there is no such thing as a kernel of meaning to anything to be found anywhere. we may dig, and dig, and deeper still we will dig but we will never find it. meaning is contained in a web surrounding us in all directions, forward backwards up and down. but it always has ourselves at the centre and it is constantly expanding, like a universe of galaxies, as we observe the world around us. we will never grasp it in its entirety because our hands are not large enough to gather up all the strands. and there will be patches and holes and the web is fragile; and there will always be gaps because there is an infinite space stretching out from the self and it will never be filled and while we try to fill it up we miss out the little gaps we left behind.

knowledge is a struggle.

to continue on from this analogy - do concepts have a meaning separate from us? assuming the only intelligent life forms on earth are horses, will chairs be chairs? horses, after all, cannot sit. chairs will become pieces of wood pieced together into amusing shapes, or at best, neck rests. they might even be a strange kind of table.

and to continue:

love is blind, but it doesn't exist. not without us, anyhow. it is a cultural construct, i think.

same as justice, which is, similarly, blind. (and somehow, fair.)

i am also bored, and in a i-don't-want-to-work mood.

i've been listening to disney songs throughout my last two essay semi-crises (i.e. nights when i work to 3.30am trying to finish my essays for the next day's tute... which, actually, is not very xiong by the standards of other people here). all right, please please please do not keel over in shock from discovering that i actually listen to songs with lyrics, for God's sake, i don't want to have any blood on my hands (or the carpet, parquet, ceramic tiles or whatever have you), indirect as it may be, from people reading my blog.

and - i realize - i actually quite like them. (ok, don't writhe about on the floor, it's not becoming.) largely because they're immensely sappy (most of classical music isn't sappy, though it can get cliched) and sentimental. and i realize and appreciate, because i'm older now, some of the themes presented, the motifs, and also the pretty orchestration (kudos to the creators of Pocahontas. one also starts realizing little things like in when you feel the love tonight the strings enter when timon sings the words "romantic atmosphere"; this subtly changes the entire mood and sets the stage for the entry of the lovers. but 'nuff said.) and also because they make me nostalgic. a) because i really liked disney movies when i was younger but also b) because they make me realize what a stupid kid i was back then.

because now, you see, i also hate disney. well perhaps "hate" is too mild a word. i absolutely detest it. it is puerile and full of cute prancing bunnies with big eyes. (well, at least Bambi is.) and all the female heroines are good looking and have perfect hourglass figures. (damn.) and of course, big eyes. and it's always happy endings. and of course, they're so horribly unfair to the villains, who are presented without any redeeming features and are strictly one-dimensional, and who have immensely painful deaths. (now is that fair?) i wouldn't mind so much if it were just some dumb fairytale put on stage, like snow white. but claude frollo in hugo's novel was nowhere the power hungry sinister and cruel character that he was in disney's adaptation. (though i must admit hugo's frollo exercises a great fascination for me.) and disney lies. john smith of pocahontas fame is not tall, handsome, and blonde. he was, in real life, ugly with a huge red bristly beard, who got himself blown up by standing too near a store of gunpowder. so he was ugly and stupid. of course we see modern notions transplanted into the 'historical' disney films, for instance, the american indians were all noble savages on the rousseau-ian model, peace-loving and minding their own business until the whites came. (they were most certainly not. pocahontas's father, powhatan, was a blood-thirsty power-hungry head-basher of other indian tribes.) the only way they were noble savages was perhaps the fact that they didn't wear any clothes at all (including the women) which was not reflected in the movie at any point in time. mulan, of course, is utter nonsense, and you should know why.

but of course disney appeals to the romantic inside, so i'll happily consume the films and music while knowing that, really, i hate them.

every now and then one gets the thought flashing past of not being good enough, or worse, never being good enough. it's irrepressible, it comes without warning, and goes without one either. and even if brief and fleeting it upsets the complacent balance within.

one of those rare occasions one just feels WUMPHED by something. like WOW. WHOOOOAAAA WUMPH. akin to being hit by a club, but much less painful i think. but a truly amazing feeling, and so wumphy that i absolutely have to gush about it.

often you discover old patterns of behaviour and old modes of thought, underlying all those new facades, like scar tissue under a spanking new bandage, except they are far more than just mere reminders of the past and have actually an active role in shaping the present. and you realize that it's not so much that "the more things change the more they stay the same" but more like things don't change at all.

perhaps all which persists is much like gold, untarnished as it remains throughout the ages, unlike greening copper and rotting wood.

***
attended a rememberance day service here on sunday.

it was a simple, moving ritual performed on a windy yet fair morning; the representatives of the university resplendent in scarlet, red and jet, their gowns fluttering in the breeze like the flags borne by the members of the oxford territorial army; wreath- layers from the armed forces sombre in navy and khaki; various other important people dressed up in what seemed like 18th century uniforms, hats and breeches and swords like the duke of wellington, but cockade-less. this is a country mindful of its history.

a lone bagpiper played a lament; otherwise it was quiet safe for the rustling of the gold and brown leaves of autumn, hanging heavy from trees soon to be denuded by the rush of winter. at the foot of the giant cross erected for the dead of the two wars, the city rector intoned:

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

And the band struck up a tune then, slow but not mournful; filled with rememberance and hope, the hymn

O valiant hearts, who to your glory came
Through dust of conflict and through battle-flame,
Tranquili you lie, your knightly virtue proved,
Your memory hallowed in the land you loved.

but perhaps the most powerful image of that day was of the ranks of veterans (all too probably diminished by the intervening years), some on crutches and some on wheelchairs, but all wearing proudly their uniforms and medals, marching past the assembled crowd to the sound of swelling applause.

just an interesting thought that hit me as i was reading up on anthropology and the power of rituals in the construction of authority:

why is autochthonous pronounced as autoch-thonous rather than auto-chthonous, which, surely, given its etymology (autos, greek for self, and chton, greek for earth) should be more "correct"?

also, why should agnostic be pronounced ag-nostic rather than a-gnostic? (a - prefix meaning 'without', gnosis, greek for knowledge).

anyway it does warn me against amateurish attempts at reconstructing etymologies from a) pronunciation and b) what we are used to in normal english consonants (which do not usually include sounds like chth, zd, gn, or ps, like say, greek.) and i did actually try searching for 'autoch-' as a greek root before realizing that "-chthonous" looked similar to the word "chthonian".

i also stumbled upon an interesting article online insisting (and making a lot of sense) that the word forte in english should be pronounced in the french way (i.e. like 'fort') rather than italian (i.e. 'fortAY') because the etymology was french. after all the modern definition of the word is "strong point" which is the meaning in french, and not italian (where it means 'loud'.)

and then there is the whole esplanade (rhyming with spade) esplanade (rhyming with marquis de sade).

and also nonchalant. (non-shel-ont? non-chair-learnt?)

words are, as always, fascinating.

**
AH FUCK i'm just bored by stupid anthropology, which waffles endlessly about symbols and power and witchcraft. GGRRRR.