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1985 1 of 4

My journal from 1985 is not as detailed or day-by-day as before; I just want to get the BASIC journal pages on the website. For missing days, I've included LIFELIST at the end of the year to supplement journal entries.

1/15/85: 12:37AM: Having just gotten into the WORM honors-list, having just watched "Pirates of Penzance" and "The Silence" (with Malcolm GROOM yet!) and "Michener's Hawaii" at Arnolds (and being treated to dinner of roast beef, baked potato with clarified butter, brussels sprouts in cheese sauce, apple sauce, iced wine, and ice cream with $10/pound-jar of some pillowy-textured chocolate-with-hazelnut sauce someone had given him as a gift---for dinner), and put away the stamps with DETERMINATION (though even NOW I'm thinking: "Well, I COULD just count out the pages for Great Britain, or see why France doesn't have a stamp-count, or do the next country, Dahomey---"), I'm thinking what I thought this morning: I must write what it's like to be TOTALLY self- indulgent for a number of weeks. Interesting that it's been 30 days since I wrote anything here: just spent the time looking at my TV with VCR (though it's been clear for a few weeks that I have to experiment with antenna and booster to get a better and more consistent picture on channels 7 and 13) and doing stamps, and cutting down on bodywork to every other week, and finishing an IF series with Bruce, and catching up with Christmas cards on time (though now I have to update the "got" list, as I have to update the indexes-done list), and I think I NEED FRIENDS: phone Joe Easter and get a laugh: seems he'd called me after he got back from Europe, I was rushing to meet Dennis and said I'd phone him back, and FORGOT about it. He said he knew my memory was better than that. Yeah! Think for the THIRTIETH time to phone John Connolly; glad Rolf's been over twice for jerking off to video porno already; HAD gotten out to the Anvil once with him after the ludicrous stopover at Danceteria; AND have a nice day from Dennis tomorrow: MOMA for Primitivism last-day show, "Passage to India," and then Le Culot for Allen Ginsburg. But I'm plump from not having been to the gym, depressed from not having done lightwork, and frustrated that I haven't gotten back to the Mentronics tapes for WEEKS. Three indexes coming up to be finished, and STILL I'm thinking too much: going to bed at 2:30 or 3:30AM and getting up toward noon, lucky if I get food into my stomach by noon, and feeling guilty and self-indulgent and still WANT: travel (Susan still isn't sure she's going to Ireland in May, and I still haven't shown ANYONE my French slides from MONTHS ago), new friends, particularly a new SEX FRIEND, though just POSSIBLY something might come if ANYONE comes to the social I'm having at my place to "replace" (David Hoch even calls it a SEMINAR!) the cancelled-for-the-time-being Gay Men's Seminars. And I resent having to work EVERY day on my teeth, and don't for a day or so; and I've been needing to vacuum and I haven't, and needed a haircut, and haven't gotten it. But where's the idea of LEISURE time, time to ENJOY: either I watch TV or read a book or do stamps or play WORM or type notebook entries or work. When do I call a friend to chat (well, rather often for Sherryl or Pope or Arnold) or go someplace on the spur of the moment---though admittedly it's somewhat harder in the middle of the cold winter. Well, anyway, that's where I am, and now I'm tired enough to go to bed even though it's as early at 12:55AM--though I'll probably read awhile!

1/19/85: Hadn't transcribed these notes from the ASI meeting: Entering ASI meeting, that same feeling of NOT wanting to be there, not caring for (the looks of) any of the people there, and not wanting to be anything like ANY of these people (later surprised to get a mailing where Elaine Chubb, who did handwork "under" me at the Whole Life Expo, is leading the next symposium at EFA), or even to be WITH them. People chat in groups, stand sociably around the coffee urn, talking people and business and techniques and training cycles. An industrious glassed person why must be the new president, Hans Wellisch, pulls chairs up to the tablecloth-covered speakers table. My looking forward to the Williams Club is quickly settled: It HAD been nice (didn't realize there would be so many people in NYC who'd graduated from Williams), but now rather seedy, ill- (or little-) used, and seedily furnished. It would be better if I could DRINK before these, it occurs to me, as before some vaguely unpleasant cocktail party or dinner. Peter Rooney sits to one side, officiously, and Bill Bartenbach is chatting with woman behind him. Other presidents greet and meet, and new faces abound, but what I want is someone young and sexy who'd come home with me after. Sydney Cohen stops and says (as I jot on index cards) "You look like an indexer!" I get a front left seat so I can observe the FACES of those who speak. The sign for 202 people seems hardly to be reached and there are no more than 8 rows of 8 chairs each. As I glance around Elliot comes in and is greeted, and I quickly look back to my notes, fearful that HE would take the treasured single seat next to me. Which remains empty. Plump gray Palmer wants to talk CONSTITUTION first, but Wellisch says no, having wisely brought a parliamentarian with him to soothe arguments. The gavel is at 1:49, and it's over at 3:40, very INVOLVED, but we lost; no one seems to CARE that everything is in a mess. "We are an association." Cremmins metions that Saul Bellow helped Mortimer Adler index the Syntopicon of Great Books. Ed Cremmins 4:10 to 4:50, surprises me by having a mother-in-law, was born in 1929, and by the time Wellisch speaks there are 14 left in the audience. His 1972-1976 reference list had 910 entries, from 1977 to 1981 it's 1426 entries. 60% English, 12% Russian, 11% German, 5% Japanese, 5% French, and others. NO fully automated abstracting is done, is NO translations are automatically done. Terms that are GOING include chain indexing, links and roles, punched cards, and uniterms. Good! Terms COMING include databases, freelancing, microcomputers, online systems, software, and word processing. He ends at 5:15 and I leave gratefully.

1/24/85: Total outrageous linkability: doing my session this morning, still in the connectivity of my reading Blackwood's "The Centaur" last night, which takes me back to the recent Hesse readings by translations of Novalis's works, which reminds me of the current Chardin readings by references to the Spirit of the Earth, which took me to EB to read about Fechner and psychophysics (which at this moment strikes me as the basic SUBJECT of my linkability thoughts), which describes out-of-body experiences (making me want even more than ever to return to the Mentronics tapes), which has (for me, anyway) a clear homosexual component of love for a strong man, and which uses terms familiar through Actualism like Dweller at the Threshold and even stranger, like The Dance of Jesus. Then I think of the Actualism levels going up from Soul to Angelic to Archetypal to Formless Form, which IS the ground of all from which springs the subatomic, the atomic, etc, and it's a perfect CIRCLE of being. I think of ways of portraying this circle, and think of a holographic television set which fills an entire room, moving from one "level" to another, from one dimension to another, depicting galaxies and worlds and DNA and personal relationships. I then think of the various "iso" lines that could be depicted on this 3-d TV:
1) Iso-therms: 100 degrees a mile underground, around earth, in stratosphere;
2) Iso-stamps: every location of the penny black, or the 3p. Queen Elizabeth;
3) Iso-histories: locating the TREES from which the pulp for the stamps came;
4) Iso-times: visualizing everything that was taking place at 4PM 1/1/400BC;
5) Iso-references: getting back to Rolf's and my talk about referencing ANY piece of data from a DOZEN viewpoints: the people, the locations, the dates, the materials, the texts, the inventions, the antecedents, the proceedents. But sadly I don't finish this early in the day, and now at midnight most of the RICHNESS of the connectivity has vanished: I had envisioned endless chains of art and literature and data and biography and history and pornography and anecdote and critique and source and sink. Follow an idea from mind to paper to book to book-buyer to invention to salesman to factory to user to garbage dump to the end of the world. Ranging over ANY dimension of time or space, graphing the richnesses of alternate universes, alternate typographies, alternate existences, to a richesse that would dazzle my head that thought Jane Roberts was getting unnecessarily complex in "Seth Speaks." And goes beyond Actualism and birth and death and cosmogenesis and Siva-destructions. And the beguiling thought of the entire cosmos as a bevatron to accelerate ions in MY brain for the PURPOSE of writing this, at which INSTANT of completion the world will vanish in a puff of smoke and, having said all, there is no mo

1/25/85: Thinking of the problems of counting how many people are born, and come up with the idea of having an INHERITABLE population computer INBORN, as an artificial gene, and somehow think of the title "Diltanoy of the Far Future Calling" as a way of propagating these stories: though faintly Diltanoy sounds of Blackwood's Gilderoy, and of course "Far Future Calling" IS the name of a book by Stapledon! But think of the mechanism of an immutable crystal going through the "spindle" of Collapsing Universe--Big Bang--Expanding Universe-- Maximum Entropy--Collapsing Universe, and so on: and even want to display THIS sausage-of-universes on the room-hologram on page 330.

1/28/85: It's really wonderful to type this after reading NOTEBOOK 329-330 for 1/15: I actually DID get out the next country, Dahomey, though I haven't finished it YET; I DID check the antenna and find that it IS to the VCR and not to the TV, and LATELY 7 and 13 have been coming in just FINE! I still have to update the Christmas card list (though I just GOT one from JJ a few days ago) and I HAVE updated the indexes-done list; still haven't phoned John Connolly, but Rolf and I have been to DINNER at the India House, rather pleasant; the day with Dennis turned out OK, though none of the components was really THAT great (don't know WHY "Passage to India" is winning all the awards- maybe there's just not that much competition). But I've BEEN to the gym (even today) and DONE lightwork (even today) and LISTENED to the Mentronics tape (even today); FINISHED the three indexes, to have a clean shelf now, and even now resolve to do complete books AS THEY COME IN, so I NEVER have to worry about those last-minute hassles of having to take it in rather than just mailing it. DID show my French slides to Bob and Sherryl and Mrs. Johnson, and though they're not so great, I ALSO got to Paul's to see his PHOTOS, and know that my slides are LOTS better! Frederick Hodgkins calls that he's bringing his roommate to my social, too! Still haven't vacuumed or gotten a haircut, but at least the socks are NOW in the sink! And Blackwood's "The Centaur" is a REAL sensation!

Old Encyclopedia Galactica note: EB has 50 million words, or 300 million characters, or 2.5 billion bits. For 2.5 MILLION civilization-encyclopedias, there's only once chance in 1000 of being identical, so a one-meter rod could carry how many? If BASIC L* = 1.6 x 1033 cm = 1.6 x 1031 m, there are that many POSSIBLE points, say each must have 160 on side, so there are 1029 MEASURES for 1010 (a billion) civilizations, or 1019 measures. Look at 40 x 50 = 200-volume encyclopedia = 1011 BITS, or 108 = a hundred-million SIZES!!

1/30/85: Finished Blackwood's "The Centaur" (and how interesting that he used that word maybe ONCE in the book, though also with words like Chiron and Lapithae) with really mixed feelings: WOULD it be "more useful" to "pass on and send fuller messages to the world from the other side" OR "to remain and work hard from HERE, as frustrating as that might be." Is it the same as for Boddhisattvas: THEY are enlightened, but they come BACK to help OTHERS become enlightened. The "simplicity" of that sentence reminds me also of the feeling I had while reading the book that COMPLEX speech is NOT the way to describe somehing that's so simple (as I violated "Acid House" by bringing in all those literary references at the "height" of the visionary experiences)---the best and most effective way to describe the simple is WITH simplicity. After all, that is how things ARE; it's the COVER and the ILLUSION that's so complicated and DEMANDS the complicated, while the underlying simplicity IS simple, and so can be described with the simplest of words: love, trust, truth, freedom, feelings, joy, oneness, laughter, dance, ecstasy, warmth, glow, surprise. It seems that the individual might be acting for HIMSELF if he "bows out of the world toward his own happiness." And maybe that IS madness, acting AS IF the happiness of the ONE can be held in contradistinction to the happiness of ALL. But, as usual, it comes down to REMEMBERING (from the recent conversation with Pope) what the truth is while saying anything, rather than FORGETTING the truth and then talking nonsense. But then comes back the eternal thought: "If it IS the truth." If it isn't sophistry, wishful thinking, castles in the air, nonsense itself. We see clearly that we don't live forever in these bodies, so what is more reasonable than a hearty desire to live forever in some EXTENSION of the body: astral, human, soul, whatever it's called. We know with pain that we ARE separate from others, what is more reasonable than the hope that the FUTURE will see us united, whether as Chardin's Omega Man, Blackwood's Spirit of the Earth, Huxley's Perennial Answer, or Actualism's Network. To which responds the thought: yet if NO ONE thinks of the answer, earthes the answer, fleshes out the answer, CREATES the answer, first in mind, then to the emotions, then to the senses, then to the actual Physical---will it then be a "free" gift of the universe? This is circular in that IF we are the universe, then it IS we who have to CREATE it for OURSELVES. If we are NOT the universe, then we EITHER get it free from the universe (which seems to have given us OURSELVES freely, so it may not be so surprising as it might first appear), or we get it not at all. Which poses the subsidiary question: which is better, to have it not at all and not THINK of having it, or to have it not at all and yet THINK of having it. For those who would answer that honesty is everything, the answer would seem to be NEVER delude yourself, ALWAYS think ONLY the truth. Though it doesn't seem like much fun to think again and again, "I've just been born in order to die; whatever fun I'm having now I won't be having in a hundred years. But how much REAL fun is there in: "I'm going to survive in the human for hundreds of years" and then not surviving. Well, I might have to admit, MORE fun than in "I'm not going to survive in any sense" and then not surviving.

2/3/85: A play entitled "The Playwriter" springs almost intact into my head, along with climaxes for each of the three scene/acts: the first a sex scene ending "How are you going to put this on the stage?" (under sheets) with the playwriter responding "I'll find a way;" the second an apotheosis scene with the climas of "Mefistofeles" blazing in the background; the third and final with the "partner" looking up from reading the play and EITHER seeing the ACTUAL audience or VISUALIZING an audience in the ACTUAL "room" after the playwriter says "Maybe this IS the play ITSELF" and the partner has the ambiguous final line (which must be set up) "Oh, my GOD!" which could mean he's very surprised, or that he realizes that everyone IS everyone, and he's LOOKING at God, in the audience, which IS God, and HIS God since he "creates" it in his sensorium. Perfect "little theater" production: one set: the playwriter's living room with a fold-out couch for sex (or left folded in for FRANTIC sex), and one main "star" (the playwriter) (the title is also multi-leveled, being essentially an INVENTED word) and lots of one-act major and minor subcharacters (including the Shiela trying to seduce, the Mother confused about it, the straight Ingo being seduced and trying for AFFECTION rather than sex, the straight Marck READING the play and realizing he's IN it at various levels of realization and double-talk, the ghost-Father (ala Hamlet, I know) who resolves things---and then the subjects of beauty, death, desire, communication, changing the world, ALL of these could come into play, not to mention the EXPLICIT idea that this FORMAT makes it easy to throw ANYTHING in and make it into a series, ala Kei Takei in "Light", and even COMPUTERIZABLE for the far- future civilization with NEW art forms, of which this is a dim foreshadowing!! What a FANTASTIC thing, AFTER I told Marck I was going to be interested in writing anew---a new play!!

2/6/85: "The Killing Fields" is "so depressingly well-done" as I put it, that Dennis and I don't say much about it on the way home. I finally manage to get out that it seemed so PETTY for Shanberg to be worried about ONE man when MILLIONS were being SLAUGHTERED. Dennis agreed. Then I spoke of ONE of my many thoughts: "And then am I supposed to DO something about this? Here I have my computer and my VCR and people are DYING!" What I DIDN'T say were these thoughts: I had such a feeling of HATE for the killings onscreen that I began to HATE some of the people in the audience: the black who breezed past the money-taker, saying "I've been in before, with my friends?" and then I find her sitting ALONE inside; the black who came in late, sat to my right and unpacked a lunch from a rustly paper bag, drank soda from a can, and then lit a cigarette, which was actually better than his doing NOTHING, because then he fell asleep and snored! I was GLAD when he coughed, glad that he might soon DIE, and this is HARDLY an "enlightened" position to be in, but the frustration of the images of blasted limbs, hopeless cripples, valleys of skeletons with hair and clothing still attached. I gritted in frustration that the "civilized" nations of the world should stop producing (and selling for profit) ammunition and bombs---then let the combatants go at each other as much as they wanted, only face-to-face with knives or spears! This mass-killing with bombs, and long-distance killing with rifles and mortars and grenades, is so STUPID!! WHAT IS IT THAT THESE PEOPLE WANT??? If you ask ANY combatant, or general, the question is usually answered with something SIMPLE, like freedom, or control, or power. Why kill the people who could be controlled or dominated? Isn't that anti-productive even of the goals of war? I feel so HELPLESS with ANGER and RAGE while watching the movie: but what can I do---go stop the war in some miraculous way? And the INTENSITY of my sadness almost made me want to walk out of the theater! Not that there weren't flaws with the film: at one point (when he was being held prisoner, then there was an un-understandable shot of bodies on a boat, then he was NOT a prisoner) I turned to Dennis and asked "Is this later or is this a memory," and he said he didn't know. Then when Dit Pran was "lost" at the airport, there was NO sense of how he MET with Shanberg to go running for the helicopter. The sequences of Dit Pran's wandering were disjointed: first he was wandering, then he was a servant in a Khmer Rouge leader's home---how did that HAPPEN? John Malkovich played such an unsympathetic role: always unshaven and slovenly, he was more concerned about cigarettes and photographs than about the DEAD around him. Shanberg, too, seemed such a wimp: he wants to get news and wonders why some mother would want to ask him for help in digging out her wounded child. And all the sequences of the "rich" foreigners eating and lounging and drinking and comfortable while the country that is literally PAYING for their luxury is going down the drain. How could they NOT hate the foreigners. And then the children are now being trained to be hate-full party-liners. One WOULD hope for the younger generation as saviours, but now the only products are worse fanatics. And then the heart-rending strains of John Lennon's "Imagine" the world being one, with all the conflicts solved. How hopeless it all seems: I didn't read the news that Schanberg produced, but I see the summary in this movie, and it's still going on, as wars have gone on agelessly and people are STILL killed while the REAL villains, the munitions and ammunitions makers, get richer and more comfortable and send letters asking about tours through a dying country. UGH!

2/7/85: Type 1/30/85 note: Finish Blackwood's "The Centaur": GREAT book; interesting details:
p.2: his air of unusual bigness, massiveness rather, ---head, face, eyes, shoulders, especially back and shoulders. UMMM.
p.13: For one thing, the feminine element in his own nature was too strong, and he was not conscious, as most men are, of the great gap of incompleteness women may (note MAY!) so exquisitely fill.
p.17: theory---that intense yearnings end by creating a place where they are fulfilled.
p.28: It was the year of Halley's comet---and it is AGAIN, THIS year!!
p.34: NOVALIS Flower Pollen translated by U.C.B.---unpublished Blackwood??
p.47: all the senses, as in an overdose of haschish, become one single sense.
p.55: GREAT quote from James A Pluralistic Universe.
p.68: Fechner real? HE WAS! And P.74 and 110.
p.91:...free of that other world in sleep, were alert and potently discharging.
p.93: Oh, that I could be with him where he now is, in that place of eternal youth and eternal companionship.
p.114: Fechner is quoted by James!
p.117: all that we see and hear in separation she (earth) sees and hears at once.
p.154: And this vast splendour was to report itself by one of the insignificant little channels by which men, locked in cramped physical bodies, interpret the giant universe---a trivial sense-impression!
p.164: "I feel caught and caged---small." "Because you've tasted a moment of genuine cosmic consciousness and now you feel the limitations of normal personality.
p.176: mystical idea that a man must lose his life to find it, and that the personal self must be merged in a larger one to know peace---escape from the endless pain of futile personal ambitions and desires for external tings that are unquenchable because never possible of satisfaction.
p.181: Kakhetian as Caucasian again.
p.189: At LAST the word "Centaur" is used!
p.192: That loss of personality he first dreaded as an "inner catastrophe" appeared to him now for what it actually was---merely an extinction of some phantasmal illusion of self into the only true life.
p.193: Dweller on the Threshold HERE.
p.201: He understood that worship was au fond a desire for loss of personal life---hence its subtle joy; and a fear lest it be actually accomplished--- whence its awe and wonder.
p.214: The Dance of Jesus?
p.223: The boxwood bushes ran together into a single sheet of black, the far peaks faded out of sight, the air grew keen and sharp towards the dawn on the wave of wind the sunrise drives before it round the world.
p.226: And then the big figure moved. He came slowly forward from among the trees, his hands outstretched in greeting, on his great visage a shining smile of welcome that seemed to share the sunrise. In that moment for the Irishman all was forgotten as though unknown, unseen, save the feelings of extraordinary happiness that filled him to the brim.
p.235: The account of what followed simply swept me into fairyland, yet a Fairyland that is true because it lives in every imaginative heart that does not dream itself shut off from the Universe in some wee compartment all alone.
p.255: He SEES them: lustre of glorious bodies, golden bronze in sunlight...
p.264: That unrest which men miscall delight could touch him not nor torture him again. If this were death---how exquisite! And Time was not a passing thing, for it lay, he says, somehow in an ocean everywhere, heaped up in gulfs and spaces. It was as though he could help himself and take it. That morning, had he so wished, could last for ever; he could go backwards and taste the shadows of the night again, or forward and bask in the glory of hot noon. There were no parts of things, and so no restlessness, no sense of incompleteness, no divisions.
p.277: Was loveliness, as men know it, a revelation of the Earth-Soul behind?.. from this Garden of the Earth's deep central personality came all the inspiration known to men.
p.279: In these flashing moments, when a second seemed a thousand years, he further understood the splendour of the stage beyond. Earth in her turn was but a Mood in the Consciousness of the Universe, that Universe again was mothered by another vaster one...and the total that included them all was not the gods---but God.
p.282: from 226 to here the crux and an "instant dream."
p.290: he saw all loved ones joined and save, as separate words upgathered each to each in the parent sentence that explains them, the sentence in the paragraph, the poaragraph in the whole grand story all achieved---and so at length into the eternal library of God that consummates the whole.CONSUMMATES!!
p.326: Civilization brings its own army of diseases---the few illnesses known to ruder savage races can be cured by simple means the earth herself supplies. Implying that the CIVILIZED diseases can be CURED by civilization only!

2/7/85: Type 2/1/85 notes from James Manning: What sounded like women's voices in his work-tape were NOT women's voices, but BOYS'. Ankh-Mehor in Sakkara and the Temple of Mut at Karnak, in Birth House, have two circumcision scenes. Egyptians did circumcize for cleanliness, coming from priests saying FEMALE soul found in FORESKIN. ATUN was a Mother-Father God! The hand is the female in masturbation of that double-sexed god. Atun appears in Medinet-Habu and in a Libyan desert oasis. A cave ABOVE Hatshepsut's in Thebes is filled with erotica. Sesostris I temple (phallic) is CLOSED in Karnak. Ichthyphallic God Amun. Turin Museum has erotic papyrus. Brooklyn Museum keeps "Snow White (being fucked) and Seven Dwarfs" in a drawer. Herms and phalli frighten EVIL away. Yum!

2/7/85: And still I fuss and type up notes and watch TV and keep up with Actualism and Mentronics and gym---and STILL have yet to get started on the play; will I AGAIN be stung in the future as Arnold did a few days ago when he referred to the MUSICAL that I'd been so hot about writing a few years ago. Maybe I tell people to FORCE MYSELF into producing something!!

2/8/85: Came up with a list of "revolution" pictures: "Battle of Algiers" for Algeria, "State of Siege" for Chile, "Z" for Greece, "Apocalypse Now" and "Deer Hunter" for Vietnam, and "Killing Fields" for Cambodia.

2/12/85: After trying the Mentronics REBAL:
a) REBAL sends energy from TOP to BOTTOM,
b) ACTUALISM plexuses send energy from SIDE to SIDE,
c) "other work" portals work from FRONT to BACK,
d) TIME "passages" from PAST to FUTURE,
e) and WE travel along our life-points from YOUTH to AGE, for
ALL-DIFFERENT THROUGHPUT

2/13/85: A) Three points of view on climbing a mountain:
1) From ABOVE: CLOSER to heaver is better; start is bad, middle GOOD, end bad.
(Youth BELIEVES in progress.)
2) From EARTH: Closer to GROUND is better; start good, middle BAD, end good.
(Old man BELIEVES in regress.)
3) From SIDE: ANYWHERE OK: NOTHING relational, bad or good.
(ANY age is just THERE.)
B) We WANT "All is One" because all is REALLY complicated and UNunderstandable and uncontrollable and we WANT everything to be UNcomplicated & understandable and controllable!!
C) I do STAMPS, until I TIRE, they BORE, they don't EXCITE. Then I stop. When I return, they EXCITE.
I do TV, until I TIRE, it BORES, it doesn't EXCITE. Then I stop. When I return, it EXCITES.
I do cleaning, listing, computer expansion/games/lists, movies, sex, playwriting, museums, plays, amusement parks, gym, actualism........LIFE!
Season-change is GOOD. Age-change is GOOD? Recreation-change? UNIVERSE- change (expansion and contraction). So life MUST change or it BORES!!

2/14/85: "I wrote a story about a common person who became a "monk for love" and wandered into foreign countries and held "love meetings" at munitions plants: the people wake up to life and the site seems to be "encased in peace." No one would every work there making munitions again. He understood, without money or shelter or food, this entire world, and saved it. When interviewed to find how he started, he said "I once read a story about a common person who....
Then I wrote a book of 2000 pages that followed one family, a page a year, from the time of Christ to the present. Then I wrote a play that described a character writing that story and writing that book and writing that play. The AIM is to save a world.

2/15/85: 2:25AM: SCALE thoughts: We're so convinced that our light-year is so FAR and our quark is so SMALL. We may be really a MID-RANGE, containing galaxies in a quark, and the idea that "it would take a particle accelerator as big as the universe to produce----[see P.78 of March 1985 Scientific American: "To resolve a structure of such small size (10-30 centimeter) with an instrument based on current technology would require an accelerator several light-years across"]----maybe we ARE in a particle accelerator of a hyper- universe where investigators move LIGHT-YEARS in FEMTOSECONDS to cross THEIR room! Or PARALLEL universes as different from US as height and depth are from east and west! Incidentally, these 10-30 centimeter spheres are in the FIFTH dimension in this article in SciAM, and THESE might be universes!! Chinese BOX! There were OTHER articles BEFORE this that required such large accelerators, and there will undoubtedly be more AFTER, so an intense literature-search would be needed to find ALL the possibilities, but with so MANY possibilities, it would almost become a REQUIREMENT to EXIST! In an est-controlled universe, since the mind can imagine it, there it is, and the world in TOTAL complexity!

3/1/85: 2:30AM: The POVERTY before: no heat, laundries, anesthetics, antibiotics, medicines, flush toilets, hot water, central heating, refrigeration, toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant; the RICHES now: ALL plays, translations, restored and catalogued art, recorded speeches, worldwide news services, TV bringing images from ANYWHERE, music of ALL ages, accumulation of science and technology and crafts, refinements of sights and sounds and smells and tastes, HEALTH and COMFORT and ENDLESS stimulation both mental and physical and emotional.

3/2/85: 2:30AM: A) "Last night I TRULY REALIZED what it meant that civilization could be WIPED OUT by a nuclear holocaust. ANOTHER Atlantis! Another Lost City of Mankind. Chardin and Huxley and Christ were WRONG. The DEVIL & DARKNESS win!
B) If only one TRULY could go "out of body"---one could see ANYTHING: the Ark on Ararat, the wreck of the Titanic, whether Atlantis was underwater near the Bahamas, El Pajaton (the newly found "lost" city in northern Peru), other "lost" cities in places currently inaccessible from road OR helicopter, the poles, Mars, Venus, Mercury---the SUN, Halley's comet---and I could DISARM all the fuses in all the rockets and bombs, even preventing them from being FIRED!

3/3/85: 1:05AM REVELATION!! GOT to be able to feel TIRED without feeling DEPRESSED!! 1) After gym, I'm DEPRESSED when I should feel TIRED. 2) After long day I'm DEPRESSED when I'm only TIRED! 3) In sickness, I'm DEPRESSED when I'm only SICK! 4) In LIFE, I'm depressed when I'm only FATIGUED AND NEED REST!

3/4/85: EB notes for play: 14:564 gives chart of depths of ocean from 100 meters at 17,000 BP to 20 meters at 10,000 BP. 14:569 gives mass extinctions of about 70% of species from 15,000 - 9,000 BP, clustered around 11,000 BP.
5:117: "Since last glacial interval sea level has risen 100-120 meters (330-390 feet) in about 12,000 years (17,000-5,000 BP). Constant over last 5000 years.
8:1001: Around 8000 BP a maximum of 5 cm/year rise of sea level = 5 m/century = 50 meters in 1000 years MAXIMUM. 8:1002e: marginal bulge COLLAPSES during deglaciation. 8:1005a:"milk and honey 7750-5100 BP" 8:1005-1007 GREAT summary!

3/15/85: EB notes for Silk Route trip: 19:174c: FIVE places of origin of civilization: Yellow River Valley in China: Yangshan culture in 3000BC; Egypt, Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, Andes in South America. 19:185c: Yunkang caves in Sian (was Northern Wei) 460-470AD. Lung-men caves in Loyang (which was capital 494-sacked 535 AD) 508-523 (and in 19:189a, also 672-675); 19:187c: Tun-huang cave of Thousand Buddhas 660 onwards.

3/16/85: SCI-AM notes on "mind-blowing" articles:
1985, Mar, p.74: 11-Dimension Spacetime; p.78:"accelerator several light-years across" (authors mathematician and physicist)
1983, Dec: Creation in an article on Quantum Gravity
1983, Mar, p.101: cyclic, long-lived universe, past year 10100; p.112:
"particle accelerator the size of a galaxy."
1983, Feb, p.86: Inflationary SUPER universe---causally connected
1981, Dec, p.171: "The observer is as essential to the creation of the
universe as the universe is to the creation of the observer."
Anthropic Principle by American philosopher at University of Missouri.
1981, Apr, p.48: "ONE kind of elementary particle and ONE force" at speeds.
1981, Feb, P.70-74: rishons
1980, Oct, p.79: Nucleon decay about 1033 years.
1980, Apr, p.128: "The anthropic cosmological principle overcomes the
traditional barrier between the observer and the observed."
Astrophysicists from England
1979, Nov, P.181: "In some sense all objects constitute an indivisible whole."
Professor of Physics at University of Paris.

3/18/85: Notes from JEWEL IN THE CROWN watching. Interesting that there was SO MUCH homosexuality in the two HIGHEST-ACCLAIMED series: Brideshead Revisited and now Jewel in the Crown:
a) Barbie Batchelor(!)'s "affection" for Susan and Sarah
b) Merrick's putting hand between Hari Kumar's legs
c) "No problem with HIM" "How do you KNOW?" soldier looking back at boy
d) Bronofsky as pederast
e) Princess's having affairs with husband's mistress
f) Legal advisor's stroking blond head at sitar concert
g) "Sophie" Dixon
h) Merrick's "smarmy" batman
i) Transvestites at Maharanee's party
j) Pinky in many episodes
AND I think Perron used the word CAMP to Nigel in train in Pankot, episode 11!
AND the comments AROUND it: Indian widows killing selves by FIRE; mystique of "I am your Mother and Father;" and Merrick's saying "I fell for the idea of it: Devotion, sacrifica, a CAUSE---a moral definition of what we're here for, people living in a world some sort of GOD created---the whole impossible, nonsensical dream." Then Cooke quoting from Churchill: "War was a GENTLEMAN'S GAME. War, which had been cruel and magnificent, had become cruel and squalid. It is all the fault of democracy and science." GOD!! SQUALID!! It was ONLY the peons who ALWAYS died in wars! But it WAS refreshing to hear SHIT and FUCK on prime-time TV!! But why is it STILL squelched on NON-PUBLIC TV??

4/8/85: First lecture on the SCIENCES OF RECOGNITION: Introduction of Dr. Edelman, Nobel Prize for Antibody Structure. Outline of series:
I. Science of Recognition. Evolution, Adaptation, and Complexity.
II. Molecular bases of animal form.
III. Immunology.
IV. Neurobiology and Learning.
V. Evolution and Awareness.
"We have constant lust until we have not. Science is that which is verifyable.
Recognition: adaptation to novelty without prior information.
Physics, computers, and AI inadequate to tell us how we think.
How do we recognize the world without labels?
Plato's Cave: We MAY be naming SHADOWS. Plato REQUIRED ESSENTIAL taxa or CATEGORIES: he was an ESSENTIALIST. Modern science is AGAINST Essentialism.
Darwin invented "Population thinking" in 1859: Variation leads to natural selection leads to evolution (through genetic mutation). For Darwin, INDIVIDUALITY was the essence. Genotype is each set of genes, and a phenotype is a functioning animal form with variation in populations.
Natural selection or differential reproduction. Variation (mutation) is not informed, it is by CHANCE. Environment is REMORSELESSLY indifferent. On the AVERAGE the more fit will survive; the less fit will die.
SCIENCES OF RECOGNITION
1) How does a species evolve? From the bottom up, by natural selection.
2) How are adaptations inherited? By Mendelian gene mutation.
3) How is self distinguished from non-self? By Immunology.
4) How does 1-D code produce a 3-D being? These two are linked at the
5) How are perceptual categories developed in brain? frontiers of study!

Evolution leads to increasing complexity over millenia.
Systems of selective recognition act during individual's lifetime.

Cell biology: Nucleus membrane, cytoplasm, DNA; Virus (key) FITS SHAPE of antibody (lock).

WRONG theory: Instruction in immune system. Pauling: Antigen serves as template for antibody.
RIGHT theory: Clonal selection in immune system. Virus polls 1010 different antibody LOCKS until it FITS, and the LOCKS THAT FIT are signaled to CLONE.
"This is amply, deeply confirmed."
In evolution, ESSENTIALISM is wrong; in immunity, INSTRUCTION is wrong. SELECTION is right. In the brain, may it be selection and NOT instruction?
Thus (he doesn't say) OUR BRAIN KNOWS IT ALL ALREADY!
Brain has 1010 cells and 1015 connections: globs and slabs connected to sense receptors and muscles as input is connected to output.
His theory: EACH brain-map is different.
Theory that signals through synapses are "like" computer circuits: signal to the network changes synapses to produce learning and memory. This is the information-processing theory, and it's WRONG.
Optical illusions prove that senses can be FOOLED. Senses are context-dependent. Pigeons can GENERALIZE shapes (into tree-like, or whatever) though he later says that doesn't mean they RECOGNIZE them as TREE-like, just LIKE!
Are stimuli ESSENTIAL classes or ARBITRARY classes?
Group-selection model theorizes that the stimulus is a polymorphous set, which enters the brain that has a repertoire of groups, and a "match" is selected so that there is an amplification of synapses at the adapted groups, which produces the capability of GENERALIZATION.
1. Development leads to variant networks that confront
2. Experience, which selectes adaptive groups. MORE than one kind is actually successful, so that ONE kind of nerve group can be used by MANY signals.
So there is HETEROGENOUS evolution
HETEROGENOUS immunity
and HETEROGENOUS brain and nervous system.
Evidence: CLONES have DIFFERENT neurons.
He found Neural Cell Adhesion Molecules (CAMs) that act as glues that hold cells together, giving SHAPE (3-D) to the cells from 1-D code (DNA).
Cells aggregating during development form DIFFERENT glues in DIFFERENT configurations for DIFFERENT individuals. No monkey hand-brain map identical.
Maps of fingers EXPAND into ADJOINING brain areas when brain-areas removed.
So POLYMORPHOUS input produces INDIVIDUALIZED output.
Continued adaptive matching allows brain development.
Next time he'll take up neural Darwinism.
So recognition and automata theories, NOT computer theory, fits the brain.
EVERY ACT OF PERCEPTION IS AN ACT OF CREATION.
An act of MEMORY is an act of IMAGINATION.
INDIVIDUALITY IS UNAVOIDABLE AND ESSENTIAL.
UNPREDICTABILITY PROVIDES CREATIVITY. First over at 8:15, then questions.
NG cam is a Neuron-Glia glue. A second is for nerves and muscles, a third for liver, and fourth for "adult" neuron agglutination. CAMs go ON and OFF where and when WANTED. Splitting and linking WHEN NEEDED. There is NO reductionism: it is foolish to say that man is determined. "Science is morally neutral."
CAMs are HIGHLY regenerative after brain damage, but if you remove certain cells from the medulla oblongata, there's no more regeneration.
1080 protons in the universe. 200 cell-types in body.
It's been PROVEN: if A makes 10,000 keys & B makes 1010 locks, ALL KEYS FIT!!
Meaning: the keys will TURN in the locks, but they won't be PERFECT match.
Argument: good-enough is sufficient. Questions end at 8:35.

4/10/85, #2 starts at 7:09, place 80% full as compared to 90% full Monday.
Recognition systems: immune systems.
Nervous sytem reacts instantly for a lifetime memory. This lecture: How do you inherit your father's nose? How does a cell in an embryo know its place?
Development into form by division and movement and death of CELLS.
Controlled by adhesion and different gene expression.
A major mechanism is GLUE CONTROL (change in expression of cell adhesion molecules or CAMs). Thus no two organisms or brains are identical.

DNA code, specified in genes, specifies PROTEIN sequence of sets of 20 amino acids which FOLD UP (into 3-D) to fit other molecules, leading to change in structure. Genes control genes to build complex proteins to turn genes on and off. Mutations are changes of code---usually for WORSE.
1-D code, specifying protein, forms a SHAPE in 3-D. Now, how does a 1-D code specify a 3-D animal? BEST question in biology today.
SECOND good question is: How do GENES cause EVOLUTION?
Cells communicate by molecules on SURFACES. If genes turn ON, "outer" cells form, then gene may turn OFF and OTHER genes turn on to cause OTHER outer cells.
Embryology: Male DNA (sperm) and female DNA (ovum) give FULL set of genes, and then cells DIVIDE. Cells SPECIALIZE as they divide (how?). Gastrulation forms three layers from ONE layer. By primary induction, central neural plate is formed. Neural plate CLOSES to neural TUBE and axis and spine of animal. Then FOLDING and DEVELOPMENT follow. Primitive streak precedes neural plate---even HERE the cells are DIFFERENTIATED in different places. MAP of gastrula is DIRECTED to the END-ANIMAL.
1. How does it assemble and SPECIALIZE itself?
2. How did genes get to chicken, fish, and human?
HAEKEL: Ontology recapitulates phylogeny: fish, bird, dog, and MAN embryos look SAME at 3 weeks.
VON BAER (1828) Embryos resemble OTHER embryos, not other FORMS.
Neoteny: WE are advanded because WE are retarded in evolution (allowing larger BRAIN in MAN.)
Primary processes in embryology development: Cell division, cell differentiation (in which only SOME of DNA is expressed), cell movement, cell interaction, and cell death. Coordination is through gene program and surface modulation, but NO SINGLE GENE specifies SPACETIME orientation.
EMBRYONIC INDUCTION: morphogenetic movements lead to information exchange (such as turn on Gene X and turn off Gene Y), which leads to a CHANGE OF SHAPE.
JIGSAW-PUZZLE MODEL states that animals are formed like "paint-by-numbers" paintings: cell 1 requesting a cell 3 next to it, cell 3 then requesting a cell 5, cell 5 requesting cell 4, 4 a 2, and 2 a 1 if there's to be a CIRCLE formed. This requires MANY different proteins.
Scientists formulate hypotheses/models.
The GLUE-CONTROL model states that cells aggregate during development to form an animal. If A cells are moving, then GLUE A is off. If B cells are stationary, then GLUE B is on. So A cells can move until glue A goes ON, forming a structure WITH variation.
Jigsaw-puzzle model must be EXACT---or nearly so.
Glue-control model CANNOT be exact---must have LEEWAY.
CAMs stick cells together: picture of two "lollipops" where cells are pops and CAMs are the sticks which STICK together. CAMs end in sticky plates.
There is local cell surface modulation, where cells move as glues go on or off.
Chemical alternation occurs when two types of cells alternate on cell surface.
N-CAMs are found in neural groove and neural tube ONLY.
L-CAMs are found in skin ONLY.
Whereas formerly they were EQUALLY DISTRIBUTED, NEIGHBORHOOD can turn glues on or off. WITHOUT glue, neurons scramble. Different glues light up in different map-parts. Cells reach different neighborhoods and CHANGE PROPERTIES. Most embryologists become VITALISTS: SOME POWER controls it!
How to make a feather: tube attracts cells, cells build structures, certain of which develope carotene and die, and when alternating cells die, get a FEATHER.
CAM operation works through the following theta-figure, with the outer circle being "Gene expression and transport" leading to "surface modulation" leading to alternation of binding, leading to regulation of movement, leading to induction, leading back to gene expression and transport. Also, induction is "induced" from the left, and goes ACROSS the theta-figure through "expression of other genes" to "surface modulation", which can also be initiated from outside the circle. He concludes from this that the jigsaw-puzzle model is wrong, and CAMs have been "proven" in feathers, neurons, and kidneys. There's only one gene for each glue.
High temperature destroys CAMs that allow cells to become cancerous; lowering temperature RESTORES cams and cells are no LONGER cancerous. "This work is extremely recent." Genes LINKED to higher-order movements of CELLS. Variation is thus BUILT IN, and fundamental. Thus evolution changes in SHORT time with LARGE changes.
Cell-surface modulation leads to expansion of DIFFERENT brains. No strict determinism in brains. Next: mechanisms of immune system recognition in SOMATIC (body) time.
IV: Developmental biology is akin to NEURObiology. He talks to 8:25.
Q: LINEAGES imply jigsaw nematodes? NO CAMs found in invertebrates yet.
Q: Amino-acid evolution changes? Is it still that like species have like amino acids? Yes, they are unchanged. Dr. Edelman: NEXT LECTURES SIMPLER.
Q: UNIFIED theory of development and evolution? YES!
Q: Huxley theorized RATE genes, as you? YES!
Q: What is NATURE of CAM signaling? We don't know. "In ten more years, we'll know, or a lucky lab elsewhere, alas."
Q: CAMs not the same as F9 antigen.
Q: CAMS related to slime molds? No one knows HOW slime molds and SPONGES fit together! ALL molecules are different. Nature ignores the fact that YOU call it all ADHESION.
Cancer cells have DNA that causes ENDLESS growth. CAMs ONLY related to METASTASIS. NOT all cancer cells lose CAMs and metastasize.
Q: Chemotactic factors (molecules that EXIST) are not linked to CAMs.
Edelman: COULD be a DOZEN or two dozen CAMs, but not a MILLION. They ARE tissue-specific.
Preformationists ALMOST had it: not a TINY animal, but a tiny animal-CODE.
Epigeneticists ALMOST had it: we ARE dependent on what happens to us.
MOVEMENT comes from GELS forming from WATER and dRAWING cells forward.
Embryogenesis IS a mechanical-chemical process. GROWTH is not. To 8:55.
MY question: Why not STUDY cancer cells as IMMORTAL?
1) They're not really immortal; we don't KNOW how long they live.
2) Long-lived at EXPENSE of structure---so what's so great about structure?
3) Will KEEP resources from NEW individuals which new and maybe BETTER ideas!
Cells "before commitment" can be moved to another area and BECOME another cell.
Cell-function can be OVERRULED by MANY surrounding cells of ANOTHER function.
STATISTICS of cells: SOMETIMES, with over a RANGE of number of cells, it goes.
There's a cutoff point in cell-transfer beyond wich the "different" cells DIE.

4/12/85: #3 Starts at 7:07. He's the NINTH lecturer.
Immunology: seletion and instruction.
Best know example of a recognition system is the immune system, which is ONLY:
1) found in vertebrates,
2) a somatic selection system RECOGNIZING and distinguishing self from non-self
---the key molecule called antibody is SPECIAL:
1) It has Variable (V) and Constant (C) regions.
2) It's made in a special way--by somatic variation of genes: clonal selection.
Slide: THE SCIENCES OF RECOGNITION
Species evolve by Darwinian natural selection.
Adaptive cranges are inherited by mendelian genetics.
Animals distinguish self from non-self by the principle of clonal selection: a selection from MULTIPLE choices.
Immune system is one of evolution's PRIME productions.
Bone marrow produces PRECURSORS of immune cells. It seeds stem cells into THYMUS, producing thymic hormone and some cell seeding.
Antigens go to lymph nodes, to spleen (under lower left ribs), and to the process of plasmacytopoiesis and lymphopoiesis, which operate in germinal centers and memory.
An antigen is any substance introduced from WITHOUT that stimulates immune system to ACTION.
RED cells ALSO part of immune system.
The word "immune" is from the Latin "protection from government."
Cell membrane is "transaction interface." It contains antibodies and recognition molecules. We have 1010 cells.
T-cells are thymus-dependent lymphocytes: of HIGH rate and anti-SELF antigens are removed. Also Natural killer T-cells, Helper T-cells, Killer T-cells, and suppressor T-cells. B-cells mature through the BURSA in birds, which is NOT KNOWN in man---to recognize foreign antigens. That's what it was in 1958.
History: disease survivability is SPECIFIC.
Ehrlich said virus-KEY fits into antibody-LOCK.
This FIT is a RECOGNITION event.
Landsteiner found blood groups. Molecules of specific SHAPE showed that immunity was CHEMICAL. Different specific antibodies can be made from SPECIFIC antigens (haptens). WRONG theory thought that antibodies formed AROUND antigens: that was the theory of instruction in the immune system.
Antibody BINDS antigens. BINDING leads to EFFECT: destroy/eliminate/multiply.
RIGHT THEORY: Clonal selection in the immune system. You ARE tolerant of your OWN cells. Lymphocytes had different binding sites. Antigens that FIT into binding site would cause those lymphocytes to CLONE. So there is:
1) prior repertoire; 2) movement through repertoire; 3) cloning of the "fits."
Proteins made in triplet double helix. Proteins form complex shapes.
DNA is COPIED into RNA, RNA is fed through ribosomes to form proteins.
Fertilized eggs multiply and differentiate to form large numbers of immunologically committed cells (lymphocytes). THESE cells, stimulated by antigens, clone the cells that fit to make identical IMMUNOGLOBULINS.
Circulating small lymphocytes with membrane-bound IgM antibodies lead to antigenic stimulation. Immobile plasma cells secreting IgG antibodies.
One cell-one antibody theory: make one kind of heavy chain and one kind of light chain.
Requirements of clonal selection:
Diversification in the form of a repertoire.
Encounter by means of efficient polling of the repertoire.
Ampification by means of: Got it? CLONE it! VERY ANALOGOUS TO EVOLUTION!
Edelman: does an antibody have pieces? 1959: "Dissociation of gamma-globulin" was the ONE-PAGE article cited in the 1972 Nobel Prize.

Combining site Heavy chain
Light chain
Reduction and aklylation: dissociating solvents Papain
Fc Fab
Fraction Antigen
Binding
Bence-Jones protein SECOND protein described, treating proteins in organic chemistry. Light chain of antibody is Bence-Jones protein, made by cells in cancer (malignant myeloma).

PARTS of protein are REPEATED:

3 elements of heavy chain are CONSTANT.
1 element of heavy chain is VARIABLE---and the lock is THERE.
1 element of light chain is constant and one is variable.
This came from Edelman's BEAD MANIPULATION.
EFFECTOR was from the CONSTANT.
RECOGNIZER was from the VARIABLE.
X-ray crystallography FIXES molecules.
THIS cell SITS on cell membrane, arms out to get antigens, sending signal to cell to DIVIDE.
Zygote undergoes antigen-independent proliferation, to 107 types of cells.
Antigen-binding cells are primotypes.
Antigen induces clonal growth. Ig secreting cells are clonotypes.
THUS NO INSTRUCTION: ALL INFORMATION ALREADY THERE.
pxq hypothesis:

Germ-line theory of antibody diversity (in testes and ovary):

Somatic hypermutation theory of antibody diversity:
Stem cell
mutation
mutation
mutation

Somatic gene conversion of V with translocation to C:
Somatic recombination: V V V C V V V C

Proof: lymphocytes move PIECESof DNA around (joining segment, variable segment)
V J V J V J V

THUS: antibodies have multiple polypeptide locations.
On cell-membrane surface: IgM Antigen receptor MHC class 1 Thy 1

B cell Cytotoxic T cells

All these structures are KNOWN. B2M and CH3 are SOLVED in 3-D.

Frame a question in BIOLOGY and you must look for the answer in CHEMISTRY.
Take one antibody cell and CANCER cell will be formed; ANY monoclonal antibody can be formed. To 8:35.
Neuroscience: categories and learning.
Nervous system ALSO a selection system.
Q: Immune system "exploded into being" at vertebrates? We don't know why.
Q: Antibiotic BIvalent, mirrors. 5-valent antibodies known---one cancer.
Q: Thymus shrinks, dense with lymphocytes forming and dying.
Self versus non-self recognition index
via histocompatibility antigens number of lymphocytes
Recombining by SPLICING and clipping off.

Polling mechanism known to be directed by chance. NO WAY does every cell have identical DNA. Cosmic rays induce mutations in somatic AND sex cells. Antibodies are hypermutations.
Autoimmune diseases:
1) iris molecules (accidentally) forming antibodies can cause antibodies to be created to DESTROY the eyes.
2) T-cell "blanks" leave the defenses DOWN.
3) mother rejects FETUS in erythroblastosis fetalis.
Limits to cloning:
1) T and B and antigen is necessary
2) growth factors operative.
3) network operations prohibited.
4) normal cells don't go beyond 50 divisions.
T-cell suppression in stressed individuals is field of psychoneuroimmunology.
Allergies are caused by IgE antibodies. Mast cells full of histamines and you REACT. Polling ISOLATED in Peyer's patches, thus "directed." to 9:05PM!
LEDER article in SCI AM Five years ago "Number theory versus science."
POPPER on reality, science, and chance. ERNST MEYER on population statistics.
Cells limited to 50 divisions: no one know WHY, but lots of FAULTS then, and "nature doesn't like immortality."

4/17/85: #5: Intro: "Great scientists are always great teachers." BOSH!
Starts at 7:13. #5 slide says: NEURAL DARWINISM The grand loop:
Evolution leads to development; leads to epigenetic changes; leads to somatic selection systems; leads to social transmission; leads to awareness/language/
culture; leads back to evolution, which is natural selection + genetic change, or HEREDITARY transmission. The SMALL loop branches off somatic selection systems, going around in the circle of INDIVIDUAL action.
Lamarckian change is ACQUIRED inheritance, coming from awareness and culture.
NO information passes between the antigen and the antibody being formed.
#4 slide: The brain is the most complicated object known. It is not just a COMPUTER, it can do adaptive categorization and generalization.
Learning DEPENDS on this prior categorization--it usually requires SURPRISE.
These observations lead to the Theory of Neuronal Group Selection:
1) Selection for variant circuits (development), and
2) Selection of groups of neurons by EXPERIENCE.
Feature detection (by touch or eye) SELECTS and CONNECTS groups by PATTERN:
Feature detector (a group) interacts with feature selector (a group), and this is known as a classification couple.
Evolution (phenotype variation in taxa with natural selection), leads to
Ontogeny (regulatory constancy with somatic variation), which produces both:
Lymphocyte population (proved) and Brain circuits (theory): NO TWO IDENTICAL INDIVIDUALS.
Neuronal group selection treats brain memory NOT as a computer memory (since it isn't replicative and not recursive), but as RECATEGORIZATION with degradation.
Memory contrains self-awareness, volition, categorization, and co-location of sense locations. Alexander Luria wrote "Memory of a Mnemonist," the story of a PERFECT MEMORY that remembered 64 random numbers 25 years later!
Brain can detect patterns pre-attentively---before you CAN GIVE ATTENTION to solution. As in Texton perceptions: versus .
We can't say we have more INTELLIGENCE than animals, but we do have semantically structured language.
No ape has Broca's or Wernicke's areas.
Social transmission is IMPORTANT in the Grand Loop.
Lamarckian Theory treated by Darwinian methods of forces---direct bias, random variation, guided variation, and natural selection. So it's DUAL transmission.

IF neuronal selection is right:
1) biological DETERMINISM is wrong. Science, by nature, CHALLENGES ideologies.
2) NO intelligence test is accurate---gift of INDIVIDUALS is UNTESTABLE.
3) individuality is unavoidable and ESSENTIAL.
4) categorization is fundamental and adaptive (but not necessarily CORRECT).
5) memory/intelligence/abstraction are recategorization with degradation.
6) no idea is a priori authentic by ANY method.
7) all perception is an act of creation.
8) all memory is an imaginative ACT.
9) free will and free agency exist but are limited.
10) BOTH chronology and repertoire are important.
11) we are indissolubly linked to the world by natural selection AND (if the theory is correct) neuronal group selection.
12) nature versus nurture question HAS NO MEANING: "I am wedded to the world."
ASSUME a machine can predict a prototype of consciousness:
assume we know EVERYTHING about the brain---the irreducible unit is STILL the individual.
We must be tolerant of the new.
Our lot is to believe and to hope.
Scientists are servants of the inevitable. To 8:28.
Q: This theory says NOTHING about dreams.
Q: Sensory deprivation produced zig-zag edges and WORLD distortions.
Q: DON'T KNOW if lectures will be published.
Q: Creativity is so RICH that we can't see how to INCREASE it.

4/17/85: Arthur Ellenbogen has AIDS! He went into hospital on Monday, 4/15, with pneumocystis pneumonia, which should run a course in three weeks. He's at Mt. Sinai's Klingenstein Pavilion, entrance on Madison between 100 and 103 Sts.
I talk to him that night and take these notes: 50% of patients are now DEAD.
He's now 1) not interested in THINGS, and wants to find 2) "What I have yet to express in writing as a being of life---LIGHT in THIS form with whatever life I have left," and 3) how would I like to REWARD myself for what I've ALREADY done. Estimates are that 60% of gay population has antigens ALREADY. So Arthur's chance of INTRODUCING them to anyone is SLIGHT. So he can even have SEX. It'll be easier for me to get disability, anyway! Room is paid to 4/24th and then for two weeks afterward.

4/25/85: Arthur Ellenbogen: "I'm not a slut; I'm really a nice girl, but I like to do EVERYTHING." About hospital policy: "You can eat all the CANDY bars you WANT, but heaven FORBID you want to take a VITAMIN." "God told me to stop fidgeting, and I DID, but then I said 'Well, I'm gonna gidget some more.' I'm really ARROGANT when I talk to God." "My counselor had a two-foot sword of light that he waved up and down and my SPINE felt better."

4/27/85: Woman behind me in the Hollywood Twin Cinema taps me on shoulder before "Mass Appeal." "Is this about the father who loses his son in the war?" "No." "I thought 'Mrs. Soffel' was a comedy. What's 'Mass Appeal' about?" "Priests." "Oh, I was wrong about the one and I'm wrong about the other, too!"

4/30/85: Finished watching the four-hour series on Central America (followed, not by coincidence, by an hour on "The American Way of War" and "Filthy Rich at Last" by Jean Shepherd), and I feel that I have to EXAMINE what's what there: The HISTORY is dreadful: poverty caused by oligarchy, supported by military, supporting the presidents who run the countries like personal corporations: for their own benefits. The old shadow of money, whether in the form of oligarchic splendour or Somozan bank accounts or the United Fruit Company, looms overall. Add the "felt" US need to "protect ourselves" against Marxist-Leninist (one can't even say SOVIET) infiltration in "our" hemisphere (just wait until we decide that the NORTHERN hemisphere is ours, too, and we have to annex Europe and Asia and North Africa as well). Mix with OUR military stupidity (though oddly THOUGHTFUL when some general at the War College says "When you call in the Army, what you're ASKING for is killing and property destruction." THAT's calling a spade a spade!) and THEIR military stupidity ("They ordered the Military to stop the killings, but somehow the killings never got stopped."), and the stupidity of our leaders: "We have a choice: do we want another Vietnam (i.e. a loss) or another Cuba (i.e. a loss)?"---is anyone surprised that the result is stupid? The PRESENT is dreadful: the poor are not only poor, but they're being killed by the military of BOTH sides; the rich are either in exile or prisoners in their own countries' bloodshed; the leaders can't be that happy with THAT much more money. What's the hope for the future? If every faction could just say WHAT it is that they WANT: let the oligarchs ADMIT they get their profits from the work of the poor and EQUALIZE the wealth. Let the US REALIZE that there will ALWAYS be the threat of Marxism-Leninism where there's poverty, so we'd better address the POVERTY better than the Marxists- Leninists do! But we can't do that in our OWN country, so why should we have the hubris to think we can do it in ANOTHER country? And when will I stop thinking that I can even CONSIDER the alternatives when I have NO knowledge of what's ACTUALLY going on. How much responsibility must be laid at the feet of the CHURCH wanting to maintain THEIR status quo? How much of the news isn't even COMING to us, regardless of the distortions by the reporters and the press? How much do I not know because I'm not INTERESTED in keeping up with the news REGARDLESS of its truth or falsity. The farmers just want to farm, the fishermen to fish, the sugar-cane growers to sell their carious product. Oh, God, it seemed to simple to be able to come to some BOTTOM in this, but it just ends in the same kind of questions that plague everyone, resulting in no progress. What good thought to hold? JUSTICE, for everyone; FREEDOM, regardless of religion or political leaning. How simple. How impossible.

5/7/85: Watch "Titus Andronicus" on TV, amazed again at the richness and detail of the very first act: Saturninus and Bassianus are ready to kill each other for the kingship of Rome, which is then offered to Titus, who gives it to Saturninus, who requisitions Lavinia then falls in love with Tamora, who hates Titus because he orders killed her eldest son Alarbus. Titus kills his son Mutius, but then deigns to allow him to be buried with his other TWENTY-ONE killed sons! This in just ONE SCENE! Then there's the scene when handless, rape-torn Lavinia takes her father's hand in her tongueless mouth while her father and uncle carry the two heads of more dead sons, to send the banished brother to get Goths to kill the Goth-queen whose Moorish lover, Aaron, induces Tamora's sons to kill Bassianus and then pleads for the life of HIS black son begot on the Goth Tamora. And how MANY names from PREVIOUS literature enjewel the pages of text: FIFTY-THREE OF THEM by my count: Priam, Solon, Titan, Phoebe, Hymeneus, Ajax, Laertes, Prometheus, Semiramis, Vulcan, Lucrece, Dido, Venus, Saturn, Philomel, Diana, Actaeon, Pyramus, Tereus, Cerberus, Revenge, Tarquin, Aeneas, Cornelia, Tully, Hecuba, Ovid, Apollo, Pallas, Jove, Mercury, Hector, Junius Brutus, Sibyl, Horace, Enceladus, Typhon, Alcides, Pluto, Cyclops, Justice, Mars, Virgo, Taurus, Aries, Jupiter, Coriolanus(!), Rape, Murder, Hyperion, Progne, Virginius, and Sinon; and places like Rome, Sythia, Troy, Thrace, Olympus, Pantheon, Cimmeria, Acheron, among others I may have missed.

5/10/85: Arthur Ellenbogen: "Yesterday they told me I could come (die) pretty quickly, and I said 'Yes.'" "I glimpsed some sapphires waiting for me on the inner. I have less than two months, and maybe REAL soon because Russell and Carol Ann were here helping yesterday. Brother is POOR in Harwinton Conn. Buddha gave me 11: I thought it was 11 YEARS, but it might be 11 MONTHS (last Wesak Festival). I can come back a beautiful gay woman---NOT a life of misery and struggle, but an easy one. I polled my DIMENSIONS to check living form. My emotional would be less burdened, my mental would follow me anywhere, sorrow in Physical in losing touch with friends, Perceptual was REALLY freaked out. Human would stay or leave as I chose. My CELLS are fearful of death. I polled the large ORGANS: small intestine is strong; colon and rectum susceptible to germs; stomach and mouth can't process food, brain will slip BACKWARD if I stay. Heart can't take much more stress, pelvic organs were VERY sad, but I told them they'd be coming with me; prostate vulnerable; testicles still pretty feisty (joke about ballsy); liver's BEEN sick and tired and is willing to go on; lungs don't know how they're even still HERE; skin is SO fragile; muscles thinning out; bladder and kidneys are fearing to inflict the final blow. The knee wound is worse: more bone exposed, healthy flesh is now sore, but doctors say you're safe with it as it is, it hasn't healed enough to operate to take out the plate, but the pin hasn't come through, so the doctors said it wouldn't require intervention, but it can't get TOO bad. They took oxygen away: I'm BREATHING enough to oxygenate blood to normal levels.

5/10/85: (notes from before): on 5/3/85 I'm recording one TV channel on the VCR, and watching another channel, and playing WORM during the intermissions, and I feel so INFORMATION-INTENSIVE it's thrilling. Then on Sunday morning 5/5 on the way to the Cheese Cellar, I say, not too humorously, to Dennis that I don't DO anything: NEVER go for a Sunday brunch (as we're doing), NEVER go to dance performances or museums or restaurants (as I've done a number of times this week), and NEVER travel (planning a trip to France). Dennis makes the rather pointed remark that New York is a place one can spend MUCH time absorbing what OTHERS do, but time should be spent GENERATING things for OTHERS to participate in and watch---like my play, is the obvious subtext. YES!

5/11/85: EB 2:220f on Astrology mentions PERIHELIA as ADDITIONAL SUNS, yet word in EB and dictionary gives only perihelion: CLOSEST of planet to sun.
EB 2:222c says that PROROGATOR determines length of life in Astrology!

5/12/85: Old note from Public Library on Bradbury's "The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope." Poems published in 1981, with listing "author of 19 books."
p.4: rhymes Mull and Full; p.5 Gene and Been; Blood and Good; p.6 Mood and Blood---do I expect Mood and Good next? p.8: Moves and Loves. And he "reminds" me of echoes from other things: p.3 "knock something wicked ere it comes." p.5: "go not with ruins in your mind." p.10: "put out the night/and then/put out the night." p.18: "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow." p.36: "Poe inhales a morbid snow"---coke?? And then a BEAUTY passes in the library and I write "and what a WASTE is words against the beauty of his face?"
Then check Nabokov and find "Lectures on Literature" and "Lectures on Russian Literature: and "Lectures on Don Quixote," which last I get and read on page viii: "Specifically warned AGAINST abridged Viking Portable edition; the Penguin edition is OK (which is the one I READ) but his lectures are really too dependent on the BOOK to read except while re-reading the novel itself.

5/13/85: The awful DESICIONS to be made:
1) Looking at a muscular HUNK, do you look at MUSCLES to admire his WORK (but EVERYONE does, and he may HATE that) or look at his EYES to admire his MIND (but risk the guy thinking "Dope, doesn't he notice my magnificent BODY??")!
2) Looking at an INNOCENT gay guy, do you stare at the CROTCH to clue him in and excite him SEXUALLY (which might antagonize him) or look at him as a FATHER would and get his love (when he might be interested ONLY in sex-sex-sex)?
3) Looking at a CRUISER, do you aim for SEX (when he's looking for a long-term) or for LOVE (when he just wants an uninvolved and uninvolving quickie)?
4) Do you capitalize on your EROTICISM (he's CRUDE) of AFFECTION (he's MOOSHY)?
5) Do you resonate to his EXTERNAL LOOKS (nosoul) or his INTERNAL SOUL (nosex)?

5/15/85: Read in New York Magazine that the thrust of Jeane Kirkpatrick's "argument over the years reveals a predilection for the US to support friendly autocrats long after the handwriting is on the wall." Article concludes near the statement "It could be that George Will got it right---that conservatives love capitalism more than they loathe Communism." Which sounds SO RIGHT!

5/16/85: Note from few days ago from Arthur: He's TALKED to Tommasina, long on the phone, and Susan Lieber COMES IN TO SEE HIM. Pat Mandino CAME to Mt. Sinai, and she's intimate with Arthur Dworin, so she'll hear through HIM. Elise knows to get RID of all HIS stuff that's still there. He left word with Joan Pankoski. He wants to call Bernice and Valda. Dana will get the juicer and other appliances (some still unwrapped) in his apartment.

5/17/85: Actually 2:20AM of 5/18, and I just CAN'T seem to do what I WANT! DO get to indexing, all but printing, which I'm still reluctant to do at 1AM, and then get into WORM again, playing to 270, 270, 819, 549, and 549 before I can finally get my finger-weariness together and STOP it. Then I come here to write, and there doesn't seem to be anything to write, except that my fingers are SORE, and I'm starting to get antsy about the thought of flying, even though that's STILL over 6 weeks away. But at least Neil is sending me a check for over $400 that I can mail to the checking account so that I can write MORE checks. And I STILL have to figure out how much more money will be coming in to find how much I have to get out of my account, since it seems DEFINITE that I must do that, as awful as it seems. DRAT!

5/23/85: 3AM: How STRANGE I yearn after BEAUTY. I don't year after YOUTH or MONEY or POSSESSIONS, just a LOVER. I guess everyone has their "most yearn," and if it wasn't BEAUTY it'd be something ELSE to complain and wonder about!

5/25/85: 3AM: I lay in bed thinking I didn't DO much today, but when I look behind me, the day stretches INFINITELY long behind me: up to try to get money from Dennis and GET a check from John; worked on Nuclear Physics index; finished two Grade 8 units for Kirchoff and took them to Don to sign agreement forms and bills; lunch with Susan at Joe Burns' (watching sexy people and street-crossers and truck drivers and Cavalier St. Charles Spaniels); meet Shelley Hooe and talk of Samantha; to IBM Gallery for Radcliffe-seen Wertheim collection and lovely Tapio Wirkkala wood sculptures and glass and silver and stamps; read Kant on sexy-filled subway going and coming; mail stuff; cum with porno; chat with Dennis on AIDS lecture and "Doubles" that I send for and "Dreamgirls" that he can't decide to see; Trivial Pursuit and pizza and laughs at Pope's with John Robertson and Malcolm, who says EVERYONE'S quitting the New Yorker magazine; NOT to Underground when I see I've had Baird Jones' invitations for ANY Friday or Saturday; watch TV programs of "Generation", rather poor, and Friday Night (and other) videos, and news, and tape Fatima movie and raising of O'Conner to Cardinal; and that's just ONE day!! Love/Joy of Form INDEED!!

6/5/85: Sexual Compulsives Anonymous (SCA) meeting last night, patterned on AA and COA, the last of which I'd been to once before, with applause, reading of "laundry list," introducing yourself "I'm Bob, and I'm a sexual compulsive" with everyone parroting "Hi, Bob." I wasn't sure I WAS one: I didn't HAVE sex, but I kept THINKING about sex (including dismissing most of the 28 people there except for the non-speaking young blond, the tall guy reminding me of Joe Easter, and the two guys on my left (AND the funny thing of THREE people not being able to READ the "laundry list" of tenets). Randy "qualified" and everyone praised Robert, but there was lots of self-aggrandisement (going to the Tonys, having sex) and lots of self-conscious "I feel anger" without FEELING behind it. But maybe I'll try again some night: free entertainment!