This concise term, "winter mix," might denote something warm, friendly, and nourishing, like a bowl of dried fruits and nuts and a hot toddy beside the fireplace. But it's used in weather reports to describe what we in MidAtlantica are having right now: a rain of stinging ice pellets mixed with snow and almost-freezing liquid water. This sticks to everything that is outside, and will coat it with at least a quarter inch of solid ice, which I must chip off or melt off my Orange Car which now looks like a candied orange rind covered with sugar. That damn groundhog! He lied to us with that no-shadow trick. I thought we were supposed to have a No-Winter and an early spring. Global warming was going my way. But no, it's February for real.

I am back picking my way through what I learned in calculus the last few months. I re-lit the light of limits, and am now re-doing the devotion of derivatives. I haven't forgotten much, so I should be ready to move ahead on it soon. The Day Job is rather demanding these last couple of weeks, as remodeling is done within a few feet of my workplace with workers hammering, drilling, sawing, and clanking much of the day. Whatever was stored in the area being remodeled is now stashed in my workplace, leaving me only a few cubic feet to maneuver. Claustrophobia is setting in. Meanwhile, I struggle with the art direction, trying to decipher the latest in marketing strategy, which seems to change every few months. More coffee is necessary.

I'm starting another of my architectural images. This will depict the local comics and used book store, which is housed in what used to be a little bungalow home dating from the 1930's. I'm gonna make the "Hole In The Wall" look like a mansion.

Artifactual Metempsychosis

I owe this excellent title to Amanda, my Webmistress, whose upgrades to my site you may have noticed. All things have their name, living and unliving, and I underwent a crisis of nominalism once I traded in the blue Honda CRV for the Orange Honda Element. What would be "Electron Blue" now in the world of symbolic objects? All objects in this world are symbols, whether you know their meaning or not. We swim in a semiotic sea. And it's up to us, like Adam in the Bible, to put the names on those things which cannot or do not name themselves. With the name comes the soul, which I believe is not confined just to living or even natural objects. Even a toaster has a soul, though it would be a rather simple one. Perhaps the more complex the machine, object, or artifact, the more "soul" it might have. Thus a particle accelerator, one of the largest and most complex things ever created by human beings, must have a massive, if impersonal soul. And certainly cars and computers, which live with most of us far more intimately than a giant particle accelerator (unless you are a physicist at CERN or Fermilab) have souls.

Metempsychosis means the "transmigration of souls," which could mean reincarnation as the Hindus or Buddhists understand it, or a lateral transmigration of a soul from one object to another existing at the same time. And so once I said goodbye to the blue CRV, its soul needed to stay with me, to inspire this Weblog as well as my travels. It could not go to the orange car, for it was blue by nature. Remember, colors are symbols too. So where would the soul of "Electron Blue" end up?

It so happened that during the time of the car transfer, I also had both my PC computers re-furbished, with updated Windows and other software. (No, I am not ambitious, or daring, enough to get the new Windows "Vista.") I referred to this in an earlier Electron post from January 5 of this year, and stated what I hoped to do with the Electron Soul. This has now been accomplished. Unlike most human beings, computers can completely forget their past and start a new life as new persons. They don't even need "Witness Protection." My desktop system, which began its service in 2003 as "Pythagoras 2," is now "Electron Blue." Now if I were a real hardcore geek with a lot of time on my hands, I could turn my dull Dell into a fabulous sculpture, pop culture ornament, or neon-lit futuristic blaster, as those who follow the hobby of computer "case mods" do. But somehow, I'd rather do calculus and architectural perspective.

Meanwhile, I hear an ominous hissing noise outside my window as the rain of ice intensifies. There is a symbology for sleet, but I don't want to think about it. Hidden underground, the false prophet sleeps the winter away.

Posted at 3:19 am | link