the phase boundary for
Steam and water fades away
—
Ambient liquid water under
The continuous influence of fluctuations from
A critical point it can never reach
—
Blanket warmth
Early morning cold
Waiting for birdsong
—
Skin paunchy
Pulling as I shave
Bright hot water
—
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanishing_gradient_problem
Dwindling a
A vanishing gradient dissolves
The possibility of learning
-
The exploding gradient
Washes any learning away
In the noise
—
Wife away
Wearing the same shirt
Two days in a row
—
The hydrangea suffering
Some of the higher leaves
Cracked and dry
—
Unfolding a tensor
Into sliding local blocks
To isolate a feature
-
Folding a tensor
Into the destination pixel
To restore the image
—
Relaxing
My hands begin to shake
Reading small text
—
The water quiet
Lying still until
It’s tepid
—
Riding a train
Across her life
Sipping tea
-
She asks for help
To find the gate and
Looks confused
-
Invited to come along
With a return ticket
Full of doubt
—
Roast pears with
Lavender early summer
Rosemary later on
—
Cutting cold butter
Into the flour
Rolling it out
—
Cleaning each loop
Of the whisk
Putting it back
—
Early morning still
Warm the day starts
. . . Slowly
—
Living alone
The same meal
Gets repeated
—
Why use a symbol
To mark a pause or space
In the meaning
—
Waiting while
The watering can fills the
Space between points
—
Early morning heat
Watering the plants
A faint steam
—
Wildfire smoke
Season today’s
Ride cancelled
—
Sound shape
As the vessel fills
Something complete
—
Warm stones comfort
The feet walking barefoot
Stress released
—
Sun on old wood
Dries what little moisture left
Oils seep out
—
Finding gradients
In high dimensional space
Looking for a way down
—
Wildfire smoke
Potassium from the cellulose
Infiltrates the lungs
—
As smoke travels downwind
Organic compounds oxidize
The aged smoke more toxic
—
After washing the dishes
Washing the sink
Sitting waiting
—
Finally rain
No need to water
The garden happy
—
Passive relief as
Rain does work for me
Watering the garden
—
Roots full as
Water runs off
Into the street
—
Wildfire smoke from
Burning soil’s last
Exhaustion
—
More rain
Not bothering
To water the garden
—
Thyme smothered
By fallen blossoms
Early rot
—
Cutting a dead patch
Out of the thyme
A crow squawks
—
For Mohini Dey
From Advanced Electric Bass Technique
Avoid playing the root note
Referencing the third and b7
Suggest the underlying chord
-
Adding tension notes
A chromatic passing tone
The pitch inventory adds up
-
The scale broken into
Smaller shape-based cells
Patterns in notation
—
Half asleep
Gull raucous
Wakes me up
—
Not many bugs
Spiders find something to eat
Sweeping the stairs
—
Rubbing salt
Into the corn
Summer evening
—
Rubbing salt
On her skin
Licking it off
—
Coarse salt’s
Large grains dissolve
On the skin
—
Less sound walking
Barefoot on the wood
Leaf rustle
—
A summer hard cheese
With a dry rind
Left to sweat
—
Summer soft high cirrus
Drift away from each other
Creating space
—
Pressed yoghurt sour
With old honey crystals
Thick on our tongue
—
Husking corn
Each thread of silk
To its own kernel
Reading
The Origins of Order by Stuart Kauffman. Continued from June, and will continue into August. This is a dense monumental book. Rereading it now, about 30 years after first reading it, I can see how much it shaped my thinking. Fitness landscapes and the exploration of fitness landscapes, the edge been chaos and control, cascades, selection operating on parameters, co-evolution … there is much to think about here.
Greenwood by Christie, Michael. Perhaps the great Canadian novel. The destruction of the forests and the ways Canadian society fails in the great depression, in the 1970s, early this century, with a look to the future. In New Brunswick, outside Kingston, in Saskatchewan, on the coast. From 1908 to 2038.
Mirror of Dew The Poetry of Alam-Taj Zhale Qa’em-Maqami by Zhale tr by Ashgar Seyed-Gohrab. A little known Persian poet, resonates on some levels with the next book.
String of Beads: Complete Poems of Princess Shikishi by Shikishi Naishino 式子内親王 translated by Hiroaki Sato. Read it to get a feel for Sato’s one line translations of waka, but this drew me in and contributed to the decision to translate 100 waka sequences complete by Teika.
Alice’s Adventures in Differentiable Wonderland by Simone Scaradapane. Got a better understanding of why it matters if the vector space can be differentiated, and directed me to ways that transformers are being applied to graphs.
School by Jen Curin. This did not end up engaging me, not sure why.
Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki, art by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell. I have grandchildren in high school …
Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Will be going to this at Bard on the Beach with grandchildren.
Being in Being by Skaay of the Qquuna Qiighwaay translated by Robert Bringhurst. A transformative book that restructures ones brain and embeds you in the life of the coast.
The Royal Hunt of the Sun by Peter Shaffer. Picked this up from a local book exchange. His play Equus was important to me in my late teens and I saw it performed several times. This play is harrowing and goes into deep ethical issues.
Rise of the Machines: Drone Warfare in the Russia-Ukarine War by Illya Sekirin. A very important book by a person directly engaged in using drones in Ukraine. Most of our current military technologies, from fighters, to vehicles, to ships … drones and soon AI are rewriting everything people thought they new.
A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski. One of the great feminist eco SF books. Plan to read Brain Plague and Minds in Transit as well.
The House of Charlmagne by Tim Lilburn. A dance text on Louis Riel. Uses lines from Riel’s Massinahican. I had not heard of this work, which looks compelling even if only a few parts of it were preserved. Want to look for his poetry as well.
Advanced Electric Base Technique by Mohini Dey. An incredible musician. Her approach to speaking rhythm is helping me with my own writing.
Po Chü-I Selected Poems by Bai Juyi 白居易 translated by Burton Watson. This came up in the Teika work, specifically a line from The Song of Endless Sorrow 長恨歌, one of the great poems of world literature. Watson did not translate it, but here is a link to a translation by Zixi Cai in Alchemy.
Magnifica Humanitas by Pope Leo XIV. His missive on AI. The emergence of generative AI is the defining event for humanity in my lifetime and I plan to read widely on and around this. I am a heavy AI user (the seed and frames work to selected and sequence by using AI).
How to Read Water by Tristan Gooley. A wonderful book that helps me see what I am seeing, especially when looking at water, which is something I do a lot.
I always knew your pricing work was compelling; now I understand why.