Absalom
p269 ...though nobody ever did know if Bon ever knew Sutpen was his father or not, whether he was trying to revenge his mother or not at first and only later fell in love, only later succumbed to the current of retribution and fatality which Miss Rosa said Sutpen had started and had doomed all his blood to, black and white both... the next Christmas came and Henry and Bon came to Sutpen's Hundred again and now Sutpen saw there was no help for it, that Judith was in love with Bon and whether Bon wanted revenge or was just caught and sunk and doomed too, it was all the same....
I am so ashamed. Here's a lesson I thought I had learned from reading Parade's End and yet I had forgotten it until now. The lesson was to really pay attention to horses when they are described in any detail in books set before the automobile became the dominant means of transport. The horse Sutpen rides into this novel on is described as roan. Here is the definition for "roan horse:" "Roan is a horse coat color pattern characterized by an even mixture of colored and white hairs on the body, while the head and "points"—lower legs, mane and tail—are mostly solid-colored. Horses with roan coats have white hairs evenly intermingled throughout any other color."
In the section of the book I'm reading now, when Sutpen returns to Jefferson -- with the headstones --during the war we are repeatedly told Sutpen is riding a black stallion. (An odd choice for a war horse, I believe.)
p277 ... [Quentin] Am I going to have to have to hear it all again he thought I am going to have to hear it all over again I am already hearing it all over again I am listening to it all over again I shall have to never listen to anything else but this again forever so apparently not only a man never outlives his father but not even his friends and acquaintances do....
I can't tell if that "to have to have" is a typo or not.
And so we come to the retelling of Sutpen's second reverse in the battle between men and women. When Rosa reacts as anyone else would have known she would. While I don't really follow how Charles Bon was played into his part in this tragedy -- or how he himself could have known how to position himself, the situation with Rosa is simple enough. But what is the significance of Sutpen's relationship with women generally? I don't see that gender played any part in the story of either Race or Class in the South, aside from the usual desire on the part of women to support what ever side they happen to fall into. I'm clearly missing something here.
p286 Sutpen's black stallion and the mare produce a male foal, a horse "...the spit and image of his daddy when I rode him North in '61...." And Milly, Wash's granddaughter, I presume, gave birth to what? "horse or mare?" Shreve suggests a son, which makes no sense.
p290 ...[Wash Jones, according to Quentin's father] 'Brave! Better if narra one of them had ever rid back in '65' thinking Better if his kind an mine too had never drawn the breath of life on this earth. Better that all who remain of us be blasted from the face of it than that another Wash Jones should see his whole life shredded from him and shrivel away like a dried shuck thrown onto the fire... And Wash slaughters his own granddaughter and great granddaughter -- well at least that it was a mare makes more sense, if that's the word I want here. And so it does come down to the boy-symbol after all.
Rare books
Two of the oddest -- and also most interesting -- works in my library are a self-published account of the beginning of the Pacific War in the Philippines -- by a U.S. Army doctor who had moved to Manila Bay a bit before the Japanese invasion, given to me by a friend whose family had been neighbors of the man after the war. (He survived the Bataan Death March and all the years of captivity.) And a multi-volume history of the American Civil War first published in 1911 that some friends gave me for Christmas one year. (The Photographic History of the Civil War the Blue and Gray Press) One of the more curious features of this latter work is the section on war horses of famous generals. Really, it's about famous horses because it seems that people during and after the war were interested in these horses. They would have had their own Twitter accounts.
Chapter 11, "Famous Chargers", includes photos and bios of many of the horses. Grant, for example had at least three mounts at the end of the war including the most famous "Cincinnati." Even Lee had other horses in addition to "Traveler." It appears that most of these mounts were geldings though at least one of Grant's was indeed a stallion.
Here's a passage about General Meade's horse, "Baldy," that is worth quoting,
...He was wounded twice at the first battle of Bull Run, before he came into General Meade's possession. Left on the field for dead at Antietam, he was later discovered quietly grazing, with a deep wound in his neck. Again, at Gettysburg, a bullet lodged between his ribs and rendered him unable to carry his owner again until after Appomattox. "Baldy" was a bright bay horse, with white face and feet. This bullet-scarred veteran followed General Meade's hearse to his last resting-place in 1872, and survived him by a decade....
Entropy
I'm having a problem understanding the concept of entropy. But I've come up with a metaphor that I think might work for me. Still not sure. My idea is to apply entropy to military science.
A classical army -- in theory -- was directed by a commander and everyone did what that commander directed. But as the size of armies increased it was necessary to divide the total force into divisions, each with a sub-commander following the overall direction of the commander. As this process continued, it became more and more complex with lower level leaders (centurions, for example) in place to keep each component of the force in order.
As armies grew to much larger size in the Modern period, armies were divided into corps which were in affect armies in their own right, but following the direction of the army commander through the work of the chief of staff. This level of complexity increased yet again during the Great War when nations fielded army groups instead of individual armies.
Then, in response to the stalemate on the Western Front (resulting from the maturation of industrialized warfare with machine guns and advanced artillery and explosives) new infantry tactics evolved requiring a more complex command structure at the lowest levels, with captains, lieutenants, and even sargents playing a crucial role in directing field movements.
Today, the increasing role of elite (or special) forces approaches the point where each individual soldier plays a role in the direction of the force. (This trend is magnified by a technological trend to connect individual fighting vehicles, aircraft, and even individual soldiers into a distributed communications network where they all share data and where decisions may either be made by any individual or, alternatively, by staff or even political officials far away but linked into the same network.)
To summarize, military decision processes have gotten more and more complex and it's hard to see how they will ever get simpler. So ever increasing levels of entropy.
Here's something from Wiki that makes me feel a little better,
This implies that there is a function of state which is conserved over a complete cycle of the Carnot cycle. Clausius called this state function entropy. One can see that entropy was discovered through mathematics rather than through laboratory results. It is a mathematical construct and has no easy physical analogy. This makes the concept somewhat obscure or abstract, akin to how the concept of energy arose.
If, on the other hand, you think of a military force -- call it an army -- in the same way you think of a heat engine, the military potential of the army should drop as it is warn down over time by casualties and illness and simply the friction of use. This would seem, intuitively, to be true, but is not an invariable law. I've written before how the "military potential" of Caesar's legions or "Stonewall" Jackson's corp tended to increase even as their numbers and condition dropped. Instead of being expended, they turned into a more experienced, more cohesive force that larger, less experienced units could not resist.
And it occurs to me that, in this respect, a military unit is a bit like a steel sword blade. It's almost as if the energy -- in the form of heat and hammer blows -- that goes into the creation of the blade is conserved. The more "work" that goes into either forming the blade or training the unit, the greater potential each has. I suppose education works the same way, at least in theory. Though, interestingly, the potential of physicists, if you judge by their Nobel worthy production, does seem to drop over time -- as in a heat engine -- rather than increasing as with a military unit or a sword. At least in this metaphorical sense, entropy can either increase or decrease (in violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics) depending on the circumstances.
I should be adding really confusing notes to Wiki science entries. It would be like an entirely new form of trolling.
Life goes on
The world may be going to hell but I just had my favorite vegan breakfast at the Pork Store and now I'm having tea at Coffee to the People, so life is good for the moment.
Leaving home this morning I ran into the owner of the lower level unit, she was overseeing the dance of vehicles in our alley as four or five cars and trucks pulled out into the street so that the van with her new carpet could get back to our building. For some reason, the people doing construction next door work even longer hours on Saturday than on weekdays. Sometimes, and this was true yesterday as well, the alley is blocked even after the normal quitting time of 4pm. My latest plan for "landscaping" our back yard is to put down tarps and observe how they drain until the construction is complete next door, or until I have a much better idea when we can schedule a delivery of 60 bags of gravel and not run into an alley parking jam.
Speaking of construction, yesterday I walked past a guy finishing some newly replaced cement on a Grant street sidewalk. The rest of the sidewalk there has an unusual pattern and he was doing a skillful job of matching it. The reason I noticed him was that he had brought his dog to the work site. The dog was lying comfortably on a blanket the guy had laid out on the sidewalk adjacent to where he was working. Nice gig for everyone concerned.
Not again!
As if things weren't bad enough this week. Walking past Union Square on my way to breakfast this morning I was shocked to see the big Christmas tree is already up and decorated. I'm interested to see if we will get our subway construction zone streets back for the shopping season -- as we always have in the past. Now that they are working on the station, I don't think they can just cover everything up with fake grass for a few weeks. Hope I'm wrong.
History!
I just ran into something amazing on Medium. This relates both to the Holocaust and to the subject of the Faustian/Mephistophelian character of the Jewish bourgeoisie. I'm amazed I've never heard about this. HERE's the link. Only think what Goethe could have done with this story. Or Dostoevsky.
Time
This morning I was doing a little math in my head and thinking about how I was 24 when I moved here to SF in 1976. That's the most obvious point to divide my life into a "before" and an "after." For my first 24 years I lived in cities of my parent's choosing, since then I've lived in SF, my choice.
Since I moved a year after graduating from university, it is also tempting to view my first 24 years as my education, followed by my 40 years of career -- or careers. But that, too, is dramatically misleading.
I only started to read the Classics when I moved here. Even my knowledge of Greek and Roman philosophy was limited to what I had learned in a couple lower level philosophy classes at ASU. Starting to read Livy was one of those unaccountable -- but life changing -- decisions (like reading Samuel Eliot Morison's history of U.S. Navy operations in WW2 while I was in middle school) that have shaped my world view.
I also hadn't yet read Proust, Gibbon, Mann, or Fernand Braudel. It's like moving here was the start of my (auto-didactic) graduate education. If I were to meet the "me" of 1976 I would consider him annoyingly uneducated. (Also annoyingly moody and angsty, as are some of my current Buffy Board online friends of that age.)
Even in terms of military history (the subject I know best and the only thing I feel I could teach at a moment's notice) aside from the foundation in Pacific War Naval history and a superficial knowledge of some periods of European military history, I knew almost nothing. It has been a slow, cumulative process of delving deeper and reading wider. My understanding of even the Pacific War, the subject I knew best back then, has probably changed a half dozen times in the past 40 years. (This does help to put Caesar's "over-night" success in his 50's in perspective. Perhaps he wouldn't have been "Caesar" if given an army command 20 years earlier. Just as I maintain Napoleon wasn't "Napoleon" without his chief of staff, Berthier.)
My 40 years here in SF can still be sub-divided by careers: Student (2 years), bookstore clerk (7?), programmer (13?), greener (10?). Though, while the first and last sub-divisions have been the most learning intensive, the ones in the middle were only marginally less so -- for lack of time, mostly.
While I sometimes have "What if?" thoughts about attending Wesleyan or one of the Great Books colleges (or Sandhurst), I think SF has proven to be an ideal post-graduate school for me.
Peet's
I have dumped the Bank Cafe. It pains me to pay an extra dollar for my iced tea, but the impossibly slow WiFi was finally more than I could stand. Peet's opened a new, larger, location on Market a block further away, and I've been coming here now for about a week.
I've written (a long time ago) about my fondness for Peet's interior design, which they've now updated. The front counter/table I'm now sitting at is still oak, but rough cut and not stained in the same way. I can't say I like it more, but it has it's own appeal. I'm sure this is much poorer quality oak -- probably pieces that would have been scrapped in the past -- so I like that they are doing something nice with wood that would have been wasted. Eventually, I will be writing on a sheet of paper and my pen will sink into one of the crevices and I will curse the high-concept of this surface, but for now I approve.
The people watching at the Bank Cafe was not bad, but this Peet's overlooks Market, our main drag, with wider sidewalks and a steady flow of a little bit of everything. The crazy woman I first noticed walking here and there in front of the cafe eventually came to rest on the cafe's seating that acts as a barier between the street and the cafe. I say "rest," but she seems unable to be "still." I would guess she's Southeast Asian. She seems childlike, in a demented sort of way -- she's been lying on her back picking at her fingers and toes since she assumed this position, never quite being still. It is hard to tell to what extent she is aware of her surroundings and, in particular, of the people around her. She seems oblivious.
I don't know if this is a Peet's in general thing or just at this location, but they play a surprising amount of Brazilian music from the '60s. Not a bad thing.
HOA
Back at my building we are in the process of seeking the origin of a leak. It is either coming from above -- though no one has any idea from where or how -- or it is rising from a poorly tiled shower in the bathroom (of that same unit that has been a thorn in my side since June.) For reasons I can only guess at, they thought it wise to paint the room before dealing with the rotted threshold between living room and bathroom. Now, understandably, they are not eager to open up that wall to find where the damage starts. We just today opened up a section of the "box" that conceals our sewer drain pipe as it traverses the bathroom to it's furthest point under the three kitchens stacked above. We determined that the water is not coming from that pipe (which would have been a nightmare to address) but that's about all we've learned. Odds are that it's coming from the shower on the other side of the bathroom wall, though, I admit, I don't quite see how.
I've now painted the door and doorway (which I originally ignored/forgot) so my participation in this drama should be complete, unless it really is a leak from elsewhere in the building.
I am happy to see that we are still all being quite civil, given the summer we had. We've all lost patience at one time or another, but the HOA as a whole seems to be holding it together. Still, I will be happy to see the end of this year... and that's even before taking into account the Presidential election.
TV
To celebrate the end of my greening season, I went to Amoeba on Sunday and bought some DVDs. I finally found a copy of the version of Sense and Sensibility I love so much. And then, since they didn't have any of the TV shows I was hoping to find, I started Rizzoli & Isles. The hook for this particular murder procedural is that it focuses on a friendship between two women -- the Detective and the Medical Examiner. All of these shows have a characteristic way of starting an episode, and almost always it involves finding the body. R&I starts with a glimpse of the victim before death. I wish it didn't. But otherwise, the show has an amazingly talented cast and the core friendship is a shockingly novel thing to see on TV. (Note that this is not a new show, just new to me.)
When I say it's a talented cast, I mean you know almost everyone from previous roles. Isles was previously a beloved character on NCIS. Rizzoli was on Law & Order for years. Donnie Wahlberg played one of my favorite characters on Band of Brothers.
Aside from two women engaging in a friendship that has little to do with men, the show seems pretty routine so far. It's like they had a TV Trope Checklist and were eager to check all the boxes. To be fair, I'm only four episodes in, but the tricks I learned for determining the murderer from watching NCIS and Bones and Castle and The Closer seem to still aply. And these tricks have nothing to do with evidence but instead with show pacing and how recognizable characters are. It's rare when the possible suspect you recognize from previous substantial TV roles, or from a long career now coming to a close, didn't do it.
I'm pretty sure I will complete the season I bought, but I'm not sure if I will trade this in for the next season. All the shows I mentioned above, had more interesting irons in the fire when they started. But I think this show is still on the air, so maybe what it has is engaging enough. This genre is so popular, you'd think someone would do something really novel -- and maybe someone has, I watch so little TV I wouldn't necessarily know.
