Day of rest

The whole day went by while I was resting. The bit of snow in the faternoon was a nice surprise. The vision of white flakes flying in the twilight has such a beautiful charm that makes me long for the cold outside, as if the footprint of the faint light is drawn on my very heart, beating as one with the scenery.

How the world can be so beautiful is always a subject of curiosity for me.

Hollow men, by T.S. Eliot

The Hollow Men

T. S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

      A penny for the Old Guy

      I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

      II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

      III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

      IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

      V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.


Am I about a hundreth person to quote T.S. Eliot on livejournal? 
Still, what can I do? His proses are simply too beautiful to resist! 

Livejournal benefits

The real benefits of livejournal, at least for me, is that this service provides a space for me to stretch my creative legs, so to speak. I do have a bit more formal web log site on wordpress, which I don't update often due to the fear of besmirching my creative edge (though I must say it's been besmirched quite enough already). The community-based feature of livejournal, while attractive, isn't something I took time to partake in yet. I feel as if it's the kind of feature that people who already know each other in real life would enjoy, rather than someone like me whose close acquaintances don't use livejournal service (they all seem to use facebook, but I have personal reservations against using that service). Maybe I'll find a club or two that fits my bill, though I haven't been ale to find anything significantly interesting so far.

Writing random things on the net without fear of continuity or any specific repercussion, a sort of personal journal on the net with possibilities of interacting with those who share similar interests, is in the end the best benefit of using this service, and something I believe many of the other more community oriented microblogging services seem to lack.

matter of music

When I'm listening to a music, am I listening to a physical ripple in the airwave or am I listening to the musician him/herself? Is the music something separate from the musician or an extension of him/herself? What about music generated by a program in some predefined rules of harmony? Is the product of art an extension of the artist or something that stands upon its own, a a separate being?  

Shopping around

I'm looking into buying a student edition of mathematica 6.0

While I had no problem getting by with ruby/python scripting and a bit of maxima so far, as I study deeper into things I'm beginning to feel a need for a more sophisticated mathematical tool, with full publishing and graphics output support. Of course, there are quite a few open source and GNU applications that do all those things to a certain extent, but it is also true that they don't seem to be able to stand upto a truly commercial software like the mathematica in fullness and integration of all the features into one concise package.

One thing that irks me about mathematica is simply, that it isn't open, and runs contrary to some of my beliefs regarding what a scientific computing platform should be. All those half-cooked 'libertarians' running around talking as if the commercial flow represents the virtue of humanity doesn't really help my appetite for a commercial software either.

Being a student though, I guess I should be more kin to my realistic needs as a student. It is undeniable truth that I'll be needing some powerful modeling platform soon. Choices choices....

Night

I woke up in middle of the night. The world reminds me of the statue by Rodin, how calm and silent it is.

Maybe I'll catch a little midnight movie before I go to the lab in the morning.

Pleasantly cloudy

The morning's come again. Is it the time again? Woe to the ones who must wonder what to do for the day every morning!
I have a few paths opened before me, and I should choose one. I wonder which one will end for the best by the end of the day?

The tune of music is doing well to calm my edge down somewhat.