Another morning 5.am and I am wakened as the rooms fills with light. I go back to trying to turn that damn where inside out. I give up in frustration and turn the sphere into a small squealing piglet and then I was suddenly with Alice in the smoke filled kitchen and the Duchess was there too sitting on a three-legged stool. Only I thought she was the Red Queen, or was she the White? I couldn't remember so she flashed red and white like a beacon as I juggled the wriggling piglet.
It seems to me that if we have any free will at all then it exists there in the mutable imagination, the waking world feels entirely determined down to the smallest detail. I then moved on to thinking of the cruelty and depravity of the first Ming Emperor Hongwu or Zhu Yuanzhang, - Chinese Emperors have several names which can very confusing unless you are familiar with them. -. Yet despite his absolutism and all the dreadful cruelty the Emperor did much to alleviate the conditions of the peasant farmers and the slaves, and laid the foundations for the flourishing of the arts and sciences and the growth of trade during the Ming Dynasty. One famous example of this spirit of curiosity and enterprise is Wan Hoo who tried to fly to the sky by sitting in a chair propelled by gunpowder sticks.
If only the Darwin Awards had been around then! But you have to admire the spirit of the man.
Michel Tournier in his novel The Erl King (Le Roi des Aulnes) talked of malign inversion, the elevation of evil deeds and the denigration of the good. I remember he talks of the many war memorials as an example of this. The way we view the cruelty of kings may be another. The criminal is usually a figure to be feared and extirpated in society and popular culture and yet even the worst serial killer seems insignificant when compared with deeds of those who have ruled over us. Yet we remain far more terrified of the shambling inarticulate monster than we do of the urbane articulate tyrant, and I think there are a lot more of those around. But I suppose the difference is that the shambling monster lives in a box just beyond the car park whilst the urbane tyrant lives in a palace far away on the hill top.
Time to get up and work on my flying chair . And feed the pigeon.
And, going back to it later on, I finally managed to turn the sphere inside out. Though I'm not sure I could do it again.
It seems to me that if we have any free will at all then it exists there in the mutable imagination, the waking world feels entirely determined down to the smallest detail. I then moved on to thinking of the cruelty and depravity of the first Ming Emperor Hongwu or Zhu Yuanzhang, - Chinese Emperors have several names which can very confusing unless you are familiar with them. -. Yet despite his absolutism and all the dreadful cruelty the Emperor did much to alleviate the conditions of the peasant farmers and the slaves, and laid the foundations for the flourishing of the arts and sciences and the growth of trade during the Ming Dynasty. One famous example of this spirit of curiosity and enterprise is Wan Hoo who tried to fly to the sky by sitting in a chair propelled by gunpowder sticks.
If only the Darwin Awards had been around then! But you have to admire the spirit of the man.
Michel Tournier in his novel The Erl King (Le Roi des Aulnes) talked of malign inversion, the elevation of evil deeds and the denigration of the good. I remember he talks of the many war memorials as an example of this. The way we view the cruelty of kings may be another. The criminal is usually a figure to be feared and extirpated in society and popular culture and yet even the worst serial killer seems insignificant when compared with deeds of those who have ruled over us. Yet we remain far more terrified of the shambling inarticulate monster than we do of the urbane articulate tyrant, and I think there are a lot more of those around. But I suppose the difference is that the shambling monster lives in a box just beyond the car park whilst the urbane tyrant lives in a palace far away on the hill top.
Time to get up and work on my flying chair . And feed the pigeon.
And, going back to it later on, I finally managed to turn the sphere inside out. Though I'm not sure I could do it again.