Every few days I take a walk through the woods behind my house. I leave nothing but boot prints and take nothing but photos.
Exceptions to every rule.
This morning, I awoke early, heated up a cup of Uncle Lee's tea and sat on the back deck listening to birds and armadillos.
A cool morning. Partly cloudy on the first day of March. When are we supposed to be aware of the ides of March? I don't know.
This quiet morning I heard the faint sounds of tapping coming from the woods up over the lip of the ridge.
So, I finished my tea, put on my hiking coat, grabbed my hiking stick and pointed my body toward the sounds that had since disappeared.
I don't believe in magic. I believe what I see. If a man in a tuxedo pulls a rabbit out of his top hat, then I figure he's using sleight of hand. As long as I'm entertained, though, it really doesn't matter if the rabbit magically appeared or fell out of the magician's jacket into the hat.
I scared the armadillos back under the sunroom and the birds scattered ahead of me. We respect the distance between each other.
As I climbed up the rock ledge, I listened for more tapping sounds. I heard cloth rustling like a flag flapping in the wind.
Three ridges later, I saw dark mustard yellow and dark forest green stripes low to the ground. A hundred paces in front of me a tent sat pitched in a small, grassy clearing.
Sitting crosslegged on a Mexican blanket in front of the tent was a petite woman. Her long hair was braided into two thick strands of climbing rope, both of them about the length of my forearm.
"You are here."
"I am here."
"A beautiful day!"
"Yes, and a little cool."
"Have a seat."
I sat on the blanket and faced her, both of us crosslegged and leaning forward slightly.
When I read a story, I want the writer to tell me the approximate age of the people in a scene. I look forward to other clues like facial blemishes, style of clothes, and body postures to tell me the people's lives before they speak.
This woman defied description. Her skin was smooth but wrinkled when she talked or smiled. Her skin tone changed as she turned her head from side to side. Ribbons of gold and silver weaved in and out of her braided hair, fooling me about her hair colour. Sunglasses hid her eyes. Her zipup hoodie had the word "Bonnaroo" stamped across the front. She wore new but faded blue jeans and muddied hiking boots. Her hands were covered with gardening gloves.
She held out a small journal. "Read this."
I opened the cover. The first page said, "To Rick. Thanks for everything, including our mountaintop excursions, glacier calving expeditions and zero gravity moonshots. Yours always, Bonny K." Literally. I mean the page actually spoke to me, no written words.
I turned to the next page. "Dear friend, we know the future for us. We know our adventures live outside time because when others don't know the two of you exist together, then they have no way to compare you to them."
I looked up at Bonny. "So you've already recorded our time together?"
"Every minute."
"For how long?"
"For the rest of our lives."
"So you know..."
"...how long we're going to live? Yes."
I closed the cover. "Do I want to know?"
She took off her glasses. "Do you?"
Are you one of those people who like to read the first couple of chapters and then skip to the last two pages to see if reading the rest of the book is worth it? I'm not. I read the first few chapters and if I'm bored I put the book down. I've found books in my library that I stopped reading when I was 15 and finished when I was 35. Age and experience that you bring to your reading are what makes the book worth finishing, not just what the author put into the writing.
I turned the journal over. The back cover told me, "Know the end and the end knows you."
I looked at Bonny. She smiled and in her smile I saw the face of an old woman who has spent most of her life in the outdoors.
Popular novelists will tell you to hook your reader with the first word, the first sentence, the first paragraph, the first page and set the hook before the end of the first five pages. If you want to be popular.
But there are those who purposefully write cryptic script. Obscurity and obfuscation serve readers who want to wade through swamps to get to the hidden lair of a rare being.
I felt the weight of the journal. A little heavier than it looked but not extraordinarily weighty.
"Do I want to read more?"
"Do you want to write more?"
"But you've already finished this journal, haven't you?"
"Have I?"
The paradox of time. When I was a kid watching the Watergate hearings and holding strong to my faith in the leadership of Richard Nixon, knowing history would paint a poor silhouette of a man who held the power of the world in his hands, a man who accomplished more than his natural paranoia superficially indicated, my father told me that I was living history and would read about these days when I studied Western Civilisation in college. If you've already lived history, why study it again?
I gave the journal to Bonny. "I assume that what happens next has already happened and has not already happened."
Bonny set the journal aside and reached out her hands. I pulled off her gloves and held her cold hands in mine.
Bonny relaxed. "I have a whole set of blank journals in the tent. We can write as many futures together as we want."
She turned and crawled into the tent.
I reached into my breast pocket and felt for the magic pen that never runs out of ink, given to me by a medicine man who told me the pen was destined to write the history of his people leading this nation, one tribe representing all tribes, time unimportant. He and I knew he spoke the truth.
Did I say I don't believe in magic? I will elaborate (but not laboriously). I don't believe in illusion. I believe in fact. This pen has never run out of ink and thus never will.
I followed Bonny into the tent and forgot about the stuff I promised to tell you in this blog entry. I disappeared outside of time for a while and can't remember how long I've been gone. Bonny and I buried each other in our old age and then returned so I could hike back to the house to write about us.
Sigh...another lifetime lived, another "yes" spoken without saying a word. How many lifetimes can we live? How many loves can we know, each one from birth to death?
Bonny, dear Bonny. Watching the fog roll in with you. Watching Earth's atmosphere disappear. Weightlessness for days on end... the wrinkles of your smile growing deeper with wisdom and love. Then to close the last page of the last journal and start over... how can 80 years feel like one brief, happy moment together?
Showing posts with label reward. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reward. Show all posts
01 March 2010
15 December 2009
Epilogue Yule Log Catalog of Logged Logjams
Subtitle: Ode to Miranda, Who Took Care of Five Customers, Five Cheques
What is a day? A moment divided. A set of sensations. A series of situations. Smoky blue eyes. Happiness accounted for and noted.
I will start a new blog, a new attitude, a different opinion. This blog afterthought an afterthought, an aftertaste, a reaching out from the fog, a tap on the shoulder, a smile, an agreement, an "I'm not sure what I'm doing but I'm here in the typing phase of my existence away from the from a livescribe pen and notepad to let myself (yourself) know I am (we are) alive and doing well."
I pause, taking a sip from a cylindrical glass of wasser to say hello to you who may read this. Me, in other words, in this moment, in one thought, one idea, one expression of a person's thought(s).
I want to be more than I am. I am happy to be me who is who I am in this moment, my limited vocabulary limited by my typing skills, by my thoughts, by my experience(s) with you, lonely as we are now/then.
I see your eyes. I see the eyes of Miranda, the gray/blue, blue/gray reflections coming back to me as we conversed during your memorisation of my ordering from the restaurant menu, your knowing pretty much what the other regular patrons around me would tell you what they wanted to eat. And then there was Sarah this evening, an order taker joining me and others (including my constant companion, my cohort, my spare change, my lifesaver, my bedsharer, my spouse, my wife), who passed brown and clear bottles of brewed hops and grains (i.e., beer) at the BeerQuest in the Heritage Club in Huntsville for an evening of good times between those who wanted to gather downtown for privileged drinking, a few hours of hoppy fun.
We know our presidential leader, our national icon, smokes tobacco-filled cigarettes.
We accept what we cannot change. We know Tammy Harrington (Herrington?) [like my friend Ann-Marie in HHI], whose automobile license tag reads "WINEDIVA," or some such, kept track of the beer-tasting festivities tonight, recording which beers from which state outside of Alabama provided the tongue-tingling sensations (our tastebuds tickled by high-gravity fermentation) which we'll remember best. Harry and Laura say the Upland Nuthugger did the trick. Others picked other brews.
And what a list, too (do I dare try to name some, if not most, of them all?):
Sarah (with an "h", with a smile, with...well, with her boyfriend Adam who finally showed up, Harry and his wife Laura providing a counterbalance). Laura, who couldn't sing, but who missed the boys' choir this year. Sarah, who grew up in a "holler" 10 miles south of the Tennessee border and 10 miles east of the Lawrence County line. Robert, who has shown up with 100 kinds of beer and who brought friends in times past who brought gallons of fresh brews for tasting / sampling / drinking / guzzling.
Anyone remember the Chicken Shack or the River Club? Anyone remember boilermakers?
Have you ever had 1/4 shot Jameson, 3/4 shot Bailey's, all dropped into a glass of Guinness?
And then the team who cleaned up after us, going to school, taking classes, wondering when they'd get to enjoy the festivities and/or have someone clean up after them.
Time for another blog. Another look at life. A new perspective. This epilogue accounted for and added up.
I enjoyed working with Glenn and Ryan and Janeil and Lawrence and Jim and others who piled and handed food to the 33rd Rocket City marathon runners/DNFs on Saturday. I met Eric Patterson (sp?), Carol (my wife's college roommate), Erin (a UTK alumnus/supporter) and many others whose faces smiled/flashed at me during the aftermath of sweaty/satisfied finishers passing through the food line.
I've seen faces in other places while looking at mobile phone providers who want my business. I still use my old-fashioned Nokia 3120 (old model) to answer calls and peruse a tiny screen for the occasional foray into the media mall world, not yet convinced to plunge into the 3G/GPS universe of Internet browsing, letting my spouse use her iPod touch to touch the worldwide web of YouTube and Google searching.
"Michelle, ma belle..", another song sung after a server served us at Chili's. "Tres bien ensemble." Built very well?
I know the faces, the smiles, the persons/people whose faces have recognised mine. Need we say more? Loneliness/alone, we know the looks. Time to find another space to share with you. Another time, perhaps? I'll post one more entry sometime to let you where I'll land. This epilogue has found its epic finish. Time to bid adieu. Adios. À bientôt. Friends from Dominican Republic to ROC, I say hello and farewell (or fair well, as the case may be). We face a new beginning, a new tomorrow, an old yesterday, a moment in forever where our paths will cross. Until then, I bow and say thanks for being my friend for the brief time we spent together. Lenier and Anita, I hope I got your names right because our friendships were right at the time...
What is a day? A moment divided. A set of sensations. A series of situations. Smoky blue eyes. Happiness accounted for and noted.
I will start a new blog, a new attitude, a different opinion. This blog afterthought an afterthought, an aftertaste, a reaching out from the fog, a tap on the shoulder, a smile, an agreement, an "I'm not sure what I'm doing but I'm here in the typing phase of my existence away from the from a livescribe pen and notepad to let myself (yourself) know I am (we are) alive and doing well."
I pause, taking a sip from a cylindrical glass of wasser to say hello to you who may read this. Me, in other words, in this moment, in one thought, one idea, one expression of a person's thought(s).
I want to be more than I am. I am happy to be me who is who I am in this moment, my limited vocabulary limited by my typing skills, by my thoughts, by my experience(s) with you, lonely as we are now/then.
I see your eyes. I see the eyes of Miranda, the gray/blue, blue/gray reflections coming back to me as we conversed during your memorisation of my ordering from the restaurant menu, your knowing pretty much what the other regular patrons around me would tell you what they wanted to eat. And then there was Sarah this evening, an order taker joining me and others (including my constant companion, my cohort, my spare change, my lifesaver, my bedsharer, my spouse, my wife), who passed brown and clear bottles of brewed hops and grains (i.e., beer) at the BeerQuest in the Heritage Club in Huntsville for an evening of good times between those who wanted to gather downtown for privileged drinking, a few hours of hoppy fun.
We know our presidential leader, our national icon, smokes tobacco-filled cigarettes.
We accept what we cannot change. We know Tammy Harrington (Herrington?) [like my friend Ann-Marie in HHI], whose automobile license tag reads "WINEDIVA," or some such, kept track of the beer-tasting festivities tonight, recording which beers from which state outside of Alabama provided the tongue-tingling sensations (our tastebuds tickled by high-gravity fermentation) which we'll remember best. Harry and Laura say the Upland Nuthugger did the trick. Others picked other brews.
And what a list, too (do I dare try to name some, if not most, of them all?):
- Moosbacher Schwarze Weisse
- Dragonfly IPA
- Hog Heaven Barleywine by Avery
- Dogfish Raison D'etre
- Blackheart English-style IPA
- Bathbeer Nuezeller Blofter-Brau
- Boulevard Dry Stout
- Unibroue Dark Ale (Terrible?)
- Unibroue Trois Pistoles
- Stone Vertical
- Stone XI (11th) Anniversary
- Jefferson Bourbon Barrel Stout
- Dogfish Palo Santo Marron
- Sierra Nevada Harvest Fresh Southern Hemisphere Hop
- Midas Touch Ale
- Upland Nuthugger Brown Ale
- Upland Chocolate Ale
Sarah (with an "h", with a smile, with...well, with her boyfriend Adam who finally showed up, Harry and his wife Laura providing a counterbalance). Laura, who couldn't sing, but who missed the boys' choir this year. Sarah, who grew up in a "holler" 10 miles south of the Tennessee border and 10 miles east of the Lawrence County line. Robert, who has shown up with 100 kinds of beer and who brought friends in times past who brought gallons of fresh brews for tasting / sampling / drinking / guzzling.
Anyone remember the Chicken Shack or the River Club? Anyone remember boilermakers?
Have you ever had 1/4 shot Jameson, 3/4 shot Bailey's, all dropped into a glass of Guinness?
And then the team who cleaned up after us, going to school, taking classes, wondering when they'd get to enjoy the festivities and/or have someone clean up after them.
Time for another blog. Another look at life. A new perspective. This epilogue accounted for and added up.
I enjoyed working with Glenn and Ryan and Janeil and Lawrence and Jim and others who piled and handed food to the 33rd Rocket City marathon runners/DNFs on Saturday. I met Eric Patterson (sp?), Carol (my wife's college roommate), Erin (a UTK alumnus/supporter) and many others whose faces smiled/flashed at me during the aftermath of sweaty/satisfied finishers passing through the food line.
I've seen faces in other places while looking at mobile phone providers who want my business. I still use my old-fashioned Nokia 3120 (old model) to answer calls and peruse a tiny screen for the occasional foray into the media mall world, not yet convinced to plunge into the 3G/GPS universe of Internet browsing, letting my spouse use her iPod touch to touch the worldwide web of YouTube and Google searching.
"Michelle, ma belle..", another song sung after a server served us at Chili's. "Tres bien ensemble." Built very well?
I know the faces, the smiles, the persons/people whose faces have recognised mine. Need we say more? Loneliness/alone, we know the looks. Time to find another space to share with you. Another time, perhaps? I'll post one more entry sometime to let you where I'll land. This epilogue has found its epic finish. Time to bid adieu. Adios. À bientôt. Friends from Dominican Republic to ROC, I say hello and farewell (or fair well, as the case may be). We face a new beginning, a new tomorrow, an old yesterday, a moment in forever where our paths will cross. Until then, I bow and say thanks for being my friend for the brief time we spent together. Lenier and Anita, I hope I got your names right because our friendships were right at the time...
08 December 2009
24 November 2009
See-oh, too
22 Nov 2009, 2300
How do you accommodate a whole world full of people who don't want to accommodate a whole world full of people?
Just a few generations between any two major military conflicts – on a global scale, that is. Otherwise, our species constantly battles itself some place all the time.
So what? Facts are facts. I look for truth. You want to dare me. We both face the consequences.
Ran into a management/supervisory type person today. She expressed a common sentiment, “Fake it until you make it.”
How do I tell you the truth without using these words? How do I tell you the truth by only using these words, in any language or any symbolic form?
We all live, and by living we demonstrate or show some form of the truth.
De monster. Demonstrable.
Holding one planet and seven billion people in your hand does not the truth make. That's what I'm here talking to myself about. That's what I've been talking to myself about for years.
I have been telling myself the truth, using one language for the most part, using one species all the time, walking the same path over and over, beating my head against invisible walls, racing to the tops of mountains and tumbling back down into the valleys, counting trees in the middle of the tangled jungle.
Words, words, words. All this obsession with text and textbooks, believing that text existing before my time was text that existed before all time.
T-r-u-t-h. Trees in the forest surrounding a glen. Rocks and ice on a mountaintop surrounding a bald.
Again, just a sound in my thoughts, a bunch of electroneurochemical sensations passing whispered secrets in a circle, the truth going in one end and these words coming out the other.
Why hadn't I seen this? Why haven't I seen this before? To have and to be. To behave. To have bees.
But then again, the truth is what it is. Many of you already know the truth. We all live the truth, here in plain sight for anyone and everyone to see.
I think of myself as just one person. At the same time, I think of myself as yours, seven billion pieces of myself in you and seven billion of you in me. All this time, I had focused on the me/you, yin/yang, death/life duality, with the truth staring me in the face, a blank expression like camouflage hiding the truth at the tip of my nose.
Let's see, I've lived over 47.5 years, clearly making claim to a middle-aged body, having reached the age when previous societies would have considered me a wise elder, past the average age of death in some cultures today.
I see you and through you I see me. I depend on my sight, either literally through my eyes or figuratively through the expression of my thoughts on this page. And yet my sight has blinded me to the truth.
Didn't I tell you I repeat the words of those before, during and after me? Don't you know I'm not the only one to know the truth behind the facts under the superficial layers of daily living?
Are you meant to live on the superficial layers? Do you care about anything other than what's before you? Do you question the reality of reality? Did you “wake up” in the crib and see a world that those around you couldn't comprehend or no longer cared to see?
I have fooled myself with my body. I have not fooled myself with my body. I didn't know that I'd fake it until I'd make it.
I am not who I thought I was. I am not who I am. Who am I? I am the truth. You are the truth. We are the truth. We are beyond the beyond.
We are not these words but these words are us.
People have tried to tell me, using people tools, about life outside the people life but my natural use of anthropomorphism has turned me back to looking at non-people life as though it was another version of people life.
Let's look at an example. Those who stare at the cosmos know that large waveform patterns show the underlying undulating “weather” of the universe. Our comprehension of this “weather” is limited because of our people-powered concept of time. Another one. We say we need bigger instruments to peer into the distant reaches of space to find the state of the universe ten billion years ago but can we see the same thing when considering we're the state of the universe as if it had been scooped into a tube, frozen and then pushed out the other end of the tube like cake icing?
Two examples of superficial, people tool views of existence.
But really, does any of this matter? I am one person on the superficial level. I act as if I'm one person on the superficial level and have made a comfortable life for myself in that regard. In other words, I faked the life of a member of my species and I made it.
Of course, it matters. I, that is, my body, will die. “I” will end. The ripples of who I was will bounce back and forth and lose their shape among those who use people tools, absorbed into the bigger wave patterns of this part of the universe, which will lose their shape with time, too.
I have only my life to look back on and see my thoughts on which I reflect the life I thought I lived. I will not create waves big enough to stop wars or starvation. I create small waves to give me momentum which aids in my journey through uncharted territory.
But again, these are superficial sentiments. I am not me and I am not the small waves I make. “I” does not exist.
How do I describe the truth to me (to you) using these words when the truth is not in these words?
I see you. You see me. We look at each other using our carefully-trained cultural magnifying glasses looking for clues about our use of people tools.
The truth is not in tools. Thus, tools will not reveal the truth. Being me, I cannot see the truth.
I have sat here for many years – at least since I was ten – using words to describe the part of the truth I know, to keep me focused on the truth I see outside of the superficial layers my species creates in our inspiration to see cultural growth as progress toward what we think our clever use of tools will reveal about the truth, knowing the truth is outside of being my species.
But you already know that. Like I said, I am yours. I am repeating what you've already heard over and over and over again. The truth is in the core of your being, partially reflected in your DNA but beyond even your/our understanding of our place in the universe, and especially our seeing the universe as if it will reveal something to us through people tools.
To repeat words stated earlier, I am not spouting pseudoscience, touting a new religion or laying down some riff that I heard in my dreams after a previous evening of eating spicy tofu mixed into a delectable curry sauce.
I am, to use cultural terms, deprogramming myself. I am tuning out my species to see what's around me as if I'm not me. I am discarding the emperor's new clothes that everyone sees everyone else wear because no one wants to say there's nothing there to see.
And I'm attempting to deprogram myself using the people tools which programmed me. Impossible? Yes!
That's why I say these words are not the truth. These words don't point to the truth. They don't even hint at the truth. These words are my enjoyment. They are my playthings. I am having fun in every single moment, even when my fun is not fun for everyone around me, knowing that the pebble of my fun will cause disruptive ripples somewhere else in some other time. I treat myself as if I will live no other life than in this moment with you because these words guarantee such a condition.
The truth is not out there. The truth is not in here. The truth is just a word. The idea of the truth is a people tool.
I am not the pied piper. I am not the royal jester. I am not a soothsayer or a wise elder (if I cease exercising, I will become a wide elder, however).
I know the truth. So do you. I cannot convince you otherwise. The truth is outside of being a member of our species. Can you know the truth without being able to see it?
Duality is life as we know it. The truth is free of duality. Life is not truth but truth is life.
I am not here to sell you something. I am not here to coerce you to accept my opinion over your opinion of how to live life. I found success in this life without knowing the truth. Or I should say that I knew the truth but found success without putting the truth to use in this life.
You can succeed using the facts that our superficial layers of life provide. In fact, that's probably the only way you'll succeed here. But you can succeed in another way that includes more than the life of one species. More than life as we know it in any form.
Truth has no emotions, truth has no pain or pleasure, truth has no thoughts or awareness of what we think of as thoughts, awareness, self, pain, pleasure, happiness, sadness, life, or death. Truth is more than universal but truth is seeing the universal in seeing our species' creation of an ecumenopolis on one orbiting spherical blob.
When you see the truth that is usually just out of reach or around the corner, glimpsed in your peripheral vision or hidden in plain sight, you know what I knew when I opened my eyes and saw this world is not here to be understood by me, why I don't need riches or titles or accolades as this body I think of as me.
I once wanted to say the truth is wonderful but the truth is indescribable. The truth is also horrible, depending on one's view (just like someone said hell is seeing the version of you if you had taken all the risks you avoided and became immensely successful). The truth requires no money. The truth requires no sacrifices. The truth is unaware of us as our species in anything we do or say or wish.
Why have I spent time here repeating myself and others in using words to describe the indescribable? I don't know. I know the truth won't set you free. You'll still be your body if you see what you cannot see. You'll have been born, you will live and you will die whether you discovered the truth right there in front of you or you didn't even know there was truth at all.
I am here because I believe in myself. I believe in myself because I know I don't know the truth. I only think I know the truth that is there beyond what my body senses or what my body interprets of people tools that sense what my body cannot.
I cannot escape my body. I will always see the world and my species through the training that my species provided.
Despite my repetition, I am making progress. I use humour to disperse the fog that being a member of my species creates. Clarity is brief. I see what I already saw once before and forget it again. Then the next moment arrives and I'm back to where I was, just past where I started, sometimes farther along, sometimes further back. Usually aware that these words are meaningless once the truth is revealed to me again.
Don't pay for what you already know. Pay for what you want to put into practice to succeed in the superficial layers of life with our species. I pay for my thoughts by writing these words for me/you to read later on, practicing what I believe, believing in me, pointing out the truth that we can't point to or talk about but already know so that's why these words are meaningless.
You know what I'm talking about, I'm sure. I saw it in your smile just now and heard it in your thoughts I can't see. If not, soon enough you'll see it again for the very first time. That's what the truth is all about.
How you interpret the truth is up to you. Don't quote me on that. I'm repeating someone else's words that didn't have any meaning to begin with. Time to stop this blog entry and forget what I just said.
19 November 2009
Anthropomorphosis
A friend of mine told me about a person who put his eccentric showmanship to commercial use and wrote the book, "The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage," a tale of modern technology at work (author's name: Clifford Stoll). The writer also carried his fame into public presentations, accentuating his seemingly exceptionally bizarre behaviour, even in front of so-called stern, straight-laced, top military brass.
Evangelising is not just a quasi-religious style of living. We look up to modern icons because of their ability to evangelise themselves through their strong personalities and/or the strong personalities of those around them (such as family, friends, colleagues, agents, producers, fans and foes alike). As you know, history is really just the retelling of instant fame and fortune in the moment. Doesn't matter if you were famous or infamous, notorious or inglorious, as long as you got noticed.
Some people get fame. Some people get fortunes. Some people get both when they only sought one. Most of us get neither.
Because we are who we are - people, members of one species - we communicate no other way but person-to-person. Can you see that we anthropomorphise everything, then?
I live in the realm of our species. I do not expect to wake up and quack like a duck one day, seeking grass to eat and a pond to paddle across while keeping my eyes out for land and water predators. My innate duty is self-preservation and then preservation of our species. By default, my life is focused on the life of us.
Do we all see that? I don't know. Some people focus on themselves to the exclusion of the rest of the living things on this planet. Some people see us as just one more species on this planet that the universe can give or take.
How do we pay homage to ourselves as bipedal primates and see ourselves as equal to all parts of the universe at the same time? How do I pay attention to my bodily needs, my social desires, the needs/desires of people around me, the needs/desires of people I can't or will never see, the needs/desires of other living things on this planet and the existence of other parts of the universe that don't qualify as living systems?
In other words, I don't seek fame or fortune. I expect to find sufficient food, clothing, shelter and adventures to fill my bodily needs and brain's social desires. In that old, classic psychology description, I have fulfilled my self. In the same vein, I have seen wonders of the universe beyond normal comprehension and thus consider myself self-actualised. I exist on the superficial level of social/civil life and find other levels just as easy to place my existence, if I want to believe they exist (e.g., a swirling set of atoms/molecules like a tornado/hurricane/typhoon that spins up and dies off, unnamed by the universe except by our anthropomorphic habits). I do not understand everything I see but I have reached a state in my life where I trust others who say they do understand what I do not. I have seen the universe for what it is and can let go of my having to have a historical place in it.
I live in the moment. I live in the moment with you. You have needs/desires different than mine. Because my needs/desires are met, I can pick and choose your needs/desires I want to help you meet or achieve.
Thus, I walk the path that others have walked before me. My behaviour may or may not be unique in the moment between us, but ultimately any one of my behaviours is repetitive, either by me or someone before, during or after me. I have reached the state of my life where I want to help others regardless of personal gain in the form of fame or fortune.
A few friends of mine have asked me to help them find a way to be more financially successful than they are right now. I see a path of success for them and their needs/desires. I also see the path is wide enough for others to join. The path contributes to what I see as an idea that integrates preservation of me, my species and the living/nonliving things around us. As one of my friends said, he does not want to wrap his hands around the whole world because such a person stretches too thin and can be easily crushed. Instead, find a small crack and, like a fungus, squeeze in the space and fill it. Blend in with the environment instead of trying to smother it. Grow with the space instead of trying to overwhelm it. You may not seek fame and fortune in the process. If, however, the process is successful for everyone and everything around you, fame and fortune may follow. There's nothing wrong with that. In that case, people will accept your eccentricities and perceived personality quirks - they may even reward you for them!
Never put yourself down for who you are. Congratulate yourself for being the only person in the world who is exactly, accurately, precisely like you all the time. You don't have to be famous or wealthy to be you. Fill your needs and desires - if they match the needs and desires of others, fame and fortune will find you. Take care of you and you take care of your species. Take care of your species and your species will take care of you. Try it and see. I might be right!
My blog may be interesting or boring, correct or wrong, but my blog is me. I believe in who I am and have gotten all the success I've ever wanted. Time to share my success with you. Some day I'll get you circling the Moon on a cruise ship. We get closer to our launch date moment by moment. There goes another moment. Have you booked your ticket yet? Won't be long now!
Evangelising is not just a quasi-religious style of living. We look up to modern icons because of their ability to evangelise themselves through their strong personalities and/or the strong personalities of those around them (such as family, friends, colleagues, agents, producers, fans and foes alike). As you know, history is really just the retelling of instant fame and fortune in the moment. Doesn't matter if you were famous or infamous, notorious or inglorious, as long as you got noticed.
Some people get fame. Some people get fortunes. Some people get both when they only sought one. Most of us get neither.
Because we are who we are - people, members of one species - we communicate no other way but person-to-person. Can you see that we anthropomorphise everything, then?
I live in the realm of our species. I do not expect to wake up and quack like a duck one day, seeking grass to eat and a pond to paddle across while keeping my eyes out for land and water predators. My innate duty is self-preservation and then preservation of our species. By default, my life is focused on the life of us.
Do we all see that? I don't know. Some people focus on themselves to the exclusion of the rest of the living things on this planet. Some people see us as just one more species on this planet that the universe can give or take.
How do we pay homage to ourselves as bipedal primates and see ourselves as equal to all parts of the universe at the same time? How do I pay attention to my bodily needs, my social desires, the needs/desires of people around me, the needs/desires of people I can't or will never see, the needs/desires of other living things on this planet and the existence of other parts of the universe that don't qualify as living systems?
In other words, I don't seek fame or fortune. I expect to find sufficient food, clothing, shelter and adventures to fill my bodily needs and brain's social desires. In that old, classic psychology description, I have fulfilled my self. In the same vein, I have seen wonders of the universe beyond normal comprehension and thus consider myself self-actualised. I exist on the superficial level of social/civil life and find other levels just as easy to place my existence, if I want to believe they exist (e.g., a swirling set of atoms/molecules like a tornado/hurricane/typhoon that spins up and dies off, unnamed by the universe except by our anthropomorphic habits). I do not understand everything I see but I have reached a state in my life where I trust others who say they do understand what I do not. I have seen the universe for what it is and can let go of my having to have a historical place in it.
I live in the moment. I live in the moment with you. You have needs/desires different than mine. Because my needs/desires are met, I can pick and choose your needs/desires I want to help you meet or achieve.
Thus, I walk the path that others have walked before me. My behaviour may or may not be unique in the moment between us, but ultimately any one of my behaviours is repetitive, either by me or someone before, during or after me. I have reached the state of my life where I want to help others regardless of personal gain in the form of fame or fortune.
A few friends of mine have asked me to help them find a way to be more financially successful than they are right now. I see a path of success for them and their needs/desires. I also see the path is wide enough for others to join. The path contributes to what I see as an idea that integrates preservation of me, my species and the living/nonliving things around us. As one of my friends said, he does not want to wrap his hands around the whole world because such a person stretches too thin and can be easily crushed. Instead, find a small crack and, like a fungus, squeeze in the space and fill it. Blend in with the environment instead of trying to smother it. Grow with the space instead of trying to overwhelm it. You may not seek fame and fortune in the process. If, however, the process is successful for everyone and everything around you, fame and fortune may follow. There's nothing wrong with that. In that case, people will accept your eccentricities and perceived personality quirks - they may even reward you for them!
Never put yourself down for who you are. Congratulate yourself for being the only person in the world who is exactly, accurately, precisely like you all the time. You don't have to be famous or wealthy to be you. Fill your needs and desires - if they match the needs and desires of others, fame and fortune will find you. Take care of you and you take care of your species. Take care of your species and your species will take care of you. Try it and see. I might be right!
My blog may be interesting or boring, correct or wrong, but my blog is me. I believe in who I am and have gotten all the success I've ever wanted. Time to share my success with you. Some day I'll get you circling the Moon on a cruise ship. We get closer to our launch date moment by moment. There goes another moment. Have you booked your ticket yet? Won't be long now!
11 November 2009
Jamocha Tapioca Pudding from Jamaica
What is beauty? A word. An idea. Mixing Debussy and Grand Master Flash over one another, a dove on a branch outside more concerned about keeping warm than keeping the beat. Does it ever seem odd to you that we'd give atmospheric phenomena personal names?
Young people today, with relatively high unemployment, have a world of possibilities ahead of them. Someone coined the phrase that it's easier to get into Harvard than to get a job. Yet, what's a job? Painting eyes on a plastic doll to be shipped to the other side of the world for holiday gift-giving? Cooking and mashing beans to put inside a rolled-up tortilla? Looking at photos and deciding how to set the fashion industry abuzz with your new accessory arrangement? Designing software applications for people to socialise online?
Friends of mine, from Frances to Estella, from Charline to Gary, use their waking hours for socialising, being productive the way they want to be known, some in conventional jobs and some not.
We are beautiful. We have jobs: we are ourselves. We define ourselves by how we act and react.
When we are raised to believe that working and consuming are our primary purposes for being, we set ourselves up for disappointment when those tasks are nearly impossible to achieve. A new friend of mine, Earle B., has lived a long, happy life not by defining who he is by what he consumes but by being there to support others who search for who they are to be.
Of course, we want to eat. We want to have safety and shelter. We are fascinated by new colours and sounds. We are driven to increase our self-worth by comparing ourselves to others in a social environment.
A whole generation experiencing unemployment levels of the Great Depression. An experiment at the ready. A chance to redefine the goals of our ecumenopolis. Someone said we can't just start over, we have too much invested in the current system. I wonder...
I fall in love with everyone I meet. I see the life within every person just wanting to scream and shout and enjoy life to the fullest, life a definition with no clear definition. In viewing that reaching out for life, I see what life has been for every person. History that will rarely find its way into the history books.
I know that life is not fair. Life rarely gives us a treat for very long, with pits inside peaches and sunburns in tropical paradises. But we know that already, unless we get carried away from our balanced view of life. Perspective makes us speculate and listen to speculators selling spectacular spectacles. Placebo pills that'll cure every ill. Instant gratification consumables that'll last forever. Blah, blah, blah. Blah. Bland when consumed over and over for too long, right?
Can we reset our pace to enjoy the pastoral life? Can the pastoral life give food, safety, shelter and sufficient enjoyment to seven billion of us?
In this moment, this break from the recent past of increased consumption, can we think outside this box, this internetworked world, and find viable solutions that cut off the tops and bottoms of the highs and lows of economic boom and bust cycles? Okay, look, I know we don't live in a fantasy world where leprechauns have pots of golds hidden at the end of every passing thunderstorm that'll get us out of this economic slump, international stimulus fund efforts to the contrary. But we can reset our expectations, can we not?
I am the children of migrants. My family has migrated from one place to another for generations, never settling down on one plot of land for very long. I have read about, researched and watched the effects of migration on our ecumenopolis. We call it world history, do we not? We are a wandering people, our species producing too many offspring to take care of the same place over and over so we tend to spread out.
Our numbers increase. Our population grows bigger. Older people live longer and younger people die less frequently. Prosperity has brought us medical marvels and clean drinking water in many places.
In our grasp is the definition of what success means to the generation that's coming into its own, just behind mine. My generation, the Me generation, the backside of the baby boomers, holds the key to the secret to life hidden in a box. We unlocked and have looked inside the box, slowly comprehending the meaning of life, our views vastly transformed by the discovery of success that transcends material wealth. We know we are the keepers of ourselves a thousand generations from now. We want to hold the key a bit longer because the power of knowledge is too vast, we think, to give to others. But time marches on. We will give the key to the keepers of ourselves 999 generations from now.
My sister and I talked on the phone last night. We tried to recall our views of life in the early 1980s when we were stepping out from our protected secondary school years into the world of relatively high unemployment in a prosperous capitalist-market based society. My sister worked at McDonald's. I worked at Montgomery Ward. We both attended university. We remember being told that we should be thankful we had jobs in the 1981/1982 economic slump, with teachers having to work at McDonald's and PhDs pumping gas once again.
What is beauty? It's Rihanna and Taylor Swift singing a duet in a movie starring Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. Beauty is musical, its rhythm set to our heartbeats and our thought patterns. We don't need jobs to be beautiful. We let our beauty shine and our lives unfold as if by magic, revealing ways to prosper we'd never imagined.
How do we emulate the pastoral life of balance with the land on which we live, seasonal, cyclical, sprinkling manure to grow food, fallowing one field while increasing the productivity of another, sharing the harvest effectively and fairly, migrants feeding migrants, taking turns tending the soil, generation-to-generation and intergenerational, knowing we'll always have those who think they live in a novel like Animal Farm or Lord of the Flies, greed a matter of degrees, sometimes too hot and sometimes too cold, and yes, can you believe it, sometimes just right?
We listen to ourselves. We see the beauty within and let it out. We let ourselves fall in love with each other's beauty. We see we live on the only planet we've got right now, a giant pastoral farm, if you will. We can't trade it in for a new model, or move wholescale to a new one. We see our imperfections and lean on each other during lean times. We share our flats with friends out of work, and when we're out of work we help clean and cook for our friends whose flats we share. We redefine prosperity and remember that truth is beauty. And then we go from there.
Young people today, with relatively high unemployment, have a world of possibilities ahead of them. Someone coined the phrase that it's easier to get into Harvard than to get a job. Yet, what's a job? Painting eyes on a plastic doll to be shipped to the other side of the world for holiday gift-giving? Cooking and mashing beans to put inside a rolled-up tortilla? Looking at photos and deciding how to set the fashion industry abuzz with your new accessory arrangement? Designing software applications for people to socialise online?
Friends of mine, from Frances to Estella, from Charline to Gary, use their waking hours for socialising, being productive the way they want to be known, some in conventional jobs and some not.
We are beautiful. We have jobs: we are ourselves. We define ourselves by how we act and react.
When we are raised to believe that working and consuming are our primary purposes for being, we set ourselves up for disappointment when those tasks are nearly impossible to achieve. A new friend of mine, Earle B., has lived a long, happy life not by defining who he is by what he consumes but by being there to support others who search for who they are to be.
Of course, we want to eat. We want to have safety and shelter. We are fascinated by new colours and sounds. We are driven to increase our self-worth by comparing ourselves to others in a social environment.
A whole generation experiencing unemployment levels of the Great Depression. An experiment at the ready. A chance to redefine the goals of our ecumenopolis. Someone said we can't just start over, we have too much invested in the current system. I wonder...
I fall in love with everyone I meet. I see the life within every person just wanting to scream and shout and enjoy life to the fullest, life a definition with no clear definition. In viewing that reaching out for life, I see what life has been for every person. History that will rarely find its way into the history books.
I know that life is not fair. Life rarely gives us a treat for very long, with pits inside peaches and sunburns in tropical paradises. But we know that already, unless we get carried away from our balanced view of life. Perspective makes us speculate and listen to speculators selling spectacular spectacles. Placebo pills that'll cure every ill. Instant gratification consumables that'll last forever. Blah, blah, blah. Blah. Bland when consumed over and over for too long, right?
Can we reset our pace to enjoy the pastoral life? Can the pastoral life give food, safety, shelter and sufficient enjoyment to seven billion of us?
In this moment, this break from the recent past of increased consumption, can we think outside this box, this internetworked world, and find viable solutions that cut off the tops and bottoms of the highs and lows of economic boom and bust cycles? Okay, look, I know we don't live in a fantasy world where leprechauns have pots of golds hidden at the end of every passing thunderstorm that'll get us out of this economic slump, international stimulus fund efforts to the contrary. But we can reset our expectations, can we not?
I am the children of migrants. My family has migrated from one place to another for generations, never settling down on one plot of land for very long. I have read about, researched and watched the effects of migration on our ecumenopolis. We call it world history, do we not? We are a wandering people, our species producing too many offspring to take care of the same place over and over so we tend to spread out.
Our numbers increase. Our population grows bigger. Older people live longer and younger people die less frequently. Prosperity has brought us medical marvels and clean drinking water in many places.
In our grasp is the definition of what success means to the generation that's coming into its own, just behind mine. My generation, the Me generation, the backside of the baby boomers, holds the key to the secret to life hidden in a box. We unlocked and have looked inside the box, slowly comprehending the meaning of life, our views vastly transformed by the discovery of success that transcends material wealth. We know we are the keepers of ourselves a thousand generations from now. We want to hold the key a bit longer because the power of knowledge is too vast, we think, to give to others. But time marches on. We will give the key to the keepers of ourselves 999 generations from now.
My sister and I talked on the phone last night. We tried to recall our views of life in the early 1980s when we were stepping out from our protected secondary school years into the world of relatively high unemployment in a prosperous capitalist-market based society. My sister worked at McDonald's. I worked at Montgomery Ward. We both attended university. We remember being told that we should be thankful we had jobs in the 1981/1982 economic slump, with teachers having to work at McDonald's and PhDs pumping gas once again.
What is beauty? It's Rihanna and Taylor Swift singing a duet in a movie starring Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. Beauty is musical, its rhythm set to our heartbeats and our thought patterns. We don't need jobs to be beautiful. We let our beauty shine and our lives unfold as if by magic, revealing ways to prosper we'd never imagined.
How do we emulate the pastoral life of balance with the land on which we live, seasonal, cyclical, sprinkling manure to grow food, fallowing one field while increasing the productivity of another, sharing the harvest effectively and fairly, migrants feeding migrants, taking turns tending the soil, generation-to-generation and intergenerational, knowing we'll always have those who think they live in a novel like Animal Farm or Lord of the Flies, greed a matter of degrees, sometimes too hot and sometimes too cold, and yes, can you believe it, sometimes just right?
We listen to ourselves. We see the beauty within and let it out. We let ourselves fall in love with each other's beauty. We see we live on the only planet we've got right now, a giant pastoral farm, if you will. We can't trade it in for a new model, or move wholescale to a new one. We see our imperfections and lean on each other during lean times. We share our flats with friends out of work, and when we're out of work we help clean and cook for our friends whose flats we share. We redefine prosperity and remember that truth is beauty. And then we go from there.
09 November 2009
Warm Weather Wren
Maple leaves the colour of bananas. A wren a few feet from my head building a nest in the garage. Tree limbs trimmed to a uniform height as if by deer.
Linear thinking. Imagining a product design while walking to the other side of the box, hidden in the box walls' shadows. Feature creep. Perfecting the design.
Sweeping the driveway of dry leaves, fingers of a hurricane not too far away. Not too far? As opposed to what? Compared to whom?
An unknown bird, like a large black swallow, a few trees away from a redheaded woodpecker. My version of twitter much more appealing - titmouse tweets.
Sitting in Big River last night, using a beer coaster to play with their logo - "Rib Giver, Grilling and Brewing Workers Since 1994" - Vanessa and her CV in play. Five years to settle a car smashup lawsuit. Had to repeat her ten-grand vacation (i.e., finishing her college degree in the second round). More of a college veteran than a college alumna. Decided life in the cubicle next to those having heart attacks was not the last view of life she wanted to have. I'm there with you, sister. You've got what it takes to see life outside the box. But more on that later...
Overheard conversations on the weekend:
Sentences outside of metronomic rhythms. Inside the box. Thinking... nonalliteratively. Iteratively.
We know the politics of dancing. We see the slate of our dance cards. We scan the dance floor for partners even if we don't dance. Chickadees and finches sharing the same trees. Us sharing the same roads.
Creative thinking is not thinking creatively. Discovering fire is not inventing the fireplace.
Leaves falling in bunches like bananas. Leaves the colour of...what? Not red. Not orange. Not peach. Not salmon. Not, not, not! The opposite of not what? Burnt orange? Close. Light rust? Maybe. A colour repeated over and over, fall to fall to fall.
How many times have I been "bitten" by a mosquito, tick or spider and turned into an agar-filled petri dish for bloody parasites?
How many times have I seen the solution to one problem while contemplating a problem somewhere else? Why do people not write poems and odes to poison ivy leaves in fall?
Business consultants should work, at least partly, on commission, their "guaranteed solutions" dependent on their customers' success. Politicians should not be financially rewarded for seeking or achieving election, their income dependent on society's success, success a matter of public whim.
The sound of squirrels chasing each other through the leaves. The click of a mimosa leaf falling apart when it hits the ground. My belly sticking out from typing too much and not exercising enough.
Holding a chunk of agate and seeing the volcanic history of our land. Knowing at once what you see through your eyes as I see what you see with my thoughts. History is not the formation and the reformation of political entities. History is outside our time. Being a millionaire or billionaire (by dollar standards) is nothing. Being a potentate or president is temporary and forgotten in another era. Knowing, in full conscious action, that what you do is all you've got, robber baron, monopoly winner or factory worker.
A chipmunk at my feet, being chased by another. More unknown birds migrating nearby. If you aren't successful right now in this very moment, you're never successful, no matter what you say or what or who you say you own.
Vanessa got my business attention because she sees life with no box. She is alive in the moment. She sells without selling because she gives without receiving and gets back more than she can repay. A provincial life is providential when one moves in deliberate steps unknowingly. Monica taught me that. Ann-Marie is reteaching me. Babli is teaching me anew. Julia and Jennifer use poetry and thankfulness to express the same thought. JJ keeps my moral compass pointed at a right angle because solutions are rarely straight ahead.
What is the wasp digging into the leaves beside me for?
I just gave you the solution to a problem. It's not a riddle. There's no rhyme or reason. You hold it in your hand when you hold out your palm. The squirrel and the chipmunk and the wasp and woodpecker already know what's going on.
We want the housecat to think inside the box within the box. How many of us are housecats thinking we're mustangs? A maverick with a saddle or tethered to a carriage? How many of us are headed to the glue factory before we ever started our lives?
We don't live in a box. We live on the outside of a teetering sphere. Teetotaling and totaling tees. I'm successful because of you. I'm successful in this moment because we can think outside of the realm of influence that ties us down. Providing solutions rather than adding to problems.
Of course, we do whatever we want to do, comfort zone or demilitarised zone. Freedom is what the moment is all about. Freedom to be and free to be with others as we please. I freely choose to spend my free time with you. Wanna be free with me? You already are. You're you. See you when you see me.
Linear thinking. Imagining a product design while walking to the other side of the box, hidden in the box walls' shadows. Feature creep. Perfecting the design.
Sweeping the driveway of dry leaves, fingers of a hurricane not too far away. Not too far? As opposed to what? Compared to whom?
An unknown bird, like a large black swallow, a few trees away from a redheaded woodpecker. My version of twitter much more appealing - titmouse tweets.
Sitting in Big River last night, using a beer coaster to play with their logo - "Rib Giver, Grilling and Brewing Workers Since 1994" - Vanessa and her CV in play. Five years to settle a car smashup lawsuit. Had to repeat her ten-grand vacation (i.e., finishing her college degree in the second round). More of a college veteran than a college alumna. Decided life in the cubicle next to those having heart attacks was not the last view of life she wanted to have. I'm there with you, sister. You've got what it takes to see life outside the box. But more on that later...
Overheard conversations on the weekend:
- A group of folks faking a conversation about who had spent more time in jail
- A young woman deciding to completely change her MySpace page
- A young man who eats Krispy Kreme doughnuts in two big bites
- A homeless man bumming money from bar patrons in order to buy a beer but refused service because of his patron-bugging habits
- A set of Firestones and nice rims in hell instead of hellfire and brimstone - a comic street preacher
Sentences outside of metronomic rhythms. Inside the box. Thinking... nonalliteratively. Iteratively.
We know the politics of dancing. We see the slate of our dance cards. We scan the dance floor for partners even if we don't dance. Chickadees and finches sharing the same trees. Us sharing the same roads.
Creative thinking is not thinking creatively. Discovering fire is not inventing the fireplace.
Leaves falling in bunches like bananas. Leaves the colour of...what? Not red. Not orange. Not peach. Not salmon. Not, not, not! The opposite of not what? Burnt orange? Close. Light rust? Maybe. A colour repeated over and over, fall to fall to fall.
How many times have I been "bitten" by a mosquito, tick or spider and turned into an agar-filled petri dish for bloody parasites?
How many times have I seen the solution to one problem while contemplating a problem somewhere else? Why do people not write poems and odes to poison ivy leaves in fall?
Business consultants should work, at least partly, on commission, their "guaranteed solutions" dependent on their customers' success. Politicians should not be financially rewarded for seeking or achieving election, their income dependent on society's success, success a matter of public whim.
The sound of squirrels chasing each other through the leaves. The click of a mimosa leaf falling apart when it hits the ground. My belly sticking out from typing too much and not exercising enough.
Holding a chunk of agate and seeing the volcanic history of our land. Knowing at once what you see through your eyes as I see what you see with my thoughts. History is not the formation and the reformation of political entities. History is outside our time. Being a millionaire or billionaire (by dollar standards) is nothing. Being a potentate or president is temporary and forgotten in another era. Knowing, in full conscious action, that what you do is all you've got, robber baron, monopoly winner or factory worker.
A chipmunk at my feet, being chased by another. More unknown birds migrating nearby. If you aren't successful right now in this very moment, you're never successful, no matter what you say or what or who you say you own.
Vanessa got my business attention because she sees life with no box. She is alive in the moment. She sells without selling because she gives without receiving and gets back more than she can repay. A provincial life is providential when one moves in deliberate steps unknowingly. Monica taught me that. Ann-Marie is reteaching me. Babli is teaching me anew. Julia and Jennifer use poetry and thankfulness to express the same thought. JJ keeps my moral compass pointed at a right angle because solutions are rarely straight ahead.
What is the wasp digging into the leaves beside me for?
I just gave you the solution to a problem. It's not a riddle. There's no rhyme or reason. You hold it in your hand when you hold out your palm. The squirrel and the chipmunk and the wasp and woodpecker already know what's going on.
We want the housecat to think inside the box within the box. How many of us are housecats thinking we're mustangs? A maverick with a saddle or tethered to a carriage? How many of us are headed to the glue factory before we ever started our lives?
We don't live in a box. We live on the outside of a teetering sphere. Teetotaling and totaling tees. I'm successful because of you. I'm successful in this moment because we can think outside of the realm of influence that ties us down. Providing solutions rather than adding to problems.
Of course, we do whatever we want to do, comfort zone or demilitarised zone. Freedom is what the moment is all about. Freedom to be and free to be with others as we please. I freely choose to spend my free time with you. Wanna be free with me? You already are. You're you. See you when you see me.
31 October 2009
When Latin Ruled The World
A blimp of a change, the inclusion of other language character sets for addresses/destinations in virtual space on electronic computing systems. Can you convert your keyboard quickly enough to jump between domains? Can you read what you're typing? Can we stay connected with one another despite language barriers?
I watched the blades of a ceiling fan for hours in the dark hours of the early morning, patterns emerging and disappearing, looking at tangents, seeing the near perfect circle drawn in the air, rapidly blinking my eyelids to see snapshots of the fan in motion. I heard the pattern, the pitter-patter, of words in my thoughts. I couldn't believe I used the phrase "inner being" in a recent blog post.
I got up and wrote in my pocket moleskine:
We separate ourselves into age categories for many reasons. Pediatrics. Geriatrics. However, learning is a lifelong process. Should we have mandatory mass education for people of a certain age anymore? Should we develop a new system of learning, where the student and the teacher are the same, on the job and in the classroom at the same time, solving problems and managing projects with others regardless of age?
Alternative education is a hot topic right now as many public schools face the issues of failing to provide sustainable skills to youth. As a person who grew up in the public school system, whose family was/is/will be intimately involved in the public education process, I wonder what increased value I would have received had society used a different model to turn me into a useful interdependent being.
I look at the teachers who meant the most to me and remember them for their encouragement to see life outside the textbook and classroom.
I look at the friends with whom I congregated and realize we tend to gather in herds of like personalities. The teachers/administrators/coaches who encouraged us to socialize outside our herds were the ones who impressed me most.
I recently decided to leave my role as an instructor in the adult education system as exemplified by the for-profit model I worked for because I believe that education is integral to the workplace. I always paid my employees to learn on the job, using cross-training to encourage my employees to learn what their coworkers were doing. People shouldn't pay to get an education. We should pay people to solve problems and guide them, education being part of the solution, not part of their problem repaying debt.
I ought to know. I learned just as much, if not more, spending time with my friends experimenting with breadboards and diodes and homemade power supplies in our basements and bedrooms than I did in formal education settings. I learned more about my physical capabilities playing street ball and backyard football than in little leagues. I was a Vikings, Dolphins, Redskins, Falcons, Cubs, Reds, Braves, Hawks and Volunteers fan long before I knew about dangling modifiers or differential equations. I read Mad magazine as much as I read classical literature. I fought with my friends and verbally sparred with adults.
I have more to think about this education situation as faced by developed nations and developing nations. I believe it's tied to healthcare. Essentially any universal service, those which we consider the rights of our species, should be integral to what we do everyday. Physical and mental training is who we are.
No solution is perfect. The solutions we have do good jobs. I know that business concepts like process improvement are no panacea but they provide examples with which to soak in a pot of spaghetti noodles, pull out and throw at the dartboard to see if they stick to the bullseye. Mixed metaphors are useful sometimes, too.
More as the film develops color distortions in the rusting canister. I want to stew on what matters to me most, building a team of people who thrive on constant learning, no matter what their innate capabilities may be. Nothing in life is guaranteed. I want people around me who want more than an insurance policy to protect them from catastrophe - I want people who find solutions to problems before they exist.
I watched the blades of a ceiling fan for hours in the dark hours of the early morning, patterns emerging and disappearing, looking at tangents, seeing the near perfect circle drawn in the air, rapidly blinking my eyelids to see snapshots of the fan in motion. I heard the pattern, the pitter-patter, of words in my thoughts. I couldn't believe I used the phrase "inner being" in a recent blog post.
I got up and wrote in my pocket moleskine:
What bothers me about the business of education, the business of healthcare, the business of business, for that matter, and our seeing life in terms of economic conditions like democratic capitalism or communist socialism (or is it socialist communism? I can never remember) is this:I happily stared at the ceiling fan thinking about this. I have thought about this issue for many years, especially as a person managing others in an office work environment or as a worker in the sewer business. As a person making lunch at Taco Bell, looking at the adults beside me and asking, "Is this what 12 years of public education gives back to society?"
Life is not working for a living. Life is getting paid to learn, to earn our way to self-actualisation, market viability of our inviolable right to live.
Are we looking at the wrong paradigm for educating ourselves? Should children be taught problem solving skills from the very beginning, encouraging them to seek out alphabets and number systems through cooperation with each other to figure out how to give/get food, clothing, shelter and other social goods/services?
We separate ourselves into age categories for many reasons. Pediatrics. Geriatrics. However, learning is a lifelong process. Should we have mandatory mass education for people of a certain age anymore? Should we develop a new system of learning, where the student and the teacher are the same, on the job and in the classroom at the same time, solving problems and managing projects with others regardless of age?
Alternative education is a hot topic right now as many public schools face the issues of failing to provide sustainable skills to youth. As a person who grew up in the public school system, whose family was/is/will be intimately involved in the public education process, I wonder what increased value I would have received had society used a different model to turn me into a useful interdependent being.
I look at the teachers who meant the most to me and remember them for their encouragement to see life outside the textbook and classroom.
I look at the friends with whom I congregated and realize we tend to gather in herds of like personalities. The teachers/administrators/coaches who encouraged us to socialize outside our herds were the ones who impressed me most.
I recently decided to leave my role as an instructor in the adult education system as exemplified by the for-profit model I worked for because I believe that education is integral to the workplace. I always paid my employees to learn on the job, using cross-training to encourage my employees to learn what their coworkers were doing. People shouldn't pay to get an education. We should pay people to solve problems and guide them, education being part of the solution, not part of their problem repaying debt.
I ought to know. I learned just as much, if not more, spending time with my friends experimenting with breadboards and diodes and homemade power supplies in our basements and bedrooms than I did in formal education settings. I learned more about my physical capabilities playing street ball and backyard football than in little leagues. I was a Vikings, Dolphins, Redskins, Falcons, Cubs, Reds, Braves, Hawks and Volunteers fan long before I knew about dangling modifiers or differential equations. I read Mad magazine as much as I read classical literature. I fought with my friends and verbally sparred with adults.
I have more to think about this education situation as faced by developed nations and developing nations. I believe it's tied to healthcare. Essentially any universal service, those which we consider the rights of our species, should be integral to what we do everyday. Physical and mental training is who we are.
No solution is perfect. The solutions we have do good jobs. I know that business concepts like process improvement are no panacea but they provide examples with which to soak in a pot of spaghetti noodles, pull out and throw at the dartboard to see if they stick to the bullseye. Mixed metaphors are useful sometimes, too.
More as the film develops color distortions in the rusting canister. I want to stew on what matters to me most, building a team of people who thrive on constant learning, no matter what their innate capabilities may be. Nothing in life is guaranteed. I want people around me who want more than an insurance policy to protect them from catastrophe - I want people who find solutions to problems before they exist.
28 October 2009
Link O' The Day
What do we do with what we know and how do we apply resources effectively?:
http://www.good.is/post/how-might-we-measure-what%e2%80%99s-most-meaningful/
http://www.good.is/post/how-might-we-measure-what%e2%80%99s-most-meaningful/
26 October 2009
Fall: Between Yellow and Brown
Outside the window, sunlight and shadows form a crisscross pattern on a yellow redbud leaf full of holes. Brown leaves fall to the ground in a timed dance, flipping and spinning toward Earth's core, stopped by the woven vines and roots that feed off of last year's crop of tree leaves, dust and other former living material.
An invisible breeze passes through, indicated by waving branches.
The cycles of this patch of planet vary but repeat, tied to the tilt, spin and rotation around the Sun.
I cannot tell you if there is a Who or who, Them or them tied to the creation of this planet and its inhabitants. That is for you to know and believe. I wander aimlessly, my body what it is, what it was and what it might be. I support those who support others but I seek no support for myself. I observe and report, tied to my nurture and nature, no matter what else you know and believe I might be tied to.
Your belief is wonderful. Your happiness shows on your face and in the joy you share with others. Your gifts are not just self-sacrificing, they're life-enhancing. I've tried to be you but my vanity and my vices get in the way. That's why I support what you do, believing the world of our species is better served by you than by me.
I'm a crotchety old fool, fooled by his folly. You are the salt of the earth and the honey of the beehive. I'm a beer drinker and sports enthusiast who cusses like a sailor when he's angry. I seek resolutions that will make our species more successful - sometimes a resolution requires "adjustments" that make me uncomfortable in the moment but I look at the big picture and try to shake off what I know I just approved to be done that I don't like. I don't seek forgiveness or acceptance of my actions. I accept what has to be done that will get happiness later on.
The leaves on the tree outside the window...some of them still have shades of green but yellow and brown are the dominant theme now, here in late October in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere of this planet.
I happily sing songs from my childhood spent in summer camps and youth retreats. I enjoyed my time in the choir, singing four-part harmony, trying my best to stay in tune before tinnitus took away my ability to hear myself sing in a group. I'm a middle-aged guy now, subject to chronic aches and pains I didn't know when I was younger except when I played sports and took a few days to heal from wounds. Happiness is knowing the aches and pains and my off-key singing mean I'm alive.
I admire those who adhere to religious practices, no matter what you say in prayers. I understand what you seek but I do not ask myself for the same. I respect one sacrosanct ceremony - the wedding vow - and seek only the same of others. My wife is my angel, my saint, my partner, my companion, my eternal joy. Everything else that I do and think relates to that one belief, monogamy. Others have different ways to celebrate monogamy, different rules, different beliefs. My sight is limited - I do not know what is right or wrong and will not judge others' behaviour, no matter what I personally feel about their practices.
I celebrate me. I celebrate you. Life is the key to living. Our planet is tiny, tiny, tiny. We forget sometimes how small our world is because we live in isolated pockets most of our lives and think the world must be gigantic in comparison.
I am just one person but we are seven billion strong. The more we focus on our strengths the less we have to let our weaknesses get in our way.
What is one leaf worth? It can become food for plants, or warmth and shelter for a gray squirrel's nest. In a few weeks, the leaf in front of me will be gone. The bare branch of the redbud tree in winter will face me for a few months, its seedpods hanging until Earth's axis points the Northern Hemisphere toward the Sun again, bringing out new redbud blooms and fresh seedpods.
Happiness is being at peace with myself. Peace is knowing you have found the life you seek. Let me share my life with you from here, knowing you're sharing your life with others in more direct ways in the moment, no matter whether you're in a church, temple, synagogue, mosque or other formal religious gathering place.
An invisible breeze passes through, indicated by waving branches.
The cycles of this patch of planet vary but repeat, tied to the tilt, spin and rotation around the Sun.
I cannot tell you if there is a Who or who, Them or them tied to the creation of this planet and its inhabitants. That is for you to know and believe. I wander aimlessly, my body what it is, what it was and what it might be. I support those who support others but I seek no support for myself. I observe and report, tied to my nurture and nature, no matter what else you know and believe I might be tied to.
Your belief is wonderful. Your happiness shows on your face and in the joy you share with others. Your gifts are not just self-sacrificing, they're life-enhancing. I've tried to be you but my vanity and my vices get in the way. That's why I support what you do, believing the world of our species is better served by you than by me.
I'm a crotchety old fool, fooled by his folly. You are the salt of the earth and the honey of the beehive. I'm a beer drinker and sports enthusiast who cusses like a sailor when he's angry. I seek resolutions that will make our species more successful - sometimes a resolution requires "adjustments" that make me uncomfortable in the moment but I look at the big picture and try to shake off what I know I just approved to be done that I don't like. I don't seek forgiveness or acceptance of my actions. I accept what has to be done that will get happiness later on.
The leaves on the tree outside the window...some of them still have shades of green but yellow and brown are the dominant theme now, here in late October in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere of this planet.
I happily sing songs from my childhood spent in summer camps and youth retreats. I enjoyed my time in the choir, singing four-part harmony, trying my best to stay in tune before tinnitus took away my ability to hear myself sing in a group. I'm a middle-aged guy now, subject to chronic aches and pains I didn't know when I was younger except when I played sports and took a few days to heal from wounds. Happiness is knowing the aches and pains and my off-key singing mean I'm alive.
I admire those who adhere to religious practices, no matter what you say in prayers. I understand what you seek but I do not ask myself for the same. I respect one sacrosanct ceremony - the wedding vow - and seek only the same of others. My wife is my angel, my saint, my partner, my companion, my eternal joy. Everything else that I do and think relates to that one belief, monogamy. Others have different ways to celebrate monogamy, different rules, different beliefs. My sight is limited - I do not know what is right or wrong and will not judge others' behaviour, no matter what I personally feel about their practices.
I celebrate me. I celebrate you. Life is the key to living. Our planet is tiny, tiny, tiny. We forget sometimes how small our world is because we live in isolated pockets most of our lives and think the world must be gigantic in comparison.
I am just one person but we are seven billion strong. The more we focus on our strengths the less we have to let our weaknesses get in our way.
What is one leaf worth? It can become food for plants, or warmth and shelter for a gray squirrel's nest. In a few weeks, the leaf in front of me will be gone. The bare branch of the redbud tree in winter will face me for a few months, its seedpods hanging until Earth's axis points the Northern Hemisphere toward the Sun again, bringing out new redbud blooms and fresh seedpods.
Happiness is being at peace with myself. Peace is knowing you have found the life you seek. Let me share my life with you from here, knowing you're sharing your life with others in more direct ways in the moment, no matter whether you're in a church, temple, synagogue, mosque or other formal religious gathering place.
24 October 2009
Style Points
In a dream last night...
Last night, a dream, in...
A last night, dreamin'...
I spin the tiny rock in my hands and remember the theme park song about the size of this planet. Rubicon. Rubik's cube. Pros and cons. Political debate. The click and tock of phonemes.
The first grunts. The expanding vocabularies of sights and sounds. Who gets to name the object in front of us? Whose vocal utterings are the official mental lists? Why do we keep breaking down the image in front of us into smaller chunks?
We aim to please, our precision and accuracy like archery class. The more we seek unity, the more we find disparity.
The rock has no boundaries, just a continuous spherical surface, smoother than a billiard ball. But no one cares about those comparisons.
We want more descriptive details. We want delineation. We want categories.
Big government rolls down a hill, gathering no moss and crushing tiny stones, smoothing all in its path. Plurality has a single personality.
The issue at hand, what to do with artificial boundaries, issues proclamations to protect the right of sovereignty to govern others.
We watched tribes grow to the size of municipalities and feudal lords into kings and queens. We watched monarchy give way to democracy and communism. We'll watch the ecumenopolis turn democracy and communism into...?
I had a dream last night. Dreams are what they are, my brain with little external stimuli to play with. In my dream, I walked around a theme park with a former classmate of mine. We met other former classmates and eventually lost track of our current families, just the two of us walking through the park, looking for a way to get to the other side, finding a tram to take us up and over. I had other dreams, too. I value my dreams for their insight into my personality and the changes I seek to make my days more eventful and fulfilling. But my dreams are not secret visions or gifts from the other side. They are the result of my earlier interaction with the environment and lack thereof in the moment.
I am one person watching all of you, interacting with many nearby. Like the kids who walked into my yard to find a lost cat. Or the woman who wants my wife and me to attend local weekly religious services.
Local, regional, global. I have opinions and dreams about what to do with perceived conflict between the regional factions in Afghanistan. But I don't have a clear picture. Do we declare groups in the area VNSAs (violent non-state actors) or belligerent forces? Do encounters with FARC, the Red Brigades, the IRA and other fighting forces teach us valuable lessons to apply in the Afghan hills and Indus valley? What is the definition of a benevolent government and is there such a thing in existence? Does unity or disparity make better diplomatic policy in situations like this?
In Britain, a separatist got major airtime to talk about insular views. Is there a place for British separatists and Afghan separatists? Should there be? If the planet knows no bounds, should we recognize others' desires for homelands? If separation is granted, should international support be taken away?
In becoming an ecumenopolis, we face the question of who we are. Are we one species and two genders? Are we one species with multiple cultures but not necessarily multicultural, or a little of both? I don't have the right answers. I have opinions and dreams. I depend on my fellow members of our species to come up with a variety of answers, situational and timely, to solve problems iteratively because we're perpetually changing.
Change is constant. Change is pain and joy. Thus, we face constant pain and joy. Easy? Never. Eventful? A most resounding "YES!" We can see square pegs and round holes. We can pound a screw with a hammer. The choices are many. The solutions are few.
You can choose where you want to live. Your life is now subject to international scrutiny. Can you live a separatist life that is acceptable in an ecumenopolis? Absolutely. The right of a member of our species to perpetuate a subculture is guaranteed at birth. How hard you're willing to fight to protect your subculture against those who want to be where you live is up to you, not me. Cooperation and coordination 'midst competition - that's where I'll meet you and see if your subculture is worth promoting on the international stage. As always, we don't have to like each other, just agree that we're one species. The rest of our lives are opinions and dreams to do with as we see fit.
Last night, a dream, in...
A last night, dreamin'...
I spin the tiny rock in my hands and remember the theme park song about the size of this planet. Rubicon. Rubik's cube. Pros and cons. Political debate. The click and tock of phonemes.
The first grunts. The expanding vocabularies of sights and sounds. Who gets to name the object in front of us? Whose vocal utterings are the official mental lists? Why do we keep breaking down the image in front of us into smaller chunks?
We aim to please, our precision and accuracy like archery class. The more we seek unity, the more we find disparity.
The rock has no boundaries, just a continuous spherical surface, smoother than a billiard ball. But no one cares about those comparisons.
We want more descriptive details. We want delineation. We want categories.
Big government rolls down a hill, gathering no moss and crushing tiny stones, smoothing all in its path. Plurality has a single personality.
The issue at hand, what to do with artificial boundaries, issues proclamations to protect the right of sovereignty to govern others.
We watched tribes grow to the size of municipalities and feudal lords into kings and queens. We watched monarchy give way to democracy and communism. We'll watch the ecumenopolis turn democracy and communism into...?
I had a dream last night. Dreams are what they are, my brain with little external stimuli to play with. In my dream, I walked around a theme park with a former classmate of mine. We met other former classmates and eventually lost track of our current families, just the two of us walking through the park, looking for a way to get to the other side, finding a tram to take us up and over. I had other dreams, too. I value my dreams for their insight into my personality and the changes I seek to make my days more eventful and fulfilling. But my dreams are not secret visions or gifts from the other side. They are the result of my earlier interaction with the environment and lack thereof in the moment.
I am one person watching all of you, interacting with many nearby. Like the kids who walked into my yard to find a lost cat. Or the woman who wants my wife and me to attend local weekly religious services.
Local, regional, global. I have opinions and dreams about what to do with perceived conflict between the regional factions in Afghanistan. But I don't have a clear picture. Do we declare groups in the area VNSAs (violent non-state actors) or belligerent forces? Do encounters with FARC, the Red Brigades, the IRA and other fighting forces teach us valuable lessons to apply in the Afghan hills and Indus valley? What is the definition of a benevolent government and is there such a thing in existence? Does unity or disparity make better diplomatic policy in situations like this?
In Britain, a separatist got major airtime to talk about insular views. Is there a place for British separatists and Afghan separatists? Should there be? If the planet knows no bounds, should we recognize others' desires for homelands? If separation is granted, should international support be taken away?
In becoming an ecumenopolis, we face the question of who we are. Are we one species and two genders? Are we one species with multiple cultures but not necessarily multicultural, or a little of both? I don't have the right answers. I have opinions and dreams. I depend on my fellow members of our species to come up with a variety of answers, situational and timely, to solve problems iteratively because we're perpetually changing.
Change is constant. Change is pain and joy. Thus, we face constant pain and joy. Easy? Never. Eventful? A most resounding "YES!" We can see square pegs and round holes. We can pound a screw with a hammer. The choices are many. The solutions are few.
You can choose where you want to live. Your life is now subject to international scrutiny. Can you live a separatist life that is acceptable in an ecumenopolis? Absolutely. The right of a member of our species to perpetuate a subculture is guaranteed at birth. How hard you're willing to fight to protect your subculture against those who want to be where you live is up to you, not me. Cooperation and coordination 'midst competition - that's where I'll meet you and see if your subculture is worth promoting on the international stage. As always, we don't have to like each other, just agree that we're one species. The rest of our lives are opinions and dreams to do with as we see fit.
21 October 2009
"The Numbers Don't Add Up"
While one set of people face long-term unemployment, another set is investing and reinvesting in the climbing stock market value. An intersecting subset is paying more attention to investment portfolios without employment income to work with.
Some people are selling their second yacht or fourth retirement property. Some are having their first home taken away. Some are scooping up cheap assets for later profitable resale.
On whom do I focus?
Experts, analysts and other questionable words float in the open marketplace of ideas. Ideas. Hmm... What is an idea? And no, not the dictionary or wikipedia definition. What is an idea to you?
I don't know the diets of the lifeforms whose daily habits take them across the patch of ground on which my house was deeded. As an experiment, I throw bits of food next to the driveway to see what happens. Apples quickly disappear. Oranges and grapefruits are never consumed by large lifeforms, their round shapes shrinking with the growth of mold. Today, I threw a few stale doughnuts out and will check on them later. Birdseed is almost instantly consumed.
I try not to distinguish one lifeform's needs from another in what I choose to toss into the yard. That way, I get to see a variety of responses to my application of the "trickle down" food cycle. You remember the "trickle down" theory, don't you? A person who's eating a large, juicy sandwich will have some drops of nutritional liquid drip off the chin and onto the ground for other lifeforms to feed on. That's not the "trickle down" theory, you say? Are you sure?
While we google our memories of the "trickle down" theory, let's think for a moment. Did you take an economics class in school, primary, secondary or collegiate? Do you remember the theories of supply and demand, the iterative value of currency, or how the banking system is supposed to work? Do you know how to write a check? [Those of you who've only used credit/debit cards your whole life, or even your mobile phone to pay for goods, are excused from answering that last question.]
At one point I thought about majoring in economics or accounting in my college studies, especially since beer consumption and football watching weren't offered in college curricula. Somewhere between chemical engineering, foreign languages, religious studies, computer science and IT management, that is. Meanwhile, my college loans piled up.
If I have no personal belief in the power of money, should I speak from a monetary point of view? If I only see life in the moment, should I talk about the value of compounding interest?
Questions today...questions...sigh...what to say, what to do...
In my family, participation in the exchange of goods and services vary. Some live on the minimum monthly payment plan. Some live frugally and pay cash for major purchases. Some invest heavily and make major gains in their personal wealth. Risk and reward. Comfort zone. Playgrounds.
I don't know what money is other than an idea. I see pieces of paper and bits of stamped metal and hear about the comparative value of one version versus another but it makes no sense to me. Money. What is it? Barter converter. Murder incentive. War inciter. Peace initiative. Health provider.
Suggestions pour in on how to make our economy strong again, from isolationist policies to single global currency, from free market to centralized control, from high risk rogue investors to highly-regulated / scrutinized market management teams.
And still, I have no internal concept of money. It's like a void in my mind, the center of a hurricane / typhoon, alive but empty, surrounded by bustling activity.
No matter what I say or believe, people will use their definitions of money to take risks or do nothing with their money. No matter what we think, the future is undefined and full of risks - there are no surefire definitions of safety and security. We act and the rest of the universe reacts, seen mainly on the local scale.
For instance, decades after the launch of the Voyager spacecrafts, war and pestilence have killed millions of people, yet these tiny boxes of metal parts keep moving outward from the center of our solar system. Like beams of energy reaching us from across the universe, the Voyager units represent us at a point in time that no longer exists. We took many risks using vast sums of money to create those spacecraft, money that could have been spent on any number of ideas but we chose to learn more about our solar system and thus more about our place in it, including the risks facing the survival of our species in this area of the galaxy.
Where is real growth occurring in our economy? What is truth? What is reality? What is money but this shirt on my back and the laptop computer under my fingertips?
I tell myself I am the only person writing and reading this blog so that I can be free to say what I think and feel, not tied to emotions between myself and others or economically linked to others who might give me motives to speak or keep quiet. Sometimes I believe what I tell myself and other times I see myself not saying enough because of fear of offending others.
While those versed in the ways of making money more valuable (and thus more likely to be loaned, spent or invested) express their opinions or use their actions to put money in motion, I sit here and look at our planet from the edge of the solar system, as if I'm a vulnerable set of technology long past accomplishing its stated goals, and even past its imagined value as a precursor to "V'ger."
I have no use for money. I only have use for my species. To see value in what the two have in common, I pull away from all the voices who are trying to make money by talking about the value of money and imagine a time and place where the current value of money is unimportant. If I talk about a time 10,000 years from now, I might as well write a science fiction story. If I talk about a time a few months or a few years from now, I might as well become an economic policy expert.
I imagine a time in the near future - could be tomorrow or could be fifty years from now - most likely, a time where we're still repeating ourselves over and over while pretending that our new discoveries, new technologies and new genetic changes make us a better species. I don't mind the repetition because repetition is like the food I throw into the yard, giving us ongoing experiments to see which changes we make will lead to more innovative beneficial changes.
In this near future:
Some people are selling their second yacht or fourth retirement property. Some are having their first home taken away. Some are scooping up cheap assets for later profitable resale.
On whom do I focus?
Experts, analysts and other questionable words float in the open marketplace of ideas. Ideas. Hmm... What is an idea? And no, not the dictionary or wikipedia definition. What is an idea to you?
I don't know the diets of the lifeforms whose daily habits take them across the patch of ground on which my house was deeded. As an experiment, I throw bits of food next to the driveway to see what happens. Apples quickly disappear. Oranges and grapefruits are never consumed by large lifeforms, their round shapes shrinking with the growth of mold. Today, I threw a few stale doughnuts out and will check on them later. Birdseed is almost instantly consumed.
I try not to distinguish one lifeform's needs from another in what I choose to toss into the yard. That way, I get to see a variety of responses to my application of the "trickle down" food cycle. You remember the "trickle down" theory, don't you? A person who's eating a large, juicy sandwich will have some drops of nutritional liquid drip off the chin and onto the ground for other lifeforms to feed on. That's not the "trickle down" theory, you say? Are you sure?
While we google our memories of the "trickle down" theory, let's think for a moment. Did you take an economics class in school, primary, secondary or collegiate? Do you remember the theories of supply and demand, the iterative value of currency, or how the banking system is supposed to work? Do you know how to write a check? [Those of you who've only used credit/debit cards your whole life, or even your mobile phone to pay for goods, are excused from answering that last question.]
At one point I thought about majoring in economics or accounting in my college studies, especially since beer consumption and football watching weren't offered in college curricula. Somewhere between chemical engineering, foreign languages, religious studies, computer science and IT management, that is. Meanwhile, my college loans piled up.
If I have no personal belief in the power of money, should I speak from a monetary point of view? If I only see life in the moment, should I talk about the value of compounding interest?
Questions today...questions...sigh...what to say, what to do...
In my family, participation in the exchange of goods and services vary. Some live on the minimum monthly payment plan. Some live frugally and pay cash for major purchases. Some invest heavily and make major gains in their personal wealth. Risk and reward. Comfort zone. Playgrounds.
I don't know what money is other than an idea. I see pieces of paper and bits of stamped metal and hear about the comparative value of one version versus another but it makes no sense to me. Money. What is it? Barter converter. Murder incentive. War inciter. Peace initiative. Health provider.
Suggestions pour in on how to make our economy strong again, from isolationist policies to single global currency, from free market to centralized control, from high risk rogue investors to highly-regulated / scrutinized market management teams.
And still, I have no internal concept of money. It's like a void in my mind, the center of a hurricane / typhoon, alive but empty, surrounded by bustling activity.
No matter what I say or believe, people will use their definitions of money to take risks or do nothing with their money. No matter what we think, the future is undefined and full of risks - there are no surefire definitions of safety and security. We act and the rest of the universe reacts, seen mainly on the local scale.
For instance, decades after the launch of the Voyager spacecrafts, war and pestilence have killed millions of people, yet these tiny boxes of metal parts keep moving outward from the center of our solar system. Like beams of energy reaching us from across the universe, the Voyager units represent us at a point in time that no longer exists. We took many risks using vast sums of money to create those spacecraft, money that could have been spent on any number of ideas but we chose to learn more about our solar system and thus more about our place in it, including the risks facing the survival of our species in this area of the galaxy.
Where is real growth occurring in our economy? What is truth? What is reality? What is money but this shirt on my back and the laptop computer under my fingertips?
I tell myself I am the only person writing and reading this blog so that I can be free to say what I think and feel, not tied to emotions between myself and others or economically linked to others who might give me motives to speak or keep quiet. Sometimes I believe what I tell myself and other times I see myself not saying enough because of fear of offending others.
While those versed in the ways of making money more valuable (and thus more likely to be loaned, spent or invested) express their opinions or use their actions to put money in motion, I sit here and look at our planet from the edge of the solar system, as if I'm a vulnerable set of technology long past accomplishing its stated goals, and even past its imagined value as a precursor to "V'ger."
I have no use for money. I only have use for my species. To see value in what the two have in common, I pull away from all the voices who are trying to make money by talking about the value of money and imagine a time and place where the current value of money is unimportant. If I talk about a time 10,000 years from now, I might as well write a science fiction story. If I talk about a time a few months or a few years from now, I might as well become an economic policy expert.
I imagine a time in the near future - could be tomorrow or could be fifty years from now - most likely, a time where we're still repeating ourselves over and over while pretending that our new discoveries, new technologies and new genetic changes make us a better species. I don't mind the repetition because repetition is like the food I throw into the yard, giving us ongoing experiments to see which changes we make will lead to more innovative beneficial changes.
In this near future:
- We've rewritten the laws governing advertising and marketing - we can no longer over-promise the benefits of goods and services - we must give messages that demonstrate the real benefits and detriments of products, including product life of average enjoyment/usefulness and environmental impact, with links to forums discussing the products/services.
- Community service is a required set of skills/classes taught to children throughout their school years and has monetary value which can be exchanged for goods and services, useful during times of economic downturns when those who are less actively employed, both children and adults, can put their skills and hobbies to use for the community and still have economic purchasing power.
- We fuse fantasy and reality where we can don imaginary lives that are viewable by others wearing similar augmented reality gear - no longer do you have to use limited resources for your wardrobe or lifestyle - you can create, lease or buy your own AR life and change it at will, making mandatory school/office dress codes obsolete. On the Internet and in real life, nobody sees you as a dog.
- Office hours become completely useless as labor laws recognize the blend of work and private life into one - we get paid for completed projects, not hours worked, freeing us to do what we want when we want as long as we stay on schedule (schedule being a flexible definition using time, cost and resources creatively).
- Poverty still plagues society due to war, pestilence, mental challenges and drug abuse. However, voluntary poverty becomes fashionable as people try and stay in the "no impact" lifestyle. Governments grapple with the concept of low-tax zones to encourage more people to live in low-stress, low-overhead areas, asking if such citizens must demonstrate higher community involvement to qualify or if being just plain "we don't trust and don't want a government" folks can live there, too.
- The digital divide raises the barrier higher and higher that separates the educated from the uneducated, continuing to spark inventions to connect those who want to be digital citizens but don't have the means or understanding to get connected. Political revolutions are led by digital citizens pretending to be members of the nondigital proletariats.
- Greenland becomes a major tourist destination when people flood to the island to bathe in the curative cold waters of melting glaciers.
- Antarctica becomes the next major battleground for terrorist groups to control.
- A child of parents of Taoist/Buddhist Han, Muslim Uyghur, Hindu Indian and Ainu heritage is born in space.
19 October 2009
Sunrise Through The Trees
I couldn't sleep last night because of you. Who are you? You are the parents who insist their children get a narrow point of view while being raised. You are the child who's known only one point of view while growing up but senses there's more to life. You are those who want more and those who want less.
Over the past few days, while watching a few spectacles centered on sports arenas broadcast to television screens, I paid attention to the adverts which pay, in part, for my viewing. Many of them told me about the money I'd save by spending money, often in the $500-$1000 range and sometimes in the $3000-$5000 range, depending on products being advertised. Overall, I felt a nostalgic touch, as if the adverts were still aimed toward the mass consumption audience, even in adverts for alcoholic beverages ("drink more because we've packed fewer calories," "drink lots because we added two more drops of artificial flavoring!").
Earlier this morning, while I stared at the ceiling in near-darkness and imagined little insects crawling around that farted glow-in-the-dark gas which my optic nerve was trying its darnedest to detect, I thought about you and I thought about those adverts. I thought about what defines us.
Before I retired a few years ago from a day job, I managed several small projects, totaling in the tens of millions of dollars. Saving $500 a year would have gotten me fired. My company wanted savings in the X to XX million dollar range, or significant sales increases to compensate for lack of savings while a new technology hit the market.
Therefore, I am of two minds here. I enjoy watching sports but sitting in front of a small box, even one close to 60" diagonal, and letting myself get exposed to adverts for savings of small change tells me that I am not the demographic the product companies are after. At the same time, the cost to go to to the same sporting events and watch them live is cost-prohibitive to my frugal budget.
As the Earth turns and the view of the Sun comes close to my eyes, the landscape slowly breaks into individual items out of the general dim silhouette moments ago. So, too, my understanding of the universe slowly wakes up and brightens my view of life.
Who am I? Who are you? Who are we? My generation now runs the executive branch of the U.S. government. The U.S. president is 10 months older than I am. Those of our age actually have control of the world. We have come of age, as they say, after making significant progress in our growing-up stage. Wise, we depend on those of many ages and backgrounds to run the machines that make our lives better - political, financial, industrial, academic, religious, etc.
I no longer sit back and let the older generation tell me what to do because I am now in charge of my life. I am me because of you so I am in charge of your life and you in charge of mine.
I have 14,809 days to keep learning. In some number of days less than that time, my generation will pass the torch that keeps the lamp of our species burning bright.
I did not vote for Barack Obama and do not support many Democratic ideals (especially since I am a fiscal conservative at heart) but I will not let detractors stop my generation from having its day in the sun! We will go after the detractors until our last breath, if necessary, to shape our species up and prepare us for the next tens of thousands of years of growing up we still have to do. We will hunt down the cowardly suicide bomber trainers and do what we have to do with them to better our species. We will not rest. We don't care what your colour is, how you dress, how you speak, what you do or who you hang out with. We spent our youth discovering we are all the same and we will not waste our training on backwards thinking.
Because I could not sleep last night, I had several hours to contemplate the future of our species. I saw that we make progress when we put aside insignificant differences, which accounts for most of what we do everyday, and work together to improve our living conditions. I don't have time to waste on vegetating in front of a TV any longer if I want our generation to make a difference in where our species will be 10 or 20 years from now when we finally relinquish our responsibilities to the next generation.
I'm not out to make our planet a peace fest or a love nest. I'm out to save us from ourselves and get us on the path to a prosperous future, starting now. As usual, I'll keep using humour but my days of sitting on the sofa are over. Time to return to the workforce and push us a little harder in the right direction, one company and one industry at a time. If I'm lucky, in my lifetime I'll see us having an interplanetary broadcast system that, instead of searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, will actively beam intergalactic broadcasts of what our species has accomplished to points all over the universe (sure, we don't know the risks or rewards for such a scenario but we're already noisy now).
I'll start today by seeing how we can convert or retrain our war profiteering into space research and exploration. How do we train kids that the path to heaven includes building rockets to the Moon instead of strapping bombs to our chests? How do you say that the rigours of space are equivalent to infidels? How do we coordinate our navies into solely stopping pirates instead of chasing after each other? How do we turn our armies and air forces into profitable means of both protecting good governments and getting us onto other planets? Do beauty pageants and racecar events fit into this scheme?
My future started over 47 years ago and it's happening today. How about yours?
Over the past few days, while watching a few spectacles centered on sports arenas broadcast to television screens, I paid attention to the adverts which pay, in part, for my viewing. Many of them told me about the money I'd save by spending money, often in the $500-$1000 range and sometimes in the $3000-$5000 range, depending on products being advertised. Overall, I felt a nostalgic touch, as if the adverts were still aimed toward the mass consumption audience, even in adverts for alcoholic beverages ("drink more because we've packed fewer calories," "drink lots because we added two more drops of artificial flavoring!").
Earlier this morning, while I stared at the ceiling in near-darkness and imagined little insects crawling around that farted glow-in-the-dark gas which my optic nerve was trying its darnedest to detect, I thought about you and I thought about those adverts. I thought about what defines us.
Before I retired a few years ago from a day job, I managed several small projects, totaling in the tens of millions of dollars. Saving $500 a year would have gotten me fired. My company wanted savings in the X to XX million dollar range, or significant sales increases to compensate for lack of savings while a new technology hit the market.
Therefore, I am of two minds here. I enjoy watching sports but sitting in front of a small box, even one close to 60" diagonal, and letting myself get exposed to adverts for savings of small change tells me that I am not the demographic the product companies are after. At the same time, the cost to go to to the same sporting events and watch them live is cost-prohibitive to my frugal budget.
As the Earth turns and the view of the Sun comes close to my eyes, the landscape slowly breaks into individual items out of the general dim silhouette moments ago. So, too, my understanding of the universe slowly wakes up and brightens my view of life.
Who am I? Who are you? Who are we? My generation now runs the executive branch of the U.S. government. The U.S. president is 10 months older than I am. Those of our age actually have control of the world. We have come of age, as they say, after making significant progress in our growing-up stage. Wise, we depend on those of many ages and backgrounds to run the machines that make our lives better - political, financial, industrial, academic, religious, etc.
I no longer sit back and let the older generation tell me what to do because I am now in charge of my life. I am me because of you so I am in charge of your life and you in charge of mine.
I have 14,809 days to keep learning. In some number of days less than that time, my generation will pass the torch that keeps the lamp of our species burning bright.
I did not vote for Barack Obama and do not support many Democratic ideals (especially since I am a fiscal conservative at heart) but I will not let detractors stop my generation from having its day in the sun! We will go after the detractors until our last breath, if necessary, to shape our species up and prepare us for the next tens of thousands of years of growing up we still have to do. We will hunt down the cowardly suicide bomber trainers and do what we have to do with them to better our species. We will not rest. We don't care what your colour is, how you dress, how you speak, what you do or who you hang out with. We spent our youth discovering we are all the same and we will not waste our training on backwards thinking.
Because I could not sleep last night, I had several hours to contemplate the future of our species. I saw that we make progress when we put aside insignificant differences, which accounts for most of what we do everyday, and work together to improve our living conditions. I don't have time to waste on vegetating in front of a TV any longer if I want our generation to make a difference in where our species will be 10 or 20 years from now when we finally relinquish our responsibilities to the next generation.
I'm not out to make our planet a peace fest or a love nest. I'm out to save us from ourselves and get us on the path to a prosperous future, starting now. As usual, I'll keep using humour but my days of sitting on the sofa are over. Time to return to the workforce and push us a little harder in the right direction, one company and one industry at a time. If I'm lucky, in my lifetime I'll see us having an interplanetary broadcast system that, instead of searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, will actively beam intergalactic broadcasts of what our species has accomplished to points all over the universe (sure, we don't know the risks or rewards for such a scenario but we're already noisy now).
I'll start today by seeing how we can convert or retrain our war profiteering into space research and exploration. How do we train kids that the path to heaven includes building rockets to the Moon instead of strapping bombs to our chests? How do you say that the rigours of space are equivalent to infidels? How do we coordinate our navies into solely stopping pirates instead of chasing after each other? How do we turn our armies and air forces into profitable means of both protecting good governments and getting us onto other planets? Do beauty pageants and racecar events fit into this scheme?
My future started over 47 years ago and it's happening today. How about yours?
15 October 2009
Packing The Heat
You know what, in the midst of my foray into humour, part of me is burning mad. I'm tired of brothers and sisters bombing brothers and sisters in and around Pakistan. Time to take action. See you in a few days. These assholes with their desire to kill others have run out of time. No more monkeying around my funny bone. Kick the neighbourhood association into gear and flush out the geeks wiring up their explosive playtoys.
The planet is my backyard. You kill someone(s) with a bomb anywhere on this planet and you're messing with me and my associates. We take no prisoners. We listen to no excuses.
You got my attention. Now you get the attention you deserve. Lightning never strikes twice in the same place? You know why? You just struck out. Time to say goodbye.
The planet is my backyard. You kill someone(s) with a bomb anywhere on this planet and you're messing with me and my associates. We take no prisoners. We listen to no excuses.
You got my attention. Now you get the attention you deserve. Lightning never strikes twice in the same place? You know why? You just struck out. Time to say goodbye.
13 October 2009
Redux Revisited
Thanks to blue-eyed Alyssa at Taco Mac for the service the other night. You and your manager (Jerry?) made our fresh kettle chips enjoyable as an after-dinner appetizer. Stephanie was quiet at Carson's last night. I didn't catch the name of our server at Barley's on Saturday but congrats to you guys on the upgrade to two bars with two sets of 48 beer taps, one smoking and one nonsmoking, just in time for 31st October celebrations. Oh, and a late nod to Naomi at Dreamland BBQ in the Atlanta area - nothing like a familiar Alabama venue near ol' Terminus.
I. Adagio sostenuto, Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor for Piano, Op. 27, by Beethoven. Is the composition good, great or fantastic? I don't know. The music changes my mood, that much I can tell you. What about the other two movements? Right now, I can't remember.
Is it true that the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is really a Douglas Adams' remake of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now? Or is the other way around? Right now, I can't remember.
Meanwhile, changes are shaking up at EU headquarters. Word comes to me that the way it was is the fear for the way it will be. War is always a good profitmaking venture to get one out of economic doldrums, especially when others feel all warm and fuzzy about peace breaking out across the globe. As much as I desire peace, peace tends to be a break between skirmishes and wars just as quiet is the parents' break between inner-fighting and authority-rebelling children. Is there a true balance between war and peace? Tolstoy never said. Did Joan of Arc prove otherwise?
We are one species. We can cooperate in peaceful competition or take our affairs onto the battlefield. We can do both and we can do neither. The planet doesn't care. Right now, I can't remember. Any way, I'm going to enjoy the changing colors of the light passing through the tree canopy this afternoon. Happiness is seeing lichen spread on wet tree bark just as much as seeing if there's water on the Moon in the dust cloud no one saw.
I. Adagio sostenuto, Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor for Piano, Op. 27, by Beethoven. Is the composition good, great or fantastic? I don't know. The music changes my mood, that much I can tell you. What about the other two movements? Right now, I can't remember.
Is it true that the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is really a Douglas Adams' remake of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now? Or is the other way around? Right now, I can't remember.
Meanwhile, changes are shaking up at EU headquarters. Word comes to me that the way it was is the fear for the way it will be. War is always a good profitmaking venture to get one out of economic doldrums, especially when others feel all warm and fuzzy about peace breaking out across the globe. As much as I desire peace, peace tends to be a break between skirmishes and wars just as quiet is the parents' break between inner-fighting and authority-rebelling children. Is there a true balance between war and peace? Tolstoy never said. Did Joan of Arc prove otherwise?
We are one species. We can cooperate in peaceful competition or take our affairs onto the battlefield. We can do both and we can do neither. The planet doesn't care. Right now, I can't remember. Any way, I'm going to enjoy the changing colors of the light passing through the tree canopy this afternoon. Happiness is seeing lichen spread on wet tree bark just as much as seeing if there's water on the Moon in the dust cloud no one saw.
05 October 2009
Addiction
Concrete solutions. Like knowing the effect of artificial food products on one's body - if positive, eat/drink in moderation and if negative, stop using. Every life form seeks growth media. When separated from the environment in which a life form naturally lives or gravitates toward...
A mourning dove flies past my head. A fox runs along the eating path left by the turkeys. No, I'm wrong. A couple of small deer chase each other through the woods with a mother following close behind. The deer are so small I thought they were foxes at first, or even dogs but their spotted backs gave them away today. Crows call out not too far away.
Where was I? Oh yeah, the feeling of substances oozing through my veins. I drank a lot of artificially flavored liquids this past weekend, despite knowing from experience that I feel lumps or clots making their way through my blood circulation system the day after drinking sweetened liquids.
Our species no longer has to worry about its existence on a day-to-day, eat-or-die level. Clumps of our species do, though, through poor environmental conditions like drought, pollution, natural disaster, war.
In general, we long ago conquered local environmental hazards and made extra-survival conditions the norm. As individuals, we can concentrate on whatever we want, no matter what happens or we know will happen.
We have placed high monetary burdens on our strongest habits yet many of us maintain our habits, anyway (alcohol/tobacco consumption and motor vehicle operation being ready examples to show). We adjust our habits to accommodate our communal need for governance and paying for governing bodies.
[Didn't mean to write another dissertation on our species but I'm here so I'll finish this up and think up another comedy skit later this afternoon.]
Is it my responsibility to pay for the habits of others? No. Thus, taxing the goods/services with which others support their habits is acceptable to me.
My goal is still the same - focus on the species and see what it's capable of and doing to/for itself. If our habits on a macroscale are destroying our capabilities, then we should develop and teach healthier addictive habits for ourselves while using monetary disincentives as a slight deterrence (with the goal of using the disincentives to fund the newer habits), knowing some people will insist on maintaining old, destructive habits because of their bodies' lifeseeking needs, negative as they may seem to observers.
A mourning dove flies past my head. A fox runs along the eating path left by the turkeys. No, I'm wrong. A couple of small deer chase each other through the woods with a mother following close behind. The deer are so small I thought they were foxes at first, or even dogs but their spotted backs gave them away today. Crows call out not too far away.
Where was I? Oh yeah, the feeling of substances oozing through my veins. I drank a lot of artificially flavored liquids this past weekend, despite knowing from experience that I feel lumps or clots making their way through my blood circulation system the day after drinking sweetened liquids.
Our species no longer has to worry about its existence on a day-to-day, eat-or-die level. Clumps of our species do, though, through poor environmental conditions like drought, pollution, natural disaster, war.
In general, we long ago conquered local environmental hazards and made extra-survival conditions the norm. As individuals, we can concentrate on whatever we want, no matter what happens or we know will happen.
We have placed high monetary burdens on our strongest habits yet many of us maintain our habits, anyway (alcohol/tobacco consumption and motor vehicle operation being ready examples to show). We adjust our habits to accommodate our communal need for governance and paying for governing bodies.
[Didn't mean to write another dissertation on our species but I'm here so I'll finish this up and think up another comedy skit later this afternoon.]
Is it my responsibility to pay for the habits of others? No. Thus, taxing the goods/services with which others support their habits is acceptable to me.
My goal is still the same - focus on the species and see what it's capable of and doing to/for itself. If our habits on a macroscale are destroying our capabilities, then we should develop and teach healthier addictive habits for ourselves while using monetary disincentives as a slight deterrence (with the goal of using the disincentives to fund the newer habits), knowing some people will insist on maintaining old, destructive habits because of their bodies' lifeseeking needs, negative as they may seem to observers.
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