A pataphysical introduction

Hiya!

I’m a professional researcher, sometimes essayist, sometimes designer, dabbling artist/musician and insatiable traveller/consumer of experiences.

My background is in philosophy and the arts, and my interests span literature, history and the sciences (my current fetish is neuroscience), which I guess makes me pretty weird and a generalist on the knowledge front, rather than expert in any particular field.

I’m also a middle-of-the-field medium distance runner (sometimes triathlete) who gets a B- on her multisports report card, a tennis, squash and golfing geek, and a vegetarian.

I’m extremely wary of social media, having rubbed up against its underbelly in the past, so I’m happy to share personal data with people I know and trust, but won’t be posting selfies anytime soon. You can see more of my writing over on Quora if you’re really interested: here

I label myself an URscape Topologist—‘ur’ as a prefix embodies the basic or intrinsic qualities of a particular class or type; the 'Urscape' I therefore define as the human body. And topology is a branch of mathematics concerned with the properties of space preserved under continuous deformations. Make of that what you will…

My claim 'Cartographe du Collège de 'Pataphysique is slightly more inscrutable, suffice to say that pataphysics is to metaphysics as metaphysics is to physics (an extrusion of an extrusion) and the pataphysical unit of currency is a pataphor: that which occurs when a lizard's tail has grown so long it breaks off and grows a new lizard.

“ASPT (Archivist and Slovenly Page Turner) for the Book of Dismal Itches” is my current project, a mock ancient book of predictions that have already happened (which I’m composing for self-amusement).

My avatar image here and there is a detail of a shoulder from one of my painted figure studies. The shoulder, in this instance, illustrates an URscape topology, one that flexes into various shapes while retaining its intrinsic underlying architecture, and is an interesting pataphysical map too, a meta-metaphysical map of the human condition (i.e., a cold shoulder).

I might sometimes write in what-the-hell-ese (especially when writing about myself, which I treat like a dismal itch) but, like my dog, I’m friendly and approachable :)