mind over matters

Raskolnikov's dream, chapter v, Crime and Punishment.

Mikolka is the embodyment of the violent urges that surge from Raskolnikov's id. By creating a character to house this part of himself he disconnects his guilt administrator ( the superego) from his violence inclined id.

He shouted from the cart – 'and this brute, mates is just breaking my heart, I feel as if I could kill her. She's just eating her head off. I'll make her gallop! She'll gallop!' he picked up the whip, preparing himself with relish to flog the little mare.

Mikolka acts as a separate entity with his own set of id, ego and superego. Deeply disturbing is his superego (depicted as the crowd of on lookers) who seems to bend to the will of his id or are completely dismissed as Mikolka's ego justifies his actions as socially acceptable because they are within the rights of every capitalist.

'Don't meddle! It's my property, I'll do what I choose.'

Two lads in the crowd snatched up whips and ran to the mare to beat her about the ribs. 'Hit her in the face, in the eyes, in the eyes,' cried Mikolka.

Raskolnikov's internalized superego exerts no control over Mikolka in this detached state. Reducing himself to the helplessness of a child he allows Mikolka to have the power to maim and destroy.

Mikolka stood on one side and began dealing random blows with the crowbar. The mare stretched out her head, drew a long breath and died.....the poor boy beside himself, made his way through the crowd to the sorrel nag, put his arms round her bleeding dead head and kissed it.

Facilitating the rise in power of the id born killing urges inside him, Raskolnikov prepares himself for his ultimate act of cruelty.

'Can it be, can it be, that I shall really take an axe, that I shall strike her on the head, split her skull open, tread in the warm sticky blood, break the lock, steal and tremble; hide all spattered in the blood...with the axe.....good god, can it be?'

Posted in: Crime and Punishment on Tuesday, June 8, 2010 at at 1:34 PM 0 comments  

The smoking cube social environment seems reminiscent of an elevator.

a) Everyone is there by necessity.
b) The space is small enough to force some awkward accidental eye contact.
c) Your intention is to get in and then quickly get out as soon as you’ve elevated to a higher level.
d) It smells bad.

Posted in: on Friday, April 16, 2010 at at 8:48 AM 0 comments  

The baby stroller.

10kg of plastic, 2.5 cubic meters in size to carry a 4kg baby, 50 cubic centimeters in size. The lost ability to cling to the side of our mothers as monkeys do was a travesty of natural selection.

Posted in: on at at 8:28 AM 0 comments  

We cannot underestimate the complexity of our social communication with others and the deep effect it has on our emotional development. When another person is live before us in the flesh, we are bombarded by a range of input from the individual (body language, conveyed emotions, suppressed ones, created dialogue) this is weighed up against our own output (prior knowledge of the current situation and predicted emotional response from the other, deep sustained ideas and knowledge of the individual from the past, our own agenda with concerns to that person, our own psychological temperament at that given time) what occurs is a most rich and unique interaction.

Relationships we attempt to re-create over the Internet are effectively retarded by the physical lack of the individual in our space. The Internet essentially stops an emotional reactional feedback loop from cycling through. It cuts off access to the full extent of the input required to move through to another mental position in the loop. This loop is necessary for a rhythmic emotional state that allows a healthy attachment/detachment with another person. The retardation caused here creates a mental standstill, ‘if I can’t form a ‘reality script’ of the situation from my intuition in the presence of the individual how do I piece together their character and the nature of their attentions?’ In our efforts to resolve this standstill our minds return to our mental safety net, fantasy.

We visualise fictitious situations where the person is a real bodily presence in our lives. We dream of the future because our nature states that a ‘disconnected connection’ will never be enough, eventually we long for a physical presence. The lure of this kind of relationship is it is at once immensely self indulgent and satisfying, we have the chance to mediate our reactions towards that person which alleviates the pressure of potential unguarded negative projections, we also build tension and intensity of desire through longing and forced restraint.

The concern here is that we become so self indulgent that we immerse ourselves completely in our online connections or our highly mediated fantasy replica connections. This can lead to a retraction from real world connections which are overwhelmingly complex and taxing by comparison, yet exponentially more rewarding by aiding a healthy continuum of the emotional progressional loop.

Posted in: Internet, philosophy, spain on at at 8:22 AM 0 comments  

Posted in: cartoon, Paul Noth on Saturday, March 13, 2010 at at 12:02 PM 0 comments  

Life has a habit of throwing people into your path who have the annoying tendency of showing you just how ignorant you actually are. From the tender age of 14 I've viewed the Alevis as the carnival freaks of Islam, a people whose leader was a warrior of such repute his emblem became the double edged sword, a people who believed that mosques were evil and ran screaming from bunny rabbits.

My housemate a Danish born scholar of Turkish origin is both a researcher of Alevi traditions and an Alevi by birth. Little accurate information is known about Alevi customs due to the years of political suppression which put this minority religious group in hiding and the nature of the religion itself which comes from a mostly oral tradition. It is widely known that Alevis will not enter a mosque because their caliph Ali was murdered in one. In part this is true and certainly fits into Alevi mysticism. However, at least in the case of the Turkish Alevis who originally preyed in mosques with their Sunni brethren, there was also violent political pressure from the right (predominantly Sunnis) for them to partake in their worship elsewhere (Alevis being associated with the left).

A fascinating branch of Islam worthy of much more academic study and recognition in the political arena than it is afforded, it's definitely worth some of your days 'googling time'.

Posted in: alevi on Friday, March 12, 2010 at at 6:25 AM 0 comments  

Feeling the niggling rise of nostalgia for my home country lately I was inspired to put down in words an image that had been floating around in my head from some months ago.

Home 6.

a name
to name it in soundless words conjures an image
a feeling of stillness, hushed felicity
a fanciful amalgamate of memories
played sluggish through the nostalga of time

ochre powdered rocks shimmer in the heat
dark sandy strands of hair drift unbidden towards the sky
blue grey leaves slide over one another with
muted rustles as the breezes pass
tall feathery reeds bend and float on air, entwined together
crisp eucalyptus and old spice pepper the air
a bold blue jolt of sky and eyes

here
gently warms all the feeling organs
burgeons the senses in rapture
recinding banality

Posted in: home, poem on Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at at 12:02 PM 0 comments  

During a recent jaunt to Syria I was struck by the repeated use of one particular motif. It shimmered on finely woven cloths and loomed out of pagan stone carvings, the ever alluring pomegranate. Strange that this fruit which appears in almost every strain of our worlds ancient mythology (Persephone and Hades, 613 mitzvot, Bijapuraphalasakta) hasn't as yet had a full color, glossy laser printed coffee table book dedicated to it.

It does however get a mention in this odd poem that gives me a warm recollection of my homeland.

Many Colored Squares

by Philip Whalen

Posted in: poem, pomegranate on at at 11:23 AM 0 comments  

I think there comes a time when every girl who was fortunate/unfortunate enough (depending on your point of view) to have a mother whose inclination was to watch giddy period films, is reminded of a quote from Jane Austin.

This week I am reminded of a quote from sense and sensibility.

'Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no, it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken.' - Marianne

Posted in: on Saturday, February 27, 2010 at at 10:08 PM 0 comments  

Home 5.

chilly toes
better tuck them up
sit like a brooding hen
all plumpf, all eyes a
sparkle with pleasure
surveying the scene
a little slovenly
but gratifying yes
even delectably belly warming
or is that the
hot chocolate talking
both have the desired effect
magnifying the calming effect
of my vacant drifting feelings
bloating the brain
stained not blood red
but rose red
a tender shade of pink
to match these tender thoughts


(Sometimes the urge to write something silly and sentimental just can't be sedated)

Posted in: home, poem on Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at at 8:56 AM 0 comments  

When disaster on this scale strikes I'm humbled and shocked and horrified. When disaster on this scale strikes again on the news at 6, then on the news at 8, then on the news at 10, then on the late night news at 12:30 the shock ahh starts to feel a little less shocking. Bless the mainstream media channels and their repeated 30 second disaster clips detailing all we need to know for discussion around the water cooler. Bless them for turning the pain of thousands into a viewer ratings smash. As disenchanted as I am with the media these days there are blissfully some publications out there that try to go beyond the headline grabbing stories to bring us small pictures of the individual lives that have been altered forever in such a tragic and unforeseeable way.

My nearly six foot tall twenty two year old cousin - the beauty queen we nicknamed Naomi Campbell - who says that she is hungry and has been sleeping in bushes with dead bodies nearby, stops me.
'Don't cry,' she says. 'This is life.'
'No it's not life,' I say. 'Or is should not be.'
'It is,' she insists. 'That' what it is. And life, like death, lasts only yon ti moman.' Only a little while.

-Edwidge Danticat
The New Yorker FEB 1, 2010

Posted in: on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at at 9:18 AM 0 comments  

Home 4.

as it goes then not
so bad then
a chair a
table
put them together
elementary
productivity
as it should be
idleness
shot straight in
the face
a busied frame
is a frame full of
life

work life
public life
love life
family life
all needing oiling
constant monitoring
the pace must be
maintained
only the dead lie still
left to soak up serenity

Posted in: home, poem on Monday, February 15, 2010 at at 11:39 AM 0 comments  

After descending down into 'the pit' today to drum up some help from the IT department it struck me how every organisation I've ever worked for has always deemed it necessary to dump our hard working nerd friends into the dankest, airless sub-basement office space in the building.

I cant imagine how hard it must be to watch the latest sci-fi flicks where the guy manning the computer console is always the center of attention in a sparse room filled with white light, electric colour and panic striken people looking for a hero.

Feeling sorry for my compadrios I'm considering giving this interior design team from Germany a plug at our next meeting. We might have to run a few LAN party fundraisers to bloat our budget a tad though....

N59 arkitekter

Posted in: on Monday, February 8, 2010 at at 12:26 PM 0 comments  

I'm sensing a re-occurring theme as I trundle my way through the impenetrable tomes of the great philosophers... intellectual super stardom equals immense ego, dirty jokes and a strong oral fixation.

'Zizek positively fizzes with enthusiasm for anything that might be hoisted into the world of ideas, so much so that it is sometimes difficult to get him to shut up. When the photographer tells him to keep his mouth closed for the pictures, he dutifully obeys for about two seconds before launching into a half-serious aside in which he compares the camera to a phallus.'

Interview by The Guardian.

Image: Analia Hounie zikeks blushing bride, added for your viewing pleasure.

Posted in: on at at 11:30 AM 0 comments  

During a wet Sunday of endless movie screenings from the comfort of my couch my mind drifted as it has a tendency to do to other things. Comming back to the real world after a jaunt into my own brainspace I realised that I'd completely missed a vital plot point. Alarmed I wracked my brains for what I had missed. My eyes had been observing the screen the whole time. If I could completely block the data entry comming into my head by thoughts of what pizza toppings I felt like eating that evening then how were more complex emotions and desires blocking my vision of other things. Does the 'id' have a naturally stronger persuasion over our bodies physical reactions/receptors than the 'ego' cares to temper?

“The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego”
Freud: The Ego and the Id.

Posted in: on at at 10:21 AM 0 comments