Notes for the Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul - Rudy Rucker

Notes for The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, by Rudy Rucker
Los Gatos, the coffee shop though not bad, isn't what you'd call cool, filled as it is with
retirees, yuppie moms, blank faced strangers, fake athletes back from fake bike rides, etc ⎯
the usual catalog of snobby putdowns ensues from this pathetic self-and-world-hating man...
I could start a fulltime blog of my own. But it was also kind of negative thing in that
I had a deadline every morning. Something to live for, but isn't it nice to relax instead.
What's the opposite of "the unexamined life is not worth living"? The blogged life is barely
lived at all. Like the way when you have a camera, you see things differently, on the plus
side you pay more attention, your eye picks out photos, on the minus side, you're dirempted,
cut off, Other, observer rather than participant.
Sent this to Mark Laidlaw, he answered,
“Reminds me of a John Rechy line in, I think, City of Night, a put-down about a
novelist: ‘He had a novel where his heart should be.’ The hard-core blogger has a blog there
instead. I think it's a bit like everyone trying to be Harvey Pekar, but without a parade of
artists coming through and adding the extra layer of artistry that makes it transcend the
source material.”
September 14, 2004. One More Section To Go
At this point, I just wish I could finish. I got enough words, I got 147,755 of ‘em.
The only section that still needs substantial work is the 6.4 section on undecidability,
“Leibniz’s Dream.” Though I still need some more discussion of unpredictability in social
computation for section 6.3. I noticed a new book by Benoit Mandelbrot about the stock
market the other day, and could possibly mine this for further examples. But I’d rather not.
Enuf is enuf.
I expect to top out at 150,000 words. Longer than Bruegel, shorter than Frek. Old
windbag.
I got the final Answers 6.5 section done after a trip to Big Sur a couple of weeks ago.
Valetudinarian tone. “Render no man evil for evil...” Pop at the end of a church service,
holding up his hand, being a priest, his face shining with Godlight.
Since doing that final section, I’ve been getting into all this juicy unsolvability,
unpredictability, and undecidability stuff for sections 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, respectively. Really
nailing the meaning of the PCE and PCU. Even drew a map of “downtown” in the
computational zoo today.
It’s like I’ve set up this system of thought and now am suddenly collecting immense
rewards. Climbing up the ladder I built from the trees I grew and chopped down. This
morning, doing yoga, I had this deep sensual pleasure in the unsolvability, unpredictability,
and undecidability of natural phenomena. The jiggles of my thoughts, the trembles of my
legs. A passenger jet flying by low overhead looked as beautiful as a Rule 110 glider. I’m
losing it, but in a good way.
“And through the wondering skies they came.” “They” being the angels in the Xmas
carol, but also the harpies of extra work, and the fractal demons of human logic-chopping.
September 17, 2004. Done Draft One.
I finished Lifebox today. 150,000 words and about 150 illos. Posted it as a 17 Meg
PDF file on a password-protected site for a few peers, and my editors. Don’t plan to touch it
until, say, November 1, let the comments come in and handle them all at once.
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