Genesis 1

Thanks to a series of CDs entitled Create Your World, by Patricia King, this time that I read Genesis 1, from the beginning of Oursler's The Greatest Book Ever Written- these were my impressions.


It's just great.  Some people see Genesis 1 as the first part of the Bible, which it is.  And I see it as a great introduction tacked on later to set the stage for some thoughts that were already written.  How do we write what is so awesome that it is beyond words?  Is the idea beyond the Word?  Of course it is.

I see Genesis 1 as instructions for what people are to do.  We're supposed to create.  And we're supposed to identify the good.  And right now that I'm so overwhelmed with a world of options that I do nothing, I'm supposed to divide and segregate the big wide world into my part in it.

God says things and they happen, but most of the story is dividing up everything into smaller bits until there is a focus on one man.


I also loved the fact that the definition of fruit is taken from this passage.

A fruit is something that has a seed in it.  An herb is something that needs a seed to grow.

Those scientists.  Don't they know that everything they do is just trying to explain Genesis 1?

Toynbee's Six Civilizations Without Precedents

On p. 48 and elsewhere in Somervell's abridgment of The Study of History, Toynbee states that of the 21 civilizations that are identifiable, in all of time (I love his willingness to say what he sees rather than to say, "Uh, I don't know.  The record is incomplete.")  six civilizations had no known antecedents.

He's going to go into the history of the Egyptiac, Sumeric, Minoan, Sinic (Yellow River in China), Mayan and Andean as civilizations that sprang up from nothing.  And only the Egyptian had no descendants.  Is this why I love Egypt?


A word about adjectives.  Why can't we just say either Egyptiac or Egyptian?  Is there a difference?

I hate when people say Mosaic meaning pertaining to Moses.  Mosaics are already something else, so let's not drag art into the study of Bible, history or civilization- thank you very much.

 

The Study of History

An event enters "history" when it is recorded.  But there may be multiple, and competing, histories; as there are multiple. and competing, eyewitness accounts.

Joyce Carol Oates  The Accursed

          And -

The historian is not so puzzled, for this is commonplace in history, that afterward, witnesses disagreed about what had happened, or what they had believed happened             p. 625

p. 455 footnote
It is not the historian's strategy to keep his reader in any sort of cheap suspense, for history is past; so I see no reason not to reveal to the reader... the outcome.




I'm reading an abridgment of Arnold J. Toynbee's A Study of History by D.C. Somervell.  This work uses definitions and identifies its methodologies, and some suppositions.  How nice it would be if every book would start out by presenting the author's suppositions.  Authors don't generally want to admit that they have them, and the ones they know of tend to be a very small percentage of the ones they have.... but I digress.

On page 45-46, it's mentioned that the only difference between the genres of History, Science, and Fiction is that fiction can be drawn from innumerable data.  I love this admission.  History and science include everything that's happened!  Well, we can't write that, much less read that.  Other than that, the techniques are the same whether someone admits it or knows that.  The author decides what to write about, and what to include in that tale.  And it is a tale.  Some authors know what the story is, and some ramble, but maybe the difference between science and history can be seen as the difference between the book and its movie.

It struck me recently that science needs to be repeatable.  But despite all the fiction and physics about time being fluid, isn't it the one thing that isn't repeatable therefore nothing is?  What I mean, is the variables in an experiment can all be repeated in a laboratory, but they really aren't repeated to the last detail.  But time is a huge detail, and the first time the apple fell on Newton can only happen once.

 

Notes On The Preface: Fulton Oursler's The Greatest Book Ever Written

The cover got me.

There's an angry Moses in the top left corner, and the title of the book is pretty largely written on a commandment tablet that he's gripping with both hands.

Then there are the debauched crowd antics below.  If you ever want to catch my eye, show me something reminiscent of those Sunday School illustrations- women with veils and scandalous dancing caught in mid-step.  Apparently there were bikinis in ancient times.  Just look at Jeannie.

I'm not familiar with Fulton Oursler, but I look forward to reading another version of a story I've become familiar with.  

The preface states

The Holy Bible is still the best-selling book of all time and in all countries, yet surprisingly few of the new generation seem to be familiar with its contents.

I'm reminded of something I say in Internet classes, attempting to explain the new world we're in to people my age and older.  I say, adding that I'm speaking facetiously, that the best way to hide something today is just to put it on the Internet.  It's just so overwhelming; the amount of information out there for everyone to see.  And this has happened before in our culture.  Think of Bibles in every home but sitting there, dusty and unread.


A few months ago, when I was reading about Gutenberg, I was surprised that his goal was the Bible, not that the Bible was what he happened to print.  His wasn't a mercenary mission.  He wanted to get the Word out, and he did.  The word Bible obscures the obvious.  To many, this was the book; as in the only one.  Now it's a paperback, thrown away in a bin, sold by the pound.

There's A Scene

in Before Night Falls, where Javier Bardem walks out of the prison in a way that made me think of freedom as a byproduct of self-actualization.

The movie is a little dreamy.  I especially like the images of trees and sky and that sometimes it's not obvious if we're watching what happened or what the protagonist remembers and invents poetically.

Walking around quietly, the character easily slips through his captors' clutches with no one noticing.  He's scared, and he tries to be sneaky and then fast, and then frantically escapes.  But what I got from the scene is that there's nothing really keeping him in prison at that point.  Nobody follows him out of the holding cell, but everyone could have.  He lets himself out of a prison of his own making.

Sure he's scared.  But no one else notices, or follows.  He just let himself out.  He's the only one involved and it's all up to him, whether to relax, leave, run or dash into exile.

Thanks IMDB

It's great to be able to see who played which part and to follow an actor, or director, or writer.

I especially like the "credited with" feature so I can easily catch up with a duo if I've liked them together in something.

Love That Chicken at Popeyes

First of all, there is an ambiguous use of the apostrophe in their logo.  And I think I don't like orange.  But Popeyes has me.

The first time I had fried chicken, I probably liked it.  But who knows.  Today I think that it may be the best taste on earth.  Do you think I'm overselling this?  Imagine if there weren't any fried things, and we had the wherewithall to show a little restraint, or maybe the government decided to do that for us; but either way, a bite of fried chicken was all that was available at any one time.  People would be lining up for their daily hit of this stuff and whoever sold it could charge quite a bit.

Would the government take their cut and control the supply?

If so, would it be a legal or illegal operation?

I once heard Chelsea Handler say that we should know better.  She said that when someone eats fried chicken, they actually know deep down inside that they shouldn't be eating it.  I suppose the idea is that if something is so good, it has to be bad.  That's a strong idea in our culture, but it doesn't stop anything from being sold.  I think it increases consumption.  Nobody ever says "Hey, man, try this broccoli.  I'll give you a taste.  Go on.  Everybody's doing it."  Maybe that idea is why soda and dessert are so popular, and sex is so misappropriated; ambiguously and simultaneously celebrated and maligned.  Smoking and drinking have probably benefited from this idea as well.  But the idea of vice is so old, it's hard to tell.  Can we imagine a world where people didn't feel as if they should go after and/or resist what they want?  We accept animals doing what they want, and consider that innocence or instinct, as if something so simple could be both.  But people are supposed to decide, and then act or hold back.  Doing what you want can be courageous, evil, morally neutral, despicable, or just a matter of taste.  It can be interpreted as the one defining characteristic of a person's life or a minor detail unworthy of comment.

The first time I ate Popeyes was at a restaurant on Sand Lake Road and International Drive in Orlando.  I was very familiar with the character of Popeye, and surprised that the place didn't serve spinach.  And I had no idea that I would be living and working very close to that store for years, later on.  We were on a high school trip to Disney World and the bus stopped in a parking lot between Burger King and Popeyes.  There was a small amusement park there also, and our instructions were to eat at one of those restaurants and then meet up at a certain time later inside the park, which boasted arcade games and a Ferris wheel.

Today, I ate at another Popeyes, and the manager Samuel saw me coming and started getting my order ready before I even gave it.  I suppose you can tell that I could tell that he could tell he'd seen me before.  I came to the conclusion that the spicy chicken at Popeyes was the best single taste on earth when there was a show on television that involved putting something on a spoon and the judges judged it just by taste and how it looked sitting there on the spoon.  They didn't know what the taste was, and were supposed to be more authentic in their judgement; also not knowing who cooked what.  I was out of work, and drinking a lot of water.  I was held hostage by the idea that water is good and salt is bad, and I didn't have much money or much to do.  So I was drinking a lot of water.  I later realized that the level of salt and water needs to be within a certain range for life to continue.  Thankfully I figured this out before I did any additional damage to myself for such a stupid reason.  At the time, I was craving salt.  And Popeyes filled the bill magnificently.

One day it occurred to me that if fried chicken didn't look like it does, and wasn't presented how it is, that a boutique restaurant could charge a fortune for it.  Put that same flavor on a smaller plate with a mixture of colors and an expensive entree would be born that people would line the block for- if they didn't know they could already get it at Popeyes on the corner for a couple bucks.

Thanks Popeyes for saving my life when I was drinking too much water.  And thanks for the deal on the back of the receipt that made it possible, even for someone with little funds at the time.

I still wish you had spinach.