Chinese flying machine

Morning in the palace garden, the emperor is drinking tea.

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Emperor: What a beautiful morning. Wha- Who are you? Where did you come from? What is that, that contraption?

Flier: I am Jin Fei-Ji, Your Majesty. I flew over your wall. This is my glider.

Emperor: Glider?

Flier: A flying machine, Your Majesty.

Emperor: Let me see this machine. Hmm. Very clever. You built it? By yourself?

Flier: By myself, Your Majesty.

Emperor: And does anyone else know about it?

Flier: No one, Your Majesty. I built it secretly, to show you.

Emperor: Very good work, Jin Fei-Ji. Guards! Take this man, that’s it, yes, execute him. And burn the machine.

Flier: But...

Emperor: Yes, it is sad, and you seem a  good man. But if an evil man learns of your design, he may build a hundred of these machines and fly over our Great Wall and invade us.

___________________

Voice-over

Ray Bradbury wrote this original story in 1970. A modern parable for the “Needham question”? “Why did Chinese science stop in the fifteenth century?"

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The moment of passing

Giselle tells Bertrand about Dorothy’s death.

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Giselle: She passed away. 8:55 last night.

Bertrand: Oh, I’m sorry.

Giselle: I was with her at the end. I’d just dropped in and was just leaving and saying I’d be back to see her in the morning.

Bertrand: So you saw her go?

Giselle: She just sighed, like she was really tired, and that was her last breath.

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Voice-over

There are certain facts commonly reported in the passing of a soul. The time of passing. Any last words. An expression on their face.

Conventions that clear the way for words of remembering and grief.

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Going down fighting

Grigori returns from visiting his brother Vladimir, Grigori thinks it was the last time he will see Vlad.

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Grigori: The nurse was there when I arrived, she’d left some medicine, some heart medicine…

Alexandre: To get it going again if it stopped?

Grigori: Maybe not. Maybe to make it easy. She was from the hospice.

Alexandre: Did he recognize you?

Grigori: I thought he was gone at one stage. No pulse for a whole minute. Then it started again. I said, “It’s me, Grigori.” And he opened one eye. And I said, “Everyone says hello and Godspeed.” And then he whispered, “Tha - thang.”

Alexandre: He heard.

Grigori: He understood. But the nurse said, it’s going to be difficult for him. He’s the type that doesn’t let go easily. He may hang on for a few days. Or more.

Alexandre: Vlad’s a fighter. In the war. Escaping from the prison camp. Breaking in the farm. Never giving up on his kids, even with one a full-on bipolar.

Grigori: He’s not going to let go easily. He’ll hang on and on and go down fighting. It’s going to be hard on us all.

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Voice-over

The last days of a life. The words stop. Sight and touch become the channels of communication. Again. Just as in our first days of life.

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In cooking things just happen

Helen holds forth on cooking.

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Helen: Cooking borrows. Cooking depends on what is to hand, the art of cooking lies on the details, the subtleties, the context.

Jackie: Example?

Helen: Example, this lamb has a lamby taste, yes, but there is mixed in the flavor of tomatoes, the sniff of garlic, the texture of onion. And alongside, the potatoes, bathed in a mushroom sauce, does that not…

Jackie: What?

Helen: Is it not suggestive?

Jackie: Yes. It suggests you gave up serving up a soup and instead turned it into a mushroom sauce for the caulis and brocs.

Helen: Exactly. In my cooking, nothing is ever as planned. TJH. Things just happen. Que sera.

Jackie: Whatever will be, will be.

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Voice-over

Helen is in full Socratic flight as she pushes Jackie twice with negative interrogations: “Does that not…?” and “Is it not suggestive…?”

But Jackie is not the passive student Helen is treating her as. She CAN suggest that the soup became a sauce, and she CAN translate from Turkish to English. 

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Festschrift or retrospective

Looking at buildings being demolished, two architects discuss a holding a retrospective of a colleague's work.

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Jakob: He’ll be 90 in less than a couple of years.

Roman: We should celebrate it somehow.

Jakob: A festschrift, you mean?

Roman: He’s not an academic. He’s an architect. Festschrifts are books of essays written by disciples published in honor of someone retiring. Artists and architects don’t have festschrifts.

Jakob: Right. Maybe we should have an exhibition. A retrospective of his buildings.

Roman: Have to be photographs. A lot of his buildings have been knocked down.

Jakob: Buildings may look solid. But when confronted by the depredations of city planners, architecture can be a fragile art.

______________
Voice-over

Specific vocabulary for commemorations: festschrifts for academics, retrospectives for artists. Exercise caution in use.

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Maslow and blogging

Eric frets about Percy being so public.

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Eric: Why even write a blog?

Percy: See it in terms of Maslow. Basic human needs are getting food, erecting shelter, making friends, At the top of this hierarchy of human needs is self expression. A need to make sense of the world, interpret reality, reach out for some kind of truth even.

Eric: Why do you have to publish it for all to see?

Percy: Sometimes it’s to avoid writing many letters about the same thing. Perhaps so friends can join the discussion.

Eric: Not everybody in the marketplace is a friend. You can’t control who reads your blog. If you write something foolish, and you apply for a job, you lose the job. Or worse, if you write something political, and an authority gets hold of it, you might be dragged off to a court, or prison.

Percy: It was always thus. Writing a book had the same dangers. FaceBook has the same dangers. Write for a public and learn from what they say.

Eric: What about crackpots and spies? The ones who flame you with random invective? The spies who twist what you say and turn you in for their own profit?

Percy: Approach politics as you would a basket of cobras. Don’t pillory real people. Write about ideas. Use multiple identities. Shift the location. Tell the stories through myth and fable. Montrez a courage mon ami.

____________

Voice-over

Whether you write a newspaper article, a book, post something on the Internet, make a speech, or shoot a film, if you go public with your thoughts, something may happen to you. Or it may not. What will it be? Silent agreement? Deafening ridicule? Or being asked to “step this way” at immigration?

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Overeating and overreading

Gerhard and Gert differ in their excesses.

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Gerhard: I need to lose weight.

Gert: You could start by eating less.

Gerhard: I NEED food. Keeps me alive.

Gert: If you weren’t so, well, BIG, you wouldn’t need to eat such amounts. It’s chicken and egg.

Gerhard: I know people who eat heaps. Okay, so other factors come into it. Anyway, how about YOUR excesses? You READ way too much. You’re a book glutton.

Gert: At least I READ all the books I buy.

Gerhard: You do. I grant you that. Makes you a bit of a rare bird. But don’t you feel your swells a bit after reading?

Gert: Like getting an OBESE HEAD? I will say at times I feel a bit overwhelmed and can scarcely waddle – mentally.

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Voice-over

Excessive intake of food, excessive intake of knowledge. One grist is concrete, the other abstract.

The more we shove in, the more we push out?

Could that be why the ascetic who eats a little, then ruminates, who reads a little, then meditates, is neither fat, nor big-headed? And often lives long?

Less can be more.

Square Root Day Dinner

Laura comes home to find an odd dinner prepared by George on his cooking night.

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Laura: What’re these funny cubes on my plate?

George: You know what day it is?

Laura: It’s the 3^rd of March.

George: And the year?

Laura: 2009. So?

George: Don’t you see? 3.3.9. It’s square root day. 3 times 3 equals nine.

Laura: But there are three groups of nine, makes 27.

George: Don’t you see Laura? They’re CUBES. 3 cubed is 3 x 3 x 3 = 27. 27 cubes. 9 cubes of feta, 9 cubes of carrot and 9 cubes of cheddar. My JOKE!

Laura: George, don’t you think you may have just a little too much time on your hands? Maybe you should have another go at politics.

__________

Voice-over

Numerology: ascribing special power to numbers. Astrology gave rise to astronomy. Pseudomaths preceded mathematics. 

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