"Ong"-liners

To live and to understand fully, we need not only proximity but also distance (81)

Writing heightens conciousness (81)

technology can enrich the human psyche, enlarge the human spirit, intensify its interior life (82)

everyone lives each day in a frame of abstract computed time (96)

Texts assimilate utterance to the human body (99)

the alphabet, the ruthlessly efficient reducer of sound to space (99)

The word in its natural, oral habit is part of a real, existential space (100)

Writing is a solipsistic operation (100)

'the writer's audience is always fiction' (100)

Ong's one-liners

I scanned through the text I highlighted in Orality and Literacy so far and picked out these gems:


"Written words are residue" (11)

"Writing separates the knower from the know" (45)

"Sound exists only as it is going out of existence" (71)



Surely there are many more to come...

A Passage from Ong

I found this passage at the end of Ch. 3 in Orality and Literacy extremely striking in terms of Ong's reflections on the reality and movement of both Time and words:

"Sound is an event in time, and 'time marches on', relentlessly, with no stop or division. Time is seemingly tamed if we treat is spatially on a calendar or the face of a clock, where we can make it appear as divided into separate units next to each other. But this also falsifies time. Real time has no divisions at all, but is uninterruptedly continuous: at midnight yesterday did not click over into today. No one can find the exact point of midnight, and if it is not exact, how can it be midnight? And we have no experience of today as being next to yesterday, as it is represented on a calendar. Reduced to space, time seems more under control--but only seems to be, for real, indivisible time is what carries us to real death...Oral man is not so likely to think of words as 'signs', quiescent visual phenomena. Homer refers to them with the standard epithet 'winged words'--which suggests evanescence, power, and freedom: words are constantly moving, but by flight, which is a powerful form of movement, and one lifting the flier free of the ordinary, gross, heavy, 'objective' world" (Ong 75-6).

Sound is fragile and fleeting, and thus too are words. Yet, at the same time, they are powerful and resounding. "Spoken words are always modifications of a total, existential situation, which always engages the body" (Ong 67). Words are an extension of ourselves, an extension into another dimension of time which never stops or is divided. If we continue in time, up until our 'real death' of course, how far do the words continue, how far do they carry? As Ong refers to sound as an "event in time", I am inclined to believe that it is only that, a momentary burst of sense and thought, ended as fast as it happened. That is the greatest difference between the oral and written cultures: the immortality of words.

Where the chirographic tradition preserves its past and present through the written word, the oral tradition is necessarily more selective in the preservation of its culture. What the oral poet creates evaporates, if not repeated and internalized by another. And even then, it can never exist as it did the moment it was spoken. It is impossible to preserve the inflection, gestures, and emanating emotion that accompany an individual word or phrase in an individual moment in time.  They represent something more active and essentially human than a scribed sign. Spoken word walks a line between sense and thought (in a way that written word cannot, is completely unable); ultimately, it is the culmination of the two.

While reading the above excerpt from Ong, I couldn't help but think of this passage from Burnt Norton:

V

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

Memory (mneme) and recollection (anamnesis)

    I heard that we were beginning to discuss the concept of anamnesis in class on Friday, and while it has been introduced in my previous classes with Dr. Sexson, I find it important to think back (hah) and reexamine my conception in light of the theme of this class: memory.

“What seest thou else in the dark backward and abysm of time?”

    Prospero asks this of Miranda when she is trying to recall her childhood before exile on the island. The simple way for Prospero to initiate this conversation would been to have said, “What else do you remember?”. But as we know, Memory isn’t about what is simple. It is about the memorable, the extraordinary, the convoluted imagery and phrasing of such things as “what seest thou else”. Prospero is asking Miranda to pierce the surface of her consciousness and dig for something deeper and essential to her existence. (Miranda remembers that she once had four or five women that tended her, “Thou hadst, and more, Miranda” Prospero replies. How many do you think she had? Probably nine)

By ‘thinking backwards’ we are thinking of the past as the source of the present. We are reaching past a temporal frame into the realm of the mythic.  

    Anamnesis is derived from the Greek roots ana (meaning “re”) and mimnḗskein (meaning “to call to mind”) (dictionary.com). So it denotes the recollection or remembrance of the past. What then is the difference between memory (mneme) and recollection (anamnesis)? I think, most basically, if anamnesis is the process or act of remembering, then the memory must be what is represented by the culmination of those processes of recollection, or the faculty of an individual in regards to those processes.

    Where does ‘memorizing’ fit in then?  The verb for “learning” or committing to memory? And further, the act of recitation, which delves into the recollection of what was memorized?  I’m not sure.

    From the Wikipedia article on Anamnesis: “He [Socrates] suggests that the soul is immortal, and repeatedly incarnated; knowledge is actually in the soul from eternity, but each time the soul is incarnated its knowledge is forgotten in the shock of birth. What one perceives to be learning, then, is actually the recovery of what one has forgotten. (Once it has been brought back it is true belief, to be turned into genuine knowledge by understanding.) And thus Socrates (and Plato) sees himself, not as a teacher, but as a midwife, aiding with the birth of knowledge that was already there in the student.”

    Through this understanding, knowledge is not something to be learned…but to be regained. The initial discussion centers on the existence of universals and universal understanding. Is there a source other than the accumulation of perceptions that creates for us a basic understanding of our universe? Is it the structure of nature and the human brain that guides our senses and perceptions, or is it the immortality of the soul that allows for progression from sense perception to reasoning?

These are obviously huge questions.

    More lucrative for our purposes than the deliberation of epistemological and/or ontological assertions of anamnesis though, I think, is the consideration of remembering versus forgetting. The two initially seem opposing, but are yet both integral to memory and anamnesis. Anamnesis is remembering that which you have forgotten. And is not memory affected by that which you remember as much as that which you have forgotten?

 You already know everything, you have just forgotten it.

“In one way or another, recollecting implies having forgotten…forgetting is equivalent to ignorance, slavery (captivity), and death” (Myth and Reality, Mircea Eliade).

You all must go out and read Mircea Eliade, it is seriously imperative.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a mythological lesson of the day (gathered from wiki, of course):  

·         River of Lethe, one of the five rivers of Hades, and whoever drank from it experienced forgetfulness.

·         Lethe was also the name of the Greek spirit of forgetfulness and oblivion, with whom the river was often identified.

·         In Classical Greek, the word Lethe literally means "oblivion", "forgetfulness," or "concealment". It is related to the Greek word for "truth", aletheia (ἀλήθεια), meaning "un-forgetfulness" or "un-concealment".

List of 51 things

Being so 'Sweet & Spicy', I figured it was all too appropriate that I memorize...what else but...a list of spices. I'm going for practicality as well as being outrageously apropos, because it happens also that I love to cook, so the memorization of this list will undoubtedly prove to be useful. The strategy? For spices that are more difficult to memorize I'll try to incorporate their actual properties in the image I create for them. For example, Marjoram, which has grayish-green leaves and is a member of the mint family--so I'll picture a soldier in his gray-green colored uniform saluting and saying "Major I am" while marching in place on a pile of York peppermint patties. Yeah, this can totally work. (Note: The actual list here is 60 things long, but it pains me to give up the symmetry)
Allspice Alum Arrowroot
Anise Seed
Basil
Bay Leaves
Black Caraway
Chamomile Capsicums Caraway Seed
Cardamom Cayenne
Cinnamon
Celery Seed
Chervil Chile Powder Chinese Five Spice
Chives
Cilantro
Cinnamon
Cloves
Coriander Cream of Tartar Curry
Cumin
Dill Seed
Dill Weed
Fennel
Garam Masala
Ginger
Horseradish Juniper
Lavender Lemongrass Mace
Marjoram
Mustard
Nutmeg
Oregano
Paprika Parsley
Black Pepper
White Pepper
Peppercorns
Peppermint Pumpkin Pie Spice
Poppy Seed Red Pepper
Rosemary Saffron
Sage Salt
Savory
Sesame Seed
Spearmint Star Anise
Tarragon
Thyme Turmeric
Vanilla Bean