payitforward wrote:doclinkin wrote:payitforward wrote:It's really not a question of "better," I don't think -- simply the more data you have, the more information (& kinds of information) you can extract from it, & with more information you can develop more knowledge. This sequence -- data > information > knowledge -- is a standard construct in the technology industries (where I was 30 years an entrepreneur) for how benefits come out of adding tech. The next step after knowledge depends on what world you operate in -- it can be "wisdom," it can be "expertise," it can be called "intuition," etc.
...PIF is PIFFling again.
Tonight, when day is done & the darkness has descended, when no longer can we tell an olive tree from a Christmas tree or a Benz from a Benzadrine, then will you remember these words in all their order -- from data to information to knowledge to wisdom -- as you attempt to recall what good you did with the hours I prevailed upon the goddess to grant you, despite... well we won't get into that.
In that darkness, doc, in all your doubt, when the tacos of Tuesday trace no more in your mind than the dankness of doomsday, then will your mockery of my me-ness ripen among your rankest regrets as, like whatshisname (who was turned into a whatchamacallit just because a glance he got of the goddess whatshername as she bathed in the springs of truth) you will be turned into something I'm too old to remember, for after all, I was the one who told her where they were, those springs, & believe me I told her way before they'd sprung! Tho I have to admit, I wouldn't deny it, I did avert my eyes -- I don't wanna be no whatchamacallit.
Stag! That's it; he was turned into a stag -- stag only, no party! O Acteon, you didn't deserve your fate! You were hunting -- but then your own dogs tore you to shreds. It's all in Ovid, a great read. That's what I say, doc, what I always say: the darker it is everywhere (& it's dark in America right now, a deep deep darkness in America) the more light there is in Ovid.
The gods turned on Ovid too, as you know. Augustus banished him to Tomis on the black sea (near Constantia in modern-day Romania) where he wrote the two long collections of exile poems
Tristia &
Epistulae ex Ponto -- both great, amazingly great.
Almost 2000 years later, the equally great Russian poet, Osip Mandelshtam, another poet of exile, wrote a poem he called "Tristia" -- after Ovid:
TristiaI have studied the Science of departures,
in night’s sorrows, when a woman’s hair falls down.
The oxen chew, there’s the waiting, pure,
in the last hours of vigil in the town,
and I reverence night’s ritual cock-crowing,
when reddened eyes lift sorrow’s load and choose
to stare at distance, and a woman’s crying
is mingled with the singing of the Muse.
Who knows, when the word ‘departure’ is spoken
what kind of separation is at hand,
or of what that cock-crow is a token,
when a fire on the Acropolis lights the ground,
and why at the dawning of a new life,
when the ox chews lazily in its stall,
the cock, the herald of the new life,
flaps his wings on the city wall?
I like the monotony of spinning,
the shuttle moves to and fro,
the spindle hums. Look, barefoot Delia’s running
to meet you, like swansdown on the road!
How threadbare the language of joy’s game,
how meagre the foundation of our life!
Everything was, and is repeated again:
it’s the flash of recognition brings delight.
So be it: on a dish of clean earthenware,
like a flattened squirrel’s pelt, a shape,
forms a small, transparent figure, where
a girl’s face bends to gaze at the wax’s fate.
Not for us to prophesy, Erebus, Brother of Night:
Wax is for women: Bronze is for men.
Our fate is only given in fight,A
to die by divination is given to them.
It doesn't get better. Only a translation but through the translation you see the art at its height, mind of the mind alone w/ itself & the rest.
Every thread leads everywhere; do not fear to follow. You already have & will again.