rattus rattus’ blog

Ouroboros illustration by Good Winter

This fascinating illustration, a variation of the Ouroboros theme, I luckily found at the Good Winter Tumblr blog. (Click the picture to see the original version.)

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A recent conversation on rats, cats, life, and other music:

Should I fly more rats over to you?

Sure! But, please, slowly! You know, they tend to multiply so damn fast.

You could get a cat to keep the rats in check in the meanwhile.

She’s welcome!

I can imagine the occasional bloody scenes.

This is what I love about music, especially Blues and Rock, I guess.

(Trying to see a link)

You mean to see the trees instead of the wood?
Rats do what Ouroboros stand for.
In absence of cats they get self-caught.
(See, this is why cats often playfully try to catch their tails, too.)
Rats and cats are like counterparts.
Essential elements of life.

You have sent me both. So life is complete.
And of course there is blood (life’s fuel).

Perhaps, there is music that tries to paint all in blue, or black, or white, bright and shiney. I think, if an Ouroboros were to play music it would be Blues-Rock.

Sure, music tries to paint pictures, but it’s most of the time too unreal. Which is what makes it addictive.

And then, it is in some way real, or the unreal is real, or it becomes real, or realized.

If everything goes in circles life seems so banal; to be born to die, to gain something to lose it later, to learn something and find that it’s useless/wrong etc. Like time passes just to be passed.

If you see it this way you can use your life’s time for whatever pleases you. Not that bad a deal.

With pleasure.

[Many thanks to iexertinertia.]

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it,
does it make a sound?
— George Berkeley (1561-1626)

Enough people, it might seem, wrote about the term attention whore. The Urban Dictionary expressively explains attention whore. The Uncyclopedia shows some imagery. Wonderful writer Cairo Otaibi pretended to out herself in a comment to No comment is a comment. Google lists a gazillion of results, and even more so, quite a number of people say: We are all attention whores.

I agree!
For it is such a nice example of a lying liar. And of course, we are all attention whores. Assuming some aren’t we wouldn’t know about them, would we?

Attention! A digression: If we are all attention whores, and if we cannot know about those who aren’t, might this prove that we are all liars because we wouldn’t know of people who tell the truth?

Attention again! An answer: Truth is that those telling the truth are the actual liars. — I wonder who could read this out of George Berkeley’s writings.

Thinking of perception, like in how we perceive a tree, does the tree create a mental notion, or does our mind create the tree? Is attention an attention whore’s service, or is she paid by it?

Ouroboros, you are her mother.

The portal of the St. Marx cemetery (Friedhof St. Marx) shows a hexagram, well known as Star of David. Yet, I was told that this hexagram was (and still is) not meant as a Jewish symbol.

Interestingly, a number of gravestones there show six-pointed stars which some consider variations of hexagrams. Though, I found one engraving showing a six-pointed star within a hexagram.

What is part of a symbol?

One of Heinz von Foerster’s favorite symbols was the Ouroboros. (Von Foerster often used a variation where 2 snakes devour each other’s tail.)

At the St. Marx cemetery some gravestones carry Ouroboros, many with an arrow pointing from left to right.

Are symbols just symbols?

I vividly feel as if I was an Ouroboros on fire.