there’s no shortage of weird people in the world. every one of them has a ‘theory.’
for example, there’s this fellow, Leonard Shlain, I heard on the radio one time.
He has a couple of books: Art & Physics, The Alphabet vs. the Goddess, Sex, Time & Power.
here’s some of his ideas:
theory of 8’s
8% of men are gay
5% of women are gay
8% of men are left handed
5% of women are left handed
8% of men are bald on top of the head
8% of men are colorblind (advantage: can see thru camoflage)
hunting group theory:
a hunting group consists of about 12.
8% is about 1 in 12.
determining whether any of those numbers are actually valid is left as an exercise for the reader.
i have this feeling that just a few thoughts keep rattling around in my brain like a pinball machine.
turns out that is just the way it is with one exception. with the realization, each new repitition of a thought is like a clone of a virus, maybe a software virus, or a meme. excactly copied hundreds, maybe thousands of times, without variation, but with just one error or change in the copy, a new thought comes along.
do you know how rare and valuable a new thought is?
most folks i think have no appreciataion for that. some do, but on the one hand i don’t know if people either value it, or percieve how rare such a thing is.
so here it is: i’ve got all these files, as time goes on, my disk (*i said disk*) size just keeps increasing.
from the beginning i kept most stuff from the active pile, hundreds of little programs, journal fragments, ideas, todos, on the live list, with a lot of other crap on the backup media, at first floppies at home, and mag tapes at work, then zip disks, now cdrw disks, and little by little i’m just aggregating all the ancient shit into a big backup pile on the disks, with an optical backup…
and there’s copies, and copies of copies of some of these files in and among the various backups, and even in my live working directories, not even considering the stuff under version control…
and the nth generation version of one of these programs are like today’s children, running around doing stuff from time to time called to work, and the backups are like previous generations, gone but not forgotten,
and the programs are like viruses and viruses (biological and by metaphor software) are like thoughts, expressions of thought, but not only expressions, manifestations, but the thought itself, possibly replicating, or by mixing and matching with others, reproducing, given a fertile environment, maybe that’s one’s mind, and maybe a human being isn’t exactly necessary any more, given the right program and the right environment.
but its not the terrifying thought that you find expressed in terminator, or the matrix, its just this other thing, that may or may not be benign, but is just out there, you know, like squirrels, or deer, or even maybe the flu. what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, they say.
so picture my mind, or your mind, for that matter, like a pinball machine, or like a pacman video game, with the little blobs of thought percolating around the mazes of the things which you assume as “must-be”. now from time to time, move, remove or replace a wall from the maze, and see if your view of the world doesn’t change correspondingly.
edit:
yet another peculiar omission:
Eighteen days before the invasion of Iraq began, the UK paper the Observer printed the contents of a top secret U.S. National Security Agency memo.
That NSA memo outlined surveillance of a half-dozen delegations with swing votes on the U.N. Security Council.
The memo said that the agency had started a “surge” of spying on U.N. diplomats, including wiretaps of home and office telephones along with reading of e-mails.
Major news outlets in the United States almost completely ignored the story.
At the time, the New York Times did not cover the U.N. spying revelation at all.
When asked why, deputy foreign editor Alison Smale said, “We would normally expect to do our own intelligence reporting,” Smale replied. She added that “we could get no confirmation or comment.” Smale was subsequently named managing editor of the International Herald Tribune, which is owned by The New York Times Co.
What kind of journalism is this? It would seem a story is not fit to print unless U.S. intelligence officials are willing to discuss it.
The Washington Post printed a short piece on the back page under the headline “Spying Report No Shock to U.N.”, essentially parroting the US government spin.
The Los Angeles Times published a piece emphasizing that U.S. spy activities at the United Nations are “long-standing.”
The LA Times didn’t report on the basis of the story at all, merely quoting unnamed “experts” who “suspected that it could be a forgery” — and “several former top intelligence officials said they were skeptical of the memoÂ’s authenticity.”
The UK government had arrested Katharine Gun, the source for the memo, charging her with leaking classified material. About a year later, the charges were dropped for unstated reasons.
The next day, a member of Parliament and one of BlairÂ’s former cabinet ministers, Clare Short, said that British spies did in fact closely monitor conversations of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq last year. “I have seen transcripts of Kofi AnnanÂ’s conversations.”
see http://www.fair.org/media-beat/040226.html
http://www.agrnews.org/issues/217/mediawatch.html
ok, I don’t know why, but these oddball memories have been coming to me.
I remember the day I bought the band’s album cahoots up at hempstead mall. john brought me up there, he could drive.
at that time, he wasn’t much older than monica is now, and I wasn’t much older than lizzie.
we were already pretty much out there. everyone seemed to be, but I now realize it was something that was happening on the east coast and west coast, in the urban and suburban areas pretty much. something else was happening in various places, but not the kind of complete cultural upheaval we were amidst.
and when you’re growing up, first of all, you’re not ready for any of this stuff you don’t know what’s going on, even when things are pretty stable. but growing up in that time in that place, was nuts.
i’ve now known people who grew up poor, or rural, or both;
people who grew up on farms in kashmir, and in revolutionary housing blocks in shanghai under the maoists.
ok?
these folks have had it much harder than, praise God, I hope I ever have to know. that’s not what I’m talking about.
what I’m talking about is that we were completely at sea. if you’re poor, and growing up on a farm, its a pretty much known quantity. ok, we know where we are, and where we’re going, and maybe it sucks. but its known.
what we were dealing with was a rocking sea. it was more similar, I think to the turn of the twentieth century in europe, from what I understand, the fall of the ancient regime, and everything was different. all the pillars of society had essentially fallen. you found the results everywhere: in modern art, in modern music, in modern architecture, all of which seem quaint and dated now.
and the sixties and seventies seem like that somewhat now, except for the parts that endured, which we take for granted. equal rights, or at least the lip service and in reality something more nearly approaching equal opportunities for blacks and women, tolerance for differences in appearance, hair, dress, and lifestile, at least on a social level, the new music, and artistic milieu: irreverence in film, television, books. the antiwar movement, the ecology movement, the conspiracy theories, the drug culture. and later, the reactionaries, who are after all not entirely wrong. and ultimately its all about the dollars, and whatever it was you thought you were thinking just got coopted by the machine, like when you hear the who playing background to ads for hummer on tv, or the stones at the super bowl, or stockbrokers wearing expensive jerry garcia ties, its all kind of sick and disorienting. and putting aside how derivative all that rock music was, there was an element of uniqueness beyond what muddy waters or lighting hopkins ever did or said, its like this big echo chamber. they were responding to english folk and church music in the american south, and adding in african and other kinds of beats and whatever, and before there’s sunday morning, oh, there’s saturday night, and all that.
but what didn’t pass away, we now take as accepted norms. and its easy to forget what a challenge it was to bring out something that was new.
sometimes you hear country singers doing traditional songs like “hard times” and they’re doing it beautifully, but they don’t seem to have the depth from which to draw the tragedy and sadness out of the song.
the other day, I heard a remarkable young singer on npr’s morning edition, by the name of Nellie McKay. she said she decided to become a professional musician when she heard Dylan’s “Hurricane.” She said, here’s a guy who wrote a song that wound up getting an innocent man out of prison. music can change the world. it matters.
so then, go and listen to Dylan’s version of “hard times”, and compare it with, say, the smith sisters.
there’s this whole other thing going on besides just what’s in the song. ‘know what I mean?
RE: FW: A Christmas Poem
its nice to hear from uncle jack, but between cuddly bear hearts, jokes about killing jesse jackson, and the politics of christmas, I’m a little confused 🙂
today is september 6. last night was a total trip. we went to the local high school football game. the first game in the new $20million dollar stadium. its quite a piece of work. pretty nice, really.
but the whole high school football experience here, probably especially in texas, but throughout the rural u.s. I believe is a common grounding, a social experience and celebration uniquely american, I think, and something completely outside my experience growing up in new york.
its something I’ve explored in some detail elsewhere, so I won’t belabor it here, except to say that last night was sharp, focused, like the late afternoon sun sparkling in my crystal glass just now. a moment in time, another pearl on the thread. trust me.
but now I’m sitting at the desk upstairs in my room, and the sun is shining warm on my face, but for the first time in months, not blazingly, punishingly hot, but rather pleasantly warm. its a treat. like water to a man in the desert, sort of, but not quite so far along that direction.
I love my saturdays. its an indescribable pleasure to me to putter in my garage, fixing things, building things, enjoying the simple pleasures of life, occaisionally throwing the frisbee for my dogs who otherwise lounge around, apparently satisfied to be within eyeshot or perhaps in their cases nose-shot of their master. they follow me around like an entourage, like a shadow, exceptionally focused on my movements, my hands. and at least at times like this, its a pleasant feeling to have such trusty companions, just to share the experience of life with.
earlier in the day, I took them out to the field to throw the frisbee for them, and I slacked off of my workout and my run today, but I deserve it. anyway, they need to blow of the steam, and I’ve been able to do something along the lines of exercise for I guess six of the last seven days, so they deserved a turn. and they need someone to take them. God knows no one else in the house seems to think along those lines, even though I was the one who didn’t want dogs, and they begged me. “oh, dad, we’ll walk them, and we’ll feed them.” I knew it was a bunch of crap even then, but I wish Anita and the kids would take the dogs out for a walk or to play if for no other reason than for their own good now and then.
but this moment is also precious, more like a jewel than most, as I sit here, and the wine is just right, and the sun filters through the trees, and I return to the gravity, the magnetism of the computer after a pleasant day working in the non-sweltering garage, cleaning up the boat, perhaps for the last time, and constantly consulting my long todo lists, checking things off, adding new entries, and thoroughly enjoying myself, I recall the infinitude of things I want to do, physically, intellectually, spiritually, and I know time is limited, and one must prioritize, but in this instant, there is all the time in the world.
I’m a real fool for sunlight. colors, shadows, brightness and dark, its funny how I wound up in this field, the computer arena, so artificial, so manmade, but one of the things I enjoy most about it is the sense of adventure, that we are doing something that has never been done before, we’re blazing new territory, even if it seems mundane, its not. providing new means for folks to access and process information, and even new means for policing those folks from abusing the very means we just gave them, its a crazy world. I used to say it was like the early days of barnstorming, you could just feel the energy. its changed, now a little more corporate, a little better understood by the “lay folk” but still now and then you get that sense of adventure, and I’m a fool for the question: “what does this do?”
Aleksandra, Marty and I had lunch yesterday. I like them both. It’s pleasant to work with people you respect and who enjoy one another’s company.
I’ve been doing a lot of stewing about work, career and stuff, and it was interesting to learn that they have both had similar thoughts. Marty is married and his wife is going to graduate school for social work. Aleksandra’s husband is in the post-doctoral program in physics at UT. So it turns out the three of us are essentially the breadwinners for our respective families.
The economy has been recovering from what seems like a hangover more than anything else, after the party of the last decade or so. The net effect on us is that we no longer enjoy the luxury of changing jobs at will, or at least it seems like there are fewer good options. That affects the psychology of the worker as well as the corporation — in a market with wider choices, a worker who’s unhappy is more likely to just leave, so you don’t have people hanging around who don’t want to be there. Similarly, the company knows that they don’t need to work as hard to keep employees happy when they are tempted to rely on the market pressures to keep workers in place.
This induces a kind of feedback situation in which everyone gets more and more miserable.
Aleks asked the question, “where are we going to be in 20 years? there don’t seem to be too many 55 year old programmers running around Broadjump. they wouldn’t hire us. not everyone can be in management or on the board of directors. so where will we be?”
It’s a question I have been asking myself for 15 years now. I once thought a management track would be one solution, but for some reason, I don’t seem to fit the profile. I’m not even sure why, exactly, but now I may be rationalizing when I realize I despise low level managers. Their authority orientation makes them seem like dogs, serving their masters, and the middle managers serve their own masters in turn, each claiming the work of his subordinates as if it were his own. The chain continues in some cases to absurd lengths until you reach the executives, founders or owners.
These, it sometimes seems, have more in common with the best and brightest of workers — a disdain for the chain of ass-kissing middle managers — a regard for them as overhead, a necessary evil.
In a technological world that changes so rapidly and thoroughly, experience isn’t worth much, where a young person willing to work harder for less can be as or more productive than an experienced one, why bother with us?
It’s a reasonable business decision on the one hand, but a disturbing realization to anyone on the receiving end.
This line of thinking has led me to the conclusion that its only a matter of time before something bad happens. So the prudent thing to do is to plan to go into business for myself.
I’ve been an author and consultant. I liked it a lot better than what I’m doing now. So maybe its time I stopped making compromises and started listening to my heart.
Where are you now, children of the sun?
The broken things you left behind,
yet hold one another up,
standing hard against the frost.
Once the sun beamed on our faces,
and we burst forth, full of life,
and in that day, we gave you birth
just to watch you fall, too soon, too soon.
Sadly resolute, we must live on,
vines whose fruit has long since fallen,
what remains for us to do,
but wait the tiller call us home?
010930
Lake Travis, Texas
Maybe that which we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly. Or rather “il miglior condimento e l’apetito.”
In any case, yesterday was another one for the books. Our little boat, neglected for so long, came through for us once more.
Late in the season, when the weather moderates a little, many of the summer boaters are already putting their rigs up for the winter, but for us, that body of water held up from flooding the towns and farms downstream on the “little Colorado” river, by dams built in the late forties and early fifties of the last century, named for a hero of the Texas war for independence, and commander of the doomed garrison of the Alamo, Col. William B. Travis, our refuge and oasis, Lake Travis welcomed us once again, as it has so many times before.
It is one of those ironies of life that if it were not for a serious misfortune, we would never have been able to afford her.
Back in 1984, we had just moved down from Dallas where Anita and I had met. The long paths that led us there must remain the subject of future excursions into our peculiar histories.
But for me, it was a “coming back” to Austin. Compared to Dallas, Austin seemed so much more accomodating — looking back who knows what other paths might have uncovered — but days like yesterday, on the one hand glorious, perfect in so many ways, on the other hand only emphasize the brevity of life. To think of all the other possibilities, the other paths not taken, is to miss the point.
Julian of Norwich said, “history is nothing more than a pattern of individual moments, each perfect and infinite in itself.”
It is in the pondering of such moments that all insight comes. I stood in one — knee deep in flood waters, the rain falling on my head — and in another I first launched this little rig into the waters of the Colorado — and many years have passed between those moments until now — but the distance is meaningless — no, less than meaningless — it doesn’t even exist, except perhaps in our own minds.
The physicists have an explanation for it, the mathematicians formulae and theorems. The theologians have riddles, but lovers have the best and truest explanation of all.
To them I dedicate these pages. One of their number, I know what they know, what Julian knew, what an infant knows in her mother’s gaze — the fools may prattle about us, but we pay them no mind, as the sun sparkles on the water in moire patterns — shifting and hypnotic — the birds cry, the wind blows, and to us — it is all the same.
Ponder one of these pearls with me, as the pleasant afternoon sun filtered through the canvas shade over a hardwood deck halfway up one of these innumerable limestone cliffs dotted with junipers, live oaks, rocks. The air filled with the hiss of chirping crickets, normally quiet this time of day, but now that it is cooling off, their song has a poignancy — how much time left? how much time left? how much time left?
But they don’t know that time is an illusion — they don’t know what I know, as my sandals slap on the deck and I approach my wife from behind — she doesn’t hear me yet, approaching her — this neck I know so well, this hair, this contented smile, obscured behind her sunglasses, looking out on the water, positively high, but not the wine — well, maybe a little, but the wine, as they say, is no more “il condimento” than “l’apetito” — the heart longs for this moment like salt for water, like gravity, understood without comprehension — and the boats play down below — so commonplace, but made otherworldly in this moment because they don’t know that they’re merely pieces of glass, turned in a child’s kaleidoscope, no more than candy for our eyes, and in this moment I can forget that the truth hurts, like anticoagulant on the needle in our veins, the needle that brings life to others, or blessed relief.
In this moment I can forget that life is God’s challenge to us: “And what are you made of?” He seems to ask with every test, with every temptation, with every blessing.
How is it we come to be here, somewhere up this lazy river, on the Sandy Creek arm, not a quarter mile from where we once camped in a breathless tent on a steamy July Fourth in 1983, I guess. Who knows? Who cares?
And above us the sky is cloudless, but for a few wisps, down below is our little honeymoon boat, nameless, trusty, quaint, humble, adequate — and she doesn’t look the part of Gateway to Paradise, but looks can be deceiving.
There was a groove in my step and you know my life had a soundtrack as my sandals slapped that deck and everything was perfect in that moment as I approached my wife from behind, and that was a groove as she turned to see me and she smiled and the blue water sparkled behind her and the green hills caressed the pale sky but I didn’t see them, because all I could see was the love in my baby’s eye and we kissed.
And later we cruised out into the main body of the “lake” — just a wide river — but so much more to us — and our lives are like that river — so much water has passed under that bridge since we first floated out on an inflatable raft — the first S.S. Lowe, I dare say, so many memories, always mixed, always tinged, alloyed with the spirits of those no longer with us, and we ourselves are no longer the people we were in those moments — and the river is no longer the same river, but here it is and here we are, and the sun is going down now, fiery orange hiding behind a few wispy white clouds, and I’m getting bold enough to cut the engine out here as we have done so many times before, and the sailboats glide by us, each silently telling its own tale about lovers and families and lonely sailors, who all share this need to come back to the well, where we find renewal, better than any church, because, believe it my friend, God is here, and here He smiles on all lovers of the water, and as the faithful, ancient sun descends, the shadows lengthen on the fingers of the hills, and the big birds tickle the drafts that hold them up with their finger-like feathers, otherwise motionless, timeless, and this little boat carves out a space of air just for us two, as our thoughts fly back, ten, fifteen years when we were both younger and sitting together, right here, looking at the shadows stretch across these same hills, warming to this same now yellow, now orange, now red ball of a sun, farewell, old friend, see you tomorrow, God willing, but meanwhile, we have each other as companion. And once we floated out here when Anita was expecting, and now that person is a teenager, and once we did so again, and now that person is ten, and once we did so with my brothers, and we swam in the black water in the dark and watched the meteors shower, the sailboats grazed by us unlit, like ghosts in the night, and still we return, and still this faithful old girl conveys us and keeps us dry and carries us once more to port.
And like old hands, we tie up to the familiar moorings, making her fast, and we’re exhausted from joy and pleasure and love, and God bless us, we’re lucky to be alive, and thank Him for another day on this earth, another pearl on this thread, and for each other.
Drink deep sweetheart, this is what life is all about.