I was going to tell you about heartache and the loss of god, but you've probably heard that song. I thought instead to tell you of beauty, but what do I know of that? I know of beauty as one who seeks what he is not.
I (mis)quote Shakespeare to myself all the time, most often the line, "I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree." because I believe that I will not. I will never read a paragraph describing a woman that is as beautiful as the woman herself, nor a paragraph describing the beauty of a man. This is not meant to be an argument against the completeness of language, but rather an appreciation of the complexity of beauty as seen through the eye of this beholder.
Today I met an older gentleman with a grey-white beard riding an adult sized bike, but with the scoop handlebars that one would expect to see on a child's bike, the kind with a banana seat. He was wearing a very wide-brimmed cowboy hat instead of a helmet and had on thick black ski gloves that extended as gauntlets almost to his elbows. Of course, to match this he was wearing flip-flops, denim cut-offs and a dirty white v-neck t-shirt. He seemed very happy as he said, "Hello" while passing me by. What an absolutely beautiful site - a bike rider by Dada.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
Hmmm...
Do citizens of the Apple nation pray to an iGod?
Will Bill and Melinda Gates' children have code-names before they are born, such as "Mojahe" or "Longhorn"?
Will Bill and Melinda Gates' children have code-names before they are born, such as "Mojahe" or "Longhorn"?
Friday, August 07, 2009
Fear of Sleep
When I was a child, I suffered from insomnia. I also suffered from a serious lack of being able to communicate why I couldn't sleep. I'm sure some of it was physiological, but I am just as sure it was partly psychological.
Starting around the age of 12, I became aware of my own mortality. There wasn't a near-death experience, or even anything particularly traumatic, at least to my adult mind, that I can recall. I don't recall it being an epiphany, either. It was more like one night as I lay there staring through the darkness at the ceiling I knew must still be above me, it was like I just said, "Oh yeah, I'm going to die someday." and then went right on staring.
In the fall of 1984, I entered Junior High and a particularly dark time of my life. Though I wouldn't read it for another couple of years, I was acutely aware of the truth of Sartre's "No Exit". This contributed to my mood as I try to get to sleep and 10 turned into 11 turned into midnight turned into 1 turned into 2 turned into 3. By the holidays, the realization of my mortality had turned into, "I might die tonight."
1984 was a presidential year and I avidly followed the media coverage of all of the campaigns and formed my own opinions. No offense to my family, but I've never agreed with them politically or thought that their political views held much merit at all. I have always felt that they voted based on knee-jerk reactions and what the television (and then radio) commercials told them were the important issues. As such, I began to learn all I could about nuclear proliferation, which was not easy for a 12 year old a full 9 or 10 years before the world wide web would be in public use. Fortunately, I had an excellent relationship with the library and the librarians. I was allowed to read some of the adult magazines, the ones that had to be checked out. This was when I first discovered Rolling Stone, but it would be another couple of years before I would appreciate it's political commentary. I was mostly interested in U.S. News & World Report. I already had access to Time and Newsweek, and never have figured out why they kept that one back and not the other two. These magazines and other things I read, like Popular Mechanics and Popular Science, and other influences lead my fears to become "We might all die tonight via nuclear annihilation." This fear stayed with me in a very real sense until Ronald Reagan was out of office.
I tried talking with my mom about this, but her response was something along the lines of "don't worry about something you have no control over", which was exactly what I didn't need to hear. None of my friends wanted to talk about this at all with me because they were thoroughly uninterested in politics, for which I can not blame them. I think I may even have talked to my Sunday School teacher or her girlfriend, both of whom I was really fond of. But, if I did, I did not find what I was looking for.
As I got older, I began to do stuff during the time I should have been sleeping, if for nothing else than to keep about thinking about dying. I read a lot of books and watched a lot of television, well at least until midnight or 1 am when the stations went off the air.
In college, I finally cured my insomnia, if not the reasons behind it. But, the cure was worse than the disease, so to speak. I drank enough alcohol and smoked enough pot for nine or ten college students, all of whom would have been considered hardcore partyers. This took it's toll on my health, both mental and physical. At this point I despair that I will ever recover enough to live a normal life, whatever that means.
I also learned during those years, more from my friend Beth than from personal experience, that sleep could be used to battle your demons. And if it took the bottom of a bottle to find sleep, then so-be-it.
Snap back to the present, and I have a real love-hate relationship with sleep. I don't like to sleep, but I like to dream. I take that back, I'm rather indifferent to sleep, what I don't like is that period of time when I'm falling asleep, which is now mercifully short, or that period in the middle of the night where sleep wanes and evades me for an hour or two.
Starting around the age of 12, I became aware of my own mortality. There wasn't a near-death experience, or even anything particularly traumatic, at least to my adult mind, that I can recall. I don't recall it being an epiphany, either. It was more like one night as I lay there staring through the darkness at the ceiling I knew must still be above me, it was like I just said, "Oh yeah, I'm going to die someday." and then went right on staring.
In the fall of 1984, I entered Junior High and a particularly dark time of my life. Though I wouldn't read it for another couple of years, I was acutely aware of the truth of Sartre's "No Exit". This contributed to my mood as I try to get to sleep and 10 turned into 11 turned into midnight turned into 1 turned into 2 turned into 3. By the holidays, the realization of my mortality had turned into, "I might die tonight."
1984 was a presidential year and I avidly followed the media coverage of all of the campaigns and formed my own opinions. No offense to my family, but I've never agreed with them politically or thought that their political views held much merit at all. I have always felt that they voted based on knee-jerk reactions and what the television (and then radio) commercials told them were the important issues. As such, I began to learn all I could about nuclear proliferation, which was not easy for a 12 year old a full 9 or 10 years before the world wide web would be in public use. Fortunately, I had an excellent relationship with the library and the librarians. I was allowed to read some of the adult magazines, the ones that had to be checked out. This was when I first discovered Rolling Stone, but it would be another couple of years before I would appreciate it's political commentary. I was mostly interested in U.S. News & World Report. I already had access to Time and Newsweek, and never have figured out why they kept that one back and not the other two. These magazines and other things I read, like Popular Mechanics and Popular Science, and other influences lead my fears to become "We might all die tonight via nuclear annihilation." This fear stayed with me in a very real sense until Ronald Reagan was out of office.
I tried talking with my mom about this, but her response was something along the lines of "don't worry about something you have no control over", which was exactly what I didn't need to hear. None of my friends wanted to talk about this at all with me because they were thoroughly uninterested in politics, for which I can not blame them. I think I may even have talked to my Sunday School teacher or her girlfriend, both of whom I was really fond of. But, if I did, I did not find what I was looking for.
As I got older, I began to do stuff during the time I should have been sleeping, if for nothing else than to keep about thinking about dying. I read a lot of books and watched a lot of television, well at least until midnight or 1 am when the stations went off the air.
In college, I finally cured my insomnia, if not the reasons behind it. But, the cure was worse than the disease, so to speak. I drank enough alcohol and smoked enough pot for nine or ten college students, all of whom would have been considered hardcore partyers. This took it's toll on my health, both mental and physical. At this point I despair that I will ever recover enough to live a normal life, whatever that means.
I also learned during those years, more from my friend Beth than from personal experience, that sleep could be used to battle your demons. And if it took the bottom of a bottle to find sleep, then so-be-it.
Snap back to the present, and I have a real love-hate relationship with sleep. I don't like to sleep, but I like to dream. I take that back, I'm rather indifferent to sleep, what I don't like is that period of time when I'm falling asleep, which is now mercifully short, or that period in the middle of the night where sleep wanes and evades me for an hour or two.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
If it doesn't kill you...
The whole notion of telling someone "If it doesn't kill you, it only makes you stronger." is quite ridiculous and a bit on the sadistic side.
I think a more accurate statement would be "If it doesn't kill you, something else probably will."
Let's think about this for a minute. If Bob is in a car accident and his hands are chopped off and his whole family killed, but he somehow survives, Bob is not made stronger. Bob would probably rather be dead himself and will most likely not be able to live on his own for the foreseeable future. Bob will not even be able to wipe his own arse when he's done taking a shit. Stronger? I dont' think so.
Or how about a more likely situation? After 10 years of marriage, a woman discovers her husband has been cheating on her with her best friend, who has just become pregnant with his child, even though the woman herself, who has desperately wanted a child of her own for years, remains childless. How does hits make her stronger?
I've experienced lots of things in this life of mine that have resulted in being given the advice quoted above. If I could figure out what it was that I had done that had caused me the pain, I decided that I wouldn't do it again. I decided that if it didn't kill me this time, it probably would the second or third time, so I just wasn't going to do that again, no matter how cautious this has made me, no more the opportunities that I've missed. You get the idea.
Things that hurt, hurt. Maybe you glean some kernel of wisdom from the event, maybe you don't. Being hurt doesn't help you build a tolerance to the next hurt.
I think a more accurate statement would be "If it doesn't kill you, something else probably will."
Let's think about this for a minute. If Bob is in a car accident and his hands are chopped off and his whole family killed, but he somehow survives, Bob is not made stronger. Bob would probably rather be dead himself and will most likely not be able to live on his own for the foreseeable future. Bob will not even be able to wipe his own arse when he's done taking a shit. Stronger? I dont' think so.
Or how about a more likely situation? After 10 years of marriage, a woman discovers her husband has been cheating on her with her best friend, who has just become pregnant with his child, even though the woman herself, who has desperately wanted a child of her own for years, remains childless. How does hits make her stronger?
I've experienced lots of things in this life of mine that have resulted in being given the advice quoted above. If I could figure out what it was that I had done that had caused me the pain, I decided that I wouldn't do it again. I decided that if it didn't kill me this time, it probably would the second or third time, so I just wasn't going to do that again, no matter how cautious this has made me, no more the opportunities that I've missed. You get the idea.
Things that hurt, hurt. Maybe you glean some kernel of wisdom from the event, maybe you don't. Being hurt doesn't help you build a tolerance to the next hurt.
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Vampire Dreams
I'm a lucid dreamer. Every night when I go to sleep, it's like laying down to watch movies. Sometimes the movies are good, sometimes not, but they are often bizarre or extremely normal to the point of being boring.
Last night, I had a vampire dream.It wasn't like most of the vampire dreams that I have, in which I may or may not be a vampire, but am always being pursued by vampires who are stronger than I am. Last night I was a vampire and I was hunting. Typically my vampire dreams are about death and fighting the supernatural. Last night's dream was about sex and voyeurism. Don't worry, it's not one of those kind of dreams, and if it was, I'd keep it to myself, or at least save it for a script or something else appropriate. In fact, I probably won't go into much of the dream at all, as if there is one thing I've learned when relating dreams, it's that no one actually cares, no matter how much they say they do, unless maybe it involves them, maybe.
Vampires are portrayed as hunters in most modern media, but calling them hunters makes it seem like it's all about the food aspect and totally ignores the sex/lust aspect. This dream and it's contemplation has lead me to use the term 'stalker' when thinking of vampires. Lestat is cool when he's a predator, but not so much when he's a sexual predator. Actually, Anne Rice has probably come closer to portraying vampires as stalkers than anyone else in recent times, but the movie "Interview with a Vampire" did not. With the exception of vampires that shy away from human blood (like the good guys in "Twilight") vampires are typically stalkers, though a few are just hunters, but more likely killers more excited about the killing than about he food. It doesn't escape my notice that the vampires who shy away from human blood as food are also commentaries on abstinence.
It also occurred to me that a big part of being a stalker may lay in the pursuit of the victims. Vampires appear to enjoy the pursuit for the pursuit's sake almost as much as they enjoy actually capturing victims to feed on.
Vampires are not nice people, no matter how good looking they are portrayed.
Last night, I had a vampire dream.It wasn't like most of the vampire dreams that I have, in which I may or may not be a vampire, but am always being pursued by vampires who are stronger than I am. Last night I was a vampire and I was hunting. Typically my vampire dreams are about death and fighting the supernatural. Last night's dream was about sex and voyeurism. Don't worry, it's not one of those kind of dreams, and if it was, I'd keep it to myself, or at least save it for a script or something else appropriate. In fact, I probably won't go into much of the dream at all, as if there is one thing I've learned when relating dreams, it's that no one actually cares, no matter how much they say they do, unless maybe it involves them, maybe.
Vampires are portrayed as hunters in most modern media, but calling them hunters makes it seem like it's all about the food aspect and totally ignores the sex/lust aspect. This dream and it's contemplation has lead me to use the term 'stalker' when thinking of vampires. Lestat is cool when he's a predator, but not so much when he's a sexual predator. Actually, Anne Rice has probably come closer to portraying vampires as stalkers than anyone else in recent times, but the movie "Interview with a Vampire" did not. With the exception of vampires that shy away from human blood (like the good guys in "Twilight") vampires are typically stalkers, though a few are just hunters, but more likely killers more excited about the killing than about he food. It doesn't escape my notice that the vampires who shy away from human blood as food are also commentaries on abstinence.
It also occurred to me that a big part of being a stalker may lay in the pursuit of the victims. Vampires appear to enjoy the pursuit for the pursuit's sake almost as much as they enjoy actually capturing victims to feed on.
Vampires are not nice people, no matter how good looking they are portrayed.
Saturday, August 01, 2009
Too darned hot!
This is not a blog entry. This is just a heat delusion.
It's not as hot as this last week, but the humidity is up, and we are trying not to use the air conditioner. Running the air conditioner is darned expensive.
I'm sweaty. Umm, sweatier than usual. But, I'm less bloggy than usual.
I was just going to make a salad for dinner, but now we're having tacos, so it's getting even warmer in here instead of cooler. But, tacos are yummy. :)
It's not as hot as this last week, but the humidity is up, and we are trying not to use the air conditioner. Running the air conditioner is darned expensive.
I'm sweaty. Umm, sweatier than usual. But, I'm less bloggy than usual.
I was just going to make a salad for dinner, but now we're having tacos, so it's getting even warmer in here instead of cooler. But, tacos are yummy. :)
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