Goines On: In therapy

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A colleague and friend of Goines from years ago had recently revealed he’d been in therapy. Goines had been in therapy too, at first in the early ’70s, during the time he and Kramer had worked in the same IBM department, so he was curious about Kramer’s therapy, wanted to share notes, exchange revelations. 

    But over the course of three or four emails, Kramer offered only brief, cryptic responses, concluding with a belligerently explicit refusal to tell Goines anything.

    Goines’ initial impulse, after reading Kramer’s final email, was to reply, “Fuck you too,” but he restrained himself and went to bed in silence, asking for some counseling from Artesia.

Moristotle 80th Birthday Interview

Interviewed by Geoffrey Dean

I posed a number of probing questions to Moristotle recently. His answers give us new insights into his mind and heart, while on a lighter note, they also helped me figure out what to give him for his 80^th birthday tomorrow!

     Thanks to my sister, Jennifer, for taking the photos above.

What three (or more) words would you use to describe yourself?

Skeptical, optimistic, helpful. I’m surprised how easily those three words came, and how confident I am of them….No, those came too fast; they need qualification, elaboration.

Goines On: Poetic invocation

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The daughter of Goines’ high school teacher who had been instrumental in Goines’ learning about casting out 9s asked him by email if he enjoyed writing. He wondered why she had to ask that question, because she was familiar with his blog and ought to know the answer.

    But as soon as he started to word a reply, he remembered what he had titled his first published paper, and the remembering set off fireworks in his head: “Invoking the Muse of Technical Writing.”

An Ode to My Muse

Luis Morris: “Artist’s Muse” 2009

By Moristotle

[On May 12 I submitted this poem to Highland Park Poetry’s Summer Muses’ Gallery – ODES. Though I told Jennifer Dotson at the time that “I think it worthy of submission,” I wasn’t sure it was, nor even sure it qualified as an “ode.”
    Today, however, I received an email from Mary Beth Bretzlauf, an associate of Jennifer’s, that “We selected your poem ‘An Ode to My Muse’!” I guess it IS an ode! It was fashioned from my April 7 lyric poem, “When Your Muse Whispers.”]

When Your Muse Whispers (a poem)

Luis Morris: “Artist’s Muse” 2009

By Moristotle

No time like the present to get things done.
            —Maik Strosahl (“OLEV”)

[Note: About ten days ago, a few minutes after reading Maik Strosahl’s statement quoted above, I found myself in a wild embrace with my own poetic muse. “Following her rhythms” produced the lines presented below. I am grateful for “no time like the present to get things done.”]


When your muse whispers,
welcome her embrace,
hold her, feel her, glide with her,
follow her rhythms.

When your muse arches her back,

announcing her theme, accept
her invitation, enter her,
thrust to her rhythms.

Ask Wednesday: Are there as many odd numbers as even?

No...but... yes...but....

By Morris Dean

[Originally published, under the title "More even than odd," on January 10, 2011.]

I was amazed one morning to discover a "proof" for something that is quite counter-intuitive. I mean, there are as many odd numbers as even numbers, right?

Beware the cricket up your skirt

I pulled approximately 847 weeds out of our front yard this morning. In one area I disturbed some lawn crickets, whom I sent scurrying, one of them barely missing the gap between the bottom of my left thigh and my walking shorts. I imagined that a cricket up my shorts leg would have provoked a lively dance.
    But my mind, anyway, was already doing its wonted lively dance. Gardening, especially Sunday-morning gardening (with its contrast of my form of outdoor "worship" to that of church-goers), has for years set me to musing and, in doing so, has continued to recommend itself to me as a mentally healthy activity.
    What struck me this morning was that weeding (by the way, if you google on "weeding photos," you'll likely be asked whether you didn't mean "wedding photos" and, even after you insist that you meant "weeding photos," you'll be given the addresses of surprisingly many sites where "wedding" is spelled "weeding")...what struck me was that weeding can be an apt metaphor for what ex-smokers do when they vehemently condemn smoking and smokers. Their sometimes vociferous condemnation seems to me to be an act of negative exultation. By dwelling on the evils of smoking in restaurants, second-hand smoke, etc., they're reminding themselves how happy they are that they themselves were able to give up smoking.
    Pulling weeds out of your lawn and planting beds can be a way of exulting in how nice your yard looks. I certainly think ours looks nice and I always enjoy it when a passer-by stops to compliment me on it.

Negatively exulting seemed to me to be what I do in continually harping on religion. (My wife and my daughter occasionally comment that I seem to be obsessed with it.) If I weren't so happy that I was finally able to give up religion, I probably wouldn't condemn its second-hand smoke so often or with such relish.

An un-odd semantic solution

Last Monday, I reported my "insight" that there seemed to be more even numbers than odd numbers. I labeled the report humor to signal that my tongue was in my cheek. But I also labeled it parody to signal that I was seriously making fun of a certain way of trying to think (exemplified by numerology and astrology and, perhaps more often than not, by theology).
    Commenter Ken provided a serious, logical counter to the "proof" that there are more even numbers than odd. There's an infinite number of both, he pointed out, and one infinity is just as numerous as another. Actually, as Georg Cantor (1845-1918) theorized,

there are infinite sets of different sizes (called cardinalities). For example, the set of integers is countably infinite, while the set of real numbers is uncountably infinite. –Wikipedia

But Ken is right, because, with even and odd numbers, we're confining ourselves to "countably infinite" sets.
    Of course, I never thought for a minute myself that there were more even numbers than odd numbers. But the semantic example I contrived (the asymmetry of "even number of odd numbers" and "odd number of even numbers") did sort of make it look as though there might be more even than odd numbers.
    While Ken's logical objection is well and good¹, I've been waiting for my muse to provide a fitting semantic retort. Alas, I've been disappointed, and I've even had grapefruit almost every morning. I'm going to have to work to provide a proportional solution.

Many years ago (in the early seventies), I became interested in "creative problem-solving." One of the things I learned from my mentor, Moe Edwards ("Moe" was simply his initials; there's a reference on the web to a book titled Doubling Idea Power, by M.O. Edwards, Palo Alto), was to "ask provocative questions"—or to ask any question at all, to see whether it can spur a thought.
    Okay. What's going on when you (1) double an odd number and get an even number, but (2) take an odd number of even numbers and also get an even number?
    What this struck right off is the realization that when you double two things, you get an even number of them, and when you take an odd number of things, you get an odd number of them. So something fishy or sleight-of-hand seems to be going on in (2), taking an odd number [of something]...and getting "an even number."
    And the clue as to what's going on is that the phrase, "of them," was coyly omitted in Monday's "proof." That is, it didn't say "getting an even number of them," but "getting an even number."
    I'll go on and spell this out later (perhaps tomorrow), but for now, as a gift to my readers, I'll leave it to them to work it out for themselves, perhaps while eating a grapefruit.

Proof more odd than even

The proof "more even than odd" was semantic,
Playful, good-humored, a little pedantic,
    Done for good fun,
    As well as the pun,
And while not even odd, it was, flatly, antic².

_______________

1. "Acceptable, all right, as in 'If you can get a better discount elsewhere, well and good.' [The] redundant phrase ['well and good'] was first recorded in 1699." –yourdictionary.com
2. antic. adjective: ludicrously odd
       Example: "Hamlet's assumed antic disposition."

More even than odd

I was amazed this morning to discover a "proof"¹ for something that is quite counter-intuitive. I mean, there are as many odd numbers as even numbers, right?
    Wrong. There are actually more even numbers than odd numbers. Here's the proof that came to me while I was eating my grapefruit half:
    If you add an even number of even numbers, you get an even number.
    But you also get an even number if you add an even number of odd numbers! And you don't conversely get any extra odd numbers when you add an odd number of even numbers. Rather, you seem to gain some even numbers—or lose some odd numbers, depending on how you look at.
    Therefore, there are apparently more even numbers than odd ones. And I haven't even tried to find other ways we might gain even numbers or lose odd ones.
    Isn't that amazing!

How can that be? Can that possibly be right?
    If true, it is so astounding, do you think maybe this might be a clue toward discovering a proof for the existence of God? Or maybe for the existence of two of them (God even rather than odd)? Or for their nonexistence? Wow.
    What if duotheism is the True Way, rather than monotheism? Or if atheists have to deny the existence of two Gods in order to be atheists? "Aduotheists" is hard to pronounce.

An odd God limerick

More even than odd...the truth about God?
Then let's swell the ranks of Their Squad,
    Double Their pronouns,
    Use King and Queen crowns,
And on Fridays eat twice as much cod.

Notes for further analysis:

1. The operator "even number of" is equivalent to "multiplied by two" (or "the numerical result made even").
2. The operator "odd number of" is not equivalent to "the numerical result made odd" (if the things there are an odd number of are even numbers).

    Further disquisition
_______________

1. Note: This post is labeled "humor." I only added this note later when I suspected that some readers had not detected the post's parody of wishful or theological thinking, possibly because they'd noticed that I'd lately been taking myself so very seriously.

Will this be a day off?

I don't want to take the day off, but beyond saying that, I have nothing else to say at the moment. However, the way things have been going lately between me and my muse, I feel pregnant with the possibility that something might be delivered before this glorious day is out. My heart sings praise and I voice it: Praise!

Open Letter to Maliha on Agnosticism

Dear Maliha, thank you for coming to my blog and providing a Muslim perspective on religion. But thank you even more for your provocative questions, which I am trying to use to better travel my "journey of self-discovery through self-exploration." At about 8:40 this morning you commented, for example:

I don't understand agnosticism, because it seems so uncommitted to anything.

And then how would you derive meaning to our existence? What's the point? Is there a point? Are we just a comical abberation of a universe gone wild?

I am really interested in the thought process, because as I have struggled in determining whether Islam is "the" path (and now I am settling for its [being] "a" path), I never questioned the existence of God...it just seems like everything would be too mundane for such a beautiful world.

I must have read that not long after you submitted it, for at 10:01 I commented back to you:

I'[ll think] on these things...But know that I can't tell you when my muse is likely to strike with something like insight. She comes in her own time, but always faithfully responsive to my sincere desire for answers.

Well, within about one hour my muse was already starting to whisper to me, urgently, while I was driving home after doing an errand. Already, while driving out of my yard to go do the errand, I had been thinking that if an agnostic is not committed to anything, then the term hardly seems to apply to me. I feel committed. I am passionate about responding impeccably to life, to "the human condition." I have never been a couch potato, a spectator, a blindly following dogmatist. I have tried to engage life, to have passed this way not in vain.

In other words, your comments were affecting me powerfully and I'm sure they strengthened my desire to hear from my muse. And this, in turn, prompted her to aid me as quickly as possible.

At any rate, because I was driving when she started to whisper to me, I pulled off the road and took notes:

Free thinkers, free from received opinions about faith and science, pre-fabricated thought structures, and, perhaps most of all, other people's revelations, unless they accord with my own experience and the light of my own reason. Descartes tried to practice methodical doubt. In my own way, I have lately been trying to practice constructive skepticism.

Maybe I'm not agnostic as to whether God is or is not, but rather as to what God is (beyond the I AM THAT I AM). For I do believe in...Something. Maybe it's just that I'm unwilling to say I know what it is (because I don't think I do).

[Added on Monday: More whisperings followed, with some guidance on what God is.]