Two

In response to Chris Vitiello’s question: If you were going to work with a number, what number would it be, and why? I wrote:

I think the number two (2) is a really interesting number which has a lot of depth and potential. It seems like a really common number (as numbers go). It's prime. It's the lowest even number. It even works its way into the definitions of other classes of numbers (e.g. a prime number has two and only two numbers which it is evenly divisible by (1 and itself (right?)) The number two seems to have worked its way into our lexicon/psychology/subconscious in interesting ways (is it strange that I put lexicon in the same group of words as psychology and subconscious just then?) Think about all of the songs and movie titles and old saws which have the word two in them. "Two's company..." "A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush." "Two heads are better than one." The number two seems to symbolize/signify the most basic plurality in existence. Why did philosophy stop at dialectics... where are all of the trialectics and quadralectics etc? Think about all of the things that come in pairs. A lot of the ways in which our bodies interact with the world comes in sets of two whether we think about it consciously or not. We have two eyes, two hands and two feet. I'm sure there are other important pairs to think about. Also, this seems related to the idea of symmetry. Two, it would seem is the most simply symmetrical number. Two just seems to me like a pretty important number all around. Thanks for such a stimulating question, Chris.

riffin'

Mental Note

This is all a mental note. 1. Previously a post titled "Lunch" ought to have been titled "Late Lunch." No one eats jalapeño poppers for regular lunch. Everything seems to be coming together. The moon is sinking as we planned. Plans are a marvelous tool it turns out. Plans, not language, as it turns outseparatess homo sapiens from the other homonids. Who knew? For instance, had the invasion of Troy been planned it might have gone off without a hitch. But the Trojans it would seem were not humans at all, rather scary fire-breathing ape-beasts. Again, who knew? It certainly is amazing what science along with the help of a millennium of planning have helped us humans discover and create. I would be willing to bet that if it all were a contest that the human race would've knocked all of the other competition unconscious with our fists of hardened steel a long time ago. 2. Two is the next number here. Well, 'there,' I suppose. I want to talk about Rufus Wainwright. 3. Nick Drake, Rufus Wainwright, neither man is a different man. Allow me to explain. 4. Here is an explanation. 5. We don't fully understand the numbering system which we use. 6. Number five, we know, was right after number four. We can designate them by their number written out in different writing systems. Therefore five is the same as 5. No one can spell 5. But we digress. We or I. You see? We is the same as I in the same way that 5 is the same as five in this case. Isn't that funny? 7. We manipulate these ideas like amarionettee when we don't fully know what amarionettee is, only we have read the accompanying instruction manual. It seems to work, so we stick with it. I am sticking with it for now. 8. This is the nick drake principle. It is called the thee nick drake principle" for several reason which may not be discussed at present. This is an ok thing. There are things un-ok sometimes. Not according to the the nick drake principle. Stay with me. 9. All of this is made up. This is meant to designate all of the surrounding materials. Look around you. What else belongs in the room you are in. What else belongs outside of the room you are in. Is there any other space to think about? Look at them. Look at all of these. Don't you see what we are trying not to have already seen soon? We are a language of ideas. We are not even speaking. Not even close. Reading does not exist, or at the very least, CANNOT exist. An ambulance is travelling between East Asheville and its centrally-located ambulance dispatch hub located to the South of Downtown Asheville. Can it ever possibly get there in time? This is my question to you, the so-called "reader." Also, how do you KNOW? How can you possibly know? The answer may seem obvious to some, and may be a real stumper for others. But now back to our regularly scheduled programming. 10. All of this is being thought in the brain of a man or woman, but perhaps he or she identifies as some other gender. We will never know. This is no accident. History has conspired, and we do not know what's on the menu yet. This music is confoundingly an adjective. How nonsense.

Lunch

So, we meet again, blogsphere. The channels of fate run deep and cold, and yet they have led me to you once again. May our time together be a memorable one. May the cheeks of the newborn calf be pink with the proper patterns of respiration. May we all fit neatly into a idea-shaped box without the need of much extra tape. May the address label be smooth upon the cardboard. May the spellchecker be functional. May and may and may. May the afternoons be filled with the "good kind of boredom." May there be a certain tree in a certain region of a certain forest which when slept beneath a certain number of nights in a row a certain wisdom may be bestowed upon a certain segment of the population of a certain planet gyrating in a certain very distinctive manner (anti-clockwise) around a certain star. May a mushroom. Mother, may I. . .? Mayfaire. Mayapple may not be a single word, then again it may. May it. May is what a linguist might call a modal. That same linguist might characterize the word, 'may,' as a "helping verb" in casual conversation with other reasonably intelligent professionals who are perhaps not as well-versed in the discipline of linguistics as the linguist over drinks (i.e. cocktails) one evening after work. One distinctive characteristic of some Southern American English dialects is the appearance of "double-modal" phrases, such as 'might ought,' and 'might could,' as in the sentence, 'I might could stop by the Bi-Lo later if you made me out a grocery list.' "Isn't that interesting?" thought the awkward dietician as she reached for her vodka tonic and smiled at her friend who was a linguist. Beside her on her left sat a couple who were both zookeepers (it's how they had met). Beside her to her right was a politician who was drinking a beer. No one could ever quite remember his first name, so they all called him "Mack" for short. It was a good set-up. The politician, whose real name was Matthew, thought they were all just mispronouncing his nickname; but he was too nice to have the desire to correct them all. On Mack's right was a 500-pound brown bear drinking a Long-Island Iced Tea made with his favorite vodka and his second-favorite gin. The bear was surprised that the bar had garnished his drink with a lime wedge rather than the more-familiar lemon-wedge. On the bear's right was the linguist. The table was round. The bear was hungry. The woman sitting two seats down from the linguist on his right (it was an oddly shaped table) was ordering jalapeño poppers-- they were supposedly good here, made with a special cream cheese blend. The brown bear really wanted a plate of spicy wings; but he was trying to impress the dietician, so when the waiter asked if anyone else was ordering he didn't speak up. The bear grinned across the table at the dietician who was stirring her vodka tonic. The bear thought she looked like Tori Amos the singer. Everyone else at the table except for the linguist (who was unfamiliar with Tori Amos) thought that the dietician, though slightly awkward, was the spitting image of one, Tori Amos, singer. This pleased the dietician greatly. A tiny Japanese man who was a dentist was thinking about time-space. For some reason, the linguists anecdote about double modals had reminded him of a book he'd been reading in his spare time (which was usually on Sundays and Mondays when Sawa Dentistry Associates was closed. Apparently Mondays are statistically the worst days to go to the dentist in terms of random shootings, etc. So, Sawa Dentistry Associates would remain closed on Mondays as well as the usual Sundays (for sundry religious observances-- it was, after all, the Bible Belt). The dentists name was not Sawa. His name was Nichizawa. Sawa was his brother-in-law's name. Their dental practice had been smiled upon by the Buddha for going-on nine years now. Sawa had been Nichizawa's brother-in-law now for almost eleven years. Sawa was the elder of the pair by five years, so although Nichizawa had received his DDS a full three years prior to his brother-in-law, out of courtesy he had insisted that Sawa's family name also be the name of the dental practice. Someone was saying ". . . one for the treble, two for the bass, three for the ladies, four for the blaze. . ." Everyone was feeling mellow after a round of drinks. The politician wondered how many of his friends smoked marijuana on a regular basis. The linguist wondered about the etymology of the word 'bong.' The dietician wondered if her wig was on straight; but resolved not to worry about it, after a quick glance in the "Guinness" mirror on the back wall revealed no visible hair anomalies. The zookeepers were whispering in an annoying anti-social sort of way about the new Hippopotamus amphibius at the zoo. The bear was fantasizing about the cream cheese blend inside of the bar's version of jalapeño poppers. TO BE CONTINUED...