October Is My Empire. Terror Is Part Of Me. 一 Tamura Ryūichi

taken by me

The mild breeze twisted over the cloud of sunset,

Poised as though the sea had taken up

the form of her capricious admirer,

To stretch out her arms and reach for her

untouchable muse.

The pearly light of the moon twinkles

with the light of heavenly solace

Upon the ceaseless wave wandering in confounding

aimlessness,

All while the depths of the untouched ocean

rumble with the disturbed murmurs whispered to an

empty heart, wherein the first star at twilight

and the final star at dawn, will be united in a

yearning embrace, someday.

An interesting thing that I’ve often had conflicting opinions on is the conflict between ‘knowledge needs to be applicable in real life for it to have any value’ and the opposite, ‘knowledge has an inherent value which is acquired through its possession’. I’ve always felt both were unjustifiable premises. Note the word used there - value. What does the word mean? Does it even mean anything? It is a term that fundamentally relies upon the importance the reader or writer places on varying subjects. Is it wise to try and reach an universal conclusion on this? Reason would say not, yet it is the philosopher’s aim to resolve the differences. How is one supposed to accept his thesis for or against one of these? Will not the degree of stress he places on places on matters such as utility and realism influence his reasoning and conjecture? And would it not be assuming a priori that the purpose crucial to him is one vital to a significant sect of the populace? What does an inference need to possess for it to be denounced as truth? Is a thing true in the same practice if it only applies to a specific few? What indeed is true? What is truth? Is it something that lies beyond the material? Perhaps as Nietzsche says, there is no thing that deserves the mantle of ‘truth’. We live briefly, with the knowledge that life is an arbitrary happening and distract ourselves from nihilistic dejection with the illusory hope of happiness and attempt to elevate our lives through awareness of the anthropological nature of things such as good and evil. What after all is there to live for? Does one really need a ‘why’ in order to find the ‘how’?

INTJ vs INTP cognitive mechanics - an analysis based on an observation

With study of the cognitive functions I'm finally starting to recognize what INTJness actually feels like.

The other day, I was going through a programming tutorial as part of a larger book on the functional programming style. I was modifying the example slightly to produce a different output, and suffice it to say it wasn't working. I called on my INTP, who is doing the same tutorial, to see if they could figure it out.

Basically, my approach was trying to "tap into" my Ni, looking over the script from a zoomed-out perspective and getting a feel for where the problem might be. I get the general feeling that the second half of a certain function isn't working. I test this assumption, I was right - so now I try to narrow down in my mind where it "seems off", and come to a vague conclusion that it's probably the order of execution. I test this assumption. It works. The example is now working as expected. I don't have a clear, 100% understanding of why exactly the order of the statements was causing the particular bug, but I move on, because I realize that this kind of error is more of a general silly-mistake in how I wrote the algorithm, and isn't something instrumental to the greater goal - which is understanding the mechanics of the functional style.

My INTP friend, in contrast, looks at the script not from a zoomed-out perspective, but goes through the logic, one step at a time, analyzing exactly what each statement does and the effects it has - and how the result should look at each point in time, and why, until they figure out exactly what was wrong and why. They didn't just get a vague intuitive understanding of how to fix it and move on, they understood in detail how every single component interplays with every other, why the statement execution must be in this order for the algorithm to work, and all the other ways changing the order of the statements would affect the output. They have understood all the mechanics of the algorithm through pure logic, and it took them much longer to move on than it did for me - but unlike me, who was doing the problem for its general purpose within the goal of understanding functional programming, they felt that understanding the algorithm (which on its own is not related to functional programming at all, and is just a modified sort algorithm), was something they wanted to understand all the components of, regardless of whether it is meaningful to the purpose of the assignment.

This felt like a very illustrative moment in understanding the differences between how INTP and INTJ approach problem-solving. Of course, as INTJ I am also compelled to learn the mechanics of all sorts of things, even those irrelevant to the overarching goal of whatever the book or the tutorial or class or the thing I am studying is right now - but I would tend to note them and set them aside for later to learn, as something separate from the process. I went back over the sort algorithm with a more Ti approach myself later, after I had grasped the concepts in the chapter I was working on, and was ready to take a break. The first "goal" was gaining an understanding of the concepts in that chapter of the tutorial, and I did not allow myself to be distracted from this purpose - but when it was done I went back to the algorithm I got wrong and Ti-ed my way through the logic, step by step. But this happened in a separate process from doing the tutorial, and a separate timeline - I didn't allow the "working on this chapter" timeline to fork into the subprocess of working out this unrelated algorithm error for any longer than it absolutely needed to.

For my INTP friend, however, following this unrelated tangent - right then and there, in the middle of the process of understanding the chapter and in the same timeline - was something perfectly natural. It was natural for them to make many "deep forks" in the path to understanding the chapter, almost so much so that they may not even make it through to the end of the chapter, and instead get lost in the study of the forks and tangents along the way. As an INTJ I just could not do this - I would feel very mentally unsettled about this.

I feel the INTP approach with Ti/Ne is very thorough but incremental and undirected in its understanding; the Ni/Te approach of the INTJ is a lot less thorough, and more "overarching" - focused more on setting up the "skeleton" or the inner structure of the framework first, and then filling it out with details - and being always painfully conscious of the shape of the path one is following. Almost as if there is always this voice nagging you that this item may be irrelevant right now, come back to it later. It is like an architect trying to capture the overallness, or a writer trying to synthesize the outline of the entire story out of thin air first, and then refining all the generalities and fleshing them out. The coherent whole comes first, and is always there and always something one is deeply conscious of, and driven by. It is like the INTJ is going through every process with a general (usually not very detailed) map or compass that they follow, always internally tugging them back to North, whereas INTP is wandering through all the nooks and crannies of the landscape without a map or a compass, and seeing what kind of fascinating mental discoveries they have on the way. They may have a purpose in mind, but it can be diverted away from indefinitely and come back to later, if there are more interesting paths to explore on the way - whereas for the INTJ the interesting paths will be noted and come back to later, as it would feel "wrong" in a fundamental way to divert away from the purpose.

I still have a difficult time figuring out how Ni worked the way it did - I suppose part of it is that I already have a decent amount of programming experience, and was able to subconsciously extract a deep pattern from what I had experienced before, without knowing where exactly I had seen this before or what it was based on. My intuition was like a synthesis of patterns I had extracted before - like a deep-learning algorithm "figuring things out" from intermediate representations. This may be why it required a lot of Se input and Ti-type analysis in the very start of my programming study before I could begin to "grasp" it, as it served to "feed" my Ni with raw materials and structures to synthesize patterns and meta-patterns from, and later synthesize hunches like this. So now I can often "feel" the way to solve something, without explicitly working through the logic.

Naturally everyone who gains proficiency or experience in some field finds themselves doing this - as humans we are equipped with all the cognitive functions, after all - but as an INTJ it is my first instinct to do this to everything, and is my most visceral response to a problem - and the impulse to analyze with Ti usually comes later, as a conscious decision. As far as I understand it, for my INTP friend it was the opposite - the first response to a new concept or a problem is to analyze it and all its components and understand every small piece of the mechanics - even if they get an Ni "hunch" about what is wrong, they tend to not trust it as much, and the impulse to analyze is first and foremost.

Just some rambling observations on Ti and Ni mechanics.

Charles Wright, Nine-Panel Yaak River Screen

Queen of hearts, bows to the fools parade, insanity is a strange thing to take comfort in. ‘Mere blood and bone’ will lure you to depths of life/hell which human hand (only) must (only) touch. Vega of the lyre and bellatrix of the Orion in a dance of lights and life, bitterness sings a frayed melody to the hearthstone, listen to her woebegone voice in the soft refrain, fold away your letters and give away your life, for its not sadness but despair that requests it. Believe in phantoms, and one as old as yourself wants to touch your windows and watch its fragile hands pass through the glass. 

2022-06-18

Hydrangea

Canon EOS R3 + RF50mm f1.2L

Instagram  |  hwantastic79vivid

the night is still young. i can do yoga and use my oil pastels. i can cut another fruit. i can write in my journal. i can make a poem. i can invite the figure outside my window in

I wonder what the impulse to beauty is, - thinking of Darwin - without all the jargon around it. Why should a pale pink cloud strike the eye as profound and beautiful? There is a pigeon drinking water a few feet from where I sit and the squirrels are chasing each other over half raised walls. Today, the evening tells me of something that has been in ruins for a period long enough for it to have ceased to matter. Somewhere a bird whispers, the ruins are to rise again, not in image of what was, but as a shrine what is now. The future seems less real than the past. why?

Behind the portraits

It was afternoon, a dark, wet afternoon. And I was sitting at the foot of the large oak wood bed, glaring at Marie Antoinette.

“Let them eat cake”

I glared more.

“I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children. My blood alone remains: take it, but do not make me suffer long.”

I sighed and turned to Sappho, as if to ask her to help me in my predicament. But Sappho wouldn’t speak, she never did. My gaze shifted to the fluttering white curtains which veiled a painting of the Bal des ardents, illuminated by the old fashioned candles on the mantle piece. My frown returned as my eyes fixated themselves on the crockery in the background.

“When?” I questioned.

“January 28, 1398.”

“Joan, the duchess …?”

“The duchess de berri.”

“D’orleans…1407, isn’t it?”

It nodded.

“How?”

“Assasinated.”

“For the throne of the mad king.” I murmured and sank my head into my knees. After a few moments, I threw up my head and exclaimed, “I cannot go on like this anymore, I live as in a nightmare! Freedom I want and Freedom I shall have!”.

“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: some things are within our control, and some things are not” The thing quoted.

Despair seized me; I let out a half wild, inarticulate cry and buried my head in my arms as tears drenched the sheaf of parchment in my lap. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw the thing stare at me coldly. “Do you blame me?” I demanded. “Do you think me weak to shed tears like this?” It pursed up its dried, hag like mouth. “Tell me, Do you hold me responsible for all of this?”, I clenched its wrist and asked. It silently shook its head. “No”. I loosened my hold and let go as it gave me a look full of reproach. It shook its head again, “No, I do not place the blame entirely on anyone in this matter, but thou must know that thou hath not played an unimportant part in bringing this about.” “Oh, I know! I know! And that just makes my burden a hundred times more heavier to bear.” I said, as the picture of Andromeda’s anguished face as she watched Cetus ravage the coast of Aethiopia flashed across my eyes.

“Was she very beautiful?” My voice sounded wistful.

“Who?”

“Her. The daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia.”

“Yes.” The thing’s eyes lost focus. “Very.” It said.

I rolled the parchments and placed them in a small brass trunk underneath my bed. Marie Antoinette’s picture slipped inside too, but I was past caring.

“Why didn’t hope leave when it could have?” I enquired.

“Zeus willed it.”

“Didn’t Elpis want to leave?”

“Perhaps.”

“I am sure that the only reason the sprite stayed was because pandora shut the jar before it could escape. I wish it had.”

The thing shrugged.

“When do thy leave?”, It asked.

“Midnight.” I replied, trying not to let a suppressed paroxysm of sobs get the better of me.

Night fell, I lingered near Henry V’s portrait, fiddling with the tapestry. I looked out the window and saw the moon emerge from the shadow of a black cloud and throw light upon the vase of white roses upon the windowsill. “The moon looks like a careworn old face.” I remarked, more to myself than anyone else.

I looked about the room with a strange wistfulness as I drew the sheets close. Something seemed to warn me. “But about what?” I wondered. I was woken up at midnight by the thing knocking over the rose vase. “Is it time?” I asked, silently praying that it was not. It nodded. And then there I stood, beneath the elm tree and among the shadows.

Little did I know, that it was the last time I would set eyes upon the elm. I stepped inside the quaint carriage, huddling my trunk closer to me. I felt the chilly wind of the night nip my face. We had not made it ten feet across the old wooden bridge over the chasm, when I heard a sickening creak and felt the bridge collapse under us. The ropes had given way. The carriage toppled over, smashing my trunk open and spilling all of its contents. I plunged into the abyss along with the vehicle. Feeling that I was about to die, I frantically tried to hold onto something before we hit the ground. And what should be the thing my eyes finally beheld at the end of my life but the face of … Marie Antoinette?