authenticity

Robert Kunzig, in February’s national geographic: The architects in charge of Notre Dame de Paris’s reconstruction plan to replace the forest of oak beam rafters that burned in a raging inferno three years ago… with a brand new forest of oak beam rafters! They do not address the irony, the nonsense, of rebuilding with wood after such a fire.

They plan to replace the lead roof that melted, sending a ton’s worth of lead particles up in smoke to settle within a kilometer of the cathedral… with a new lead roof! There’s dispute, apparently, about the lead’s actual impact on the environment, and the chief architect has determined that any possible health risk is worth taking. Guaranteed–nontoxic alternatives like copper or zinc simply won’t do — though just why is not addressed either.

Lead already covers the Panthéon, the Invalides, and other monuments, Villeneuve said; why should the cathedral be the only victim of “the madness of these lead fundamentalists”?

This is what a true last-known-state reconstruction requires, apparently: oak beam rafters hewn by hand the way our fathers intended, except for being roughed out at a modern sawmill first, because, well, that is a lot of work after all. Lead roofing, pinnacle of materials in 1850, and completely harmless we assure you, but just in case we’ll be filtering the rainwater that runs off it. Statues of the apostles restored, their copper refinished and smoothed, but not too smooth, because they “must exude authenticity.”

The two great rock–cut temples at Abu Simbel were cut into the Nubian mountainside by order of Pharoah Ramesses II ca. 1264 b.c. They stood, more or less — battered by the elements, buried by sand, and eventually rediscovered — for more than three thousand years.

And then, in the 1960s, the Aswan High Dam was built across the Nile. The resulting rise of Lake Nasser threatened to flood the temples, and proposals flooded in from archaeologists and engineers to save them. One idea proposed to just let the water rise and construct underwater viewing portals for tourists; this was dismissed. Instead, the temples were simply (simply!) moved.

Between 1964 and 1968, the entire site was chopped (“carefully cut” saith Wikipedia) into large blocks. These blocks were hoisted up and put back together in a new position above the rising water line. Put back together exactly as they had been before:

The single entrance is flanked by four colossal, 20 m (66 ft) statues, each representing Ramesses II seated on a throne and wearing the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. The statue to the immediate left of the entrance was damaged in an earthquake, causing the head and torso to fall away; these fallen pieces were not restored to the statue during the relocation but placed at the statue’s feet in the positions originally found.

zamioculcas zamiifolia

for Zeus

O goodness you must be so proud, she said —
Voice muffled by the humid air in there,
The giant shining leaves between her head
And mine, the murmur of the shop — while bare
And coiled your roots clung to familiar soil.

So happy, healthy! But to me you looked
Uptight, forlorn; for too long kept in too
Tight quarters on the corner of my book
Shelf (so for company but Montesquieu,
Berlin, no livelier); the light too dim.

You take such care, and I can tell. Can tell
Your dirt is dark with water poured in haste
Just hours ago, the first all month? And hell,
That this new terra cotta is a waste
If I can’t keep you living week to week?

I wandered, browsed the bonsai, gave her chance
To tactfully pluck off a shrivelled leaf
Behind my back, to spritz the rest. A glance
At tiny cedars, oaklings, worth the grief
And cost, if one can bear their certain loss.

All done, and much more comfortable! And yes:
Reclined in incandescent light you seemed
Content — or less resigned at least, I guess,
Returned beside our fifth floor window, leaned
Toward the sun in loose–packed earth — to grow.

do dogs dream in dog time?

I’ve long been skeptical of the existence of objective linear time, so I’m primed for Truls Wyller’s argument in What Is Time? that without human actions “physical events have only a perceived, general duration” and that time is “inextricably connected to the existence of human, acting subjects” (139-40). Sure, the world existed before us and will exist after us, but the meaning of time — past present future, then and now — that’s all human, all subjective.

Take deja vu. I can’t ignore how often I remember that I’ve had an experience before, and not just a similar experience but this one exactly. Weirder is deja vu two layers deep: remembering that I’ve already once before remembered what’s happening now. Or reverse(?) deja vu: not having remembered, but having predicted, having dreamed previously, of the present that’s now unfolding.

Then there’s how much the perceived speed of time can vary. When I got the recordings of my B.A. organ recital back, I was shocked to hear how fast I had played. I rushed through every single piece, but had no sense in the moment that I was playing any faster than normal. I was nervous and my heart was racing — racing fast enough, apparently, to drastically change my inner sense of tempo. My professor and organist friends could tell the difference, but other friends and family in the audience couldn’t. Of course, the latter had never heard me rehearse; they had no reference for what the tempos should have been. But couldn’t it also be that they were nervous for me, with me, and that our senses of time sped up together?

Sped up — in reference to what? That’s always the snag, isn’t it? In the end, when it comes to time and memory, we have to rely on subjective description. We can’t prove an objective measure of time because we can’t get outside of our own perceptions to do the measuring. Which I know is begging the question or making a god of the gaps or whatever, but still. It doesn’t change how I live my life, and I don’t look straight at it too often, but I am just vaguely suspicous of the notion of time.

Wyller writes that “dogs can be physically and mentally affected by things that have hapened, but they do not sit and chat about them” (119). To which I say: are you sure? Dogs’ experience of the past might seem lesser than ours, but the “seem” is operative. Lacking shared language, we only have their behavior to guess by. And in order to not privelege our own subjective experience, my guess leans more toward different than lesser. Perhaps a dog’s “self–understanding is not dictated by career choices and other long–term projects” (120), but dogs can have jobs, and do develop long–lasting loyalties. Who knows what that means to them?

And dogs definitely dream. When my parents’ black lab, Fischer, runs and woofs in his sleep, is he reliving specific squirrel chasing memories from earlier today? from yesterday? from a month or year ago? Are his dreams a hodgepodge mosaic of squirrel and squirrel–adjacent images, linked by stronger or weaker associations? I assume he dreams as he sees, in grey.* * But who knows! My dad sees color when awake, but dreams in black and white… Then again, most of my own dreams aren’t visual at all (at least that I remember in the morning). Are his dreams just flashes of sensation, feeling, the sense of the chase? Are his movements signs of dreams at all, or just electric signals shooting below even his unconscious brain?

What’s real? perceived? projected? Even if Fischer had our language, I think he’d find it near impossible to say.

spring sonnet

O God grant me that greatest care—or is
It actually the lack of care—with which
My dog sees all your earth and doesn’t miss
A single leaf: a look that doesn’t list
But leaps from butterfly to stick to ball,
Or one more piece of trash, or some old sock;
Two bashful browning eyes that I could call
My sight, and I would joy around the clock.
I’ll pass on taste or smell like his O Lord,
And as for hearing: well, I think it best
He keep that too. Just this I would implore—
My sight improve; the dogs can have the rest.
To think how many wondrous sights I’d see,
Were dog-like love and wonder given me!

a note on reading notes

The notes on the age of federalism previously in this post have been moved! They and future additions will be gathered on this page instead. As I added more entries, and those entries grew longer, it made more sense to give them a home of their own outside the feed.

I’m sure the structure of this and future evergreen pages will change with time; I’m also pretty sure I’ll forget to change the link here when that happens…

the last contraption

I’ve been in an unmistakably good mood lately; I feel a kind of ambient contentment that I haven’t for a while now. Why? For one thing, in Des Moines we are finally, finally (I think, I hope) emerging into spring. The days are getting longer, the snow is melting, and it feels like the deepest part of winter is behind us.

For two, I got on my bike again.

I took my first proper ride of the season on Sunday, and it completely shook off my winter doldrums. It was warm, sunny, slightly breezy: perfect sweatshirt weather. The trails were muddy in places, but that just added to the fun. It was exhausting—and thrilling.

After a season off the bike I had to relearn how to move this way: to look farther ahead, anticipate, adjust to what comes. There’s a constant stream of changing context to handle. My rides start downtown on streets, sidewalks, bikelanes, maneuvering with cars. Then the local trail by the river, sharing with joggers, skaters, people fishing, kids being hooligans. Then the regional trail: a bicycle highway, straightaways, speed. Then more local trails, more streets, and all in reverse on the way back. Endless different views of the world and other people in the world.

My senses were utterly engaged the whole time. There’s a particular sharpness and clarity that snowmelt gives the air. I’d never noticed it before like I did dismounting at the end of the day, inhaling, my whole being full and giddy with it.

I taught myself how to ride without hands on the handlebars. I’d been jealous for ages of the nonchalant hands–free riders around town; now I’m cool like them. It’s not as hard as I expected, mostly a matter of gentle course corrections and momentum. The bike is designed to stay upright—I just had to keep it upright under me!

I love my bike as an object, a contraption. The tactility of braking and shifting, the click and whirr of chain, gears, wheels—the bike itself is as much a part of a ride’s sensory experience as the scenery. It’s unabashedly (elegatly, simply) a machine; even better, it’s a machine I power myself.

What else nourishes mind, body, and spirit so well?