Passages

[Chronomar]

Simply post a passage of something you've read that you think should be shared. If it is rather long, you can put it in spoiler tags.
Let the endless procrastination begin!

Edit: Oh, and feel free to post passages from things in a different (ie: non-english) language if you want to. I know there is plenty of literature out there that is either 1) untranslated or 2) is much better in its original language.

Spoiler

"In order to perform a task properly, or to complete a train of thought, we need to give it a proper amount of attentional engergy and focus--which is tantamount to giving it time. This is in the short term. What of the specifically human capacity to conceive longer stretches of time, extending into both the past and the future?
Neuroscience is relatively silent on the latter, perhaps because the future, in terms of neurological sign-posts no less than in our colloquial conception of it, is more of a blank. It seems that the prefrontal cortex is involved in 'tagging' a sense of expectation, or futurity. Brain imaging is beginning to reveal aspects of perception which indicate the brain's projections into the immediate future--and these seem to involve the faculty of attention. For example, some theorists have found that there is a correlation between attention and the ability to estimate upcoming temporal duration. Researchers such as Joseph Glicksohn posit the existance of a 'cognitive timer' in which 'time units' accumulate at various subjective speeds. If our attention is directed outwards, taking in many stimuli or 'watching the time' actively, the timer is more attuned to external temporality and our estimation of prospective duration is likely to be more accurate. But if our attention is turned inwards, or if we are fully engaged in what we are doing or experiencing, fewer subjective 'time units' accumulate in our consciousness and we are likely to be less aware of duration itself--how much time we have to complete a task, for example, or for how long we have been involved in it."

--Time by Eva Hoffman

 

[Chronomar]

Spoiler

“The afternoon sun was warm on the sand. The muddy waters after-the-flood churned listlessly south, and out of the deep hole by the rock in front of us the catfish came. They were biting good for the first fishing of the summer. We caught plenty of channel catfish and a few small yellow-bellies.
“Have you ever fished for the carp of the river?”
The river was full of big, brown carp. It was called the River of the Carp. Everybody knew it was bad luck to fish for the big carp that the summer floods washed downstream. After every flood, when the swirling angry waters of the river subsided, the big fish could be seen fighting their way back upstream. It had always been so.
The waters would subside very fast and in places the water would be so low that, as the carp swam back upstream, the backs of the fish would raise a furrow in the water. Sometimes the townspeople came to stand on the bridge and watch the struggle as the carp splashed their way back to the pools from which the flood had uprooted them. Some of the town kids, not knowing it was bad luck to catch the carp, would scoop them out of the low waters and toss the fish upon the sand bars. There the poor carp would flop until they dried out and died, then later the crows would swoop down and eat them.
Some people in the town would even buy the carp for a nickel and eat the fish! That was very bad. Why, I did not know.
It was a beautiful sight to behold, the struggle of the carp to regain his abode before the river dried to a trickle and trapped him in strange pools of water. What was beautiful about it was that you knew that against all the odds some of the carp made it back and raised their families, because every year the drama was repeated.
“No,” I answered, “I do not fish for carp. It is bad luck.”
“Do you know why?” he asked and raised an eyebrow.
“No,” I said and held my breath. I felt I sat on the banks of an undiscovered river whose churning, muddied waters carried many secrets.
“I will tell you a story,” Samuel said after a long silence, “a story that was told to my father by Jasón’s Indian—”
I listened breathlessly. The lapping of the water was like the tide of time sounding on my soul.
“A long time ago, when the earth was young and only wandering tribes touched the virgin grasslands and drank from the pure streams, a strange people came to this land. They were sent to this valley by their gods. They had wandered lost for many years but never had they given up faith in their gods, and so they were finally rewarded. This fertile valley was to be their home. There were plenty of animals to eat, strange trees that bore sweet fruit, sweet water to drink, and for their fields of maís—”
“Were they Indians?” I asked when he paused.
“They were the people,” he answered simply and went on.
“There was only one thing that was withheld from them, and that was the fish called the carp. This fish made his home in the waters of the river, and he was sacred to the gods. For a long time the people were happy. Then came the forty years of the sun-without-rain, and crops withered and died, the game was killed, and the people went hungry. To stay alive they finally caught the carp of the river and ate them.”
I shivered. I had never heard a story like this one. It was getting late and I thought of my mother.
“The gods were very angry. They were going to kill all of the people for their sin. But one kind god who truly loved the people argued against it, and the other gods were so moved by his love that they relented from killing the people. Instead, they turned the people into carp and made them live forever in the waters of the river—”
The setting sun glistened on the brown waters of the river and turned them to bronze.
“It is a sin to catch them,” Samuel said, “it is a worse offense to eat them. They are a part of the people.: He pointed towards the middle of the river where two huge back fins rose out of the water and splashed upstream.
“And if you eat one,” I whispered, “you might be punished like they were punished.”
“I don’t know,” Samuel said. He rose and took my fishing line.
“Is that all the story?” I asked.
He divided the catfish we had caught and gave me my share on a small string. “No, there is more,” he said. He glanced around as if to make sure we were alone. “Do you know about the golden carp?” he asked in a whisper.
“No,” I shook my head.
“When the gods had turned the people into carp, the one kind god who loved the people grew very sad. The river was full of dangers to the new fish. So he went to the other gods and told them that he chose to be turned into a carp and swim in the river where he could take care of his people. The gods agreed. But because he was a god they made him very big and colored him the color of gold. And they made him the lord of all the waters of the valley.”
“The golden carp,” I said to myself, “a new god?” I could not believe this strange story, and yet I could not disbelieve Samuel. “Is the golden carp still here?”
“Yes,” Samuel answered. His voice was strong with faith. It made me shiver, not because it was cold but because the roots of everything I had ever believed in seemed shaken. If the golden carp was a god, who was the man on the cross? The Virgin? Was my mother praying to the wrong God?
“Where?” I wanted to know.
“It is very late,” Samuel said. “You have learned a lot today. This summer Cico will find you and take you to the golden carp—” And with a swish of branches he disappeared into the dusk.
“Samuel!” I called. Only silence. I had heard Cico’s name mentioned before. He was a town boy, but he didn’t hang out with them. They said he spent all his time along the river, fishing. I turned homeward in the gathering dusk, full of wonder at the strange story Samuel had told me.
“Toni-eeee!” someone called. I broke into a run and didn’t stop until I got home.
When I got home my mother was very angry with me. I had never been late before. “¡Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe! I have been crazy with worry about you!” she cried. I showed her my promotion and her feelings changed quickly. “Grande, Deborah, Teresa! Come quick! Tony has been promoted two grades! Oh I knew he would be a man of learning, maybe a priest!” She crossed herself and sobbed as she held me tightly.
Ultima was very happy too. “This one learns as much in one day as most do in a year,” she smiled. I wondered if she knew about the golden carp.
“We must pray to the Virgin,” my mother said, and although Deborah objected, saying nobody prayed for a grade promotion, my mother gathered us around the Virgin’s altar.
My father arrived home late from work and was hungry. We were still praying and supper was late. He was angry.”

—Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya

 

[Kokoro]

A Zen Master lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening, while he was away, a thief sneaked into the hut only to find there was nothing in it to steal. The Zen Master returned and found him. "You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler, "and you should not return empty handed. Please take my clothes as a gift." The thief was bewildered, but he took the clothes and ran away. The Master sat naked, watching the moon. "Poor fellow," he mused, "I wish I could give him this beautiful moon."

 

[JoeJoe]

Spoiler

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, one girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terribly stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever.

You probably know this one.

 

[Chronomar]

Spoiler

On self-reference, Metamagical Themas by Douglas R. Hofstadter

Before going further, I should explain the term “self-reference.”

Self-reference is ubiquitous. It happens every time any one says “I” or “me” or “word” or “speak” or “mouth”. It happens every time a newspaper prints a story about reporters, every time someone writes a book about writing, designs a book about book design, makes a movie about movies, or writes an article about self-reference. Many systems have the capability to represent or refer to themselves somehow, to designate themselves (or elements of themselves) within the system of their own symbolism. Whenever this happens, it is an instance of self-reference.
Self-reference is often erroneously taken to be synonymous with paradox.

This notion probably stems from the most famous example of a self-referential sentence: the Epimenides paradox. Epimenides the Cretan said, “All Cretans are liars.” I suppose no one today knows whether he said it in ignorance of its self-undermining quality or for that very reason. In any case, two of its relatives, the sentences “I am lying” and “This sentence is false”, have come to be known as the Epimenides paradox or the liar paradox. Both sentences are absolutely sell-destructive little gems and have given self-reference a bad name down through the centuries. When people speak of the evils of self-reference, they are certainly overlooking the fact that not every use of the pronoun “I” leads to paradox.
Let us use the Epimenides paradox as our jumping-off point into this fascinating land. There are many variations on the theme of a sentence that somehow undermines itself.

Consider these two:

This sentence claims to be an Epimenides Paradox, but it is lying.

This sentence contradicts itself — or rather — well, no, actually it doesn’t!

What should you do when told, “Disobey this command”? In the following sentence the Epimenides quality jumps out only after a moment of thought: “This sentence contains exactly threee erors.” There is a delightful backlash effect here.

Kurt Gödel’s famous Incompleteness Theorem in metamathematics can be thought of as arising from his attempt to replicate as closely as possible the liar paradox in purely mathematical terms. With marvelous ingenuity. he was able to show that in any mathematically powerful axiomatic system S it is possible to express a close cousin to the liar paradox, namely, “This formula is unprovable within axiomatic system S.” In actuality, the Gödel construction yields a mathematical formula, not an English sentence: I have translated the formula back into English to show what he concocted. However, astute readers may have noticed that, strictly speaking, the phrase “this formula” has no referent. since when a formula is translated into an English sentence, that sentence is no longer a formula!

[...]

When a word is used to refer to something, it is said to be being used. When a word is quoted, though, so that one is examining it for its surface aspects (typographical, phonetic. etc.), it is said to be being mentioned.

The following sentences are based on this famous use-mention distinction:

You can’t have your use and mention it too.

You can’t have “your cake” and spell it “too”.

“Playing with the use-mention distinction” isn’t “everything in life, you know”.
In order to make sense of “this sentence” you will have to ignore the quotes in “it”.

This is a sentence with “onions”, “lettuce”, “tomato” and “a side of fries to go”.

This is a hamburger with vowels, consonants, commas, and a period at the end.

The last two are humorous flip sides of the same idea.
Here are two rather extreme examples of self-referential use-mention play:

Let us make a new convention: that anything enclosed in triple quotes — for example, ‘‘‘No, I have decided to change my mind; when the triple quotes close, just skip directly to the period and ignore everything up to it’’’— is not even to be read (much less paid attention to or obeyed).

A ceux qui ne comprennent pas l’anglais, la phrase citée ci-dessous ne dit rien: “For those who know no French, the French sentence that introduced this quoted sentence has no meaning.”

(Metamagical Themas, pp. 7-10)​

Yea, I know that one...but it's also one of my favorite passages in that book. It somehow manages to make one feel sad and hopeful at the same time. And amused. Good choice

 

[JoeJoe]

Yea, I know that one...but it's also one of my favorite passages in that book. It somehow manages to make one feel sad and hopeful at the same time. And amused. Good choice

I strongly suspect, that what the girl found out was also the question to the answer 42.

 

[PapyrusAirplanes]

My dad read "A Wrinkle In Time" to me when I was six. I've never forgotten the explanation of a tesseract.

Spoiler

"Nnow," Mrs. Which said, "Arrree wee rreaddy?"

"Where are we going?" Calvin asked.

Again Meg felt the physical tingling of fear as Mrs. Which spoke.

"Wwee musstt ggo bbehindd thee sshaddow."

"But we will not do it all at once," Mrs. Whatsit comforted them. "We will do it in short stages." She looked at Meg. "Now we will tesser, we will wrinkle again. So you
understand?"

"No," Meg said flatly.

Mrs. Whatsit sighed. "Explanations are not wast when they are about things for which your civilization still has no words. Calvin talked about traveling at the speed of light. You understand that, little Meg?"

"Yes," Meg nodded.

"That, of course, is the impractical, long way around. We have learned to take short cuts whenever possible."

"Sort of like math?" Meg asked.

"Like in math." Mrs. Whatsit looked over at Mrs. Who. "Take your skirt and show them."

"La experiencia es la madre de la ciencia. Spanish, my dears. Cervantes. Experience is the mother of knowledge." Mrs. Who took a portion of her white robe in her hands and held it tight.

"You see," Mrs. Whatsit said, "if a very small insect were to move from the section of a skirt in Mrs. Who's right hand to that in her left, it would be quite a long walk for him if he had to walk straight across."

Swiftly Mrs. Who brought her hands, still holding the skirt, together.

"Now, you see," Mrs. Whatsit said, "he would be there, without the long trip. That is how we travel."

Charles Wallace accepted the explanation serenely. Even Calvin did not seem perturbed. "Oh, dear," Meg sighed. "I guess I am a moron. I just don't get it."

"That is because you think of space only in three dimensions," Mrs. Whatsit told her. "We travel in the fifth dimension. That is something you can understand, Meg. Don't be afraid to try. Was your mother able to explain a tesseract to you?"

"Well, she never did," Meg said. "She got so upset about it. Why, Mrs. Whatsit? She said it had something to do with her and Father."

"It was a concept they were playing with," Mrs. Whatsit said, "going beyong the fourth dimension to the fifth. Did your mother explain it to you, Charles?"

"Well, yes." Charles looked a little embarrassed. "Please don't be hurt, Meg. I just ket at her while you were at school till I got it out of her."

Meg sighed. "Just explain it to me."

"Okay," Charles said. "What is the first dimension?"

"Well--a line: ____________"

"Okay. And the second dimension?"

"Well, you'd square the line. A flat square would be in the second dimension."

"And the third?"

"Well, you'd square the second dimension. Then the square wouldn't be flat on top anymore. It would have a bottom, and sides, and a top."

"And the fourth?"

"Well, I guess if you want to put it into mathematical terms you'd square the square. But you can't take a pencil and draw it the way you can with the first three. I know it's got something to do with Einstein and tim. I guess maybe you could call the fourth dimension Time."

"That's right," Charles said. "Good girl. Okay, then, for the fifth dimension you'd square the fourth, wouldn't you?"

"I guess so."

"Well, the fourth dimension's a tesseract. You add that to the other four dimensions and you can travel through space without having to go the long way around. In other words, to put it into Euclid, or old-fashioned plane geometry, a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points."

For a brief, illuminating second Meg's face had the listening, probing expression that was so often seen on Charles's. "I see!" she cried. "I got it! For just a moment I got it! I can't possibly explain it now, but there for a second I saw it!" She turned excitedly to Calvin. "Did you get it?"

He nodded. "Enough. I don't understand it the way Charles Wallace does, but enough to get the idea."


:: Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle In Time" (Ch. 5, "The Tesseract")

 

[Lostwitheal]

Spoiler

[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica]A few days later when Sarah trotted by again she stopped and said, "I’m so happy you’re teaching Quality this quarter. Hardly anybody is these days."[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica]"Well, I am," he said. "I’m definitely making a point of it."[/FONT]
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"Good!" she said, and trotted on.[/FONT]
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He returned to his notes but it wasn’t long before thought about them was interrupted by a recall of her strange remark. What the hell was she talking about? Quality? Of course he was teaching Quality. Who wasn’t? He continued with the notes.[/FONT]
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Another thing that depressed him was prescriptive rhetoric, which supposedly had been done away with but was still around. This was the old slap-on-the-fingers- if-your-modifiers-were-caught-dangling stuff. Correct spelling, correct punctuation, correct grammar. Hundreds of rules for itsy-bitsy people. No one could remember all that stuff and concentrate on what he was trying to write about. It was all table manners, not derived from any sense of kindness or decency or humanity, but originally from an egotistic desire to look like gentlemen and ladies. Gentlemen and ladies had good table manners and spoke and wrote grammatically. It was what identified one with the upper classes. In Montana, however, it didn’t have this effect at all. It identified one, instead, as a stuck-up Eastern ass. There was a minimum prescriptive-rhetoric requirement in the department, but like the other teachers he scrupulously avoided any defense of prescriptive rhetoric other than as a "requirement of the college."[/FONT]
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Soon the thought interrupted again. Quality? There was something irritating, even angering about that question. He thought about it, and then thought some more, and then looked out the window, and then thought about it some more. Quality?[/FONT]
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Four hours later he still sat there with his feet on the window ledge and stared out into what had become a dark sky. The phone rang, and it was his wife calling to find out what had happened. He told her he would be home soon, but then forgot about this and everything else. It wasn’t until three o’clock in the morning that he wearily confessed to himself that he didn’t have a clue as to what Quality was, picked up his briefcase and headed home.[/FONT]
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Most people would have forgotten about Quality at this point, or just left it hanging suspended because they were getting nowhere and had other things to do. But he was so despondent about his own inability to teach what he believed, he really didn’t give a damn about whatever else it was he was supposed to do, and when he woke up the next morning there was Quality staring him in the face. Three hours of sleep and he was so tired he knew he wouldn’t be up to giving a lecture that day, and besides, his notes had never been completed, so he wrote on the blackboard: "Write a 350-word essay answering the question, What is quality in thought and statement?" Then he sat by the radiator while they wrote and thought about quality himself.[/FONT]
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At the end of the hour no one seemed to have finished, so he allowed the students to take their papers home. This class didn’t meet again for two days, and that gave him some time to think about the question some more too. During that interim he saw some of the students walking between classes, nodded to them and got looks of anger and fear in return. He guessed they were having the same trouble he was.[/FONT]
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Quality—you know what it is, yet you don’t know what it is. But that’s self-contradictory. But some things are better than others, that is, they have more quality. But when you try to say what the quality is, apart from the things that have it, it all goes poof! There’s nothing to talk about. But if you can’t say what Quality is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it even exists? If no one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes it doesn’t exist at all. But for all practical purposes it really does exist. What else are the grades based on? Why else would people pay fortunes for some things and throw others in the trash pile? Obviously some things are better than others—but what’s the "betterness"? -- So round and round you go, spinning mental wheels and nowhere finding anyplace to get traction. What the hell is Quality? What is it?
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[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica]Robert M Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
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