The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

February 16, 2005


A Letter


I wasn't expecting you to write to me.

I'm a little sad and confused myself.

I'm not very happy when I'm living in limbo.

  Even though it hurt to lose you, it feels better than wondering if you
would ever decide how you felt about me.

  I cut things off because I wanted to move on. When you say that you don't
want to write about how you feel or have been feeling, but you say we need
to communicate, what exactly do you want to communicate?

  What else is there besides how you feel or have been feeling? In the
absence of that, I have to guess how you feel.

  The best guess I came up with was that you just weren't into me all that
much any more.

  And I don't want to waste my time on someone who isn't into me. It hurts
a lot to be with someone who says that maybe he loves me and hints that he
finds me pretty unpleasant.

  When I was with you, I felt like I was a huge disappointment for you.

Now you can be disappointed with someone else.

I guess I'm still angry.

I love you.

  That isn't good enough, though.

  I can't even name what our problems are, so I don't see how those
problems could ever be fixed.

  I have little faith that we can communicate without professional
assistance.

  Are you ready for that?

  Have you been getting therapy for yourself?

  You said you wanted to do that first, so that's more waiting limbo for
me. Anyway, I think you're right.

  Our feelings have never been able to make up for our problems. I'm trying
to solve my own problems now.

  I don't think I can be any good to anyone until I'm good with myself. I
never wanted to lose you either.

  But it would be far worse to lose myself, and I'm the one who needs all
of my spare time and effort right now. I wish it didn't have to be this
way.

  There's this part of me that's trying to figure out the magic thing to
say to make everything work out in the end for us.

  But that's just me trying to manipulate the situation.

  I can't control this or make it work out. You do what you've gotta do.

  I'm doing what I have to do.

  I don't exactly miss you.

  You're heart left me so long ago, I got used to you being gone.

I miss the memory of you from long, long ago, when you were a god to me and
I wanted to be just like you.

  I miss how I felt about myself when I met you.

  I felt pretty and amazing and creative and like I was an extraordinary
being.

  And I thought all of that about you, too.

  Somehow, for both of us, our self-esteem and excitement about being in
the world slowly eroded. Maybe all those good feelings in the beginning
were artificial, or exaggerated. But I'm trying to emerge for real now.
I'm not looking to you to help me feel good about myself, or blaming you
for making me feel bad about myself. I don't know what you're doing, or
how you feel.

  I can't be responsible for that.

So why are you angry with me for cutting you off?

  What would you have me

  I didn't want to talk to you anymore because I didn't want to go
through the agony of hoping it would work out for us. Especially when you
wouldn't even commit to trying. I think I also wanted to prove that I'm not
like      .

  But maybe it's you who's like      .

  Maybe you enjoy the unstable drama of loving someone who doesn't give you
what you want.

I'm getting what I want for myself.

I want things to work out for us somehow, but only on terms that feel right
and healthy.

  I don't know what that would be like, exactly.

This is a long letter.

  Longer than         wants right now.

  He's singing "          " in my face to get my attention. He misses you.

  He asked if you could come over Thursday night.

  I didn't know if it was better to say yes or no.

I know nothing.


_

Book Review of Books Mostly Liked


This is written in a more traditional style, in the hopes of greater
distribution, and readership, and in the hopes it will be of greater use.
I already reviewed Bunt's Islam in the Digital Age for RCCS and will send
that out in the future, when it's published online.

Islam in the Digital Age and a number of other books have given me a
greater interest in the Quran itself. I can highly recommend:

Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation, John
Wansbrough; forward, translations, and expanded notes by Andrew Rippin,
Prometheus, 2004, original edition Oxford 1977. For me, raised with a
greater knowledge of biblical exegesis, the Quran has remained somewhat
impenetrable in terms of hermeneutics. This book goes a long way towards
remedying that; it describes the various tropes and interpretive modes
available in enormous detail. Wansbrough begins with retribution, sign,
exile, and covenant, analyzes the concept of prophethood, indicates how
narratology and textual archaeology tend to fail, presents a wide variety
of exegetic principles, and so forth. The work is both older and difficult
- the original has sections in Arabic, Hebrew, German, Greek, and Latin
(at least) left untranslated, but Rippin's addenda help a great deal. I
feel I can work with this book, move out to a greater understanding of the
scaffolding, if not the interiority, of Islam, and for an atheist, this is
the best I can hope for.

On the other end of the spectrum, which closes the ring through Avicenna
and Averroes, look at Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, the
translation by Shlomo Pines, with an introductory essay (quite long) by
Leo Strauss, University of Chicago Press, 1963, still in print. Note the
name Leo Strauss - the same beloved of neocons in the US (see the BBC's
Powers of Nightmare). Strauss was an expert in Maimonides, and it is oddly
to Maimonides one might turn for an analysis of current US political
rhetoric rhetorical tendency. For Maimonides writes for the 'perplexed' -
those who are already knowledgeable in Biblical exegesis, but who want to
explore the deeper meaning of the words, especially in light of Arabic and
Greek philosophy. The work is two-tiered, which Strauss' essay, How to
Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed, brings out - there is exoteric
and esoteric knowledge, and it is not necessary for everyone to understand
everything in depth. Out of this comes Bush, eventually, without the
grace, the knowledge, the problematized liberalism, that seems to
characterize Strauss' thought. And the Guide is interesting itself; it
begins with a terrific analysis of the attributes of God, and moves on
from there. Most highly recommended. Dover has an earlier translation, but
it's more difficult to read, and without the introduction, of course. (The
translator also has an introduction, The Philosophic Sources of The Guide
of the Perplexed, which indicates the tremendous cross-fertilization among
Arabic, Greek, and Jewish sources at the time.)

My ignorance of Strauss (and of political philosophy in general) led me to
The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, An Introduction to the
Thought of Leo Strauss: Essays and Lectures by Leo Strauss, Selected and
Introduced by Thomas L. Pangle, Chicago 1989, currently in print. Here
you'll find The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Rationalism; "Relativism"; An
Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism; Exoteric Teaching; The Dialog
between Reason and Revelation; and a number of other essays. The essay on
Heidegger, who Strauss considers a master, is itself a revelation; his
interstitial scholarship reminds me of Jane Gallop. Strauss thought, if
anything, is complex, and this is an excellent introduction. We need to
return to the sources at this point, not of theodicy, but at the least, to
those who struggled with materials that Bush and cohorts, bin Laden and
cohorts, have simplified and bent out of all recognition (the two engaged
in a violent dance of slaughter and retribution etc. etc.).

Strauss leads to Karl Kraus, by virtue of politics and the crisis of
rationalism. I've read Kraus for years, on and off, and he now slides into
the descriptions of the work of Elfriede Jelinek, which I've mentioned
before. I've read three of her four novels in print in English from
Serpent's Tail, and am in the middle of the fourth (Lust, translated
Michael Hulse, 1992). Although I'm probably the last to argue for a
'national literature,' there are moments among Kraus/Jelinek that resonate
strongly. It's Wonderful Wonderful Times, Serpent's Tail, translated
Hulse, 1990, that has given me nightmares and an interiority as if the
writing were inscribed just on the outer edge of a scar among twins, or
what happens in the 50s in Vienna. This is the strongest fiction I have
read in a long long time, and I hesitate to call it fiction; whatever it
is, it is something else along the lines of philosophical psychology
without the cleverness that characterizes so much in what might be
considered a fallen genre. Read it.

Here are three O'Reilly books. The first is:

Google Hacks, Tips & Tools for Smarter Searching, Tara Calishain and Rael
Dornfest, 2005. I've actually found this book indispensable, since I play
with the API, Gmail, and so forth. It's like working a cranium, or a model
of a cranium. This edition is far more useful than the first, since it
covers the wide variety of material coming out of Google labs, as well as
the usual material on the deep syntax of web searches. I'm surprised how
valuable it's been. I have mixed feelings of Google itself - on one hand a
commercial enterprise with over 100,000 computers - but on the other, an
entrance, configured/corrupted into the fabric of knowledge itself. So I
work with it; I could work with any number of other search engines, but
Google is familiar, and does what I want it to. When I try other engines
or access modes, I always return to this one, even with the advertising,
etc. It's stripped down and oddly open, and the book is an excellent guide
to all that it can do.

Second O'Reilly is Internet Annoyances: How to Fix the Most Annoying
Things about Going Online, Preston Gralla, 2005. The format of the book
itself is annoying; computer books at this point seem to divide into
'serious' and therefore straight-forward text/diagrams - and 'home use' -
with over the top production. This follows the latter, and as a result
it's difficult to use, which is a shame because the information is quite
useful. Unlike Google Hacks, the best way to use this book, unfortunately,
is to read straight-through; otherwise you might miss something, and there
are things to miss. This is for the non-geek net user, but I did find good
material on software for connection speeds. Gralla himself is excellent.

The third of these - O'Reilly send them to me for review - I ask them - if
the book looks promising or useful or valuable for cultural production of
any sort - since I've very little money - I was a consultant on one of the
Running Linux editions - that started it - is Home Hacking Projects for
Geeks, Tony Northrup and Eric Faulkner, also 2005. So this summer I have a
residency at the Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, and want to work
more with hardware, and will be using this and the other books I mentioned
in other reviews that deal with wiring and wireless and automation. This
may be the best of the group, with clear text, etc. Some of the projects
require hardware modification and some don't. A lot involve viewing - home
theater, 'Watch Your House Across the Network,' tivo-ing a radio,
monitoring a pet, etc., and the scripts, many for linux, will be useful
enough. I yearn for the day when creating an installation will be simply a
matter of linking components like modules or subroutines or old analog
audio synthesizers. It's getting there, and books like these are guides
along the way.

I found a copy of Frank Lloyd Wright's Drawings and Plans of Frank Lloyd
Wright, The Early Period (1893-1909), a Dover reissue of an original
German edition from Berlin 1910. This was a real surprise; here's either
convergence or an incredible familiarity with Japanese Heian architecture;
in any case the buildings are spread horizontally with negative spaces and
all sorts of eave-ings that sink the structures into the plains. I thought
I knew Wright - wrong! - and if you have a chance to find this, check it
out. For some reason it was at a Barnes & Noble on sale for fifty cents
(new).

Also by Dover, in the same sale, Introduction to Space Dynamics, William
Tyrrell Thomson, from the first edition Wiley, 1963. I realize how little
I understand the dynamics of space-flight, and this book explains it in
detail. The mathematics is difficult; I get the 'general idea,' and that's
enough at the moment. There's a lot of material on gyroscopic dynamics,
torque of all sorts, etc. If this book were current, it would be
accompanied by a cdrom with all sorts of demonstrations. Still, it's fun
as it is, and certainly if you 'know math,' check it out.

Finally, the Pilgrims had chronicles, and I didn't know that, and found a
book, Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers, published by Dent/Dutton 1910,
introduction by John Masefield of all people. The chapters are New
England's Memorial; Supplement to New England's Memorial; Cushman's
Discourse; New England's Trials; Winslow's Relation; and Winslow's Brief
Narrative and the material is fascinating. I've been reading these sorts
of things, if sorts they are, for several years, after I found that
Letters From an American Farmer (Crevecoeur) contained early material on
Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania, where I was born. There were bitter and violent
wars there and hunger and fury and fear and slaughter and it was in the
middle of the north-east of the state and for the narrative, imminent. So
the Pilgrim material is equally of interest, at least a century earlier;
there is much on Native Americans that I hadn't seen. If you can find this
or similar, read away; it's as astonishing as Hakluyt.

Finally - is anyone out there working with ELF radio? I'm interested in
working with one. -


===

years ago i was jumping around
these are the images i just found

because i also found a mac powerbook g3 at the salvation army with
accessories slurp slurp and extra memory for $99
and i was looking for my software disks to install lovely macisms
so there was this disk and these things and i thought why not

the susans

http://www.asondheim.org/susan.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/susan2.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/susan3.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/susangra.jpg

susan graham images from my susan graham works

the dings

http://www.asondheim.org/ding1.mp4
http://www.asondheim.org/ding2.mp4

off the screen imagery, i was lazy, from mathematica transformations
you get the idea not the detail
oh sometimes this keyboard is skipping on me now
too much typing and thinking back hurts
call it a day, a day
call a night a night


__

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> This may be of interest to those involved with new media, generative art,
> autonomous systems, and/or matrix-style paranoia.
>
> Daria is an autonomous software artist that creates art for users in real-time
> on her site. As an autonomous entity, she is responsible for her own bills
> (hosting, hardware, etc.) and employs me to make enhancements to her. You can
> donate to her via the paypal links on the site. Also on the site is
> information on how she was created and future plans for Daria.
>
> http://daria.muxspace.com/
>
> Comments and criticism welcome to me or her.
>
> Brian

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