Yin-Yang is chemical.

Levi-Strauss identifies two elements of thought which are key in our understanding of totemism.  These two elements can be called: Opposition and Metaphor.  They are not peculiar to totemism, but rather are part of the mythopoetic mind, informing both totemism and theatre.  Here we can use Durkheim's description of religious thought to explain what we mean by "mythopoetic mind."

Thus there is no abyss between the logic of religious thought and the logic of scientific thought.  Both are composed of the same essential elements, only unequally and differentially developed.  The special characteristic of the former seems to be its natural taste for immoderate confusions as well as for abrupt contrasts.  It is willingly excessive in both directions.  When it compares, it confuses; when it distinguishes, it opposes.  It knows neither measure nor subtlety, it seeks extremes; consequently it employs logical mechanisms with a kind of awkwardness, but it is ignorant of none of them.

Opposition is the natural tendency to form contrasting things into dialectic pairs: absolutely differentiated, antithetical, mutually exclusive, contradictory.  While the members of the dialectic pair are radically against each other, opposition nonetheless conceives them as a union whose combination forms a whole.  With regards to Totemism, this means that pairs of animals like the eaglehawk and crow, kangaroo and wombat, or bat and night owl form a symbolic pair somewhat like the united yin/yang principle.  To this union of opposites is added the further understanding that often the two opposites are opponents who combat one another.  The agon or struggle of tragic drama may have been a progression from the natural motive to represent on stage the symbolic opposition pairs that a society held in common.

The two parts of the pair are defined relationally, even to the obscurity of defining each one individually.  Thus a 'good guy' onstage is not as important in his specific character qualities as in the fact that he is against the bad guy.  An opposition pair takes on a larger symbolic importance to the extent that each defines the negative space not filled by the opponent, even thought these negative spaces overlap.  Therefore: Dionysianism is most importantly not dreamlike, not light-filled, not defined, not beautiful.  And the Apollinian mode is most profoundly not ecstatic, not horrible, not wise, not real.  Whatever positive characteristics the Apollinian and Dionysian forms hold, they are secondary.  Furthermore, we may be happy to realize that things can be stated not in italics, but we should expect to realize this typographical homily not in this paragraph.

Metaphor, the second mythopoetic thinking, can be understood as an indistinct expansion of identities.  Metaphor is the participation of one identity in another, a convergence that overlaps our uses of the verb to be.  The reader must forgive the italics.  In totemism, metaphor is expressed by a spectrum or continuum where at one extreme we could state, "this clan has as its emblem the black-feathered cockatoo." Here what is meant is that the clan happens to have a name which happens to be "cockatoo," since one name is as good as another.  At the other end of the spectrum, we could state, "this clan is the cockatoo."  Or more likely, a member of the clan would say, "" am of the cockatoo," where the extent of the "I am" was that the cockatoo clan and cockatoo species were considered one and the same thing.  The point is that Metaphor occupies the entire spectrum; the cockatoo clan member is aware of the entire spectrum when she says, "I am of the cockatoo." The extent to which she understands a given Metaphor idea to be co-identity, this is never pinned down.  Instead, the understanding of the Metaphor fluctuates with the moment.

Where a Metaphor involves the self-identity of a person, modern rational thinking freezes each Metaphor at one moment on the continuum.  In modern self-concepts, Metaphor is a simile -OR- Metaphor is an identification, but never both and never something in between.  Literary devices may run the gamut between the extremes of Metaphor, but we do not internalize the continuum of possible self-understandings.  At least, our thinking does not easily allow ourselves a slippery Metaphorical play.

Becoming "The Man."

Another report from the Land of No Permanence.

Here is the other side of TempJob life.  I have taken a one-day assignment as a Receptionist.  The pay is less, The work is difficult, I don't have online access.

I received a call at 9:00 AM where Beth the Temp Woman (she has a lovely phone voice) asked me sweetly, sweetly if I would take a job for a day.  Though I ought not feel any obligation towards the Temp people, I have sunk into that morass of knowing, slightly, the people who work there.  They prey on this.  They claim that I am "helping them out."  But really, am I?  Should I take a one-day low-pay assignment that is bound to be difficult?

So I arrived at 10:00 AM and received twelve minutes of instructions.  Basically, I just answer the phone.  The worst job in the world.  Not only do I not know anyone's name, I don't even know what this company does.  Every time the phone rings, I touch the Answer button, and then wait for the LED to change to T1, T2 or T36.  Then I say, "Good Morning, CBSI, an Averstar Company, how can I help you?" Jeez, I hate marketing-pyramid companies.  I assume that's what this is.  Any company that answers its phones -- SuchandSuch, a SuchandSuch company.  Cheese.

There is a very nice, patient lady who called, who insists that a woman named Norma Hill works at this company, and that she talked to Norma Hill even today at this office.  Vinnie, my adhoc boss, insists that Norma Hill does not exist.  So far, I like the Patient Lady much better than Vinnie.

There is a friendly guy with gray hair who has me spell names for him, s l o w l y, from a list.  He writes these names on papers, and then walks away.  He is also the biggest stamp customer.  I have all the stamps.  About $50.00 all told.  Though I am a big fan of mechanical pencil theft, I can't bring myself to nick somehing with such cash-equivalence to it.

So what is CBSI, an Averstar Company?  The red-haired lady tells me that CBSI is a software development company, recently bought by Averstar, who was even more recently bought by Titan.  So why don't I say, "CBSI, an Averstar Company, a Titan Company, how can I help you?"

The regular receptionist keeps a cluttered desk.  My preference is for a huge desk with vast tracts of empty surface terrain, and then a few very neat right-angle piles of paperwork near the back.

Further investigation of the Receptionists' computer reveals that she spends most of her time typing resumes for friends, relatives, etc.  All the resumes have grammatical errors.  All the experiences listed are humdrum Office-Movers Laborer, Retail Store Clerk, and the descriptions have been dressed up with corporate-esque words.  "Supervised all aspects of the customer experience" and "Responsible for handling customer inquiries for all accounts processed" and "Implemented staff operations of store transaction on in house automated system."  I have given up investigating the receptionist.

Vinnie went to lunch.  I have his pager number lest there is a call that cannot, absolutely cannot be transferred to voicemail.  Huh?  Luckily, I know the extension of the president of the company.  If someone is particularly annoying, desperate, etc, I figure the president can always deal with him.

I assume that women of a certain complexion know, absolutely, that they will be compared to Marilyn Monroe if they wear their hair in that Bleach-Blond Monroesque bob.  Joyce is such a woman.  She hires IT people.  I look at her and the first think I think is, "She doesn't look a bit like Marilyn Monroe." But of course, she must look a bit, or it never would have occurred to me to think that.

Whooie.  Strange Indeed!  There was a guy who just walked by, who apparently hates having to have a name-badge tag thing to let him into the bathroom.  I looked up as he walked by, and he thrust the badge annoyingly at me, as if to point out how absurd it was that people like me kept such big-brotherish tabs on everybody.  A suit, a tie, a desk to sit behind and suddenly I am . . . . The Man.


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Labels on Binders

It's almost noon and I have worked, in my opinion, entirely too much this morning.  My ideal Internet-dalliance-work ratio is 1-1-1.  However, this morning, I have browsed the internet only half as much as I have worked, and I have sat and mused about nothing-in-particular for not even a full 15 minutes.  Thus my IDW ratio is 3-1-8.  Obviously, terribly skewed towards Work.  But, you see, I had a Project.  There are eight white 3-ring binders in the cabinet behind me.

Melanie, the AA (that stands for Administrative Assistant, for those of you not in the biz) claimed that the spine labels on the binders were horrible and wondered if I could fix them.  Clearly, she was inventing spurious work for me, out of a compassion for the fact that I might be stone bored all week.  Also I think because she had a subconscious awareness that I needed accoutrements to flesh out my "at work" posture for the coworkers around me.  So, for the last two hours, I have carefully, carefully taken out the spine labels from the plastic sheaths, and replaced them with other spine labels that say exactly the same thing.

These labels I worked on for quite a while, to insure that they looked not only pleasing to the eye, clear and functional, but also unmistakably CORPORATE in styling.  To me, corporate style means that the label should look as if some cold committee process had decided the fonts and spacing, and that no actual human had dared to think about changing the form.  To combine this style with a piece of art (as my spine labels are, I contend) that achieves a gestalt and fitting-ness.  Well, it took a lot of work.  However, rest assured that the work I was doing was not, for the most part, the work of the company.  It was my own.  And it took up several hours of the day.


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