#honey the human mind is not cartesian

[malthusiana]

Literally fearing for my friend's life because she's been with a wildly violent boyfriend for 2 years and she made an inconsequential decision after they finally broke up that might get him fired at work and I'm scared what he will do to her if that happens. So much that I'm considering packing my things and going to another state to stay with her for a few weeks.

What people have to say to me? That she's dumb for staying with him for so long. That this wouldn't have happened if she went to therapy. When she's been in therapy for years. Then they say "well, she's not doing it right/her therapist isn't good".

If that's the best thing you have to stay then you should shut up. Also sorry to burst your bubble but therapy is NOT a miraculous solution. It cannot guarantee someone's mental health and high "emotional intelligence" or whatever, it may simply not help at all, or not much. It's a tool. It's tempting to believe it's a magical solution, scientificaly sound, and to blame the patient or the professional if doesn't. Unfortunately, it guarantees nothing. Shut the fuck up.

[i-am-become-a-name]

"So now you've read Earthworld with context : a guide to wiping away those tears with Anastasia."

So on the fourth of February 2020, I read Earthworld for the first time. It was my first EDA, and all I knew about them were random snippets I'd read off Tumblr and the contents of the eight/Fitz tag on Ao3. It was also summer, and I was taking a philosophy paper. Now it's sixteenth of July 2020, winter, I joined discord specifically to talk about eight, finished my degree, and the whole world has drastically changed and time has meant nothing since March. In that period of non-time I read all the Fitz EDAs I had skipped from the beginning right back up to Earthworld. So here's my updated version of the wee post I made all the way back in February but now with the context of Fitz and Eight’s history together.

Spoilers ahoy!

Fitz you nerd. What a great movie choice though (and the relief he must feel being back in one that isn’t Compassion after all the times he thinks of the TARDIS as home in books like Coldheart.)

The idea of eight trying to relearn who he himself is off Fitz, who he only knows of as a name thats he's been waiting to meet for a hundred years hits so much worse now.

I'd bring up Merleau-Ponty's argument with the Cartesian theory that the mind and body are separate things made of components that cannot mix but instead that the mind and body are actively and inextricably One with muscle memory being an example of the mind permeating through the body and actually being in those muscles, but that brings up all kind of weird philosophical problems with regeneration.

A lot of this book is Anji learning to cope with the death of Dave and the loss of the safe world she knew, with Fitz learning to cope and both of them learning what grief is. It’s not... fun to read, but it’s good.

Isn’t that exactly what you are, Fitz, buddy?

a) he has just spent a hundred years trying to get back to Fitz, and b) he didn’t manage it the first time around, honey.

Now I know in a pre-The Taint EDA he was locked up for a long (unbelievably long) time, but then there’s Interference, and the whole Earth arc (where the earth is his prison,) and you’d think he’d be getting used to it by now, if only he hadn’t forgotten all those times before.

...

I love that even after all this, Fitz isn’t a model companion who would leap out to save just anyone at the risk of his own life - he’s still a hugely incredibly flawed human being and however noble he is sometimes, that’s always there.

Does Fitz know what happens to Father Kreiner? how he dies protecting the Doctor and that heartbreaking ‘he hadn’t forgotten what it meant to be Fitz Kreiner’ line? Compassion wasn’t there to see it, and eight certainly wasn’t in any condition to tell Fitz.

Just.. just the Doctor and Fitz and this whole thing.

This is getting to be a lot about Fitz coming to terms with what or who he is and having time away from the Doctor to really have that breakdown, but y’know, I love Fitz, and reading his bits in the books really helped me with putting the weird philosophy rubbish I was learning first time reading this into context.

This is a long ‘un, but I really like the exploration of Fitz trying to come to terms with things. Also anything we get to find out about his life are of interest to me, and that sounds like the sweetest photo.

I still adore his description of himself (and that a lot of the things he references are things my parents (kids of the fifties) introduced me to - The Saint etc. In another book it’s Danger man and Dick Barton.) And that he has compassion for Father Kreiner, who yes, did awful things and he later describes as ‘rotten’ but Fitz understands.

look, I listened to Dark Eyes 1 the other day, and I can still hear Paul McGann singing this.

“Let’s just hope that the Doctor hasn’t left in the TARDIS already with your double. That would be unfortunate.” stop (Also he’s still hoping even a broken clone of a broken clone of himself is capable of protecting the Doctor from himself, ouch.)

It’s not Iris Wildthyme now, but still a Time Lord/Lady Fitz contemplates sleeping with. Boy, the Blue Angel was a ride and a half. Also ‘as if all his dreams had come true at once’ and buddy, I’d classify that as someone’s heart’s desire.

‘never mind my heart’s desire, the version of her in my mind told me to stop being a prat.’ Ah, Filippa.

does it, buddy? does it really? also, please, I know you don’t know, but don’t say it directly in front of Fitz.

I’m.. having trouble finding words for why this is here.

This, of course, goes back to Father Time, which is... icky, but important in that Miranda was one of the things that made the Doctor care about life again when he really didn’t at the beginning of Endgame.

Anji’s reaction is written really well here. From someone who has had that sudden unexpected grief of losing a friend to an abrupt death, Anji’s coping by using distraction not to think about it is very much a thing.

This isn’t the same TARDIS that helped to remember who he was, but asking for an ally to help protect the Doctor on the basis of she probably cares about him like Fitz does? Sweet. (Also the tale of Peter Rabbit as emotional support? thank goodness Fitz wasn’t around for the VHS of the Beatrix Potter ballet.)

“I didn’t mean you to hurt anyone. I wanted to stop people being hurt.”

those last three words are kind of intimidating, but argh. Also this isn’t the first person Fitz loves that he’s tried to take care of - his mum, for example. It’s a hell of a thing for a guy who admits he has commitment issues earlier on in the book.

This is what I’m choosing to summarize Anji’s letters (which are another part of grief that was done very well. I found one recently that I had written post my friend’s death.) Every other letter she writes she chooses not to send but they’re a way of keeping the other person alive by talking to them. Again, they give me vibes of the unsent letters between each chapter of Deep Space Nine: Enigma Tales and break my heart.

So that was Earthworld with context! It made a huge difference to my understanding of the book, obviously, and there were huge swathes of the book themes I had missed completely not knowing exactly what had happened with Fitz and the Doctor. It was a really good one to read as a starter, I’m not gonna lie, but it was amazing to read with understanding.

[k-chapman]

Chapter 3 - The Edifice

Frigid organs, empiricism in ruins, lost impressions, phantoms. [1] When a bad prince reigns, others will escape and wander in exile. [2] Leave me, [God], worthy of heaven, and return to your pleasures, let a wretched and unhappy exile be cast into poverty and filth! [3] What displaced wanderer today exile, migrant or citizen of the world swept up in wind and weather could ask himself the Cartesian question without anxiety? [4] Without gods, without God, without the Holy Ghost, without first or final authority, [5] I wander.

Now, I find myself in a foreign land, a city unknown, at the gates of a walled in house. I enter.

The place is desolate and abandoned yet I hear this place talk to me in a sleepy voice:

“I see such a slight movement changing the face of the earth and deciding the vocation of mankind: in the distance I hear the joyous cries of an insane multitude; I see the building of castles and cities; I see the birth of the arts; I see nations forming, expanding, and dissolving, following each other like ocean waves; I see men gathered together at certain points of their homeland for their mutual development, turning the rest of the world into a hideous desert: fitting monument to social union and the usefulness of the arts. [6] I yearn. Yearn for the flesh, for the breath of life.”

I speak back: “[I] walk around naked, [I] live in squalor, [I] inhabit tubs, [I am] cold and hungry.” [7]

The house returns: “The star of Saturn, because it is next to the ends of the cosmos and touches the frozen regions of the firmament, is intensely chilly.” [8]

In unison we spoke then: “Dam the water, to make it rise; then drive the beasts to stir up the mud in the water with frequent and excited movement; release the dam suddenly, so that the water floods out and takes all the dirt away.” [9]

Inside I notice at once a faint glow, I feel the house in the moonlight approve. I enter the abode cold and wet, and I am met with an atmosphere of damp smoke and abandon. My arms tried; the weight of the cardinal hat’s threads unbearable. In the middle of the space, in the heart of the house a pit. A shining rift simmering low and constant, too fluid to be made of any liquid stone or solid, more akin to flowing amber. The top layer forming skins that tear and open. Light refracted around the room as light would in a pool. The ceiling above seemed to have been eaten into by the rays.

Heat struggled with cold in the same body; moisture and dryness did likewise; and lightness and weight were the same.[10] The pit, the house beckoned me to surrender my weight. In my ears, in my mind I hear the honeyed words of the house, like a drunken father trying to convince my all is alright:

“Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving.[11] I shall speak of ghost, of flame and of ashes to God for you. [12] I wish to know your pain.”

My face was comforted by the heat of the pit, the soft dancing light that emerged did not sting my eyes, it seemed more akin to the dim light of a fading summer day, a supple air stroked my skin.

I speak: “We haunt two niches: our body, whose skin and fragile loves we shelter under a roof, between four walls, [13] and our minds, the realm of desires and pain.”

The house whispers: “Become the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, the gift giver. [14] The “excrement,” the destructive element which has to disappear so that the balance can be re-established, is ultimately humanity itself. [15] I long for this destruction. I long to know your humanity.”

I let the hat drift into the refracting substance. [ ] This rare trace in the aerial fluid, this unstable, complex mixture, this partially undone knot, trailing a thousand threads, is not subject to repetition, never achieves invariance: too circumstantial to begin beating in time, too fluid, diluted, chaotic. [16]

The heat was sudden and full, filling the house in an instant. The walls groaned and loosened, planes shifting in ecstasy against each other. The ceiling above seemed to liquify and pores opened in its surface, like tiny mouths gasping for air. The lazy summer day light was replaced by a shining akin to the sun. I am dried suddenly and can hardly take a breath as air rushes past me. A lightheaded feeling overtakes my body. All light has passed over into the thin flame of the eye, which now flickers around solid objects and, in so doing, establishes their place and form. [17] I see my place now; I see my form. I am frozen in heat, and around me the house expands. Space distorts around me. 

I feel once again a pleasure, an ecstasy of weightlessness. I watched as the hat decays and the thought struck me: Life consists in one indivisible power (for death occurs through division and dissolution). [18] I am once again indivisible.

We spoke again in unison as the smoke form the pit escaped through the corroded holes and pipes in the ceiling with a roar: “We breathe it in, we breathe it out, like air, and like the air—we do not see it. [19]”

Their hearts had forgotten the weight of their burdens. [20] I drift into a fever dream. Little did I know I was to awaken with a new found weight.

[1] Serre’s, The Five Senses

[2] Alberti, Momus

[3] Alberti, Momus

[4] Serres, The Five Senses

[5] Serres, The Birth of Physics

[6] Derrida, Of Grammatology

[7] Alberti, Momus

[8] Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture 1999

[9] Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books 1988

[10] Bayle, Political Writings

[11] Melanchthon, On Christian Doctrine

[12] Derrida, Signature

[13] Serres, Hominescence

[14] Serres, The Parasite

[15] Zizek, Less Than Nothing

[16] Serres, The Five Senses

[17] Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic

[18] Ficino, Platonic Theology Volume 1 Books I IV

[19] Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason

[20] Virgil, Aeneid