World Enough, and Time...


Bleak, bleak, bleak...

The locals have a word nekura which describes someone who is "dark-natured, introverted, dour, moody, insular, glum or pessimistic"—basically a gloomy sort. (When I asked a friend about it recently, he defined it as「つま先から頭の天辺まで暗い人。」That is, someone who's depressing from the tips of their toes to the top of their head, which I found a rather amusing way of putting it.) The word is composed of two morphemes, 根 ne or nekko meaning "root", like the root of a plant, and 暗 kura-, the stem of the adjective kurai meaning dark or gloomy. A lot of people I know seem to be surprised when I tell them that I regard myself as nekura. Go figure.

In my other entry I asked "Had we but world enough and time, what could we not accomplish?" The pessimism I have been feeling the last few days immediately answered, "Probably not too bloody much more than the little we actually have managed." (I wonder if it's possible for a bipolar person to experience both poles at once? Or is there always a cycle, albeit at pulsar speeds?!) You can take that as referring mainly to the history of the OPI. Or to the whole span of human existence if so inclined; the former could be viewed as the latter in miniature.

Bleak, bleak, bleak. It's 5:00 AM and I'm tired and unimpressed and disenchanted and have been asleep off and on on a hot carpet in front of a pablum-spewing tube.

Ah well, "the mind is its own place" and all that, right?

Speaking of perceptions, both true and mis-, the Andescotia developers believe that if they had open-sourced their IDE code, Marten (tm) would never have seen the light of day. Yet not a few OPI members believe that if they had (or still would), development would have progressed (or could progress from now on) much more quickly. The gap (gulf?) between the two is interesting, no?

I now find myself standing on the bridge between; can you guess which side I'm nearer?

Posted: Sat - February 5, 2005 at 06:05 AM           |

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