How can you make Gnosticism and Neoplatonism relevant to a modern audience? That was the thought going through the bewildered man's mind as he sat on his study seat typing sequences of words on his keypad. He could be writing code, programming the mechanical arm of a intergalactic spaceship; training the robtic devide to carefully tiptoe on the fragments of meteorites while mining for precious metals, and still the sequence of 0s and 1s beautifully coming together to create this robotic choreography would appear more entertaining and relevant to the vast majority of sentient human beings, than what he was putting down as lecture notes. He contemplated another break. He contemplated leaving things as they are, filling the remaing three pages of dense writing for the following day. He struggled with guilt. He was concerned that his work ethic was collapsing and he still has not made a decision.

A break. A long one. For the first time in months I went for a run. It was as much a test of basic aerobic (lack of) stamina as it was an exploration of my neighborhood. I must say that the running opportunities in Ann Arbor in the two areas where I used to live were better. Greater variety of suburban scenery and more twists and turns. Here it is slightly more urban and more on the rectangular city block style of road system. In anycase, I was happy to complete what was a short run that left me panting but happy with my new shoes. Really good support and shock-absorption. After this experience I simply sat down to reclaim my breath, prepared a simple dinner and started reading the news. Odd to be in Canada and follow the succession contest in the French socialist party. I must be deluded like the French in believing it matters what happens in France. In any case the debate is interesting. Only the French would be quoting Bourdieu in an analysis of party politics. Listening to Anouar Brahem on the side is itself a trip to another continent. The sipping of cocoa is just a feel good technique. Soon, I should start working on my second lecture. Do place the following bets for me:

1. Will I finish my lecture by 12AM today
2. Will I go for a run tomorrow morning

I am betting against myself, but then again I may want to prove me wrong.

Meeting of minds? Who knows. Lets just say that my grey Vancouver morning was marked by a refreshing encounter with a member of the reality based community. I am, in my professional work, a firm believer in subtexts and hidden meanings. I pursue them in the texts I read, to the amusement and annoyance of friends, who see in me a textual conspiracy-theorist. Theurgic scholarship with secret revealed meanings, they will shout. What can I respond to that, other that I am suspicious of writers' motives. There is no such thing as a clear statement. Have you ever courted another human being? You know what I am talking about. All that said, I like to take a statement by a person I meet for what it is. I like "honesty," even if I admire the techniques of obscurity that veil that honesty. Obscurity, as I see it in my work, is a tool that reveals meaning and offers safety. In a more modern context it is often (I will admit, not always) pretence or a game. I need none of the two right now. No code.

In my reading of Peter Brown's book on St Augustine the short discussion of his love travails reminded me of the following text

What is provided here is a translation of the single surviving fragment from a recently discovered, and up to this day unknown, medieval text book on the art of courtship. Philologists suggest that the title of this work was in fact Ars Amatoria, yet the present writer will call it “The rulebook of efficient courting” in an effort to avoid confusion with the famous poem by Ovid. The said manuscript (of parisian provenance) also records the first European reference to the oriental concept of the yin-yang forcing us to reassess our understanding of cultural exchanges in the high Middle Ages. As this is an unpublished text we believe that the reader is indeed privileged to find him/herself exposed to this antique wisdom. Footnotes have been kept to a minimum at an effort to allow seamless interaction with the medieval jewel. The reader will note that our fragment contains one extended and numbered paragraph covering the issue of hasty courtship.

Beginning of medieval text

1. The pitfalls of hasty courting: The desire for instant gratification will kill your chances of experiencing success in the courting ritual [i]. Success in a speeded up courting process indicates participation in human interaction, which is, in fact,
not courting but rather a mutual agreement on the exchange fluids. Courting is to be understood as a delicate dance that is undertaken between two people who harbor in their minds the idea of something more than carnal fulfillment (here we mean: in addition to carnal fulfillment, on top of it, not in transcendence of it) [ii].

Courting is then to be read as a yin-yang symbiosis, where the possibility of success is evenly matched with the possibility of failure. The little black eye in the rounded part of the white side of the whole is the measure of our capacity to read the opposite side and plan our action. It is clear then that our capacity is limited [iii]. Given this reality time is of the essence [iv]. The little eye can only be opened with better knowledge of the other. Better and deeper knowledge, as with everything in life from map-reading to cooking comes with time (or age, the relationship needs to age for knowledge to ensue) [v]. The idea that courting is an attempt at gratifying deeper personal needs makes it a process that may be undertaken ad infinitum by the more spiritually-minded, though ideally the people engaged in courting will understand that the eternal unconsumed courting leads to physical pain (known among medical circles of the university of Paris as – blue balls / les boules bleus – in the male specific version of the disease) [vi]. Thus patience a virtue, which many on this world are not known to possess, is of the essence in courting… [Here the fragment ends, to the disappointment of an eager academic crowd (vii)].

[i] Notice gentle reader the medieval author’s direct address of his readership evident in the use of “your” in the preceding sentence.

[ii] The author’s direct approach of the issue of carnal love is often a surprise to modern readers. It should, however, not be treated as such given the direct contact of people with sex from their very early years. In homes with one bed for a whole family it was hard to ignore the parental carnal-fest.

[iii] Scholarship is still at loss when trying to explain the importance of this emphasis on the white part of the yin-yang total. This emphasis on the yang, the brighter more, according to Chinese metaphysics, male component indicates for some readers the male-centric aspect of this medieval analysis.

[iv] Here language betrays the author’s metaphysical concerns. Time and essence in the same sentence perform a semantic courtship, which attempts to elevate the discussion to a more spiritual level even as direct hints of the carnality of courtship are left floating in the text.

[v] The discussion of depth is inherently sexist and highlights the male-centered perspective of the writer. Here knowledge is ultimately associated with penetration, which at the same time alludes to descent and through decent to the fall itself of humans, implicit in the fulfillment of a carnal relationship. At the same time knowledge is linked with age and experience making the art of love an art that is hierarchically structured and controlled by a crowd of elders.

[vi] The reference to Blue Balls is also one of the great recent discoveries in literature as it was previously assumed that the term was a 20th century invention, when in fact it seems that it first appears in a medieval Latin text.

(vii) This is to make a note on the sexualized nature of the modern writer’s language. The "academic crowd" is in his analysis presented as “eager,” in a manner that evidently sexualizes it and betrays the present reader’s view of academia as a massive horn-fest.

I hope you now have a better appreciation of the middle ages...

Subdued state of concern and worry. Nothing to really do about it. No real prospect of agency appearing over the horizon any time soon. The question is how to keep living this merry life of mine knowing what I know? It all appears too serious to be true. I wish pressing the button did something, provided a solution, solved a problem.

Mogwai on the stereo, light pointed on my keyboard in a gentle variation of an interogation spot and time has come for some recreational reading on British Columbia's environmental disasters. See, all you people away from Canada may assume that just because Canadians can walk around the globe with little flags on their back-packs as a guarantee of safe passage, the country itself is similarly inoffensive in every respect. Well it seems that Canada has is sore spots and I am about to learn more about them. With that I turn to the right, deposit the computer on the little desklet and pick up the book. Lets flip a page...

Carpet patterns, I like them. They are warm, they are classy, they offer this very fresh and young place of mine a sense of a past. They offer history on which to erect the new, upstart IKEA design of cheep furniture. Meanwhile Momus keeps pipping out of the speakers. He is a good discovery. How does one miss a good musician? How does pleasant, apealing music totally fall through the cracks? No more writing for tonight. I have overindulged. Time of some cheese to temper the taste of beer and then some reading. Part of an effort to educate myself on local affairs. The author is called Brian Fawcett, the book: "the way things are in my hometown."

A domani