2012.12.16 — Pi Fight it? 3.1416 Fushigis* and an Also Ran Poem

Like many fushigis this one started before I knew it was one. It began with Laurie Brown playing The Sound of Pi on her show The Signal on CBCR2. [The song I've linked to here is an interesting version on YouTube. But I'm not sure if it is the same one that was broadcast because the playlist for the weekend hasn't been posted yet.]

Well, yesterday afternoon ML turned on a British movie that had caught her eye. By happenstance I was in the living room when she turned to it, and The Oxford Murders became an engaging 104minutes. (It was lambasted — mistakingly as far as I'm concerned — every which way and sidewise on the Rotton Tomatoes review .) What initially engaged me was the early scene in which the brash young student (played by Elijah Wood), stands up to confront the bombastic professor, who has argued that truth is unknowable."I believe in the number pi." i.e. the absolute truth of numbers. The professor, played by John Hurt, with the ease of much practices, turns the argument against the brass student.

When I watched the movie I did not remember the unusual reference to pi in the previous day's musical playlist. That click didn't happen until today, when ML, after her nap, turned on the TV and stumbled into a movie called Lullaby for Pi. The female protagonist, played delightfully by Clémence Poésy, took on the name Pi. She had it tattooed around her belly button and added an additional digit past the period every time she learns something about herself.

I loved the quirkiness of this love story. I thought it was excellent from all aspects: filmography, direction, acting, writing. Co-stars include Rupert Friend and the always brilliant Forest Whitaker.

Now for some self indulgence, but one with the smallest of thematic links to the theme of this fushigi post. It is a poem I wrote that was shortlisted for December's Poetry contest on Goodreads. (Caution: some self promotion follows.) With it I had two poems two months in a row short-listed, which is remarkable. But also remarkable is that it is the first Haiku I've seen short-listed in Amy King's competition and finally, that means I had a total of three poems short-listed in 2012!

Okay, enough self-congratulations. Here's the poem:

Blinded by the light
the enlightened monks mistook
the full moon for truth.

And, if the thematic link is too obscure, it goes back to Oxford Murders and the problem of mistaking what is or is not true. In Oxford Murders, this theme is a complex overlay, being explicitly stated by the philosophy professor, and then being played out in the red herring filled murder mystery where every 'truth' is flipped around.

2012.12.17: Addendum
I have decided to close this blog with the genesis of my almost ran Haiku. It begins with the Haiku Game thread in the WSS. In the game, the Haiku is connected in some manner to the one previously written. This has become, often, extremely funny and very clever. Quite often some excellent Haiku are born. And with that, I would like to introduce you to a nascent and perhaps prodigious Haiku-er by the name of Ryan. He introduced himself into the Haiku game with an interesting and well constructed effort that was also imaginative and beautiful in its imagery. So, the birth of a nearly competition winning Haiku as team Haiku sport:

So long a-slumber
Dreaming of rhymes, from her shroud
The butterfly burst
        Ryan 2523

The chrysalises,
with eyes closed and rem twitching,
dozed by the dozens.
        egajd 2525

Eyes moved rapidly,
yet sleep fled without warning.
A new day dawning.
        Ryan 2527

With eyes on the prize
The surprised young butterflies
Slept with other guys.
        egajd 2528

Though moths are easy
and sometimes breezy, they know
only one madman.
        Ryan 2531

Blinded by the light
the enlightened moths mistook
the full moon for truth.
        egajd 2532

A solitary
note. The lone wolf's howling voice
worships the cold light.
        Ryan 2534

2009.02.22 - MP Election by Lot - Secondary Rumination Pt 1.

For those of you who managed to read through my piece on an alternative to electioneering, I would imagine that I am in the eyes of many a complete nut bar. And a verbose fruit cake, at that. I am well aware that this idea, even terse versions of it, has little contemporary support. I have discussed it with others and I have suggested it to two different volunteer organizations, with which I was associated. I proposed the idea as a means of getting onto their executives new blood, and to minimize the few being endlessly re-elected, regardless competence or egoistic or self-serving motivations, simply because they are warm bodies willing to take on such thankless societal requirements.

But only two or three people have even cautiously thought that the idea had even a whiff merit — and one of them is a friend. The volunteer groups both found the idea laughable, by which I mean that they could not move past their incredulity to consider discussing it before unceremoniously dismissing it.

However, 'my' idea did receive grateful reception from someone in Quebec. He wrote "I was very elated to discover that there are like minds on the other side of the country," and "I have been discussing the "juror system" of MP selection and related ideas at every opportunity I have." I wonder if he and I are the only two 'minds' in Canada(!) because I've not received one query on the idea since posting it in 2005. (So, will this blog be any different? We'll see.)

And not only is this idea heard of elsewhere, but in various forms it has been and is being practiced. My favourite example comes from China, specifically the monks of at Kuei-yuan, who use an intricate and often protracted lottery method to elect their abbots.

As reported by Holmes Welch, and cited by Robert Hopcke,

these monks choose an abbot by drawing lots from among the [names of every member of the monastery]: after prayer and ritual, a senior member of the community uses chopsticks to pick out a name from a metal tube, and the person whose name is drawn three times in a row — from among the [scores] possible — is acknowledged as the abbot. As one might imagine, this time consuming process, which the community continues for as long as it takes unit the thrice-chosen name appears, can sometimes eventuate in the selection of a person whom the community initially perceives as a bad or problematic candidate. But even when almost universally acknowledged inferior individuals have been chosen, this method nevertheless seems consistently to have worked: to the community's surprise, such "inferior" individuals have proven themselves capable leaders, which points up the elegance of such a method in which pure chance — free from the influence of human prejudice, envy, malice, and ambition — is better at providing for the community's leadership than any mortal could have been (Hopcke p208).

(Hopcke doesn't quite do full justice to the transcription from Welch, because Welch describes an example of a monk who was selected but who refused the office because he'd been a monk for only three months. So there was a second name drawing, and after following the same process his name was drawn again. And when his five year term came to an end, his name was drawn yet again (pp169-70)).

Hopcke, Robert H. There are no Accidents: Synchronicity and the Stories of Our Lives. New York: Riverhead Books, 1997.
Welch, Holmes. The Practice of Chinese Buddhism 1930-1950. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1967.

Aziz, Robert. C.G. Jung's Psychology of Religion and Synchronicity. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990, pp. 153-4.

And, as it turns out, out west Aristotle refers to lottery systems of selecting members of the various levels of government. For example:

There is a third mode, in which something is borrowed from the oligarchical and something from the democratical principle. For example, the appointment of magistrates by lot is democratical, and the election of them oligarchical; democratical again when there is no property qualification, oligarchical when there is. In the aristocratical or constitutional state, one element will be taken from each—from oligarchy the mode of electing to offices, from democracy the disregard of qualification (Bk IV);

or:

... In democracies all things are decided by all, but there are various ways in which the democratic principle may be carried out. a) The citizens may deliberate in the assembly, but by turns; and the boards of magistrates may come into office by turns until every citizen has held office, while the body of the people meet only to hear edicts and to pass laws. b, c) In another form of democracy the citizens all meet, but only to elect magistrates, to pass laws, to decide about peace and war, and to make scrutinies. The ordinary administration is entrusted to the magistrates, who are elected either by vote or by lot. [This form of democracy is given under two heads, but the second appears only to be a repetition of the first.] Or again, d) the whole power of the executive is in the hands of the assembly, and the magistrates only prepare the business for them: — this is the last and worst form of democracy. In oligarchies some deliberate about all things. If a) the ruling class are a numerous body, having a moderate qualification attainable by any one, and they observe law, there arises a form of oligarchy which inclines to a polity. But b) when only selected persons have the power of deliberation, although they still observe the law, the state is a pure oligarchy; and is of necessity oligarchical when c) the government is hereditary or co-optative. On the other hand, d) when the whole people decide the most important questions, but the executive is in the hands of the magistrates who are elected by lot or by vote, there the constitution is an aristocracy or polity. And e) when the magistrates are partly elected by vote and partly by lot, [the whole people having still to decide about peace and war and retaining the power of scrutiny,] then the government is partly aristocratical and partly constitutional (Introduction, Bk IV).

Aristotle. The Politics of Aristotle, trans. into English with introduction, marginal analysis, essays, notes and indices by B. Jowett. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1885. 2 vols. Vol. 1. Chapter: Introduction and Book IV.

End of Part 1 of rumination. To be continued.