Understanding is weird.

Not just understanding a concept or an experience or a person, but the word itself.

By the looks of it, it is to stand under something, or somewhat opposite of overstanding.

But that is not how we understand understanding.

According to Online Etymology Dictionary: "under is not the usual word meaning 'beneath,' but from Old English under... 'among, between, before, in the presence of.' ...Perhaps the ultimate sense is 'be close to;' compare Greek epistamai 'I know how, I know,' literally 'I stand upon.'"

To understand is, then, "to stand in the midst of."

I don't know if I am understanding, standing here right now.

In Korean, "beautiful" is 아름답다 (a-reum-dap-da).

Some say that the etymology of "beautiful" comes from 알음답다 (ar-eum-dap-da), which would translate to "like knowing."

In other words, beautiful is something that you know, something familiar.

Do we understand when we are in the midst of it all, or when we are all past it?

Do we need to understand to see the beauty?

Or perhaps only when we see the beauty, we truly understand.

Do you understand?

To help with our understanding, in this week's noise, we try to understand the beauty by looking for beauty in things that are hard to understand. Like pain that can't be understood but experienced, and poems that can't be understood but felt.

<( •᷄‎ࡇ•᷅ )>

– ƴΐ⍧ի⍲e⌊ ⅋ yӭ𐦤⚇⍕⍑

The Ineffability of Pain

I remember when I had to get two wisdom teeth removed, both on the right side, one above and one below. After I got the top one extracted first and was scheduling the appointment for the bottom one, I asked the dentist's assistant: "Does the bottom one hurt more than the top one?"

Turning her head towards me from the scheduling screen, she responded with a dry matter of fact: "Yes, the bottom one is deeper, about 100 times more."

"Oh, okay," I nervously chuckled, and left wondering: 'what does that even mean?'

I understood it when I went back there the following week. I would say it was more like 5 to 10 times more, but I can't remember it precisely.

Pain is sometimes difficult to remember, because it's hard to precisely describe it.

"On a scale of 0 to 10, how would you rate your pain?"

This is an official pain assessment aptly and needlessly named Numerical Rating Scale (NRS). You've probably been asked it before, wondered what it even means, and just said something between 2 and 8. You wouldn't have even asked if it was 0 to 1, and you wouldn't be speaking if it was 9 to 10.

Unsure if you're being honest even though you're not trying to lie, you try to describe it the doctor so they understand. You know, that pain in your stomach, under your knee, inside the bone, or near your chest. That tender, sore, sharp, dull, deep, constant, undulating, jolting, gnawing, throbbing pain. The NIH even provides a list of these painful words.

But words don't quite do justice. Pain is very precise when you're experiencing it, but can be basically incomprehensible when you're trying to understand someone else's.

Unless you've experienced the precise pain that the other person is having. Then you can, perhaps, relate to it, although you might not remember it well.

We all know pain, yet we ultimately can't feel other's. Somewhere between that gap, we understand each other's pain.

I guess that's one reason to appreciate pain. As much as pain whittles you down to the experience of it amidst it, it expands our palette of pain, our ability to see and relate to other's pain – our empathy. Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger, but it also makes you kinder.

Tender Buttons

Tender Buttons (nineteen fourteen) by Gertrude Stein, a tapestry of words. Objects, food, rooms, not just seen, eaten, lived in. Language isn't straight path, but a maze, a dance, a brushstroke. Sentences break, flow, merge. A chair, a story, an emotion. The book, a riot of words, a feast for the mind, daring it to jump, to twirl, to lose itself in chaos of creation.

Below, sample objects, random sample, random objective.

Assist collage GPT-4, Midjourney with me.

A CARAFE, THAT IS A BLIND GLASS.

A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.

MILDRED'S UMBRELLA.

A cause and no curve, a cause and loud enough, a cause and extra a loud clash and an extra wagon, a sign of extra, a sac a small sac and an established color and cunning, a slender grey and no ribbon, this means a loss a great loss a restitution.

A METHOD OF A CLOAK.

A single climb to a line, a straight exchange to a cane, a desperate adventure and courage and a clock, all this which is a system, which has feeling, which has resignation and success, all makes an attractive black silver.

A SELTZER BOTTLE.

Any neglect of many particles to a cracking, any neglect of this makes around it what is lead in color and certainly discolor in silver. The use of this is manifold. Supposing a certain time selected is assured, suppose it is even necessary, suppose no other extract is permitted and no more handling is needed, suppose the rest of the message is mixed with a very long slender needle and even if it could be any black border, supposing all this altogether made a dress and suppose it was actual, suppose the mean way to state it was occasional, if you suppose this in August and even more melodiously, if you suppose this even in the necessary incident of there certainly being no middle in summer and winter, suppose this and an elegant settlement a very elegant settlement is more than of consequence, it is not final and sufficient and substituted. This which was so kindly a present was constant.

A BOX.

Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle. So then the order is that a white way of being round is something suggesting a pin and is it disappointing, it is not, it is so rudimentary to be analysed and see a fine substance strangely, it is so earnest to have a green point not to red but to point again.

A FRIGHTFUL RELEASE.

A bag which was left and not only taken but turned away was not found. The place was shown to be very like the last time. A piece was not exchanged, not a bit of it, a piece was left over. The rest was mismanaged.

A MOUNTED UMBRELLA.

What was the use of not leaving it there where it would hang what was the use if there was no chance of ever seeing it come there and show that it was handsome and right in the way it showed it. The lesson is to learn that it does show it, that it shows it and that nothing, that there is nothing, that there is no more to do about it and just so much more is there plenty of reason for making an exchange.

Known Unknowns

There are plenty of things we all know, but cannot understand.

But that never stops us from trying. Well, pain and life keeps happening to us against our will, so do we even have an option not to try?

In a throwback classic from 2013, Radiolab explores these questions further with people who:

• try to measure pain by getting stung by every imaginable bug or comparing pain to sounds
• try to make sense of senseless violence with empathy or objectivity
• try to live in the unfolding mystery of improvisation

Known Unknowns

<p>Stories of trying to chart the unknown, by measuring and making sense of things just beyond our grasp.</p>

beautiful lines

there are many lines in the world

some of them are beautiful
some of them are unremarkable
some of them are ugly

the ones i like the best aren’t any of those things
the ones i like the best are from you

I'm Sneaky and You Tried to Overthrow the Underworld Boss

I’m sneaky, like a slinky on carpet stairs. Like a mountain lion, you only perceive me when I want you too. 99/100 times I will see you before you see me. I blend in with my surroundings masterfully and in every sensory dimension. Sound, smell, hearing, even touch and taste. You will never find me; I will always find you.

This is not a threat, it is a fact. A fact you should be well aware of before you decide to overthrow the underworld boss again. You don’t even deserve the space in this cell, you’re worthless and they shouldn’t have made space for you. Your trial was a wasted day for 60 separate people.

Why do you want to live with yourself after what you did?

I’m sneaky and you tried to overthrow the underworld boss. There’s nothing more to it.

Reverse Therapy

I am starting a therapy clinic where I invite people to ask me for my advice, opinion, or ideas for their deep struggles. Then, I just go on a soapbox and think aloud to myself and generate thousand ideas that the client can’t keep up with and then send them an invoice.

Other Reverse Therapy

I am starting a therapy clinic where I chase my clients around with mousetraps and yell at them if they get caught.

Hot Dog is Taco Cat

quotes.bib

Jane Hirschfeld, a poet, in Ezra Klein Show, on the roles of poetry:

...And part of that is simply knowing you are not alone in your experience. Whatever it is you experience, someone has been there before, found language to hold, and survived it. The poem is the evidence of the survival.

...Poems exist to answer the questions that can’t be otherwise answered, these great deep questions of how to navigate a human life that are not susceptible to medicine or engineering or any of the technologies of the practical world.

And poems are a terrific antidote to despair. Because no matter what is happening in your life or the world’s life, if you can write words to have a conversation with what you feel about this, what you see, even your own impotence, even your own I have nothing here, if you can say that in words that are new and different and distinctive and only that moment’s language, you do have agency.

pleasefindthis, from I Wrote This for You (2018), a collection of poems from the eponymous blog:

I have pretended to go mad in order to tell you the things I need to. I call it art. Because art is the word we give to our feelings made public. And art doesn't worry anyone.

(2010)

Maybe it's because you're one of those people that believes that sometimes, the most reckless thing you can do with your heart, is not being reckless with it.

2009

sound.wav

I can't do justice describing Frank Ocean's music. Let's just say that I love new sounds, and that he has a knack for bringing strange sounds and odd lyrics to make a new sound that somehow you can relate to. Here are some tender bangers I've been spinning this week.

prompts.bib

• 𝕮𝖔𝖛𝖊𝖗: Do you understand?
  /imagine What was the use of not leaving it there where it would hang what was the use if there was no chance of ever seeing it come there and show that it was handsome and right in the way it showed it. --chaos 0.4
• 𝖆𝖗𝐭𝖎𝖋𝖆𝐜𝐭 1: Tender Button
  /imagine A button, tender
• 𝖆𝖗𝐭𝖎𝖋𝖆𝐜𝐭 2: Tender Button (Chaos, Brushstroke)
  /imagine A button, tender --remix tender, chaos, brushstroke
• 𝖆𝖗𝐭𝖎𝖋𝖆𝐜𝐭 3: Mildred's Umbrella
  /imagine A cause and no curve, a cause and loud enough, a cause and extra a loud clash:: a slender grey and no ribbon, this means a loss a great loss a restitution.
• 𝖆𝖗𝐭𝖎𝖋𝖆𝐜𝐭 4: A Seltzer Bottle
  /imagine Any neglect of many particles to a cracking, any neglect of this makes around it what is lead in color and certainly discolor in silver. The use of this is manifold. Supposing a certain time selected is assured, suppose it is even necessary, suppose no other extract is permitted and no more handling is needed, suppose the rest of the message is mixed with a very long slender needle and even if it could be any black border, supposing all this altogether made a dress and suppose it was actual, suppose the mean way to state it was occasional, if you suppose this in August and even more melodiously, if you suppose this even in the necessary incident of there certainly being no middle in summer and winter, suppose this and an elegant settlement a very elegant settlement is more than of consequence, it is not final and sufficient and substituted. This which was so kindly a present was constant. --v 5.2
• 𝖆𝖗𝐭𝖎𝖋𝖆𝐜𝐭 5: A Box
  /imagine A BOX. Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle. So then the order is that a white way of being round is something suggesting a pin and is it disappointing, it is not, it is so rudimentary to be analysed and see a fine substance strangely, it is so earnest to have a green point not to red but to point again. --chaos 0.2
• 𝖆𝖗𝐭𝖎𝖋𝖆𝐜𝐭 6: A Mounted Umbrella
  /imagine The lesson is to learn that it does show it, that it shows it and that nothing, that there is nothing, that there is no more to do about it and just so much more is there plenty of reason for making an exchange.:: --remix A mounted umbrella --chaos 0.4:: --remix What was the use of not leaving it there where it would hang what was the use if there was no chance of ever seeing it come there and show that it was handsome and right in the way it showed it. --chaos 0.4