Limit

Is 85% my limit? Where is the "poem unlimited"?

Fifth Aphorisms

I

Philosophy begins with the distinction of Truth and Correctness.

II

Truth is the subjective understanding of the world; Correctness is the matching of the external world with internal ideas. The difference of the two is the notion of verification.

III

A world without this distinction is the world of mythology; a world without Correctness is religion; a world without Truth is science.

IV

Hence it is foolish for those who believe in God because of science; it is yet more foolish to prove God's existence.

V

Civilization begins with there is a distinction between Truth and Correctness, with emphasis on Truth; then as it decays the emphasis shifts to Correctness. Finally, Correctness will dominant the minds of Man; Man will think no more and civilization ends.

VI

Truth is Will to Power.

VII

Truth is creative and necessarily so. To understand the world we must actively impose meaning to phenomena.

VIII

Correctness, on the other hand, reverses the process - the world, through trial and error of science, limits the scope of human understanding. The verification of Correctness is a comparatively passive act.

IX

Hence, the so-called "humanities" disciplines all have to do with Truth.

X

Logical Reasoning does not lead to Truth because it is not creative. After all, where does the first premisses come from?

XI

Contemporary science, since the Industrial Revolution, attempts the blur the distinction between Truth and Correctness by using oxymoronic terms like "scientific truth" or "logical truth". The ideology of science attempts to first blur the distinctions, then place emphasis on verification and Correctness. Hence we get people quoting scientists saying that tables are made of atoms, and the universe began with a bang.

XII

That is a correct view of the world, but not true: the Truth has no need for verification - the table is made of wood, and the universe had no beginning.

XIII

The child best understood the idea of Truth without being conscious o it because every encounter with the world is new, fresh - sometimes the tables is made of glass, somtimes of wood, but never of atoms. For the child, he had to come up with his own explanations to the world, and this is how he understood the world. Mother is not 1.58m tall; she is a big, friendly giant. Her breasts are not made of muscles and skins; they are made of warm milk and a source of comfort.

XIV

The artist too is like the child: with every experience in life the artist attempts to understand the wrold, and then creatively recreate it with whatever medium available. The world is Middlemarch; the world is the Starry Night; the world is a Paradise Lost; the world is a symphony.

XV

But if Truth is subjective, then there is no absolute Truth? Everyone can believe whatever he or she wants. The postmodernist wins, that we should spell "Truth" with a small t and add an s in the end? Shall there be too many suns for the heated, restless mind? Our firmest ground has been shattered: Truth is no longer a ground. What have we got left? Must we keep on falling? Post-modernists like to fall; they think falling is fun.

XVI

But behold! We do have a ground! That ground is the dance-floor for Zarathustra! While no longer is Truth our ground; the striving for Truth is our New Ground. What contains humanity together, what makes all the versions of Truth universal is the fact that we are all striving towards it. What makes art beautiful and wonderful is not the vision itself matching with our own - No! that would be Correctness! What is wonderful is the fact that the artist is striving to present that vision, and that we too have the same notion of striving for Truth and thus recognizing the heroic effort of the artist. The Great Striving, as I shall sing it, is our ground. This is how people of all cultures, sex, age, race, etc etc can come together and appreciate the beauty of the Great Striving, the beauty of the universe!

Poetry Selections

Milton: Lycidas (cf. Fauré's Pavane in F sharp minor)

Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once more
Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never-sear,
I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude,
And with forc'd fingers rude,
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing ear.
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due:
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer:
Who would not sing for Lycidas?

Wordsworth: Prelude, Book XIV (cf. Sibelius' Finale from his Second Symphony)

Prophets of Nature, we to them will speak
A lasting inspiration, sanctified
By reason, blest by faith: what we have loved
Others will love, and we will teach them how,
Instruct them how the mind of Man becomes
A thousand times more beautiful than the earth
On which he dwells, above this Frame of things
(Which 'mid all revolutions in the hopes
And fears of Men doth still remain unchanged)
In beauty exalted, as it is itself
Of quality and fabric more divine.

Tennyson: In Memoriam (cf. Barber's Second movement from the Piano Concerto)

I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.

T.S. Eliot: Little Gidding (cf. Beethoven's Recitative from Piano Sonata #31)

Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impottence of rage
At human folly, and the laceration
Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.

An Interesting Incident

At dinner, I was talking to my father about the womens' studies conference. My brother looked at me, as asked: "Aren't you afraid that people will think you are gay?" I gave him a weird look, and asked him, "How does that make any sense?" All he said was a continuous wave of "whatever, I don't care".

But my brother, whose social consciousness is still in development, asked me that question. Isn't that just interesting?

I do not know if he notices that the question itself makes no sense, because why would a gay guy study women?

What he is getting at, I think, is that I am talking about a subject matter that is not "masculine". All the more it is weird because he gets equally annoyed when I talk about philosophy, which is as masculine of a subject as it can get.

I think this little incident just shows how far our social consciousness have gone in the past 100 years - not very far. The status quo of masculinity/femininity still stands, if not more augmented by our media. It is a good thing that we have a conference for such studies, but unless we can actually change social consciousness, these conferences are nothing but academic games. "Cultural critics" gathering for a conference is no different from the gathering of a bunch computer gamers. While I am not stressing on superiority/inferiority, the nature of the two kinds of gathering must be at least different: cultural critics must try to change social consciousness; computer gamers don't.

Reflections from Womens' Studies Conference

I

We need canons; you can have your canon, and I'll have mine, but don't try to change my value-judgement: Truth is a subjective understanding of the world. When you are trying to change my value-judgement, it is not that my canon is un-True; rather it is simply incorrect, as it does not conform to your canon.

II

Sexual freedom is not that you can go out there and have as much sex as you want; it is the ability to talk about sexuality without shame, without feeling dirty, without feeling guilty of something. Sexual freedom is when sexuality is de-mystified.

III

The conception of the "Good Girl" in the 21st century still leans to Victorian ideal: passive, selfless, accepting, unquestioning. I do suppose even the traditional girl (who I really like) is very much like that. But is it time for this conception to change? Can girls be more active, more selfish, unaccepting and questioning? (Or I should ask, can I handle a girl like that, given my own traditional consciousness?)

IV

Let us hear the other voices emerging from the dark, and we shall find that voices in the dark is not anymore different than those in the light. Just close your eyes, and you will not be able to tell the difference.

Eroica

I

Down! Down! Tear down those tyrannical kings
From their great thrones set high above the earth;
No Sun King shall silence the poet, who sings
To all of Mankind a song of rebirth!

The King of Dunsinane had heard his cue
And left his candle's flame to smoke undone.
The birth of the Golden Child, long overdue;
The Golden Age of Man has just begun.

Tear down those walls that imprisoned our men
And traditions that paralyzed our minds:
When Apollo sings with the poets, then
Bright sparks of divinity Mankind finds!

While cries of joy thundered among the young,
Which heroes were forgotten, left unsung?

II

The candle extinguished, the proud king died,
And darkness overwhelmed the silent land:
No more war cries, or cries of high command,
Roars of cannons, or whimpers by bedside.

When young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone,
The people massed, crowding the meeting ground.
Seeing the Hero's procession, they found
That April was not yet here, and Life - gone...

O Heroes! Valiant women and men!
Thou art the deathless symbols of the dead!
We shed our burning tears, but not for thee...

But for the anonymous martyrs, when
Their stories shall never be heard or read...
We mourn for them - their blood has set us free!

III

O Little Girl! To see you smile again
Like Dawn (aroused by Athena to rise
And carry daylight to the world of Man),
Genuine tears of rapture filled my eyes!
O Little Girl! April is here again;
Life, for a second time, is my first prize.
May the heroes to Hades' realm belong;
Your sacred smile ennobled by my Song.

IV

Can we, like the little girl, smile again
Without feeling the burden of a time
When she would cry for her mother in vain?

Prometheus, though committed a crime,
Feared not the Eagle: for Fire everywhere
Is the deathless symbol of the sublime.

Aeneas exiled far from Troy's nightmare
And suffered much violence of war, before
Found'd New Troy and saw her goddess-born heir.

So even if young Siward lived no more,
As darkness overwhelmed the silent knight
And Earth buried the armour that he wore:

Courageous Man! Be hopeful, just and right;
The Golden Child shall bring eternal light!

A Brief Reflection on Love

How do we know that we love someone? Well, one thing I've learnt today is that we know we love someone when life (with that person) magnifiies itself, so that even the seemingly slightest incident to the objective observer becomes the most traumatic experience subjectively. Words become unbearable and the incident (or the absent of the incident) repeats itself over and over again. You want to defend yourself, and you are probably right in your defence, but you have found no word because you have come to a subjective realization that you are wrong - you have hurt she who you love, even if it was a misunderstanding or a miscommunication or any kind of unfortunate coincident. But out of this you also realize that you love her - you really do.

Among the Tulips: A Birthday Sonnet

Among the rippling tulips I shall find
Colours blurr'd in impressionistic style:
A mosaic of your memorable smile
That shall forever blossom in my mind.

Among the waving tulips I shall find
Every leaf and petal within a mile
Imitating your tender gestures, while
The cranes' distant song echoing far behind.

As long as the tulips flourish through Time,
In memory, presence or desire,
O Friend! To you my blessings I shall sing:

Your blameless past preserved in witty rhyme,
Your deathless present live like rousing fire,
Your boundless future'll be eternal spring!

On Books and Writing by Schopenhauer

This is the first Aphorism Schopenhauer wrote "On Books and Writing":

"Writers can be divided into meteors, planets and fixed stars. The first produce a momentary effect: you gaze up, cry: 'Look!' - and then they vanish for ever. The second, the moving stars, endure for much longer. By virtue of their proximity they often shine more brightly than the fixed stars, which the ignorant mistake them for. But they too must soon vacate their place, they shine moreover only with a borrowed light, and their sphere of influence is limited to their own fellow travellers (their contemporaries). The third alone are unchanging, stand firm in the firmament, shine by their own light adninfluence all ages equally, in that their aspect does not alter when our point of view alters since they ahve no parallax. Unlike the others, they do not belong to one system (nation) alone: they belong to the Universe. But it is precisely because they are so high that their light usually takes so many years to reach the eyes of dwellers on earth."

There is no doubt that the works of Schopenhauer are the fixed stars . Some of our popular works in modern poetry are the planets. The many uproars of Post-modernism at best is a very bright meteor: soon man will find his ground again, and the meteors will be nothing but a footnote to history.

A Promise

I got home late today. As I entered my room, I saw Emma playing with her fingers. When she saw me, she jumped up to put her arms around me and hugged me. I hugged her back. Then the following conversation took place:

Tristan: Emma, did you make lots of noise?
Emma: Hmm...
T: Remember Emma, before I left you, you promised that you won't make any noises.
E: Yes, Tristy.
T: Well?
E: Tristy, after you have left, I have been thinking: nobody is at home anyway, so why could not I make any noise? I really like to dance and sing.
T: What did you do in the end?
E: I thought about it for a long time, and I have decided that even though no one would know that I was singing and dancing, I would still not do it.
T: Oh? Why?
E: Because I promised you that I would not do it. It is very important to keep a promise, you know.
T: Of course I know.
E: I had to fight very hard to keep my urges you know? Because I really wanted to dance and sing!
T: Yes! Well, good for you! It is important to keep your own principles.
E: What are principles?
T: Nevermind, Emma. So, all that time you could have danced and sang but you didn't, what did you do then?
E: Oh I danced with my fingers instead! See? [Making all kinds of finger movements]
T: Tell you what Emma, I'll take you to the library in a couple of days okay? There you will meet a few friends same age as you.
E: Yay! Tristy is the best! [Kisses Tristan on the cheek]

I tucked Emma to bed. She was singing a tune from Phantom of the Opera. I told her that she should listen to Richard Wagner. She corrected my pronounciation: "It is wag-ner, not varg-nar, you dumb-dumb!" Then she merrily went to bed.

Emma

Today I brought Little Emma home. When we got home, I told her three things:
1. "Emma, when I am studying, you have to be quiet."
2. "When I am sleeping, you also have to be quiet."
3. "When I am away, you most definitely have to be quiet."

Little Emma looked at me, puzzled. She asked, "Tristy, when can I dance and sing?" And I answered, "only when I am using my imagination."

So happily she danced and sang until she tired herself to sleep.