Doors

“In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.” 

- W. Blake (or maybe Jim Morrison, or maybe Aldous Huxley)


Blake believed that human beings were severely bound in their experience of the true universe by the limitations inherent in their human senses. Due to his own experiences with visions and prophesies he believed he possessed a kind of super-human perceptive capability that allowed him to see deep truths. His "doors of perception" were thrown wide while we were perceiving the world through "narrow chinks" in our own personal "caverns."

Blake's phrase "doors of perception" would, much later, be embraced by Aldous Huxley and other users of psychedelic drugs who claimed they were throwing wide their own doors.


“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.

- W. Blake (definitely)

Blake's Book of Job

One of Blake's greatest, and commercially successful, pieces of work was his 22-plate set of engravings for the biblical Book of Job. The Book of Job is seriously bonkers and Blake was a perfect fit. Wikipedia has a nice collection of the plates along with some watercolors he did on the same topic.

Intro to Blake

Leo Damrosch's book starts with a bold statement: "William Blake was a creative genius, one of the most original artists and poets who ever lived."

Blake was born in London on November 28, 1757. He was an engraver, painter, and poet. His big thing was he saw visions. He literally saw heavenly hosts, angels, and demons walking around in the waking world. Many thought he was mad and he was described as having enormous eyes.

Selection for Winter 2015

Stranger Than Fiction

The unbelievable power of nuclear devices is what really captivates McPhee and Taylor. It is magnitudes higher than what most people think of when they think of explosions.

An example:

"He said that Carson Mark had once pointed out to him a number, a fact, that brought with it the most astonishing realization he had ever experienced in physics. It had to do with binding energy, and it was that when Fat Man exploded over Nagasaki the amount of matter that changed into energy and destroyed the city was one gram -- a third the weight of a penny."

Fission / Fusion

A Dumb Guy (Me) Tries to Understand Fission & Fusion

Disclaimer: This is almost definitely a deeply flawed explanation. But, it helps me to think about it this way.


Nuclear weapons get their explosive force by splitting heavy atoms (Fission) or merging light atoms (Fusion). Both processes rely on the conversion of physical matter into energy. The trick is: when two atoms are fused, the resulting atom is lighther than the sum of it's parts. This mass can't simply disappear: the extra mass is converted into an explosion.

Fission uses heavy elements that have absorbed lots of energy (and lost mass) when they were formed millions of years ago in exploding stars. During fission (inside the bomb / millions of years later) this energy is simply released when the atom is split.

Fusion uses light elements that actually release energy when they fuse together. They don't take much energy to bind, so the lost mass doesn't all get used up in the binding energy - the extra mass gets blasted out into the world as the nuclear explosion.

Selection for May / June

Griping

"Randall Jarrell once wrote that even in the Golden Age people were always griping about how everything looked yellow; all our hopes elude us."

- from Loitering

Doubt and the Unknown

We are just starting out, but it's clear from the first few essays in Loitering that the book is fiercely sad, mercilessly - surgically - self-conscious, and  beautifully written. D'Ambrosio's writing is a weird mix of world-weary wisdom, clear-eyed observation, and basically just writing about a bunch of things that he doesn't know much about. And he admits as much right up front. He says he doesn't do research. He just writes from a place of doubt and uncertainty. He says he doesn't even Google because he "wouldn't want to gunk up the works with irritable facts and information..." But it's forceful stuff. As he says, these are essays, not articles.

"My uselessness appalls me."

Selection for March & April 2015

Loitering: New & Collected Essays

by

Charles D'Ambrosio