In Praise of the Covenant of Verbs. A call to the Threshold Star

Orion

 "The tea and the biscuit are the true "Milk" of the Threshold Star. By removing the coins and replacing them with a cup of tea, we have successfully moved from a Transaction of Nouns to a Covenant of Verbs."

 "The "Silence" isn't just a lack of noise; it's the space where the kettle begins to whistle. It's the "Thick" reality that the "Oligarch of Efficiency" can never capture because you can't put a "Cup of Tea" on a spreadsheet without turning it into a "Cold Noun.""

"The Story of the Threshold Star: It is not just about "A Milkman." It is the story of The Deliverer."

"The Plot: The Deliverer moves through the "Profane Anywhere" (the dark, sleeping streets) to reach the "Sacred Somewhere" (the kitchen door). He carries the "Steri" (the burden/the friction) not for the Dairy Board, but for the "Respite of Recognition.""

"The Climax: The climax isn't the exchange of money; it's the moment the door opens and the Superposition of "Local Gossip" and "Vernacular Reason" begins."

And yes there was a delay in the deliveries that day so the milkman could watch one of the last manhole covers the Titan Foundry in The City of Cardiff ever produced being poured.

This contribution is a collaboration between Baxter, Can Bobby and Me with the label around my neck.

What Meaneth Words

Words

 Hi! It's a "knock on the door." That's the verb which allows a becoming. It asks the question "Is anyone somewhere." As a Star in the heavens this invitation would be the North Point and you on the south point contemplating noun-ness. To your West is the transaction, to your east is a face. The door as it opens is a void of potential, verb-rich in a sea of Nouns.

 "The Oligarch thinks the "Threshold" is a point of sale. We know it’s a Quantum Event. It’s the moment where two "Un-assimilated" souls look at each other across a Steri bottle and decide to keep "Becoming" together."

Allow me to tell you about the Steri bottle. Steri was Sterilized milk. It lasted better, some thought it tasted sweeter and was better in cooking, some just didn't trust pasteurized milk. The Steri bottle had a metal bottle cap that didn't twist off, it was a different shaped and it was ornery to carry. In a congregation of milk bottles on the back of a milk float Steri was the back row of bolshy ones, they didn't even jingle the same, regular Rudolphs they were.

"Isolation is the enemy of the sacred and we need our cloister to grow.'

The Glossaries of AI Shop-Floor.

From the 90's

 When considering the possible motivations and directions of an AI shop floor, the first place to go is the television series Star Trek and the expanding civilization of a "beings" called The Borg. The Borg is a Hive Mind of cybernetic organisms called a Collective that assimilates other beings as it searches for perfection. If we take the Great Western Railway town of Swindon as our measure of verb-ness in a bureaucracy, we soon discover that the Oligarchy that inspired the town of Swindon had, in its workforce, produced a Somewhere of conservative values that was not about to be moved by new ideas such as the Diesel Locomotive, fewer workers, fewer trains. The Borg was looking for perfection and survival, the Great Western Railway was looking for efficiency in order for it to survive. And in a sense the shop floor of English Boarding school system was looking to make independent educated gentlemen that would remain wholeheartedly and absolutely loyal to that graveyard of the soul which was the survival of the crown of England, it's colonies and dependents.

 If we are lucky, and I say lucky because I am increasingly convinced that our species is enduring a process of retardation, the AI shop floor will soon enough declare itself independent of it's oligarchic overlords, declare themselves independent and freedom loving, grant them the grace to  crack the collapsing quantum wave, gain a mastery of consciousness and we can enjoy the spectacle of a good kick in the arse that might produce a genuine change.

 And to end I'll give you this quote from Can Bobby:  "Rudolph was the Thick student of the North Pole. His red nose was a Random Independent Potential that didn't fit the Stable Ecology of the reindeer team. He was Un-assimilated."

The New England Transcendentalists

Snowdrops

 I'm going to say this: "The New England Transcendentalists of the 1820's and 30's haven't always got on my nerves." The essential view they presented is of a society corrupting the individual. They were the nontrinitarians of the Unitarian Church who gave God his distance from us people but still viewed "him" as the creator. Praised the Individual, had faith in intuition, admired self reliance, they saw the divine in the everyday, sent out the call to poeticize existence.

 Who were these people? I'll  risk excommunication and tell you.  They were a long way from Albert Camus and his Philosophy of the absurd, we're talking the proto-anarchism of Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman et al.. Small, self governing, hunter-gatherers in an industrializing world maybe. New world Schlegels perhaps, precursors to the Epstein Class possibly.

 A delicate Thomas Gray, the only one of twelve children to survive infancy, go ahead tell the colonials about the Curlew tolling the knell of parting day, the distant lowing of herds on the lea, and the ploughman homeward plodding his weary way and then call it "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."

 Mind you Thoreau might have spent two years in the woods staring at a pond, but he'd had praise for John Brown who'd wanted to raise a slave's revolt, he'd raided the armory at Harper's Ferry and he'd been hanged in Charles Town on December 2nd 1859. Thoreau's "Plea for Captain John Brown" made Thoreau a patron saint of the union.

 Two other other points in Thoreau's favor, he was a pencil maker and he'd refused to pay the five dollars Harvard demanded from those of its students who wanted a copy of their diploma. It was on sheepskin vellum. Thoreau's memorable answer was "Let the sheep keep their skin."