public mri: free and a 6 month wait
private mri: $650 and a one week wait

welcome to two tier health care.

Sometimes the world is too complex, and mournful--so instead of the freedom of verse libre, there is a need to return to sonnets and villanelles and sestinas, and sometimes those formalist, constrained, quiet verses do better talking about sex, love, death, desire then any of the barabaric yawps.

there was bishop, and her one art. there was auden and his angloirish sadness. there was macniece, and larkin and mcdiamand.

they are all dead, but we had gunn, we had gunn to take us through the aids crisis, and gunn to take us through queer liberation and gunn to guide us through all sorts of other compelxities.

hes dead now, my darling thomas, who taught me how to love men.

The Man W. Night Sweats
I wake up cold, I who
Prospered through dreams of heat
Wake to their residue,
Sweat, and a clinging sheet.

My flesh was its own shield:
Where it was gashed, it healed.

I grew as I explored
The body I could trust
Even while I adored
The risk that made robust,

A world of wonders in
Each challenge to the skin.

I cannot but be sorry
The given shield was cracked,
My mind reduced to hurry,
My flesh reduced and wrecked.

I have to change the bed,
But catch myself instead

Stopped upright where I am
Hugging my body to me
As if to shield it from
The pains that will go through me,

As if hands were enough
To hold an avalanche off.

Singer is a generous critic. In discussing Bush's reverence for life, evidenced in his opposition to stem cell research, he constructs the most plausible arguments possible against the sacrifice of unwanted embryos, to demonstrate convincingly how unsustainable they are. But he can hardly help observing that Bush's ''culture of life'' cohabits jarringly with his enthusiasm for capital punishment and readiness to inflict civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. Singer is led, on issue after issue, to a double conclusion: Bush's views are not intellectually defensible, and his behavior shows he doesn't believe in them anyway.

On Peter Singers new book re:Bushes ethics, NYT, last sunday

tyne daly at the reproductive rights march in washington, that happened this weekend.

the thing w. abortion is that it is in danger, the republicans want to ammend it out for one, and as much as i have a problem w. the idea, i think it should be safe and legal... there are other things these women are fighting about, they are fighting so that sex ed can be taught in schools, that power is not concentrated in the hands of men, that rape victims are protected, that condoms are given to prevent hiv and pregnacy, so that girls can be taught as well as boys, that girls can play football and volleyball and all those other things...and when up to 1/4 of women are being raped in the air force academy in col. to use one example...(its not only rape, women make 75 cents to the dollar, there are less execuctives, less professors...feminism has done a lot, but it has not done enough, and this march 1 000 000 people yelling that they will not be sent back, they will not be destroyed, they will not have the progress of their foremothers taken away from them...there is power there.

as much as im an asshole to sean, and i have been, im still worried about him

so instead of the arresting thing, i told him to go to a meeting. he spent the trip on the way to the meeting telling me how and why he hated me, and then pat/i wandered around cromdale, the skeeziest section of edmonton, for an hour, we took sean home, and when i asked him what was wrong w. sean he wouldnt answer...pat then bought me a sandwhich at tim hortons and we talked about how exhausting i was to people.

(sean says that i have a sense of entitlement, that i am a hypocrite, that im lazy, that i use aspies as an excuse)

walking to the meeting, we passed the joesph and the angels bookstore, i said that it was a good idea to have that kind of store in the neighbourhood, and sean said cause being poor is a sin ?

(before that i hung out w. dom, jacko,brad,adriane, alan, shea, austin, orion and other folks at the world water park, great fun there)

i am having sean arrested

(he kept yelling the answers to my trivial pursuit questions too)

bad night at work, and before that, my room mate got into a muderous frenzy, wanted to bash me up, after he got drunk, he bit pat, who has never done anything to anyone, and foamed at the mouth and it took 4 guys to hold him down., and i had all these guests, and we were having low key fun, and he was so loud, and he ruined it, and i got short, and he yelled these things...called me a hypocrite, called me a fag, called me dull, called me a post modernist, called me a theorist, and just general obscenity.

its like when i was 7, and i trashed my room--i remember there being a trigger, but i remember it being out of porption (sp)

(maybe

so all of these people dying in iraq, i am kind of scared at how little symptahty (sp) i have.

as far as i see it, they signed on (for whatever reason), and never thought they would have to do anything...soilders die, and these soilders died not b/c they were drafted but because they thot there was some honour in another jingoistic colonial excercise.

it was a natural consquence of their action.

more phillips

god pressing
interferring

a black cat
round midnite

there
but not there

because i've asked,
he shows me his mercy-
a complicated arrangement
of holes and hooks
hooks, buckles. What else do you think mercy looked like
he says and demonstrating , he straps it on and takes it off

carl phillips on god.

kiss machine came today...
they illustrated my poem, but its in there.

chris and i talked about this font for a good five minutes, it reminds me of the shots that i took of the library/town hall in white court.

the cold formalism , the elegance, the pure structal power.

For the topping
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, melted
2/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
3 cups 1-inch chunks fresh pineapple (about 1 pineapple)


For the cake
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup milk


whipped cream or vanilla ice cream as an accompaniment

Braised Red Cabbage
1 medium red cabbage, (about 2 pounds)
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 apple
1/4 cup red currant jelly
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon caraway seeds, optional
1/4 cup raisins, optional
Quarter the cabbage; cut away the core, then slice quarters crosswise about 1/8" thick. Melt butter in a large skillet over medium-low heat. Add cabbage, water and vinegar. Cover and cook for about 15 to 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the apple slices, currant jelly, salt, and caraway seeds or raisins if used. Stir well; heat uncovered about 2 more minutes.
Serves 8.

signage, crosses and related religous imagery, railroad bridges, hotel lobbies, bryans crotch, lawn gnomes, garabage dumpsters, falling apart houses, bushes,

things i took photos of in whitecourt

rainy mcmaster, epic text adventures, mural size and ambigous/elegant.



dont know why the image isnt working, ill talk to rainy and get back to you lot.

The rich dont want to look at the poor. They find them inconvenint...so they put a wall b/w thier houses, and the slums...making them ghettos.

(cf the edge citys of germany and france where muslims are congregated)

see how much respect these motherfuckers jave for the people that they are "liberating"

US Army punishes rape with pay cuts--its an old boys club, violent as anything.

being queer in zanzibar is a crime

london bridge (and everything else) is falling down

deaf rave talks about the beats, the phyiscal transformation of the body in realtion to "music" rather then anything else, interesting.

bbc

PinkMoosePearl: bryan doesnt think the trappists are a good idea, thinks it will be a waste
cthulhusalesman: a waste of what? this bodily conception of life is only good for getting to know God
PinkMoosePearl: of my life
PinkMoosePearl: he thinks i could serve better in an order that is more about the outside world
cthulhusalesman: your roommate suffers from the misconception that We Are This Body
PinkMoosePearl: (& i would agree w. that)
PinkMoosePearl: he does
cthulhusalesman: (it's the "beginning of knowlege" according to Srila Prabhupada/the Krishnas: the conclusion, "I am not this body, I am spirit soul"
PinkMoosePearl: how does one get to that conclusion
cthulhusalesman: #1 question: "What the hell am I doing here, who am I?" answer, after consulting scripture & common sense: "I must be a creation of God, if there be a God, and if God made me, then I must somehow be of the same stuff as He - is God limited by the demands of nature? no; therefore the 'me' that comes from God must be the 'me' that isn't gross matter"

i am going to louisville
for the trappists
for two weeks

holy fuck.

It's easy to write post-structuralism off as a) wilful obscurantism and/or b) tracing the trajectory of post-68 political disillusionment but, as the term implies, it's not really a coherent 'movement', more a baggy historical hold-all of various developments (let's say associated with Tel Quel magazine) after the systematizing tendencies of s-ism. And lots of great, beautiful, provocative books are loosely post-structuralist, including everything by Barthes after S/Z... miss out on these, and you are missing out on something significant. (The commodified importation of p-s-ism is the real culprit I think, but this happens with all philosophies once they ossify into academic jargon - eg 'existentialism' in the 50s.)
-- Jerry the Nipper


(speaking of theory, i am working on this orentalist view of the left behind books, b/w good arab who converts and bad arab who plays into a euromedia syndiate that turns into the end of the world, and extending that into a discussion of populist post dispentastionalism and eastern exoticism, and trying to tie that into a gender and sexuality reading of the mechanics of control in jessica simpson and britney spears, then moving onto a post baudillarian discussion of xian spectacle from tent revivals to the xian wrestling federation, all tying it up into this thot of a new aesthic hermeticism for evanglicals, but not too heremetic b/c they run the only empire left, and are expanding on economic gains.)

& bry/i are going out to the fort to see mom, but i forgot her bday gift, moron that i am (and i am).

ok

latin american lit in translation i have completely blown off
pop theory i havent done one assignment and after spending 3 days in the library or on the net doing research i realize its too big, messy, complicated, juxtposed, bizzare and not nearly theory heavy enough---running to 30 pages of notes and the only person i have really touched is said (unless you count allan bloom, and i dont)

cat scan today, scared shitless
working on 3 hours of sleep.

think im going to email the franciscans and talk to them about john of the cross and how thomas was called a dumb ox and its only just a yr, and its designed to weed things out, and then im going to work on the domincains and the bendectines.

dont think that pat wants me in toronto.

i want to be somewhere ot her then here.

(sending my trans essay into the sexuality issue of the xian mag crossharbour today, cross yr fingers.)

Thank you, Anthony, for sending me your information.
Part of the process of discerning a vocation is making contact with people (such as a Vocation Director for a Religious Order) and discovering more about the vocation that you are interested in. By knowing more about a certain vocation you discover your suitability or lack of suitability for it. As we do this type of inquiring it gives God a chance to direct us through opening and closing doors of opportunities.
I say this, Anthony, because I believe this is a moment in which God is directing you in your discernment. Your condition of autism and depression does not make it possible for you to enter the Franciscan Order. Through experience we have come to realize that people with your conditions and needs find Religious Life very difficult and they end up leaving.
We live in community. Communal life is a rather intense social situation. Being able to read social cues, and understand how and why people speak and do what they do is of utmost importance. People who have disabilities in this area experience this level of social intensity as difficult.
Secondly, we are not a monastic community. We are not monks, we are friars. The Franciscan life may from an "outside," uninformed perspective look as if it is a secure, certain, well regulated life with lots of explicit rules. This, however, is not the case. There is not a predominant routine that regulates and carries everyone's life. Our daily communal structure and order is rather minimal - (Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, Mass and meals). For the rest of the time (which is most of the day) the friars are off involved in various ministries which often comes with a lot of responsibilities and can make their lives rather busy and even hectic at times. We do not live in large monasteries that have a structure that automatically involves the Brothers in some type of communal employment. Even as a Friars one still has to decide what he wants to do as a Friar. Then he must go through the training to achieve that goal.
Anthony, I hope that this news does not come as too great a disappointment. I want to confirm that you certainly sound like an extremely interesting person. I encourage you to continue your pursuit of God in Jesus through the Catholic faith. I pray that God will bless you as you continue to discern His will for your life.
"Pax et Bonum!"
Br. Gerry

"Pick up the nearest book. Open it to page 23. Find the fifth sentence. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions."

The condition of postmoderinity is neither simply philosophical nor simply socio political but spiritual, a condition oin which belief and hebahovor come together in the shape of an embodied spirit.

From The Cambridge Introduction to Post Modern Theology.

INTRODUCTORY INFORMATION FORM
Franciscan Province Of Christ The king

Please Note: By completing and returning this form, you are not committing yourself to joining the Franciscans. You will help the Vocation Director to respond to you more quickly and accurately.

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Date: April 12th 2004
Name: Anthony Easton
Home Address 6524 106th St. Edmonton Alberta T6H 2V6
Phone: 780 433 9815
Fax: NA
E-mail anthonyeaston@shaw.ca
Birth Date: January 14 1981
Age: 23
Place: Fort Sask. Alberta Canada

Are you living with your parents? No

PERSONAL BACKGROUNDAre you in recovery from any addiction (alcohol, drugs, gambling, etc.)? No.
Do you have any type of mental illness (bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia etc)? Yes .
If yes,explain. I have a form of autism called Aspergers Syndrome, which impairs my ability to read social cues, to understand how and why people speak, and both my fine and gross motor skills. It leads me to seek order, and an understanding of the world that results in rules. I also have been struggling with moderate to severe depression, and have been since high school. This depression seems to be congenital, with my mother and father both suffering from symptoms.
Are you taking any medication or therapy for your condition? Yes
If yes, explain. I take talk therapy once a week, as well as group therapy. This is facilatated by Dr. Jennifer Hibbard, a pyschatrist at the university.
Have you ever been in trouble with the law? No.

MARITAL STATUS
Have you ever been married? no
If yes, have you received an Annulment? No.
Are you Widowed? No.
Have you any children? No.

RELIGIOUS INFORMATIONAre you a Roman Catholic? Yes
Are you a convert? Yes
If yes, when and where were you received into the Church? Our Lady of the Angels, Fort Sask. Alberta.
Month April 12 Year 2004
Parish Our Lady of the Angels
What is your present parish?
The Chapel at St Joesphs College, Edmonton, Alberta
How are you presently involved in your parish?
Aside from attending mass, I have voluntereed to act as lector, been involved for a while working on the Catholic Club for the University of Alberta, and have attended religous retreats there. In addition, I have taken classes at St Joesphs college, talked to the priests who all know me by name and met some of the closest friends there. Friends who have taught me about Christ, who have needled me about my own hipocrasy and encouraged me on my faith journey.
Previous parish involvement:
I have spent almost all of my time at St Joesphs, only attending weekly mass at Our Lady of the Angels.

Are you involved in any volunteer work outside the parish? I have worked for several arts organazations in town, including working on the publishing comittee for 53, an arts journal from Edmonton. I also have written for the Gateway, beginning in January of 2001 and ending in Feburary of 2004.


EDUCATION / EMPLOYMENT INFORMATIONEmployment Status: Student
Highest Education Completed: 2 years of University Education.
Present employment: Part Time
Have you any personal debt? Yes
List the amount: 300
SKILLS, INTERESTS
List any skills and / or training you may have.
I am a writer, who has been published online and off in over twenty publications including The Edmonton Journal, The Victoria Times Colonist, The Halifax Star, Kiss Machine from Toronto, Freaky Trigger from London, England and Stylus from New York City. I write mostly criticism, political as well as socio-cultural. I am also a published poet.
As well, I am an auto-didact, with an interest in art, cultural studies, general theory comparative religion and theology. In this capacity I have read most of Derrida, a large chunk of Foccualt, some Baudillard, and other earlier philosophers (eg Augustine, Aquinas, Erasmus, etc)

List any Hobbies and Interests you may have.
Contemparary Visual Culture, Music, Movies, Comics and other pop culture activities.

VOCATIONAL INTERESTSHave you applied to, or been a member of a seminary or religious community before?
No.
How long have you been seriously interested in religious life ?
5 years.
Which choice of life are you considering Brother
What attracts you to the Franciscans?
Because I read the Canticle of the Sun when I was 15, and it told me a lot about how to live my life, because Francis spoke boldy against what was common and wrong, because those who follow Francis have a reputation for kindness and gentleness. Because he said preach the gospel n all your days, but use words if you have to, because I have had complicated and ambigous realtionships with men and I want to correct that. Because I grew up Latter Day Saint, and I miss the collective energy and work they put into life. Because I belive in God. Because I want to serve God as long as I live, and I think this is the best way of doing so. Because I beleive that the society that we have today is to rushed, careless, hurried and does not care about slowing down life and perserving a culture of discourse and ideas, and the best way I can think of battling that is to be a monk, and slow down my life. Because I am confused by the Chaos of the world and this promises order. Because I think that god called me to be a catholic, and when I follwed him there, he told me I was not committing enough. Because I believe that my talents and strengths would fit your brothers better then most.

lena more, visionary quilts, from the american folk art musuem, nyc (lena was from new orleans)

in white court w. shea and alan, took bryan along or vice versa, took lots of photos, danced a bit last night, had a huge home made sushi dinner at sheas folks, watched csi, ate like a pig.

happy.

The Best Poems is a great collection to have. It is something you can read on a rainy day, when you are in love, when you are angry, or when you simply want to explore a whole other world. This is the kind of book that will just fit in anywhere. Keep it in your den and bring it down whenever you need a great quote or some insight on life. With so many modern poets writing about no-so-lovely things (with the drugs, the negativity, etc.) it is refreshing to go back into these times of past when the roses smelled just a little sweeter. As long as you are celebrating poetry month, I might suggest a book of poems by an author named Geraldi called Lowilo. The book is reminiscent of the great poets like Frost and Longfellow. It is (mostly) rhyming, which is also refreshing because it is safe and innocent in it's way.

amazon reviews blooms best poems of the english langauge.

Blessed Passover, remember others in bondage as you thank god for your freedom.

and maybe think about what it means when you say next year in jersulem.

KArl Rove learnt well from Nixon, burglaing a CAlifornai Historians house to gain war records on Kerry.

American Spectator article on our favourite aardvark

text of a fifth circuit appeal which states that police do not nessc. need search and arrest warrants to do what they wish to do.

scary shit.

Another hard core "logical" fascist that might be inspiring Bushco, havent really read Schmitt like i've read Strauss, but Schmitt is odd in that he has inspired the left.

Scmitt seems to have things to say about the nature of power and how it relates to States, so he is a govermental foccualt, who was connected to Neitsche ... someone I am reviewing in my own head.

(when you wrestle w. power there seems to be two ways of going about it, one recognzing that every interpersonal interaction comes with a power dilaectic, and then mvoing past that, or utlizing that for its own means...)

(side note: what does religion have to do w. these people, how does their view of G-d correspond w. their view of the world---strauss being a jew and schmitt being a catholic)

Walmart censors the things it doesnt like.

mefi

The advantage of being truly rich is you dont have to go to jail for being a lying convinving thief.

gawker

Pat talks about editors publishing the grocery lists of the famous, just cause they will sell (cf the latest Moore yuggorth tales), so it amused me to see gaiman link to the fortean times, who actually published famous fantasy and sf writers actual to do and grocery lists.

(remembering reading an interview in the nd wcw reader, where wcw says about a poem--"of course its a grocery list; but its a poetic one")

Momus on Mel Gibson--MP3, includes the immortal line "Mohamed was a business man, but yr just a perve"

Talked to Pearl, jeffs friend about the Passion last night, and i realised how much of a rabid dog i am about the movie, and i wonder if i am doing the same thing that mel is doing, bullying w. my theology.

also if the author is dead, how do we deal w. agit/prop or the didatic ?

Works Cited

Alifornia, Roberto. Twenty Four Conversations with Borges. New York. Grove Press. 1984
Borges, Jorge Louis. Ficciones. New York. Grove Press. 1962.
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things. New York. Pantheon. 1971.
also:(http://textz.gnutenberg.net/textz/foucault_michel_the_order_of_things.tmp)
Gates, Henry Louis. The Dictionary of Global Culture. New York Random House. 1999.
Manguel, Alberto. A History of Reading. Toronto. Vintage Canada. 1996
Ricoeur,Paul. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970
Read, Malcolm. Jorge Luis Borges and his Predecessors:Notes Towards a Materialist History of Linguistic Idealism. Chapel Hill : U.N.C. Dept. of Romance Languages, 1993.'


Works Consulted

Borges, Jorge Luis. Selected Fictions. New York. Penguin. 1999.
Borges, Jorge Luis. The Total Library:Collected Non Fictions. New York. Penguin. 1999
Sturrock, John. Paper Tigers: The Ideal Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges. Claredon Press. Oxford. 1972
Wood, James. The Man in the Mirror of the Book. Chantham, Kent. Hodder and Stroughtan. 1996.

Jorge Luis Borges's fiction "The Library of Babel" , found in the collection The Garden of Forking Paths, is one that can work as a microcosm of larger theoretic and thematic goals. It concerns itself with questions of taxonomy, biography, hermeneutics, epistemology, and cosmology. Borges does not enter into the mainstream here, believing that one can better see the center through the edges rather then vice versa. In this way he uses esoteric and mystical systems as a symbolic key to paradise, and in the process deconstructs the conventional desires and ideas surrounding the universe, both the temporal one that we can touch and understand, and the complicated ones that are past this life.
This is not a story, but a collection of ideas--a philosophical tale, and in many ways a parable. It comes with its own baggage and can be difficult to unpack. Borges is a reader and a writer who can be unreliable, not in the sense of not telling the truth, but in the sense of being a trickster. Much like the Gnostics, who did not look for answers as much as ways of knowledge or the Kabbalists, who found secret paths in the works God formed. This could also be the I Ching, finding order and guidance through seeming randomness.
The goal then, is to find the patterns of philosophical thought that are in this essay and in that way to find the red string(s) that may lead us through this labyrinth. As I introduced earlier, the strands of this string are the biography of Borges, the implications of the origin of the universe, or cosmology; the proper ways of interpreting a text, or hermeneutics; the nature of learning; or epistemology and how to categorize what we have found, or Taxonomy.
The first thread to look at is one of biography, although no ideas come ex nihilo, it would seem that there is little autobiographical context in this work or for that matter most of his other work. Even his autobiographical essays are more about ideas and themes then there are about his life. That said his life can be used as a code that surrounds the contexts in which the work is created. This code includes his growing up in the poly-linguistic Geneva who's esoteric reputation was hidden by the severe Swiss( for example Carl Jung set up practice there, as did the Theopist Rudolph Steiner), his role as librarian, losing that role and having it be replaced by sorting out chickens and rabbits in the city market, his blindness and his later regrets about not serving a "real life".
For him the library was a refuge and institution of order. It was something that could be controlled, and something that could be categorized. The library had solutions, and it had enough information to keep one entertained. There was no need for interventions in the "real world". It was also a place that had no national boundaries, there was no real Argentine library because it always contained works in other languages by other peoples. He talks of this in the text, when he says "From all these incontrovertible premises he deduced that the library is total and that its shelves contain all the possible combinations of the twenty odd orthographic symbols ... that is, everything which can be expressed in all languages." (82)
The difference is that there is order in the world of our libraries and chaos in the world of The Library of Babel. Malcolm Read talks about this confusion of order in his Jorge Luis Borges and his Predecessors: Notes towards a Materialist History of Linguistic Idealism, saying "the bookish Borges has confessed again and again to the sense of not having lived enough", and the only time that he lived outside of the academy, as a teacher or a writer or a librarian was when he displeased the Argentine military fascist Juan Peron enough to be forced into a menial job.(35) His punishment was a perversion of the taxonomies of libraries, he had to categorize rabbits and chickens instead of books, he had to touch flesh, and when he was used to touching paper.
When he returned as a librarian at the national library in Buenos Aries, he was going blind, there was an irony there that is also found in the text, when paradise comes, or what you imagine as paradise, there is always an unforseen consequence. This time the consequence is simple. The pleasures of knowledge can be quickly made horrific, or as the text says "When it was proclaimed that the library comprised all books, the first impression was one of extravagant joy. All men felt themselves lords of a secret , intact treasure." (83)
This concept of knowledge comes across in his twin beliefs in both gnosticism and the Kaballah. Henry Louis Gates Dictionary of Global Culture, is quoted as saying that "Kaballah is based on the belief that every word, letter, number and even accent of the hebrew scriptures contained mysteries capable of interpretation by those who possessed secret wisdom." (349) and gnosticism is defined as a "philosophical-religious movement that emphasized the redemptive power of esoteric knowledge" and that the word gnosis "refers to the learning of that separates the initiated from the uninitiated."(251). Then the point of these two systems is to know god, but that is impossible because God is the source of all knowledge. It would take perfection to gain such gifts, and because we are fallen, there is nosuch perfection.
The search for this knowledge is symbolized in several ways in the text. For example, I have journeyed in search of a book, perhaps of the catalogue of catalogues..." (80) or "The mystics claim that to them ecstasy reveals a round chamber containing a great book with a continuous back, circling the walls of the room; but there testimony is suspect, their words, obscure. That cyclical book is God. " (ibid). or Some librarians insinuated that each letter could influence the next and that the value of MCV on the third line of page 71 was not the same as that of the same series in another position on another page" (82)
There is something else here, that reflects Judeo-Christian Mysticism, it is the belief that the world is created ex nihilo, although he is cagey on wether this world is infinite or not (The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps an infinite number of hexagonal galleries (79)...there is no discussion of who created the place, and when it was created. But unlike God, who created form out of chaos, the creator of this place creates chaos out of form. Alberto Manguel talks of this in his History of Reading; "A room determined by artificial categories suggests a logical universe, a nursery universe in which everything has its place and is defined by it", Borges destroys that order, and uses history of western logocentrism against itself.
This is what makes Borges's use of Hermeneutics so subversive. Intended at first, to be the study of Biblical texts putting them into a proper context, it has moved into a desire to be suspicious of what is proper and then to avoid a prescriptive tendency. The founder of this school, Paul Ricouer defines this new non biblical school in his work Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation saying: "Hermeneutics seems to me to be animated by this double motivation: willingness to suspect, willingness to listen; vow of rigor, vow of obedience" (27) Borges takes these vows seriously, talking of a "wild region whose librarians repudiate the vain superstitious custom of seeking any sense in books and comparing it to looking for meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines of ones hands...They admit that the inventors of writing imitated the twenty five natural symbols but they maintain that this application is accidental and that books in themselves mean nothing. This opinion we shall see is not altogether false." (81), which means that he is suspicious of his own suspicion.
There are also people so rigourous and so serious in their search for proper meanings that they kill themselves out of exhaustion when they cannot stand the randomness any more. As for the willingness to listen, there is this: "five hundred years ago, the chief of an upper hexagon came upon a book as confusing as all the rest but which contained nearly two pages of homogenous lines. He showed his find to an ambulant decipherer, who told him the lines were written in Portuguese . Others told him they were in Yiddish. In less then a century the nature of the language was finally established." (85)
If the only proper way to interpret a text is methodological and not contextual, then what does the library of Babylon teach us about learning ? There is nothing that can be learnt in this library, because the system for learning is not known. The idea of the writer as reader, who wishes nothing more then to be locked up in a library so that he could absorb its contents is made futile here. Even the idea of using the scriptures as a guidebook to heaven is mocked. Malcolm Read talks about how Borges finds the scriptures "impenetrable to contingencies , revelations lie in wait behind their most insignificant detail and man is bound to sit and interrogate them" (58). If that is the case, then what happens when the books provide no answers, and there is no real guide, no glossary or gazetteer or expert to find your way into the library or out of it ? In an interview with Roberto Alifornia, Borges talks of "maintaining a cult of books , since books are a living thing in constant growth." In Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertus, an earlier story in this collection, he claims that "mirrors and copulation are abominable , since they both multiply the numbers of man" (17) , in the first paragraph of Library of Babylon, he tells us that "in the entrance way hangs a mirror, which faithfully duplicates appearances." (79) Does this mean that the books reproduce some how ? If this is the case then it is impossible to learn everything and no matter how hard you interrogate a text, you cannot glean all meanings from it. Books lead to more books, which leads to more books. There are commentaries on commentaries. Manguel talks of this, "in this library no two books are identical. Since the shelves contain all possible combinations of the alphabet, and thus rows and rows of indecipherable gibberish, every real or imaginable book is represented." (198). Borges catalogues some of those books: "the detailed history of the future, the autobiographies of the angels, the faithful catalogue of the library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration of the falsity of these catalogue, the demonstration of the falsity of the real catalogue...". (83). If it is impossible to use this library because of its vastness, and in that way it loses its functionality.
This dovetails into Borges's obsession with taxonomies. His life reflected it, his work as a librarian of course and the perversion of that work in the city markets of the capital. There was also his desire to move past the categories of story, essay, poem and fable--creating a new genre, the ficciones.
But his most famous excursion into this taxonomic system is the The Analytical Language of John Wilkes, where he talks of the category sets of a Chinese emperor, and mocks the scientific western precision of naming. It so inspired Michel Foccualt that he dedicated his book on taxonomy, The Order of Things, to Borges, saying "This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought - our thought, the thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography - breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things" (1). The same things happen when you read this story.
It is not strictly comic, though the idea of mystics going to the bathroom in order to roll the I Ching has a certain absurd charm but everything else is fairly accurate. (87) The idea is that the library needs to be ordered, quiet, serene. It is a sanctuary outside of the mess of the world. It is our cult of learning, and for Borges, in this story, there is no order. In this sense, we are made to pay attention to what we categorize and how we categorize it. Why is the library in a hexagon, why are some librarians put in some cells and others in different ones, where did this library come from and when will it end ? All of these questions are not answered. It even begins as a parable or a fable, but does not end that way, because there is no conclusion, or it ends with the quoting of another fictional authority, giving a new idea to another kind of infinite libraries: "Letizia Alvarez de Toledo has observed that the vast Library is useless. Strictly speaking, one single volume should suffice: a single volume of ordinary format, printed in nine or ten type body, and consisting of an infinite number of infinitely thin pages.". (88) In this way then, the macro-universe is reflected in the micro-universe, and there is no end to either, it is like two mirrors facing each other.
The title of the book that this story came from is called Garden of Forking Paths, or Labyrinth, in another interview by Alifornia, Borges expands this idea, saying that "I believe that in the idea of the labyrinth , there is also hope or salvation; if we were positively sure that the universe is a labyrinth , we would feel secure" (24). In this work, we are not sure that the library is a labyrinth. Babel was cursed by God for building, and that curse was the loss of a singular language. Now we are chaos, and the act of speech is wrought with miscommunication. The end of this miscommunication is finding a solution to the gnarled web that is the universe, but that would require speech that we could use together.
This is not a story about labyrinths, because there is no solution and the only hope that can exist is a random flailing around for clues. The goals of the enlightenment were to find knowledge, to find that one language that could bring people together, and to communicate with that common knowledge. The concept of a public library came from that goal, before that it was academics and priests, an elite class who had access to such information. But here, the communication is useless, the goal of uniting people in self knowledge is impossible, and the hope for salvation that comes from finding a central source is gone. The only hope then, is the hope that is manifested in those who do not look for solutions.