An Uninspired Life

The Whispers Sound Like Thunder

2012-01-19T14:41:00.002-06:00

Have my gaping flaws and errors finally cracked my foundation? Am I about to fall again? Certainly I have my failings and realize that they are a growing threat to be reckoned with but to me it seems that there is still time - that all is not lost just yet. And yet the eyes of my few friends here seem filled with that familiar sorrow when they see me, as if they're looking at my corpse. And when they speak the tone of their words seems forced; their phrases seem somehow chosen - the words they say seem softer than the roar of the words they've kept silent.
Am I doomed? To death? To exile? To ruin? To chains?
Do they know?
Can it be seen on me or do they have a guide?

or perhaps I simply see things that aren't there (however statistically unlikely that may be)

2011-05-08T15:13:00.002-05:00

I'll take it as a sign that this is my 137th post, at least however the numbering is counted cause there are several posts that never quite made it to print. I think that there is an obligation to finish this one. I owe it to my Aunt Serendipity. Or perhaps I owe it to myself.

It's hard to start up again. Not only in new places, which is nonetheless also true, but to start up the self again. If you lay fallow for even just a little while standing up again is hard. But it starts the way it started before, we have little adventures everyday. You fail only when you avoid them.

Today is mothers day and I'll make it a point today not only to think of my mother (I love you, Jan!) but to think of things in myself that my mother has given me. Myself, my life, my love, my hope, my forgiveness, my free spirit. My mom gave me me.

(so....) Little recks the labourer

2010-01-15T22:37:00.006-06:00

How little has my silence told you, my missing friends? Now passed the long years lack of voice seems brief, as brief as any other spoken pause is posted on a page of garbled time smeared out in space be it seconds, seasons, or five years t0 watch The River rise and fall. But this long brevity is almost done - soon I'll leave my house and Austin to go back 'home' wherever whatever that place may be! The same brief span that once marked the flicker of a moment between a thought and a second one not quite in might a correction to replace and stand alone now measures in width and hue identical the span of years in which I wandered like some Socrates by The River and found, again, that the place I was, as always finally my home - empty for me and alone. The inconsistent structure in which words written and read show relative time is for me, writing relativist aware of the relative now (for me still a then) of a reader, is just an intellectual curiosity that I can use to distract myself from myself. So far that brief span is still only simply possible but in it I can place a mythic kingdom by a river and still have room to place in it the war that tainted and made it wither with indiminished volume for me to fit in it my soul.
But that black inch that is the header of this, unintended ramble, holds in it a microcosm of the world where the hippies came

2008-05-18T12:32:00.000-05:00

2008-02-13T06:40:00.003-06:00

To sleep perchance to dream

2007-12-31T17:46:00.000-06:00

We dream our way through that little death of every night to remind us that when things such as we enter the void it bursts forth with new worlds and vast spaces. Have we not each escaped oblivion at least once before to enter, without effort or act, the flesh of us and our mothers womb?
Oblivion cannot hope to hold us ceaselessly, we are free of it here and now

2007-10-24T17:52:00.000-05:00

MY spirit to yours, dear brother;
Do not mind because many, sounding your name, do not understand you;
I do not sound your name, but I understand you,
(there are others also)
I specify you with joy, O my comrade, to salute you,
and to salute those who are with you, before and since—and those to come also,
That we all labor together, transmitting the same charge and succession;
We few, equals, indifferent of lands, indifferent of times;
We, enclosers of all continents, all castes—allowers of all theologies,
Compassionaters, perceivers, rapport of men,
We walk silent among disputes and assertions, but reject not the disputers,
nor any thing that is asserted;
We hear the bawling and din—we are reach’d at by divisions, jealousies, recriminations on every side,
They close peremptorily upon us, to surround us, my comrade,
Yet we walk unheld, free, the whole earth over, journeying up and down, till we make our ineffaceable mark upon time and the diverse eras,
Till we saturate time and eras, that the men and women of races, ages to come, may prove brethren and lovers, as we are.

-To Him that was Crucified
Walt Whitman

I wish to be good but Im bad at it

2007-10-15T23:23:00.000-05:00

It is a debate for another day - my thoughts upon the nature of miracles, intrinsic as I think them to the nature of nature itself. Be a mystic with me for a moment, see mere chaos creating life and mercy growing upon it like blossoms and accept that in the small actions of the universe there is a voice. Hard to hear and humble it speaks only when you wish to listen, to watch what is before you and see; but speak even just a whisper in your mind and it will yield to you. Omnipotent little you. We see too much an image of some distant God, incarnate upon the mountain or the cross, when Krsna and Christ spoke of no such thing. They spoke of God within you, the mercy that is the truth which knows your heart itself. Life has come to something for me, as it must come to something for each of us. But what is around us is what is what is around us and we do not suppose that nature would speak lies; the truth being defined as what nature prefers. Nature acts by elegance, burning itself away to produce creatures such as us, after all we are here. I was struck yesterday with a thought. I had just come from Half Price Books and I bought a book compiled to celebrate Stephen Hawkings 60th birthday. One of the first papers in it had an image of the sun in a dark sky showing the plants and animals on a warming and cooling Earth. The caption said, "Life on Earth is possible because the sun is a bright spot in a dark sky." That is to say, life is possible because there is a single light in a great darkness. If this does not speak numinously then what could? But as the Grand Inquisitor asks us, mocking but himself more than any, "What is the value of this freedom if obedience can be bought with bread?" Most of the time I walk around wishing to be good without actually doing much to participate. The world acts all around me and I observe it to comment, making of myself the grandest sort of hypocrite (but of all of them hypocrisy if my favourite sin). Still, I will embark this week to amend this as best I may. I'll put my foot upon the right stones to walk forward and I will pause until I know which one next will also support me.

The Rat Within the Grain

2007-10-15T01:13:00.000-05:00

By: Damien Rice

This would not have happened
If I hadn’t missed my plane
I would've been there when they told you
I’m the Rat within the grain

Within this big misunderstanding now
and I’m being misunderstood
I'm thinking someone's trying to fuck with me
And set fire to my wood

I wouldn’t want you to want
To be wanted by me
I wouldn’t want you to worry
That You'd be drowned within my sea
I only wanted to be wonderful
And wonderful is true
In truth I only really wanted
To be wanted by you

It’s a stupid situation now
Where everything goes wrong
If you can't tell if I’m lying
Then you do not belong

In my bed
Go rest your head
Upon the bones of a bigger man
He can cover you with rock wool
And you can close up like a clam

Because I wouldn’t want you to want
To be wanted by me
I wouldn’t want you to worry
You'd be drowned within my sea

I only wanted to be wonderful
And wonderful is true
In truth I only really wanted
To be wanted by you

So go play with your piano
And write a mediocre song
About the shell of mediocrity
And pretend there’s nothing wrong

I never thought
You where a chicken shit
I never thought of you at all
Until you ask me to be part of it
And now you're showing me a wall

I wouldn’t want you to want
To be wanted by me
I wouldn’t want you to worry
You be drowned within my sea
I only wanted to be wonderful
And wonderful is true
In truth I only really wanted
To be wanted by you

La la la la ……………

In truth I only really wanted
To be wanted by you

---Much of what I would say to my three great unrequited loves, adding only that I wished them well and would never have asked anything of them at all. Make your life into your love, I would say, and I will have sacrificed the utterness of my being to ensure your freedom. It is only in love that selflessness becomes selfish, incresing its measure and authority with every bit of itself which is whittled away.
On another note, happier and with greater detail to come. I officially become a Quaker on Sunday this. (Which, if thou do not know is 21st of the Tenth Month in Quaker speak.)

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam - Tetrastich 18

2007-10-10T12:49:00.000-05:00

I sometimes think that never blows so red
the Rose as where some great Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the garden wears
dropt there from some once lovely head.

Eppur si muova

2007-08-22T22:22:00.000-05:00

Dr. Robert Wilson was a very practical man. He was amongst the pioneers of nuclear and particle physics and developed smaller, cheaper, and yet more powerful particle accelerators and methods for detecting and observing objects that are smaller than light. At the time (1969) nuclear and particle physics was mostly theoretical and it promised no real applications (exactly as the study of electricity was thought to be useless for years after its discovery). As Wilson helped to pioneer the study of nuclear physics and lead in the battle to construct the tools necessary to understand the structure of not just atoms but of matter itself the United States was embroiled in a cold war of ideas about how to spend money and who should sell bread. Much, and by much we mean significantly more than half, of the US budget each year was being spent on building the biggest guns in order to show the then USSR that Communism would never work. Even though the most powerful of the weapons ever made, that at that time were being made by the hundreds (then thousands), were developed from the discoveries of nuclear physics the Congress of the US had reservations about the large investment the Department of Energy and Dr. Wilson wanted to make in a new facility to experimentally study particle physics (0.001% of the total budget that year, but paid out over almost ten years so really 0.0001%).
When Dr. Wilson was called before Congress he explained to the congressmen, as best he could, the fundamentals of particle accelerators and what they would be used for (essentially smacking REALLY REALLY small things together REALLY REALLY hard to watch the sparks). He explained how this facility could probe the very fabric of matter and begin to show the answers to questions humankind has asked since the dawn of history; what is the universe and out of what is it made? But he didn't mention Russia and he couldn't promise new military applications and so Senator John Pastore of Rhode Island had the following exchange with the venerable scientist:

Pastore: Is there anything connected in the hopes of this accelerator that in any way involves the security of the country?
Wilson: No, sir; I do not believe so.
Pastore: Nothing at all?
Wilson: Nothing at all.
Pastore: It has no value in that respect?
Wilson: It only has to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with those things. It has nothing to do with the military, I am sorry.
Pastore: Don't be sorry for it.
Wilson: I am not, but I cannot in honesty say it has any such application.
Pastore: Is there anything here that projects us in a position of being competitive with the Russians, with regard to this race?
Wilson: Only from a long-range point of view, of a developing technology. Otherwise, it has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things that we really venerate and honor in our country and are patriotic about. In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country, except to make it worth defending.
(Testimony before the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, April 16, 1969)

Dr. Wilson's words contain the truest and most compelling reason to study physics, not just for a people but for every person: to thirst for Truth and seek out the nature of things elevates not just our comfort and our safety but our very selves. Understanding is an end in itself and nothing is more pragmatic than to explore, after all, who can make use of what isn't known or build from things that haven't been found? Would we have satellites or cell phones if Newton had not wondered why apples fall but the moon does not? Is understanding how stars and worlds are born and die only of value when they make electricity cheaper and cleaner or could a curious mind, who knows that planets and people are made from the stuff of a dead star, find something about us, about what we are? Is there nothing comforting or meaningful in knowing that even stars come to an end but in so doing give birth to the substance of life and worlds?
Still, as profound and compelling a reason as understanding may be for it's own sake one cannot ignore the myriad uses which physics (and all the sciences) has brought to us. Fermilab, the particle accelerator which Dr. Wilson planned and defended was built with no expected application in mind except for discovery but in the past 30 years has helped in the development of the NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) medical scan, increased efficiency and safety at nuclear power plants,provided information about particle interactions which is now used as one of the tools to measure the health of the ozone layer and outer atmosphere, provided cheaper faster and more accurate methods for producing silicon chips, opened whole and totally unforeseen possibilities for space craft propulsion, and has provided the only source of information known to predict solar activity and solar flares which in the last century were notorious for interfering with or totally preventing radio and television communication. And this is something important and intrinsic about discovery, something we all understand but hardly ever remember; if the discoveries could be predicted then there would certainly be no need to look for them.
The applications of knowledge and new technology are limited only by the ingenuity of the people who choose to use them. It could hardly have been predicted that the invention of photography would contribute much to the development of flight and it all happened because of an argument about horses. In 1872 the governor of California, Leland Stanford, got into a disagreement about whether or not all four of a horses feet leave the ground during its gallop. In order to settle the dispute he commissioned the photographer Edweard Muybridge to take photographs of a horse in motion, but the conventional cameras of the time lacked the speed necessary to accomplish the task. Muybridge solved the problem by arranging several cameras in a line which were triggered by chords stretched across the path of the horse. These striking photographs, which showed that all four feet of a horse do indeed leave the ground at once, were seen by the French physiologist Etienne-Jules Marey who was fascinated for much of his life in flight. Struck by the idea of photographing an animal in motion this physiologist who had discovered already that the wings of an insect take an elliptical path finally found a means by which the flight of a bird could finally be known. Making use of the newly developed gun camera (as opposed to the far more threatening camera gun) he photographed birds in flight which culminated in his writing the perennial work on avian flight, “Le Vol des Oiseaux” (The Flight of Birds). This work provided not only inspiration but badly needed data to a pair of American brothers who would prove themselves right and that their “heavier than air flying machine” would work.
We can only ever see by looking and it is here that physics has the most to offer an individual. Physics is nothing less than learning how to see the future by properly observing what is happening now. It shattered the perspectives of the western mind when Newton declared to the world that no matter what stone you threw or how you threw it he could tell you not only where it would land and at what speed but he could tell you its location and speed at every moment in time after that. Newton's laws told us more than simply how to locate objects in space but set into motion a means of beginning to understand what those objects were and even what space itself might be. Physics presumes to be, and has thus far found no failure which hasn't helped it grow, a description of everything that physically exists. This does not simply stop being true when we step up from stones and begin to speak about the motions of people, the structures of the brain, or even the mechanisms by which cells carry out the business of being life and cooperating together to building plants, animals, and all of us. Physics is a toolbox that people like you and I have spent whole lifetimes of work building, taking into itself the tools of mathematics and logic, of observation and precision, of learning from error, and these tools teach us how to observe and know not just inanimate things but everything that is. These tools that built bridges across distances called epic and then to the moon have also been used, by clever minds, to see better how the things of man are also described by watching nature. Techniques which were used to explain how things are hot and why they are different from things that are cold are now used to model traffic patterns and occur to me more than once when I dart my way through a concert crowd. Methods that were developed to solve the once unsolvable problems of relativity are now used to minimize distances in complex systems (like trying to determine which series of plains will get a traveling salesman home the fastest and cheapest). And more than one impossible question in mathematics has been answered by an exhausted but curious physics student who couldn't be bothered to find out it couldn't be done (and deference where its due, revolutions coming from exhausted but curious students -and hobbyists- of math have humbled and exalted us all).
It was when the arts and sciences first began to cross over that Europe woke to it's most significant portion of one of humankind's many a renaissance. Leonardo de Vinci used his skills as an artist to bring about the beginnings of modern engineering and anatomy. The discovery of perspective, which arose because of extensive studies of Euclid's geometry, provided the means to bring a whole new dimension to the visual arts. The Futurists and Dada were, partially, a response to the counterintuitive ideas of quantum mechanics and relativity while at the same time much of the geometrical theory of special relativity itself was declared, abstractly, in H. G. Wells' book “The Time Machine”, published a decade before Einstein finished his perennial work. Jorge Borges, the Argentine genius of Spanish magical realism who taught and went blind at UT, was intimately familiar with the profound consequences of quantum mechanics and the Earth shattering ramifications of mathematician Kurt Godel's proof that an infinite language cannot ever express the fullness of truth.
More often than not knowledge is presented in shards, as if something impenetrable had struck and shattered truth and beauty, but it simply isn't so. Knowledge and truth, appreciation and beauty, is only a single thing with myriad pieces and angles by which to be seen. Its a thing I learned one day while reading a paper entitled “An Introduction to Loop Quantum Gravity in the Canonical Ashetekar Formulation of General Relativity”, reality is just a single thing all mixed together without any distinction between objects; the fractures that are the diversity of objects in the universe are just beautiful illusions.

The wise walk around with eyes in their head,
seeing truth in everything, while fools fumble
in the darkness. -Ecclesiastes

I blame thee not to look and seek,
for the heavens are as the book of
God before thee set, to learn his hours,
days, and seasons. - Milton, Paradise Lost

2007-08-21T09:52:00.000-05:00

I have looked through the lens of physics to behold the very moments of creation and in them seen glimpses of the mind of God. The nowhere that was everything exploded into (not penetrating but becoming) reality itself, time and place and all thats in it, because of some sudden uncertainty about its inexistence. Before there was time, which is change and the chaos that makes life, something changed. Inside of no place, where there are no locations and every distance is zero, is the universe stretched across lengths that shame and humble the mind that conceives to picture them.
We dwell in a place where everything is remembered but not all information exists. Not one cause or action, however small, is ever lost or forgotten.

2007-07-23T13:26:00.000-05:00

2007-06-30T22:19:00.000-05:00

It was mercy that made the stars at night. Blazing nuclear fires, some few beacons in the "dark", stand only to remind us that all is awash with light. It takes losing one sun to gain millions.

2007-05-31T18:16:00.000-05:00

I do this for my students.

2007-03-13T06:24:00.000-05:00

Beauty is reactionary.

My reply to an email from one of my students

2007-01-28T04:18:00.000-06:00

As for your question regarding tensors and why I chose that to be me email addy, there were several reasons for it. First, I wanted something that indicated, at least to some degree, my interests without necessarily providing information about my identity. I chose something from mathematics so as to be easily recognizeable by colleagues (I could think of little more humiliating or less usefel than sending a resume to the dean with an email addy of soldmysoultopopculture@whatever.com). Also, I like the concept of a tensor. It is a mathematical device which encodes within its structure information which is independent of the coordinate system used to describe a system. That is to say that a tensor is a device which communicates absolute information without the often confusing and usually pointless perspective of the system. In a more personal sense I chose it as an indicator of one of the aspects of my personality which I strive to perfect. It is my hope to be a servant of Truth and be bound less by something so trivial and random as human belief (at least those without justification). Belief is no end in itself, after all. Those beliefs which serve to help us grow justify
themselves in their benefit and thus ring of truth, but there are many beliefs which some people use maliciously as a tool to scare and intimidate. Those sort offend me to my very core and demean all of humanity with their pollution. (Quietly steps down from his ACME brand soap box and apologizes for his long winded nature).
And now for one of my favourite topics, that of the infinite. Ah, there is just so much to say about infinity, it just seems I could keep going and going about it and never get any closer to being finished at all. The most important part, and in many ways hardest, of understanding infinity (if humans have the capacity for so arrogant a statement) is to accept that infinity is a concept more than a number, it does not have a value in the counting sense than the less transcendental numbers we use daily. Now this doesnt in any way restrict the infinite to being incomporable, for example there are infinities that are bigger and smaller than other infinities. Here is an example: There are an infinite number of integers (1,2,3,4,5,6,............rotated 8) but in between each one of those numbers is an infinite number of decimals. Thus, the total quantity of
numbers which have a value is bigger than the quantity of integers even though both of them are infinite. So if I were to try to count all the numbers (and I only count with integers) then I will run out of integers before I finish. (A mathematician named Cantor discovered this and introduced and named the first few infinite sets. The smallest infinity is the number of integers, called a countable infinity for obvious reasons. Next up is the infinity of ALL numbers, called Cantor 2, and has the quality of being uncountable. He then went on to show that Cantor 2 is a smaller infinity than Cantor 3, the quantity of ALL curves in the plane. After all, for every single one of those infinite values for x there are an infinite number of possible different lines which interesect it.) Now, in the traditional sense the infinite does not stop. After all, there is no wall at the end of it so if I reached it (even in the abstract) what is to stop me from simply taking one more step, then another, then another, right? But still we have come to understand that infinities have different sizes, and that does imply quite naturally the existence of a border of sorts. It strikes me with a sense of the spiritual, actually, because if I wanted to obtain the infinite and those greater things which stand beyond that veil requires no travel, no effort, just that I open my mind and recognize it. Though I've much more I could drone on about in this I think that I will give in to sleep and leave you with a favoured quote of mine, though I cant recall exactly who said it (who knows, it might have been me on a drunken evening).

I am but dust standing upon a stone, small beyond the insignificant,
but I close my eyes and on the inside, Ah! on the inside, I am infinite.

Hope that the rest of the weekend goes well and I'll see ya Monday, although there are an infinite number of instants between here and there so its a long way to travel.

The Thom

From Professor Arthur Mattucks lecture #1 on Differential Equations

2006-06-02T14:59:00.001-05:00

There is one integral curve that is easy to see, its this one. This line is both an isocline and integral curve, its everything, except drawable.

2006-05-31T16:36:00.001-05:00

An infinite universe is no guarantee that everything will happen. There are many infinities. For example, there are an infinite number of numbers between three and four, but none of them are five. ---Someone on Slashdot, News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters.

From "Pnin" by Vladimir Nabokov

2005-10-24T14:24:00.000-05:00

"Our work is very interesting, she said, still shielding her eyes, "but I must tell you I dont love Eric any more. Our relations have disintegrated. Incidentally Eric dislikes his child. He says he is the land father and you, Timofey, are the water father."
She wanter Timofey to lay aside every month a little money for the boy, because she could not ask Barnard Maywood (her new interest) and the boys father, Eric, did not care what happened, and that someone should send the lad something every now and then, as if it was coming from his mother -pocket money, you know, he would be amongst rich boys. She would write Timofey with an address and some more details. Yes- she never doubted Timofey was a darling. And now where was the bathroom? And would he phone for a taxi?
...
All of a sudden he thought: If people are reunited in Heaven (I don't believe it, but suppose), then how shall I stop it from creeping upon me, over me, that shriveled, helpless, lame thing, her soul? But this is the earth, and I am, curiouisly enough, alive, and there is something in me and in life---
He seemed to be quite unexpectedly (for human despair seldom leads to great truths) on the verge of a simple solution of the universe but was interrupted by an urgent request. A squirel under a tree had seen Pnin on the path. In one sinuous tendril-like movement, the intelligent animalclimbed up on the brim of a drinking fountain, and, as Pnin approached, thrust its oval face toward him with a rather coarse spluttering sound, its cheeks puffed out. Pnin understood and after some fumbling he found what had to be pressed for the necessary results. Eying him with contempt, the thirsty rodent forthwith began to sample the stocky sparkling pillar of water, and went on drinking for a considerabletime. "She has fever, perhaps," thought Pnin, weeping quietly and freely, and all the time trying not to meet the unpleasant eye fixed upon him. Its thirst quenched, the squirrel departed without the least sign of gratitude.
The water father continued upon his way, came to the end of the path, then turned into a side street where there was a small bar of log-cabin design with garnet glass in its casement windows.

--- --- --- ---

I have been obsessed recently with the work of Nabokov, which I am sure those literati amongst you will immediatly agree is a fine thing to be obsessed upon. To be honest I am a bit daunted by the text, not so much the text but the mastery of my native tongue that a Russian emigre could weave into his prose. It is much like reading a fine silk or reciting a wine meant for only kings. The pages burst with the ecstasy of a muse, but weave a tale so filled with sorrow, with the good gone horribly mundane.
It is a hard thing not to relate to Pnin, at least for me. He is an aging professor of Russian at a small college in the northeast. He is a lonely academic who often seems too aloof to notice his own loneliness, making those heartwrenching moments of revelation all the harder to accept. He is a man whose life is spent and has obtained from it nothing to give a man comfort.
A far cry from the frail, pathetic Humbert Humbert in his more famous book, Lolita. That pedophile who traps himself a nymphet, Lo, Lola, Dolores on the Dotted Line, but always to his arms Lolita, whose manipulations of the innocent child can be outdone in the novel only by the manipulations of him by his small captive.
And now I notice my clock. Class begins in just a few minutes and I have to go and gather my materials together.
To that end this younger Pnin, one with hope still left, gathers his books and prepares for another day of corrupting the youth.
I leave you with these thoughts, also from Pnin:

"I dont know if it has ever been noted before that one of the main characteristics of life is discreteness. Unless a film of flesh envelops us, we die. Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space travelers helmet. Stay inside or you perish. Death is divestment, death is communion."

And other words echo in my helmet, words whose author are lost to me now....

"But inside....inside, we are infinite."

My Will (and other redundancies)

2005-10-19T16:15:00.000-05:00

I have been faced, of late, with the ever burning question of my Will and its place in my life. Should I be left to my own devices? Can I be trusted with certain aspects of my own existence and that of those around me? It is true that for all my talk and spontaneous nature I am a creature of some sound ethics, but my Will has a mind of its own and can often subvert my ethics for the sake of its own trivial desires. What will happen? Will I ever know?
My life, lately, has been a continued trial of some kind or another. The details of many of these are simply superfluous, but still the trials have been noted and have begun to show in my otherwise always happy demeanor (wink). Still, I think that I should give myself a pat on the back, compliment the strength of my Will and go on with the course that I have chosen. Though it is a path of some difficulty I think that I have chosen correctly and have demonstrated a great deal of restraint in the accomplishment of my beliefs. (Damn these porecelain chains, but damn me if I should break them!)
There is a question of some subtlty that comes to mind at the moment, though I think that it will most likely be reduced to a question of semantics. Still, it questions me now. My Will to action has been made, chosen, laid out and will be accomlished. These actions, or in some cases these lack of actions, are the manifestation of my Will through the actions of my flesh. They are, however, not the only sort of will which is extant in my soul. Hiding behind the Will that I have chosen is the Will that I desire. What I have chosen to do is so much different than what I would choose to do, given care free and morally unquestionable paths. Now, I agree that my Will most certainly lies within the actions that I have chosen, those things that I have willed to be and the course that I will take. If anything they contain the vastness of my Will being that my Will is about choice, about the force of my existence. Still though, is there some aspect of my Will which is tied to my desires. That aspect of me which constructs the great what might have beens, which would take a certain second path, is surely some portion of my Will also.
And so it comes to my mind, that question that I scream to the blank heavens in every moment of my life, the question of my Will, of its existence, of its total or moral freedom. What are the obligations that I owe to another? The obligations that I owe to myself? Is my Will a thing given in service to myself and my people or is it the overflow of that which quickens my mortal flesh, to thus serve only my needs. Is my Will wholly myself? Is my Will wholly mine?
They say that the will to action defines a man, that his thoughts are an extension of his Will. Of course, the opposite is also said, that thoughts define a mans will and give meaning to his action. A tuatology of circles if you ask me, I am not concerned so much with the definitionals as I am with the source itself. From whence comes my Will and can I say that its acts are to be dedicated to me or ascribed with the rest of the clockwork to the universe itself. Fate or a free will, or perhaps it is fate to have a free will.

From my journal

2005-10-18T15:30:00.000-05:00

"The two greatest miracles are the most common; that any of this should exist at all and that I should be aware of it."

Ive been thinking that a lot today, thought that I would share it.

Between Solitude and Self Loathing

2005-10-17T09:52:00.000-05:00

Lola woke me up again today. Actually I had been awake for a little while before that, but I was at that moment a king of infinite space. That brazen intrusion carrying up across the lightyears of stairs between she in the living room and I at the center of the void, still just as piercing as if she were inches from my face.
I scream down to her to stop. I yell for her to come to me. Everything that is within my capacity at the top of a mighty flight of stairs I tried, and still she barked at a neighbor watering his bushes at 5:15 in the morning (perhaps I should blame it all on him and his unnatural schedule).
She carried on and carried on and I decided to put a stop to it. Descending those stairs I decided that I was going to make certain that she quit barking and wouldn't start again.
I struck my dog.
It was hardly anything in force, she just looked at me as if I had betrayed her and curled up on the floor. I can't believe that I just spanked my dog. I would never spank anything (unless it asked). She's been ignoring me all day since then, and I can't say that I blame her. Her human hit her for gaurding the house from that evil neighbour who could have been collaberating with the bushes, for all we knew, about methods of infiltrating Lola's domain. I mean, she was just making sure, and I hit her for it. An instantaneous pas moi, brought on by sleep and my mood, but still, indicitive at least of something underneath.
And now Im sitting here in my office up at the school, thinking about how to best make it up to a creature without much of a memory or cause effect analysis, thinking about why I would act like that and what moments in my past have always brought it on, thinking about what was on my mind this morning when I really woke up.
I remember then thinking that I was a king of infinite space, a soul bound to a body struck at the center of the void. There was a tower standing upon a rock just large enough to make support and a courtyard, and beyond that in all directions was infinite space. Like some creature meant to be bound I dwelled alone in that tower with only my books and my meditations to keep me. It was dark and there were no stars.
See the house has been empty for the most part lately. John has been off at work, Isaac stays with Mindy on most evenings, and Jason has a bit of the gypsy in him so he stays wherever he finds himself, which is rarely home. For the most part the house is just me and Lola most of the time. It's not so bad really, and I can't say that I can complain much about the alone time. The last few months have seen me double my reading load, practicing cooking a few times a week, cut back by a significant amount on my drinking (a whole other post right there), and I've started going to Quaker services and will begin participating in some of the events that they host (Canglelight vigil and protest of the death penalty this Thursday at 5:30). And I have to admit that it is nice to have the big house to myself, completely have the run of the place, but its empty and its vast and it reminds me of my solitude.
I have the happiest of days lately, but it seems that every morning I wake up sad. Everything very empty and alone. Its a momentary emotion, just a few minutes, perhaps a brief melancholy as I brush my teeth and pick clothes, and then it passes and I have the lightest of moods for most of the day. You know me, all smiles and sunshine. (heheh) Well, if not all smiles and sunshine then at least all energy and interaction.
Still, even though today has been no exception, I've noticed a dark hair running through the stone that forms my day. There is a background mood, a shadow on almost everything that I do. Today is just like all the other days, only today I notice that its really bittersweet. I sit here in my office waiting for my next class to begin and I find that my mind is everywhere.
I'm lonely today. I think that I have been lonely for a while.

....Student here. Will return to later.

And now its several hours later and I am at a different campus waiting for my last class to start in a different office. There is less solitude here, surrounded by a few other adjuncts in an office meant to be shared by adjuncts from across the array of departments.
See, the problem is that I really dislike the gay "community". For the most part its filled with insipid queens who dislike me as much as I have a distaste for them. Still though it is a difficult thing to be separated from ones own kind, most especially when ones own kind are already somewhat separated from the main. It seems that either the people I meet are without much in their head, as filled with passionate fire as stone, or are utterly interesting and committed to others. No middle ground in the gay world. There is either perfection or dust.
Its my own Scylla and Charybdas. To the one side is cavern filled with the dark, an ancient nymph transformed from beauty to cold teeth and solitude. And to the other, well to the other is a breaking of my porcelain chains, a certain sacrifice of my soul. A choice between solitude and self loathing. The choice between them is ridiculous and the middle way calls for patience and for sacrifice.
Class is coming soon and I have to get upstairs to prepare for it. Sorry about the ambling post today, more meant as a record than as a thought. I should remember not to write posts on campus, its hard to tie them together.

"The Enigma of Edward Fitzgerald"

2005-10-08T18:34:00.000-05:00

Omar Khayyam was a mathematician of some merit in the early Islamic era. Somewhere in the time of the 5th Hegira he contributed some footnotes to algebra and geometry involoving solutions to equations up to the third and fourth degree. Though his name is not so widely known for his contributions to mathematics it should not be forgotten that while we were busy teaching the truth of Christ's mercy through torture and the beginning of a long dark age those in the realms of Mohammed were flourishing in another of mankinds many a' renaissance.
Khayyam was a student of a certain mystic, along with two of his dear friends, so teaches history. And the three of them made to each other a common vow, that should bounty favour one of them then friendship would supply comfort to the others.
I wonder how many are the times that vow has been made before the blank face of heaven, that should I fare well then I would keep thee. More though I have to wonder, and it speaks to the nature of man, how often is it made with the heart of a promise to be kept or instead made with the expectation of a promise in the keeping. Still though, for all my musings one of Khayyams friends did go on to a certain kind of greatness, servant to the Sultan and Vizeir of the court. The memory of his vow extant he summoned his friends to fulfill their wishes.
The first, whose name is already enough a part of history, wished for a place in the government. Through intrigue and, as Borges points out, a certain too quick ambition to power he is banished from the court and becomes a member of a society, the Hashashin, from which the modern English tongue derives the word assassin.
Khayyam, contrary to the nature of his infamously forgotten friend, wishes only for a place, in some shadowed and fertile corner of the Sultans power, to pray for the Sultans peace and to pursue his devotion to the order of the world.
The Vezeir is true to his word and provides Khayyam a home and farm sufficient for his needs as well as an anual pension from the royal treasury to provide him with comfort enough to pray.
Khayyam spends his hours in composition of both solutions to his equations as well as brief quatrains which are interspersed and provided with no significant order. Though he is a name to be known he is never amongst the proud and mighty, amongst the thinkers of his time or even of ours. That is until...
Edmund Fitzgerald was an academic. He was the friend of great men, so much as any man can lay claim to such a thing, and often dined with Dickens and Thackery. He made minor contributions in his own right but for the most part was little known outside of his peirs. I'm sure that a great many remarkable men have not benefited from the fame of their friends, and this is one of those rare cases when a certain lack of fame still manages to wiggle into history.
Fitzgerald stumbled upon a rare copy of the cycle of poems written by the ancient mathematician and discerns a pattern to his symbols. Borges, in a story of the same name as this post, captures so much better the ecstasy of Khayyams translation than I could hope, and he brings forth a great question.
Neither of the men alone made so brazen a mark upon history as their collaberation, six centries separated. Borges proposes that the most holy aspect of each of us fits in a grander whole, that Khayyams work, insufficient to his own skills, found fruition in his soul reborn as a quiet academic never known for greatness except but to echo a mans thoughts and give pattern to a mathematicians ironically unordered quatrains.
It is reminiscent of another poet amongst the Hegira's of Mohammud. Rumi, who founded the Suphi movement and introduced mysticism to the mystic peoples of the Allah of Abraham, Isaac, and Jesus. He was possessed of a friend, as my brother in spirit Isaac tells me, who inspired the greater part of his own great work. Friendship and mortality being what they are Rumi's friend eventually died and Rumi fell into great grief. He claimed that their "great conversation had ended."
Borges points out that perhaps in this particular reflection of the story six centuries passed in order to let a new great conversation begin.
In the end of his days Rumi found his friend again, another who Rumi claimed to be unquestionably his friend reborn. Perhaps we should take from the story of Fitzgerald and Khayyam that all of mankinds history is the story of these conversations, the eternal completion of our own truth.
And maybe Richard Bach put it best, "Oh Sully, for shame, but what have we been trying to learn here. If you overcome space then all you have is here, if you don't fear time then all you have is now, and don't you think that friends such as us would run into each other every now and again." (JLS fans forgive the paraphrasing).

A Corruptor of the Youth

2005-08-29T18:20:00.000-05:00

It seems that some of my financial woes have ended, having of course some degree of unmerited faith in my own will, as I have garnered a new poste at another university here in Austin. Fear not, gentle reader, I am still corrupting young and impressionable minds at ACC as well.
I have begun a lecture position at Huston Tillotson just recently. I had not been familiar with the school until I received a lucky email from the department at ACC asking if anyone was interested in an adjunct position there. It is the oldest institution of higher education in Austin and I recently discovered that it is associated with the Methodist church. Needless to say Isaac and his mother were thrilled.
Huston Tillotson is nestled just off 7th street on the East Side of I-35, no more than ten blocks from that ever clogged artery of the city. It is a historically black university, which unfortunatly in Texas means that it has not been appropriatly funded, but it is not, by any stretch of the imagination apparent in the campus of their facilities. The buildings are of the same light brick that made Austin College, and sits on a hillier version of that Elysian campus, Austin lending this new Austin college gentle hills atop a high place overlooking downtown and the noble spires of both UT and St. Edwards.
I'm struck suddenly with visions of my walk to class. Coming up from the main entrance to the school just off of 9th St. the triune bells sit glorious in their tower just in front of the science building and as I climb they are to my right, facing mostly the rising sun while I mount a hill to see morning mists rush down the slow slope behind the building to the horizon which holds a sister tower of almost crimson red, another in Austins own Roman lighthouses spreading truth much more than message of war.
It's really only ever just a flicker with me as I see it on my way to my 9am class, and that foul hour, made fouler by the fact that Ive been awake for an hour or longer by then, is always a bit elusive to my memory. Still, that single flicker often seems so much more real than the lecture that I give just moments after. Its strange the things that the mind clings to remember and those much more pertinent things that it bothers to forget.
The lab that is my second home from home is a bit disorganized and scattered. There is no physics department, per se, and it shows in the nature of the lab. I'm not sure yet but I believe that there is no full time professor of physics at the school and that I am teaching the full set of physics classes that are being taught this semester.
Its a terrifying and exhilerating experience all at once.
Suddenly I have dreams of building a department from nothing but my Will and my Soul. I'm taken with what it would be to sunder a place from the main and take it somewhere new, show it things not yet seen, to seek freedom. With work and devotion I could take a school that has no major in my field and form from it a garden to the universe and various truths of this reality, this home to you and I.
Could I make from this soft mortal stone a thing more withstanding?
Still, my dreams are higher than mountains and my hopes lay elsewhere. Perhaps I'm not to change the world or even too much my little piece of it. Perhaps I should be contented in the work of an earnest soul that sculpts souls to reason. So tomorrow I'll begin my own great work, I'll let it be what it will be. Tomorrow I'm going to remember that flicker of light from another lampost at a campus not so far away and the light I give to the flame outside my classroom window.
Tomorrow I'll deliver my lecture and then spend a few spare hours getting the lab and its equipment into shape. Sparks, after all.
Who could have thought that a work of great love could start with organizing a storage room?

Old Times and New

2005-08-24T02:40:00.000-05:00

Nicholas came to visit us today with an entourage in tow. His best friend from high school, Billy, came in to town with Jamie tagging along. I'm glad to see that he is doing well, though there are some aspects of his life that are a little less than envious, his mothers health is not the best but she seems to be moving through it with a certain kind of grace. Still, for the most part it is good to see him with lighter spirits and especially since it is always good to see old friends regardless.
Times have certainly changed since the last time I saw Nick, but in questions of gradiation between these new times and those that are older had to come at coffee just a few hours after they arrived. It is truely exquisite this nonlinearity but at Spider House with dear friends from a year ago I ran into a friend I had always wished to know better from nearly a decade ago. Will Cowan, whose old cell phone lasted for so long amongst my box of scattered trinckets, a brighter face from my darker days in Dallas, was sitting in a corner of Spider House as I ordered sangria for Nick and Bill.
Will seems to be doing well. He told me that he has spent some time abroad and was able to complete a degree in philosophy with a second degree in spanish literature ending this december. We talked for a while and had great conversation, much to the detriment of conversation with my visiting friends (but, eh, they'll be here all weekend, Will only lives here). Still the respite was nice. Good conversation is always so hard to come by, even in this fairest of cities.
I am forever surprised by the imagination of my Aunt Serendipity and the cool humours that guide her hand. Here I stand, a common scene in this city, confronted eternally with the promise of a completed past, some better whole.
Its been the gift of a city so brimming with soul. Matthew, my Lohengrin; Katherine with her passions; Isaac who has never left me and Jason who comes anew; a certain John from Austin College who stumbled into my life as a gift of that ever so sexy Stacy who haunts my bottom floor from moonlight to the promise of dawn, all these things and more have come back to me here in this place. So many endings that are new beginnings and, and well I wax poetic.
Nick and I had a wonderful time catching up. He has decided on majoring in physics, to study relativity as I recall, and he is hoping to transfer to Austin College. Some strange coincidence, else my Aunt and I have more authority than I often recall. Still, we spent hours discussing some of the finer points of theory and recalling old days, some a little less than glorious.
Bill it seems I had met before, but I dont recall it, which is unfortunate. Bill has a striking personality and a certain sort of wisdom about his actions. Some archetypical male comes to mind with all the appropriate virtues but lacking in the more agressive vices of the gender. He's just gotten back from a tour of duty in Korea and had all the best stories of the day. On his insitance I am traveling with the trio to Houston this weekend to see his family and hang out with old friends of his. It promises to be an adventure, and Houston is awfully close to Katy, where China is being rebuilt in replica. Perhaps I can convince them to stop by and see a great palace of kings, or perhaps I can convince them instead to buy me a drink or two to shut me up. :-)

And Godel says....

2005-06-03T05:47:00.001-05:00

each word is a series of words, each thought is every thought.

2005-05-17T03:37:00.000-05:00

Here is a truth about myself I don't think anyone understands, and in moments when Im most inwardly inspective I don't think that I do either.

Its a riddle........take pause, and think about it.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind

2005-05-04T13:48:00.000-05:00

If you are wondering where the title comes from, its Shakespeare, Midsummer Nights Dream. Beautiful isn't it, and very true. Still, I cant help but think that its truth is lost these days, at least among most of the people that I have met lately. Now, dont get me wrong, Im not cynical about it, just hoping that I have just been looking in the wrong places. Then I pose the question, where is the right place?

I have sat outside looking at the stars with dear friends, and made a great realization. I pity the sun for the sake of the arrogant moon. I want to find someone who knows what I mean, to have a lesser sphere reflect your own light with a softer beauty that is often much more understood, but stolen nonetheless. I want someone who knows what they want from life, and will make no apologies about doing what it takes to get it, but still doesnt walk across plains of their vanquished foes to win. I want someone who is soft and gentle, but strong when they need to be. I want someone on whom the joy of life is not lost, who is happy with who they are, but more importantly, happy with who they are becoming. I want someone who I can learn from, who can learn from me, and who, together with, we can learn new things that alone we could not begin to understand. I want understanding and patience, but a touch of righteous anger whem merited. I want someone who understands that morals are eggshells, but ethics are sacred beyond religion, and actually knows the difference. I want someone who not only admits their guilts, but owns them, not necessarily to be embraced, but to be there, to be learned from, and in the learning to find the contrition. I want someone who is arrogant, not because they want to be, but because they can, and still to see fundamental equality in a world where there is no such definition. I want someone who enjoys every breath of their life, who pursues it with the vigor of gods, and who in their final breath will not breath a sigh of relief for the sake of escaping regret, but will instead smile the smile of the finally content and whisper the name of something loved. I want quiet nights wrapped up by a fire lost in a ballet of color and emotion. I want arguements that make me cry, followed with a smile from one of us that melts the heart and makes compromise and new ground where before there could be none. I want someone whose goals are impossible, but so convinced by their idealism that they still come true, and together we have such faith in each other that nothing could not be done. I want to know that if faith can move mere mountains then I have found the soul with whom I move worlds. I want the only regret ever to be known is the loss of innocence, and yet still cling even in the loosing. I want a shooting star, that burns with a fury that ignites others to grandeurs and heights that they thought that they never could find.

Most would prbably say that I want too much, but the one that I am looking for is the one who says to himself while reading, "Yes, these things are a good place to begin..."

***This piece was written a few years ago. I put it here for safe keeping***

And when I'm alone.....

2005-05-01T04:05:00.000-05:00

There is this certain way the silence sounds, like a multitude of voices against the ringing of a bell. It is certain and ever different, water against stones. Even the slightest noise would shatter it, and yet it exists in a vastness and a certainty which can lend it nothing but strength. It's dominance is in it's delicacy.
It's rather like a darkness, or in some ways a great light. The thing is of itself, unyielding and unfaltered, but any breach would destroy it all. Nothing but man and Hegel; God and oblivion. What is creation in the end but a shattering of the void and the breaking of a trivial symmetry?
When I'm alone I see my friends, my family, my people and my kind in a world that screams it's joy to them. The silence comes with all it's voices and sing to the praises of existing. That mere fragments of energy should make chemistry and stars. That mere dust could make my people, my parents, and I. That mere people could make justice, science, and poetry. What it is to think, and by think to know. That mere carbon, just dust, would ask these questions or write these words. It's the asking that is holy.
And so, when I'm alone I think a lot about the world and how I perceive it. I think a lot about the martyr and the ascetic. I think a lot about the Gnostics and what it is to lose a love. When I'm alone I think a lot about what it's like to be alone.
Like just now. I sit here in my room, everyone else in bed. John and I did not have the best of evenings out and I was rather cruel to him. My dunkeness had gotten the better of me and some darker part of my psyche decided to reak a little havoc on the purest thing I know. I'm not proud of it, but it happened. The evening progressed and I came home.
On my way I listened to Beck and wondered all the time what it was that I thought about when I'm alone. Then I run into one of the first waking truths, a koan of the modern age
....thoughts are not silence.
So the visage is shattered again, and in a clamour I arrive back at my room. And it seems again that Hegel may be right. It is either joy or silence, despair or song.
These days when I'm alone I think about my priorities. I wonder at the ways that I am changed, those ways that I changed myself, but also a great deal more about the ways that I have been changed. I concentrate on the fabric of my life, the decisions that I have made and how they have woven together in not just myself but through the core of all whom I have known. I wonder at all the things that I do not see and all the things that are assumed of me.
Mostly when I'm alone, though, I'm just trying to let it all go for a moment. In these moments when I'm alone there is usually just silence and an attempt to find myself again.

The Plan

2005-01-19T01:50:00.000-06:00

I often preach to my friends (as those of you who know me have no doubt) that the best way to go about finding love is to throw yourself completly into your life. No matter what particular culture or subculture you are in, the people that you meet are most likely going to be people doing the same things you are. If you are out drinking, looking for whoever, then you're probably going to meet a drunken whoever that has no more idea about you than you do them. But, if you are out participating in things that you enjoy, then at least the people you meet while doing them will also enjoy it. There is a core of something common in it, certainly not a thing on which to base all of love, but it is at least something.
There is this second puberty that gay men go through after they come out. I don't blame them for it, and I went through it too. This puberty is generally marked, in the great generality, by a need to relearn how to relate to people in a sexual way. Only, in the gay community there is no pressure for monogamy or even a dating structure; one is not provided by society and culture, and it is a slow thing to grow. I could expound a lot on my ideas of the mechanism for this, but thats not the point of this entry. This entry is about me, damnit!
My second puberty was a little bit different. When I came out of the cloest (actually was outed in the cafeteria one day) I used my suddenly very decoupled emotional state to start reforming my character on an almost fundamental level. See, I had been very shy in my first puberty, and utterly uninterested in girls throughout it. By the time I went to college I had settled into and solidified into an unaltering introvert, though I always wanted to be more of a participant in the world. I thought that I had a lot to say.
When I found my second puberty, and began to realize that the entire community went through it to one degree or another, I started forcing myself into different habits. This time I went up to people and I talked to them. I'd stand closer and smile in the right way. I wouldn't be scared of them, and I wouldn't be rendered so silent by people who were attractive. And now it is very hard to see any part of the introvert I used to be, though many of my extroverted characteristics still bear its mark.
Well, with any willfull change in ones personality and habits, there are going to be ramifications. I am no longer as focussed on my work, and I am letting my trained abilities slip away quicker and quicker every day. And all those skills that I picked up as I matured a second time are being wasted now on bars and barkind, when I even find the inspiration to go and mingle. I rely too much on my laurels, and frankly these days, they don't so much carry the weight.
The complaints of my life are many. I go out too much, I don't work enough, I procrastinate and don't take very good care of my health. I sleep to late cause I stay up too late, and I drink a wee bit too much. I obsess over men and pay attention to all the wrong details. I don't spend my time in thought, and I don't explore as much as when I was a child. There are others, but I don't want to turn this into some sort of self accusation. My life stands in a place better than it has in a great many years, these complaints are mostly just cleanup work.

So this is the plan:

I am going to go through a radical reconstruction of the details of my life over a few months. The goal is to move into our new house with all of the details of my life intact, with all the proper attitudes and perspectives. It is my hope that the inspiration of moving into a house once I am in the habits of my new embodiment can be sparked into more of a fire.
These are the goals:

Body:
1. I am going to get into shape. And Im not talking about just the bare basics, I mean that I am going to get tight. Six pack, arms, legs, butt, you name it. I have a drastic inability to develop muscle, so I am going to take advantage of that and simply tone out all the ones I got to pure perfection. Wheel on a stick and crunches are on the agenda for every day or two from now until....well, I guess forever.

2. My clothes have got to go. Everything that I once really liked is either gone or in horrible condition. I don't really want to restrict myself to any sort of 'scene' here, but I need to get an entirely new wardrobe. I have a few ideas on the directions I want to go, but I think that I am going to enlist some of my more trendy friends to go window shopping with me.

3. I have to get in command of my hair. To this end I am going to go to one of those grand and grandly expensive stylists. Again, what I am hoping to find is some sort of inspiration on a direction that I should go. My hair hates me, it never wants to cooperate, and I need to go to someone who can teach me how to take advantage of that.

Mind:
1. I must begin to start doing physics again. I once loved it with all my being and threw myself completly into my studies and my work. This began to falter in my character, and now I have fallen into a habit of simply not thinking about it except for what I need in order to teach my class. I need to crack out the old textbooks and study from them a few nights a week. I think that the best way to do it would be to treat it like a class, and go through the book over the span of a few months.

2. I need to NOT chat online anymore. It is rotting my brain in the same way that television is, and it's just the bars all over again, although there are one or two interesting people hiding in the cracks, you just have to look for them. Still, I think that it is as much an addiction as anything else in life, and I want to make sure that I don't fall into chatting for hours and hours when I have nothing else to do. Besides, I want to meet people that I share commonalities with, not people who like the pic I put up.

3. I must start working harder for Mr. S. The opportunity that he is giving me is amazing, and I need to throw myself into it. There is a lot of potential to be successful at this, if I would just start going to the task.

4. I came here to begin teaching, and I need to make that more of a priority in my life. I love the time that I am in class, and I don't think that I am failing my students, but I don't think that I am giving them quite all I have to offer. With a bit more discipline, and just a few more hours of my almost inexhaustable supply of free time, I could really show so much more of the beauty of the universe. The aspects of existence are numinous, and with just a bit more planning I think that I could show that so much better to my students.

5. I must take better control of my money. To this end I have created a budget and opened a bank account. I am making too much money to just leave it sitting around the house. Besides, I want to go to Germany for December (more of that inexhaustable free time) and I need to make sure that I wont haphazardly spend that money before then.

6. I will quit smoking. Not sure just when yet, but it will be very soon. Probably when I am more in the habit of exercising it will be easier.

7. I will participate more in the life of the Austin community. There are a lot of amazing things going on here, and I want to know that I am being a part of what I can only describe as an amazing place.

8. I make a commitment to write something every day. I want to start going out to the parks and various sites around Austin and take advantage of the wandering muses.

Well, I had hoped to finish with all my points, but I need to write more on my lecture.

John was supposed to come home tonight, but I haven't heard from him. Hopefully he will get home soon, I know that he has been looking forward to it.

And already today......

2005-01-17T11:55:00.000-06:00

Its only 9am and I have already been awake for about two hours. In the land of Thom that is quite an accomplishment. I have to say it hasn't been half bad. Already I have battled the ice, took Jason to work, fell in love with the Scissor Sisters, and well, not much else. But thats enough!
There are a whole lot of things that I should get done today. I've had pink eye the last few days and Isaac's dad has been here for the weekend, so I haven't accomplished as much as I would like to have. Today I will:
1. Finish my evaluation package.
2. Work on some patent stuff (perfectly billable hours, and I need to catch up)
3. Clean my room.
4. Call and get tickets for Kat's show.
5. WRITE!

I have to remind myself that by definition, revolutions begin at home.

2005-01-11T03:23:00.000-06:00

I could sit and watch the dancing of a candle for hours. A tiny happy spirit that, if I let myself pay attention to it in the right way, will sway along with the music in a glorious and chaotic dance. Sometimes calm and easily known, sometimes beyond my ability to predict in any way, a thing on its own, like a tiny shard of God.
And yet we know the secret of how the fire steps, and the words to the song that it dances to. We know what the spirit is, we know its name and its nature, and from what stuff it is made.
Variations in pressure draw the flame. Currents in the air, the thermal variations in pressure around the flame, natural eddy currents that could form in the bowl of wax, all are the chords to the flames dance. Cold descriptions, perhaps, but words whose understanding lets you see that this candle is desperately telling you about the invisible dance of the air.
If you look with the proper understanding you can see the way the wind moves around the candle and the path that it is taking by the way that the candle moves. It catches the air like a partner and holds on tight to one part, like one of a line of invisible wisps has taken it suddenly from amongst a line of them that sweeps along around a path all together. And the candles flame writhes in a thermal dance of its own, though staked to the wick, its body, its source, its incarnation. It is a thing on its own, a thing which can be understood, but it is beyond our knowing.
See, we also know what the fire is made of. How the wick gives it life. How the fire gives life to the wick. Because, you see the fire is a plasma, and the fastest moving atoms have which are pumping out of the combustion reaction are emitting photons due to the jumping of electrons. Light shoots out because a charges all over the place are wigging around at almost every possible combination of speeds, with some much more likely than the others. God, luck, or evolution would have it that the frequencies of light which plasmas such as this candle or the sun would emit would be in the range in which we could see.
So that is the nature of the flame, but there is something else about it. The very ideas that tell us the nature of what the fire is tell us also that it is beyond our prediction. Any flame in the real world cannot be perfectly modeled. No machine or intellect could ever know all there is to know about the flame. Broad predictions could be made, but true knowledge is forbidden. The mechanisms of the universe call the fire into existence, the fire is compelled, it can do nothing but obey. Still though, the reality of its nature is hidden to everything except that flame, the wick, and Truth. And the wick can only see part of the story.
But really the wick is where the magic is happening. Its where the fire finds its birth, the imperfections in the wick give it its personality, and it is in the violent destruction of the wick that the flame will dance for me.
It reminds me of a life.
Sure, I could model the wick and with a fast enough computer I could even make a fair replica of the flame. A model of chaos that reveals its nature to us as it sputters through its existence, as if we were very slowly watching it with the eyes of God, only with less understanding and far less focus. But it is a model, an algorithm with behavior like a flame. Nothing but a series of numbers and points on a screen unrelated except by the program that drew them.
But the fire is a thing like me, like this table; its a thing that exists and is imposed upon reality. Like the flesh of my body or the momentary configuration of the current in the circuitry of my brain.

****

I am going to quit smoking tonight. The money I save each day from not buying a pack of cigs is going to go into my savings account, so that I can spend Christmas in Berlin.

--Thom

2004-12-19T03:51:00.000-06:00

If there really is a circular book at the center of the Library of Babel, I have to wonder if it's a dictionary.

Get Me Away from Here Im Dying

2004-12-11T20:53:00.001-06:00

Belle and Sebastian

Ooh! get me away from here I’m dying
Play me a song to set me free
Nobody writes them like they used to
So it may as well be me
Here on my own now after hours
Here on my own now on a bus
Think of it this way
You could either be successful or be us
With our winning smiles, and us
With our catchy tunes and words
Now we’re photogenic
You know, we don’t stand a chance

Oh, I’ll settle down with some old story
About a boy who’s just like me
Thought there was love in everything and everyone
You’re so naive!
They always reach a sorry ending
They always get it in the end
Still it was worth it as I turned the pages solemnly, and then
With a winning smile, the poor boy
With naivety succeeds
At the final moment, I cried
I always cry at endings

Oh, that wasn’t what I meant to say at all
From where I’m sitting, rain
Falling against the lonely tenement
Has set my mind to wander
Into the windows of my lovers
They never know unless I write
This is no declaration, I just thought I’d let you know goodbye
Said the hero in the story
It is mightier than swords
I could kill you sure
But I could only make you cry with these words

2004-12-07T04:32:00.000-06:00

I let some thoughtless words bring down my muse and cause her to flee. Whats worse is that they were words from a stranger, or practicly one. I haven't written in my weblog since a few months ago, and I can assure you that much has been going on. Still, I have to wonder most about how delicate I am in these latter days, and how so much like a house of cards.
My temprament was always something that pleased me in my youth. I was emotional sure, but most of that was for attention, I think these days. Still, when I was younger I was almost impossible to anger. Insults were often met with only blank stares or a bemused smile. Poorly motivated criticisms were combatted with a whole array of argumentative techniques which found their roots in logic and the Socratic method. I always believed that my free will was my own, possibly the only thing which I possessed, and so the often trivial aspects of our society had no effect on me. I have robbed myself of this over time.
Don't ever let anyone tell you that it's hard to change, because it's not. Entropy grinds away at us all, slowly widdling the passions and spirit of our youth. No matter how vibrant your spirit, it is the course of our aging to bring us to the norm. Nature has always had a preference for equilibrium. Changing is not hard, the current of our life will garuntee that for us, it is directing the change which requires the effort.
And what of this short slight, and the words which faltered this project of mine. My weakness lies in loneliness, it's always been my secret heel. This stranger who had power over me was someone whom I had come to admire from a distance. A character whose online journal I read everyday through a link from John's page. I had come to admire a brilliant writer and an inquisitive mind. Not to mention that the picture he had on his page was adorable, but who doesn't have a weakness for a pretty face.
As time progressed I came to meet this man, again through John, and we had spoken a few times.
Very quickly it became obvious that I had been mistaken about my interest. I don't want to degrade myself by slinging mud or recording some horrific chain of faults and judgements, but for sure I almost immediatly recognized that any pursuit of a relationship with him would be both exhaustive and emotionaly unrewarding. My interest safely curtailed I thought myself surely impervious, but apparently I was not.
You see I have this wonderful way of dismissing people completely from my life and not really ever looking back. I've never had any trouble burning bridges if I thought they might be ones the Romans would use to pursue me. But with this guy I seemed to have no subconscious defense.
See, he said something about how he prefered the intellectual and thoughtful posts over the ones that simply recorded my responses to the day. It wasn't very insulting in itself, but the tone that was set in the phrase and the context of the statement implied a harsh contempt. I had been judged, I knew, and I found it even more insulting that he thought that he could slip it by. Like he had suddenly come to decide that I was an inferior intellect, and thus a bauble to be poked at.
My emotional response was silent irritation, which passed rather quickly. My subconscoius response was to stop writing in my weblog. And now I have missed recording some of the most remarkable events in the past many years.
I wonder why he would have such power over me. And I came to the conclusion tonight, he does not. He never did. My problem is far more systemic to me; my weakness is not one of armour or weapons, but one of a fractured perception.
It is time that I made some changes in my life. And change, like strength or temperance, is an act of my will.

2004-12-05T04:51:00.000-06:00

It is always the hardest with the devils we adore. All the sultry charms of a fallen cherub and a soothing balm that will indeed cure you of one ill at the price of another. That is the ever threat of limitation, to be fallable is to be vulnerable both in thought and action.

2004-11-28T15:54:00.000-06:00

"Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses [383 U.S. 1, 9] the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body."
From the writings of Thomas Jefferson.

2004-10-31T11:40:00.000-06:00

There is no higher god than truth.

So, tonight at Snow Patrol

2004-10-12T01:53:00.000-05:00

I made an absolute fool of myself. What makes it all the worse, I did it in exactly the way that I told John that I would on the way. I said to him, "Serendipity has always had a way of giving me exactly what I want, but not taking care of any of the deatils. Like the universe sets up in front of me the things that I want the most and commands me to choose."
Today was really the best of possible days. The last few, really, have been beautiful days. I woke up in a good mood, after a day of some accomplishment and learning, and I prepared myself for class and went to the work I love more than 2 hours early.
I got to school today in a good mood, after talking to both my roomates for a while. Things were in the works for all of us today, and I could see immediatly that today would be a good day all around. Few are the blessed days, and we should always learn to count them.
Campus was beautiful in the Fall air. People were congregated in all the corners of the outisde walls, and the smokers lounge was filled with all the souls that I had been hoping to meet in the past few weeks. Everything seemed awake and alive, and after all, I was going to Snow Patrol later today.
My class was a little light today, but it taught me a great truth. Never tell students, in a class you don't take roll in, that you are going to cancel a lab. Nobody will show up. But it really tells you something special about all the ones who do. I decided to give them a few extra points on the last test for showing up, since some of them needed it and the only other few that were there were all but garunteed an A anyway.
Since the class was so small I got a chance to talk to them a little bit more one on one. They asked me about my research, and I actually had a moment or two to talk to them about my ideas and the theory of relativity. They heard a bit about my personal life and what I hoped to do here in Austin. They also heard, I thought flippantly, that I was looking for another job, something I could do that would work around my teaching schedule, but would give me something to do in the long hours of the day.
Then the class went really well. I moved fast today, but today was a day for introducing new ideas and talking about how they connected with each other. I think most people kept up, but the math was easy for them by now......they've seen the exact same thing so many times before by now.
After class I was approached by one of my best students. She is an older lady who comes in a few minutes late everyday. It never really bothers me when she comes in late, because you can always tell that she pays absolute attention to everything that you are saying. I can tell from her concern that the reasons for her tardiness are simply beyond her control since she never dismisses me or is even distracted in her attention. I digress.
Did you know that Albert Einstein's first job was that of a patent clerk? He was working as a patent clerk when he completed his theory of relativity and all the other profound ideas that came about in that miraculous final year of his old career. I've always had a special affinity for Einstein.
And today one of my best students comes to me after class and asks if I would be interested in writing patents. Her husband does it, has been doing it for years, and she wanted to know if it was ok for her to give my contact information over to him. She thought that perhaps the work would suit me well, and that it would be exactly the kind of work that I might hope to do in addition to my teaching.
I had never thought of it, but she is exactly right. I don't think of a lot of things these days, for all my real attempts at trying to.
I was so excited to go to the concert tonight. John came and picked me up at school, but I made him come out of his car and over to the smoking section of the student loung so that I could keep talking to this girl who was a physics major at the school and I had met at Spider House. She was telling me about how hard it was to get into UT, and I told her something then that I myself wouldn't understand until later in the day.
Have you ever had one of those days when life just simply insisted that you learn something?
I told her that there is no reason that she should not be selected to UT since she lives here in Austin. Who are the people in the physics department there, except for people who shared her interest in physics and the profundity of nature, and more important, they are just down the street from where she goes to class every day. It seemed to me, as I told her, that if she wanted to be a part of UT, then she should go and talk to the professors there and to participate in the academic life on that campus. How better for her to become a part of UT than to be a part of UT.
After I spoke to her John and I went off to the Snow Patrol concert, and wow, I'm really at a breaking point. I knew that it was true, but tonight it became so obvious that I'm just falling apart.
So heres what happened.
We were waiting in line and this lady behind us started talking to us about the band and other bands here in Austin. She was telling us that she wasn't sure if she would be able to make it to the show since she had to work. What is her work?, you ask. Well, she owns her own jewelry production company and she has this huge order that was coming in and she had production meetings and other such to-do's. Anyway, she was absolutely interesting.
The gates opened and we went inside. The concert was magnificent and the VIP show was even better. They played all the songs that I wanted to hear in the soundcheck party, and then again in the actual concert.
While I was there I ran into a guy that I met in Commerce. Serendipity man, she's persistant. Yet, for all serendipity could do in bringing me an old friend from Commerce and repeatedly throwing this utterly intersting new soul at me (I ran into her 3 more times throughout the night, and everytime was just as intriguing and fateful as the last) I was focussed always on myself and the mundane little contrapions I make out of my life.
John and I had a few drinks over at Oil Cans while we waited for the show to start. I told him that my lecture for the Dyonisium had been accepted and that very soon I would be delivering a lecture entitled, "Sibyls, Symbols, and the Nature of Time". We spoke well for a while and had a few drinks as friends before the concert.
At the concert I simply fell apart. My machinations and trite little perspective took almost complete control, and over something as small as a drink I was willing to cast it all away and shred poor innocent John to ribbons for the sake of my rotting soul.
And that is exactly what it is, you know. I spent the last few minutes talking to Isaac, explaining how I feel so lost, like I'm always the constant other. I was telling him that I feel always like Im the foe, and that my soul is here rotting in my room.
I regret what I did to John tonight, and I hope soon to be able to make it up to him. He is kind and faithful and deserves much better from me than what I so often choose to give him. There was one part of my great accusation to him, one part of my final shattering, though, that sums it up. Something that I needed someone to hear, but not just to hear, but hear in the right way. I think that there was a portion of my soul which needed someone to share my utter desperation, but there I can only conjecture.
I told John that I feel like everyone takes and is all demanding, and that I give always to the point of my own destruction every act and every thought that is most important. I admitted my desperation, and my desperate need to be able to call something, even just a small thing, mine.
I regret that John had to serve as the tool for my desperation, but I believe that he is willing to suffer a bit for my growth. It's one of his most remarkable virtues. As such I believe that he will forgive me my trespasses if I will take the opportunity and the lessons, and actually grow from them.
Today was a wonderful day, one that has shook the very foundations of my life. Not so much like an earthquake, but like the ground has finally begun to settle.

The Cumaean Sibyl

2004-10-10T23:28:00.000-05:00

There were ten Sibyls in the ancient beliefs of the Greeks. By far the most famous of them was the Sibyl who spoke at the Oracle of Delphi, whose generational descendents spoke with her voice as they advised Alexander of Macedonia and the elders of Athens. "Know Thyself" were the words chosen to inscribe the entrance to her cave, and it is supposed by the Greeks that she, and all nine of the others were possessed of the spirit of prophecy.
Second in fame to the oracle at Delphi is the Cumaean sibyl, who, it is claimed, had in her possession nine books of prophecy. Books of prophecy, especially of secret prophecy, are of an extreme value indeed, and are coveted by both the great and the small. As such, the Roman Emperor Targuin came to want the books, and asked the Cumaean prophetess what was their price.
The priestess stated what it would cost for the king to know the future. The price to know which were the battles to be fought, and what were the nations which would come to rule the world.
Or were they?
There are but nine volumes, the kind must have thought. Would any of the prophecies concern him at all? Would any of them contribute anything to his ends? Such is the nature of the future though, if he had known what was in the books then he wouldn't have to acquire them, right?
The king said no to the witch, her price was too high.
The prohpetess, a servant in the ecstasy of Apollo, took up a third of the books and cast them into the fire next to her. And as the knowledge warmed her in the fire, but chilled the king, she doubled her price.
Now the future has this way of burning. Pages of it smolder like so many gifts of prophecy. Best guesses really, in the end I suppose, and most of them ignite when they come within just moments of reality. Smolder up and drift away with the wind. The Fates could claim dominion, some say, even over gods; they will rarely let their ways be known to mere mortals. But some have claimed to see the future, some the fates have seemed to trust. Some, like the sibyls have seen past the veil, and one of them wrote it down.
Still, the king must have sat there trembling as he watched the future burn. How mortal he must have felt, how reminded of his own limitation. His fear got in his way though, the same fear that brought him there. He came there to pay for certainty, but without seeing first what the books said he could not be certain of their value. He wavered again and I'm sure pointed out to the old seer that he was a king.
I wonder if the seer knew that it was coming. I wonder if it was in the first third of volumes or the second one that the sage would cast a second third of the books into the flames. She did not hesitate, she did not wonder or question her course. She burned three more of the books and again she doubled her price.
The prophetess here demonstrates exactly what the king does not, certainty. She is, after all, a prophetess. It is for her to know the truth of what will come. Is it through her wisdom that she gains her sight or her sight that garuntees her wisdom? The soul is in that question, if you learn how to ask it.
The king must have been agast. What he came here to possess was now all but gone. Six of the nine volumes of prophecy were gone, and the price had now quadrupled. He must have felt regret then, to know that if he had agreed at the beginning and shown his faith, the problem he now faced would be averted.
It must have been humiliating for the king, to be so rebuked by the wisdom of the Sibyl. She knew what he could not, even though what she knew was the same as the king. She knew why the king had come, of course, it's obvious. The king also knew why he had come, and he knew it must have been obvious to the seer.
What was not obvious to the king was that the seer knew also the depth of doubt that drove the king to her. She knew, I am sure, that not knowing had caused the king to cross the lands and find her, but she also knew that the certainty of not knowing would drive the king to her will.
After watching the second set of books burn, the king consented and paid her the new price.

Of sages and shards

2004-10-07T15:48:00.000-05:00

It has been on my mind lately how much the truth is a thing which is scattered about us, like so many pieces of glass. Long and arduous journeys are taken by greater and lesser men, finding barefoot paths amongst the rocks and the shards. Their feet made bloody from all the seeking, cut most often by the tiny shards of what their journey will not let them see.
The image of the sage upon the mountain strikes me. Why is he there? For years I always supposed that there was something holy about the place, something that the sage discovered while he first climbed that sheer granite face. I think that perhaps he too was once seeking, and that someone told him, "Go there. Go to the top of that mountain, for it is where the gods dwell. Go there and they will tell you all that you will ever need to know." And so he went, climbing the face of the mountain and keeping in his heart as he climbed that the journey would finally come to an end.
I wonder what it was that he first saw as be broke over the top of the cliffs. Was it a white bird sailing across a blue sky and setting sun? Was it the feel of the snow on a springtime peak? Perhaps it was just so many stones cast upon the top of a shear granite face. Whatever it was, though, it kept him; for when he reached the top of the mountain for the very first time he never left it again.
I do not claim to know what the sage would have learned that day, or any of the mysteries that he has discovered in his years of sitting there, gathering up the shards of truth like the sharp little diamonds that they so truely are. I cannot claim to know the sages thoughts, but I think that I can claim to know what kept him there.
The sage learned a thing that caused him to stop his questing and let life go on without him. Though truth is scattered over all the world in its tiny pieces, he no longer journeys to gather them. What I think that he learned on the crest of that great hill was that the whole of truth is everywhere, and not at all in the questing. He learned then that the shards are everywhere, and that each piece is worth the whole.

Last Poems XII

2004-10-07T15:28:00.000-05:00

By: AE Housman

The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbour to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man's bedevilment and God's?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.

From Long Ago, but still

2004-10-07T06:09:00.000-05:00

Our love is forbidden, and can never be
for God lives in fear it transcends even He.
So our lives are drawn, vast undening lines
never to cross or together entwine,
for the knots made of our love, no devil untie
by the shearest of force or the subtlest lie.

Our love is forbidden and can't be unfurled
for if faith moves but mountains, then we would move worlds.
So our destinies woven, pure perfect strings
tuned so close together, but with no chords to sing
for the notes made of our love would go ever untamed
or matched quite in unison by angelic refrains.

Our love is forbidden, and can never be
for it's glory's so blinding not even angels could see.
So we'll run together, yet we'll never know
the perfection of our unified soul,
for all of creation lives deep in the fear
that in the presence of our love, even Heaven would sear.

2004-10-05T03:02:00.000-05:00

I have never heard the weaping of a rose,
as winter comes with threat of certain death,
for a vine amongst withering pedals knows
that spring suns and winds bring life her breath.
Nor does a spark from flames leaping ever see
the moist night air which shall show no concern to it.
Instead it screams to the world, "Im free, Im free."
and seeks falls fallen pedals to kindle it lit.
As the sun shines full on the moon, its mirror,
and the fortnight carries it out of its place
does envious man see himself any clearer
or only a darkness in that mirrors face?
For the vine and spark know what man has not found,
that the truth is a thing strewn there on the ground.

Some Random Thoughts

2004-10-04T00:44:00.000-05:00

It should be forbidden to name a law or for the government and its official representatives to refer to one couched in terms beyond the scope and written wording of the law. The people should not be deceived by so many tugs upon unwary hearts and minds.
Instead, I think that the congress (or whatever legislation) should adopt not only the specific wording of the law, but also a standard interpretation by which the common citizen can understand what is being demanded of them.
When making meade you should save the pasteurized honey and soak some pork chops in it. Afterwards, fry each chop for just a moment and then pour the honey in the frying pan with three heaping spoonfuls of minced garlic and half of an onion, chopped fine to preference. Let simmer for as long as you can stand to wait, but keep a close eye on the honey as it will likely form a foam which needs to be removed.

In Regards to the Utopian Paradigm

2004-10-01T04:52:00.000-05:00

There can only ever be one true test of a Utopian society, and that is in the safety and social development of its children. If the absolutely unthinkable in Utopia were to happen, and an infant be separated from it's parents then the parents would be compelled not to worry or think the child lost. Instead they would know that the child would be taken up by the very next person who passed it by, and that person would take the child in and give it true love and teaching as it grew.
It seems to me that most people think that in a Utopia our bureaucracies will work perfectly, when the truth is obviously that in a Utopia culture would work perfectly without them.

A Discourse on the Faceless Foe

2004-09-20T05:11:00.000-05:00

I don't know which came first, the unattainable standards of my life or the ones that I impose upon those unlucky enought to stumble into my domain. Times and trials, and all that bullshit just seem to add up in every corner with nature screaming at me to learn at least something. What though, am I supposed to embrace from the various causes in my life?
Life, sometimes, feels eternal and unchanging, even in the face of unconditional alteration. Faces become different (though they too are always unaltered) but the eternal course of how interpersonal reltions seem to develop are always just the same. Virtue decays into selishness; closeness becomes distance as new friends replace old ones; and even a families love can falter and simply cease to be over the span of sometimes moments and sometimes years. All of it makes me ever wonder if the problem is within me somewhere or if it is out there, a part of the social aether; sort of a modern example of original sin. Viscious circles are much more like spirals. When seen from above, with a higher perspective, they are just the same problems repeated in a harmonic pattern over and over again, but to us mere mortals the decay of it is much more obvious as the circles race ever towards the ground. For those of us mere mortals, born without choice into the finite, the ground is easy to find, and almost never out of sight.
I've found myself thinking alot lately about the nature of my life and of its blessings. Here I am, living the life I always hoped, but it is nothing like I imagined that it would be. Am I a great light? No, rarely is all I can hope for in that. Am I possessed of a strength of family and friends? Sometimes, if everyone is in a good mood. Am I at all? Well, let's wait and see.
One of my great gifts is an inner strength and passion. Only the death of my grandfather ever caused me to falter for long, but oh, how the mighty do fall. Nothing phases me anymore. The hard shell of a skin begins to grow towards the inside, and now the truth of my thoughts and actions are lost to all but me, and I can see them myself only when I choose to look with the greatest of vigour and the deepest of strength. "We see as but through a glass darkly." I worry these days that this describes my soul most, that the parts of me which had the most life are dimming more and more, like a reflection on dusk painted waters. They are devoid of their own inner light, instead just mimicking old patterns of action in the hopes that they will live up to an old way of being.
Society is a faceless foe, made faceless by the multitude of visages and outstretched arms. People take and wish, they ask and demand, and rarely if ever do they give any kind of thanks or acknowledgement. Sometimes we give because our personal "virtue" demands it, and sometimes because it is expected, but in the giving we are ever the more diminished in the strength of our spirit. The voices, but more the eyes and the silence, of those around us ask always for strength but fail always to give comfort. I fear that I am becoming a cynic, or worst yet a pragmatist (which is a cynic unwilling to admit his cynicism).
I had a strange sensation today. A moment of almost total selfishness and inward motivated compassion, but at least it was compassion. I found a picture of me as a child, crying. My grandparents took it, which Im sure helped me to find the setimentality of it all, but whatever the reason for its existence then it has served me well today.
I remember looking at it and not seeing me, but seeing a child in tears. How easy it is to make someone else out of our own childhood, dont you think? I remember looking at it and wishing I could take this little boy in his suit and tie up off the table and to tell him that everything would be ok. I wanted to be able to tell him that someday his family would abandon him, that his parents would dismiss his hopes and ideas and wish that he never find love or even to seek it, but that they would love him in their own way. I wished to tell him that his grandparents had a profound kind of love for each other and all their family, but that this would not be enough to garuntee their immortality, or even to ease the suffering of their deaths. Most of all though, I wished to take him in my arms and tell him that there was at least one soul who understood his suffering, both then and to come, even if that soul was his own.
This is a virtue that I tend to forget. A virtue I call selfish. I think perhaps that I have failed myself in compassion and understanding; but in failing myself have I not failed the purity of my belief that all life is worth love and comfort. In always attacking myself have I not taught myself that there are exceptions to the unversality of my rules, and in so exceeding have I not allowed the exceptions to become more pronounced.
This is what really defines the narrow path of our lives. What is that almost imperceptable line between ourselves and the other? Perhaps it is as with all lines, you can only ever see it if you have strayed from walking its length. It is a profound thing, eternal reason, that can make of everything a metaphor.
I am not where I wished to be, though all the trappings are there. It speaks of the cruel humor of the universe that I should always pray for the decorations of a perfect life, but never to ask for the substance of one.

The Gravity of Autumn

2004-09-08T20:13:00.000-05:00

I have always looked upon the summer as a time of purification. Like the wildfires which spread that time of year so common and burn away the old and dead to make room for the young, who lack the strength to push aside old sins and carcasses. It is a time for the strong and the strong of heart, for those who can withstand the purging flames of natures wrath and grow from them. Summer is not my favourite time of the year.
The cycle of life, for me, seems centered upon the school year. Fall is a new beginning to me, not the spring. Fall heralds a time of comfort and ease, when the old has been drained of its vigour, but now only in their fading do the most glorious colours seem to show. The old passing away to the new and the slow march of easy days always remind me of college and how life seems to begin again in the Fall, and how I am always so surprised by how a summer has changed things.
At the beginning of this summer I was in a distant place and a part of a different life. Now look at where one summer has taken me. I've left Commerce for Austin to start the career of my dreams. I lived with strangers for a month or two, and can to this day count every one of them amongst my friends (though I regret not talking to them as much as I did before). PK is happy here, though sexually frustrated. And of course there is John, a companion in my life whom I respect and adore. This summer has been a good one, but as such its changes are swift and extreme and are unforgiving of my more human failings.
The last few days though, there has been an ease in the air. The breeze is less a scorching blast and the evenings are more my idea of paradise. Tonight will rise for me the most familiar of stars in the calmest of yearly skies. Tonight will have easier cares and more placid of prayers. The Fall is is here, and with it an end to the summers quick growth and fast paced tyranny. This is a time for new progression and the slow contemplation of life learned.
And as such is the nature of the autumn, my life summons me away. More thoughts later, I hope, but till then celebrate, the summer fires have burnt themselves out and the land is rich again.

In Honor of the Day (2 Month Anniversary with John)

2004-08-31T05:43:00.001-05:00

I do not often take the time to express the dearest parts of myself, most especially to those who I love the most. Almost always I catch myself stumbling over my words and saying something which is easily misunderstood. For the most part I blame the fact that speech is not my first language, gaudy words and spoken sentences lack the substance of my thoughts, as I lack the skill to express them.
My harshness and the demands of my love can be trying and hard to understand. In my life I am a man of few revealing words, and try to focus upon consistency and order in my actions and judgements. It has always been my belief that my words, as are the words of others, pail in comparison to the utter truth that is an action and both its forseeable and ineffible consequences. My soul is inexpressible in mere words, and as such so are the deepest fundamentals of my thoughts. Words, in the end, are not the thing.
It's this that reminds me most of John, and what he has been able to bring to me in just a few short weeks. Two moons have merited not a change in my thoughts and words, nor even something still so base as a change in my actions. John has brought to me a new vision with which to see the world and a new way for me to choose my actions. I appreciate what he can give me, because his presence alone often proves an inspiring force in my life which causes in me deep and fundamental change. I prefer The Tom he knows, His Tom as he would call me. I prefer in me the spirit which he reminds me I possess, and the values his presence accentuates in not simply my deeds but in the inner strivings of my heart.
Tonight I will go to bed remembering my love and thinking of him. My thoughts of him tonight will, as they have before, cause me to recall my blessings and my virtues. And what more can I say in thanks to the man who has reminded me to be thankful?
Only this, that I love him.

Would you buy time on a super computer?

2004-08-27T14:50:00.000-05:00

I was just having a discussion with my roomates about the future development of computer technology. Mostly it began with someone pointing out that the computer on my desk was 2/3 the strength of the first Krey supercomputer. Isaac said that it's even possible to download the only two available programs written for the Krey system to run on your home machine. This lead me to think about the Earth Simulator in Japan and some of the other super-massive systems that exist in the world today. Not to mention, of course, the large Beoulwulf Clusters that are becoming even more commonplace.
Consider the possibility of having an in house hard-drive but access to a large super computing array. It would be a terminal in your home with an in house set of drives, but access to a large computing array elsewhere. Isaac points out that a small in house processor would be neccessary, but most of the computing could be done at the exterior site.
Probably it would have to start relatively small, something for the Joneses. Over time, of course, it could be expanded and made less expensive so that anyone would be able to afford it.

Poverty is Eternal

2004-08-26T14:06:00.000-05:00

I would like to begin this by commending my roomates on the work that they have done. Isaac has started classes and, since the last time I spoke on these issues, actually started looking for work instead of theorizing on how it should be done. He has hit up massage place after massage place, and has branched out to formulate and execute countless backup-plans about how to find an income in his chosen voation. Jason has shamed us both (I too am looking for a second job, but at a much more leisurely pace) by marching on foot up and down the whole of the city and filling out applications at more places than I care to count. I'm proud of them both.
I wanted to start with that because I don't want my roomates to think that anything that I say after this point is an attack on them. Sometimes I think they feel that it is. Puts me in an awkward situation, really. If I bring up my thoughts and concerns on the issue then I sort of feel like Im guilting them, even though I intend not to. I think that this is especially true becuase both of them are such compassionate people in themselves that it really puts undue stress on them as well. Still, there are things on my mind that I just need to get off my chest, so boys, please don't take offense.
The rent is coming due next week. It's all good in that I get paid the day before the rent is due, and I will have enough money to cover all the bills and buy food for the house. It will take every last cent that I will get paid, with maybe a tinsy little bit left over, but it will all get paid. That is at least some degree of comfort, to know that we will have food, lights, water, and a house. Its better than in times in the past when I had to stress about even those things. I need to make certain that I stay focussed on the positive, that I will have everything taken care of and I still have John and my job, both of which I love.
It doesnt always help though, having the job that I love if it can't really pay the rent by itself. I live in an almost constant fear that if something doesn't give very soon then we could all be homeless at the end of October. My parents don't have room for my anymore with all the things going on in their attempt to move, if this all falls apart I can't think of many places where I could go.
It's depressing though, and utterly terrifying. When I started all of this at the beginning of the summer I had worked out a fairly complicated and well drafted plan about how I could put money aside from each of these checks and be able to support myself through at least half of the fall semester. Now, at this point, with events having fallen the way that they did I am left wondering whether or not I will be able to support myself through even just the month of September. I'm falling, without my consent or any recourse to myself, into that most lamentable of modern states, working to live.
It's so strange, really. I made a vow to myself a long time ago not to ever worry about money in my life again. I realized then, after much personal growth, that the way I viewed money and what it accomplished in my life was in utter contradiction to the facts of what money really is. I stand by my belief, and to some degree still stand by my vow. What I stress over these days is not so much the money itself, its that with or without my consent, money is the means by which certain aspects of life are obtained. It is not my lack of money which stresses me mostly, it is the sacrifice of aspects of my life which I find most disheartening.
I put almost every part of my life on hold to come to Austin and begin life over completely anew. I abandoned not just some, but nearly all of my worldly possessions. All of my furniture, huge tracks of my past, all of my appliances and a great deal of my clothing are gone now, and it seems that none of them will be replaced until December at the earliest, but most likely not until next summer or possibly later. Well, I suppose that I could rework all the details of my plans again so that I could get a better paying job and actually begin building something for myself, but that would come at a necessary sacrifice of why I was willing to abandon so much and come here in the first place.
The time has come for me to choose the goals I have for my life alone, and to have at least a portion of my work and my contributions be for me only and not for this idea of community that I have allowed to swallow every bit of my soul and ambition. I don't feel like I live or work for myself anymore, instead I feel like I live and work for the good of the collective. Now mind you, I don't want to abandon that completely, it gives me much and gives much to those around me. In the proper circumstances with everyone adopting the correct additudes and ethics it really is a much superior way to live, but there must still be some room for individual achievement and personal growth.
I need to find something to participate in which is outside of the home. I must find something or some activity which will allow me a chance to express myself and feel that I am carrying something from this opportunity in Austin which is removed from those that came here with me. I don't know what yet, but I need something in my life that is just for me. I hope that isn't selfish.

Some random thoughts to start the day

2004-08-24T11:36:00.001-05:00

So yesterday was a blessing and a curse. I have been reminded how utterly emotional and cruel I can be when I have been drinking too much. It's also amazing to me that my emotional state before the alchohol apparently has nothing to do with my emotional state after the alchohol, and that even the smallest little thing can completely push me over the edge. I need to cut back on the drinking quite a bit, or at least I need to cut back to not drinking to the point I get utterly trashed. I do not like losing control of my emotional state, and I certainly don't enjoy making a show out of my own weaknesses.
Now, those of you who read this who were around last night, I don't want you to think that mind revealing my inner thoughts and feelings, but alchohol feelings are never quite authentic. When I am drunk I lose my capacity to view a situation as a whole and I also have a tendency to attach great meaning to meaningless actions and intents. Me when I am drunk is a precarious beast who reveals only aspects of truth, and never enough of the details to truely understand. This is simply unacceptable behavior for me to take towards people that I love.
I have things pretty good right now, and I am happier here in the life that I have made than I have been in years before. I have the job that I always dreamed of, I have a boyfriend who is more than I ever could have conceived of, I am living with both of my brothers and spiritual companions, I have the best cat in the world, and except for an almost continuous state of poverty these days I have few worries at all. Life is good, but through my actions and better perspectives I could make it far better.
There are people in Austin who I have counted amongst my most cherished friends, but I have spent very little time with them. Kat lives just a few miles away, but since I have been in Austin I have spent so very little time with her. Matthew lives just across the street from the campus where I taught this summer, but I have only gone to see him once since I discovered his home. I simply must make more of an effort to rebuild those parts of my life and past which I have allowed through my inaction in the past to become atrophied.
Austin is also rich with opportunities. It is a place which embraces the ideals and conceptions which I most value in my soul. This is a place for artists and philosophers, where activism is not just something that people want to be involved in but actually are. This is a town that cares about itself and humanity, and I want to take a much more active part in that.
Now, don't get me wrong, there are plenty of people here who are simply going through the motions and are devoid of the true passions which calls a person to action. There are people here, just as anywhere, who embrace certain ideologies and styles to fit into a subculture. This is simply a fact of human experience; there are always going to be those who follow without thought, and who feel passion only upon command. It simply cannot be helped, but such is life. Still, even the less authentic souls here seem to have a bit more potential than those that I have met in other places.
So today there are things which I must accomplish. Tomorrow is a class day so I need to spend a little time writing my lecture and planning a few demonstrations. Also, I need to go by the Tutor House to remind them that I exist and to try to get more of my application turned in. I still have to contact a few people to write me a letters of recommendation, but I am hoping that won't be a problem. I also need to spend a little time with PK today, I think that I have been ignoring him lately.
And another random thought to end things. I once had a goal, well intended and pure in purpous, to purge from myself all aspects of vice. Over the years I have let myself fall into various traps and to lose track of this goal. I think it high time that I embrace it again and take up the task of being responsible for myself and my beliefs.
There is an objective good and I shall find it in myself, even if it takes the span of my life.

In Honor of the Day (First Day of Class, Fall 2004)

2004-08-23T12:32:00.000-05:00

That there is an order to the nature of the universe is a thing that in this day can go almost utterly unquestioned. Still, we often forget to be amazed at the intrinsic beauty and simplicity of the reality which surround us. The works of Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, and the many others have done nothing to remind us of our limitations, but instead have spent their life in the pursuit of the highest peaks of truth and beauty.
The stars are furnaces kept bright through a dance of nuclear physics and quantum mechanics. Planets are born and made from dust and the mysterious attractions of gravity. Light fills all of space and transmits information from even the most distant corners of the universe to this small island that we call home. All of creation is filled with shattering detail and a complexity governed by the most efficient and beautiful of physical laws. Nature is pure in its perfection.
And still, what awe should we possess at ourselves and the accomplishments of our kind? Have we not, from this empty garden, made cities and universities and dared to not just look but to step upon the moon? Think of all that you know, that was discovered through hard labor and brilliance, which was not known to those before us. Have we not dared to look upon the stars and decipher from them the sources of their light and course? Have we not delved into the depths of mathematics, and the infinite truth there recorded, to only find that truth goes deeper than reason could hope to? I call upon us each to remember that not all truths are revelations, some are gained through a life of passion and sacrifice.
Remember always that truth and beauty are all about us, strewn upon the ground and in the heavens. When we have completed the longest journey, it was said once in a poem, we shall find ourselves back where we begun but to see it now for the first time.

Today and Other Blessings

2004-08-21T15:24:00.000-05:00

Things could not be better today, but in a few hours they promise to be. This morning I woke up at John's. We took advantage of the fact that his parents were both out of town to spend an evening over there. I fell asleep when we came by here to pick up the fire water, but it ended up being a good thing since I woke up with a renewed vigour.
Yesterday was a wonderful time. John took me to the Cheesecake Factory to celebrate my ascention to profess this sesmester. (I've been leaving out some of the details of my life lately, I know, but I get to teach this Fall - AMEN) I fear I wasn't the best dinner companion, but probably a much better one than I have been known to be in the past. Still, I was a little exhausted (and more than a wee bit tipsy) and I was simply drained all through dinner.
Even through the exhaustion and the drinks, I remember the food and how nice it was to be alone with John for just a little while. The rest of the night really just got better from there.
For those of you who don't know him, my boyfriend really is quite perfect. Slowly, very slowly, I'm learning not to treat him the way I do most people. His damn patience is going to get him stuck with me, I swear it.
Well, we watched Invader Zim (GRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and I got to crash in his room (after we craftily created a diversion in the guest room). It really meant alot to me to be there, to be in his home and share in that part of his life. I felt alot that I need to be more for him and try harder than I have in the past. I was glad to wake up next to him today, especially when after a few cigarettes I got a phonecall from my favourite aunt, Serendipity.
See the last few days have been exhausting, but John has been pillar and faith. I got a phonecall two days ago from the head of the department saying that my transcripts needed to be in by the next day at noon or I couldn't teach this semester. I wasn't surprised really, my old school is sort of know for this kind of desperate oversight and lack of concern for its outcome. After dealing with two days of that special beaurocratic kindness that we all know and love I got everything accomplished which I could and just went on with the assumption that I would be teaching in the fall, after all John and I were going to be celebrating it that evening.
This morning the head of the department called to let me know that he had gone over my head and told the Vice President about my circumstances, and the Vice President had signed off on it himself. I want to redouble my efforts to make certain that the transcripts arrive as quickly as possible so I don't take advantage of so generous acts by my department head and the whole of my employer. Thank you Mr. Vice President, I won't let you down.
I made a wish the other day by a fountain, and John asked me if I could tell him what it was when it had been granted to me. I told him I would, but that I had faith in slow wishes and bad memories to render my promise mute. Still, the way the last few days have been going I might be obliged to reveal it to him soon.
I am bountifully rewarded though I cling to so many vices. Perhaps there is still something in me to be salvaged since the universe conspires to give me so much these days and deliver me to achievement, brotherhood, and love.
I've learned a valuable lesson today, and I mark it among the list of the many that I have learned just being here in this city. I want to commend myself to the moment of my love. The future, the past, these things will come. The eternal now, it's one of the secrets to seeing God. There is no time, not really, there only is

For My Love

2004-08-20T15:41:00.000-05:00

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee--and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Stolen from William Shakespeare. I stole it with sincerity, so I don't think the great poet will mind.
I love you.

The Ship of Theseus and the Identity of the Soul

2004-08-20T00:58:00.000-05:00

"The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned [from Crete] had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same." - Plutarch

The ship of Thesues speaks directly to the question of identity, though I think that perhaps the example of the ship is not the strongest one. The ship is possessed only of an identity insomuch that we have given it a name and decided to recall the history of the ship. It is much like a series of atoms, to me which due to entropy and collissions decay and lose their parts. They recombine and alter to form new things, but the process can be slow and is almost always continuous.
A deeper question was posed to me once when I was in college. Suppose that our technology has advanced to the point that every type of human cell, except neurons, can be perfectly mimicked with technology.
I realize, of course, that this can be quite a stretch in imagination. This sort of advance in technology may be hard to believe, but certainly not impossible by the standards of our technological advancement. Still, I digress.
Suppose further that you go to the doctor and cell by cell have all the parts of your body perfectly replaced with these transcendent machines. We are careful to make certain that the doctor replaces the cells individualy so that after each cell is included you are given a chance to adjust and let your brain accept and incorporate the replacements. The important thing is that the brain and the self awareness is allowed to always be as continuous as your body is as each of its cells is replaced.
The question is posed then, at the end of all this are you still you? Your cells have been completely replaced by mere mechanical (though impressive) tissues. The response of many is to claim that the brain has been left untouched, and it is the seat of the soul (so our science now tells us, though the stuff of the brain fills the body entire).
Now let us suppose that we make another great leap in technology (though I have to suspect that the leap of genius which would make it possible would be quite simple) and we now have the capacity to replace the neurons of the brain and the nervous system. As the cells are replaced you are asked if there is any missing parts of you, if there is any lack of continuity in your perception of the world and in your self identity. Would one exist? After a certain large fraction of the brain has been replaced can we possibly say that the creature now before us is still alive and possessed of a soul. Is it not an automaton?
The solution to this problem I think is far simpler than the question seems to suggest. The solution flows from one of the original statements of the problem. The same sort of thing happens as an organism grows. The totality of our body, including the brain is replaced every seven years. Not all of the cells die, but the chemical pieces of them are replaced as the body slowly purifies and changes itself in order to stay alive. The very nature of our identity and its ability to retain continuity is dependent wholly on that absolute idea of growth and change. Change is almost always defining in the universe, after all on a certain level change defines time.
The concept of the instant is important to the definition of identity. I am me now, but that is all that I ever am. Each instant is its own, but by necessity must be linked in a continuous and causal way with all of the instants before and all those yet to come. I should not ever expect to be what I was seven years ago or even just this morning. I am always and forever only what I AM. The apparent utter transformation of myself, or even of a likely mythical Athenian ship, is unimportant when the idea of continuity is applied. I am still me because I am me now and I can trace a history back to a me that I was then. Though each part of me be replaced, with new cells or mechanical pieces, so long as the transformation is continuous then I should suppose that there is no place and no reason why I should ever cease to be me and to have my consciousness dissolve.
Now as for the ship. Well it cannot be aware of its own existence, and the continuity of its experience, though codified and recalled by objective physical truth, can only have any sort of identity because we continue to recall the ship which carried the young soldiers home to their countries and their loves. Isn't the ship now in a different place and a different instant than when Theseus stood upon its deck. It is a ship still because to those who speak my language that is what a ship is called, and it is the ship of Theseus because all of its alterations and changes can be traced in a causal way from this instant to the instant in the past when Theseus guided the ship back home again. It is not the ship of Theseus because Theseus does not sail it any longer, but its identity rests in its history, its continuity, and that has not ever changed and if the ship existed still (or ever did) then that causal history makes its identity still authentic.

Thoughts Upon the Chinese Box

2004-08-19T03:34:00.001-05:00

A famous thought experiment in artificial intelligence places a man who has absolutely no knowledge of the Chinese language into a room where he is delivered through some small hole a series of questions written in Chinese. A book, conceivably a large tome, is there with him, written in his native tongue, which instructs him as to how the symbols are to be arranged in order to respond properly to the cards given him, supposedly to answer correctly the questions posed. The system as conceived would be capable of passing a Turing test, or so say some of the great minds of our time. Still, the question of whether or not the system has obtained from this some sort of independent thought is a question of some debate (though less debate these days in which the great questions of philosophy are discussed no longer, but instead debated over drinks).
It is my belief (though computer science is a bit far afield for me) that the common response to this thought experiment is to say that though the man does not know Chinese, or understand the questions posed to him, the system (that of the man, the questions, the book, and the box) do indeed "know" Chinese and the proper responses to the questions. In this sense, it is argues, the system understands the questions as well as the answers.
Here I think it would behoove us to look more deeply at what is meant by this. Let me recast it in a sense I think is more understandable. It is certainly true that the information of how to respond properly to the questions posed in Chinese does indeed exist within the system. Given the man and the book the capacity to respond to supposedly any question posed in Chinese (supposing of course that the question is not rhetorical and does possess an answer). Still, can we say that the system has "understood" the symbols and has responded in like kind?
Let us look at the book for a moment, and ignore the quagmire that is the man and the understanding which comes with a creature of reason. The book is a set of symbols, which standing alone and without interpretation are as random as the characters written in Chinese to the man looking at them. The book, however, has an added advantage to the man in that they are capable of relaying to him a set of instructions (albeit likely complicated ones) which can be understood only because he has the capacity to interpret the symbols already. The book, you see, is just like the cards in that sense. Without a means of easily interpreting the symbols it too is just a comprised set of characters which lack meaning. Without interpretation the book stands as blank of knowledge and command as do the arrangement of the stars.
I believe that it would be argued that it is here that I make my error, but let me delve just a bit more deeply about the nature of the book and what is meant by information. Information without a means to application is as useless as a perfect understanding but with no information about the system. The book can be abstracted to any degree that we choose, but still it is only a mask by which the information can be transmitted. The information, however, (in this case the rules by which the Chinese symbols should be translated) is without viability lest it is possessed of both an input and an impotus by which the input can be interpreted. An algorithm is not understanding, nor does it signify understanding.
Now let us to the man, whose understanding at least of some things is not in question. He is possessed of the capacity to make interpretations of the book by which his responses shall be governed. A question is posed to him in Chinese and without any knowledge he is capable of responding to it, using only his ability to recognize the symbols presented and his ability to interpret the commands by which responses are generated. Understanding of the book is a necessity here, as a book also written in Chinese (or any other language he does not speak) would be just as useless in responding to the questions as the questions themselves. The point is that he is not understanding the process but simply following the motions. His understanding of the book does not imply that between he and the book understanding has been reached, instead only that he has the capacity to follow commands.
Not only this but the man himself has some degree of understanding. Without his ability to interpret the symbols in the book the system would simply sit there without response, flacid and without any capacity at all. Within the book might still rest the knowledge of how a solution might be obtained, but without the mans understanding of the commands the system has obtained no new understanding at all, instead it has only the information by which a response could be initiated. I do not wish to undermine the idea of the thought experiment in saying this, but it is only the man which has at any point demonstrated an ability to interpret, which is a cornerstone to understanding.
Perhaps an arguement could be made that through the man's understanding of the set of instructions the system has somehow transcended the apparent limitations and has achieved some sort of understanding abstractly, but is this really so? Has not the system (with the man's understanding in tow) only performed a set of predefined instructions? If the ability to obey instruction (however fundamental) is the only aspect of understanding then can we not also say that a drop of rain which falls understands not only gravity but evaporation, air currents, and humidity as well?
Suppose that it is like this, that we eliminate the man and the question of his understanding entirely. Let us suppose that the instructions (the book) is somehow automated so that symbols can be recognized, compared, and a response can be formulated from the rules (much like when you pose some sort of query to a computer which has the capacity to recognize the query given). Are we to suppose that the instructions themselves have somehow understood the question posed? Think of some advanced internet search tool which can recognize key words and phrases and deliver a series of websites as response. In this case, where the instructions are automated, are we to believe that the website delivering these responses has somehow understood our questions and conceived of a response, or are we to believe that a set of commands has been executed and a set of characters which I may recognize as an interpretive idea are given?
In the end, does not understanding rest with the ability to interpret instead of the ability to obey?

Good Tidings of Great Joy

2004-08-17T17:01:00.001-05:00

I got a phone call this morning at 8:45am. Now, normally a call at this time of day would be something that I would utterly despise. I have, for example, been getting them from Isaac's parents almost every weekday morning (I intercept the calls since the phone is usually left in my room when everyone goes to sleep, no biggie). Still, a morning phone call is not something I look forward to, especially since the only people who ever call then are either people with bad news or people seeking my money. (Damn thee, bill collectors).
This morning, however, was different. I was woke this morning with wonderful news, even though it was at 8:45. The school called me to offer me a teaching position for the fall semester. It was somewhat of a surprise since the college had told me that the assignements for the fall semester had been made even before I was hired on for the summer session. Still, this morning Lala (the physics admistrative assistant) called to ask if I wanted to teach General College Physics I starting on Monday.
A ridiculous question, if you ask me, of course I want to teach. Hallelujah and amen.
The great thing about the fall semester for me is that the amount that I will get paid each month for teaching this class (which is shorter in each session and meets only twice a week) will almost exactly cover my bills and expenses, so if I can find another job to work just a few hours a week then all that money will be play money. And I do so like play money.
In other news, well, there really isnt any other news. The day has been quite an accomplishment for me. I managed to get all the things that I needed to do today done, along with a list of things that I was planning on getting done later in the week. My plan for the night is to spend some time with my Commercial guests and to see my favorite boyfriend, John (hehehe). Tonight is a night for celebration, that is if I can find the means to celebrate, but to that end and goal I do not know if it will be possible. C'est la vie, n'est pas?
So, till next we meet, my friends. And power to the people.

In Dreaming they say mirrors are the hardest part

2004-08-15T02:46:00.000-05:00

"Many are the men who would ask for immortality but wonder how to spend a Sunday afternoon." - Voltaire

I've always really liked that quote, it really seems to capture something about the nature and contentment of man... but of course hypocricy being my favorite sin and all it's been a statement that has described me completely today. Absolute and total physical and intellectual lethargy. Most of the day my bed just had me tied there in chains, but my bed has been very good to me today, so I shouldn't complain.
I've had a fascinating day though, filled with a deep and long dilated time. This morning seemed like lifetimes ago, and it reminds me of old memories. Things which just now seem to be much closer to me than they have in years, but brunch and morning time see as far removed from my evening as dusk was from the dawn of time. A sort of sad compulsion drove the majority of my day and I found it a day for retrospection and self analysis. Perhaps its why the memories of this day seem so far removed from a day whose very fabric is the past.
John pointed out to me once, quite wisely, that a nourished mind will crave the "quiet of the drawing room" and that a child's proper education crucially depends upon it. There is more freedom in our minds, after all, than in the details of our society. I think that its a quiet that I worked very hard to lose, and now I feel like Oedipus with screeching voices always in his head. I asked for it though, creating one mental distraction after another over the span of a half decade.
I've let to much of me go in the passing of the years, but thankfully I have kept much of what is truely most important. I see how my life has drifted from one of introspection and the contentment of my thoughts to one of brash and garish exploits and honors praised.
I must seek to take more comfort in my thoughts.

Thoughts Upon the Ebb and Flow

2004-08-13T18:25:00.000-05:00

So here it is, almost a month and a half since I last wrote a weblog entry, but what can I say, life has been busy with me. The news which I think is most merited (both chronologically and in importance) is that I have found a boyfriend. John was delivered to me by serendipity in the most humiliating of ways, but strange indeed are the ways of luck.
I was online the very last night that I had access to the internet and I ran into him in that bastion of modern debauchery, gay.com. Surprising to the venue he is brilliant and passionate, and we have been together now for over a month and a few weeks. I miss him lately though, since he has been away on business. He returns tonight though (insert big grin here).
Of John, that would be his name, there is much that I could say. He has proven to be quite a stabalizing force in my life, and in many ways the exact sort of inspiration that I have long needed. When I think of him while he is not here I find myself almost instantly venturing off to accomplish some task, be it menial or profound, in order to make him proud of me. Often I feel like a schoolboy who doesnt quite know how to react to all of it, and Im sure that he would agree with me on that one (at least on occassion. My lack of experience in a deeply emotional relationship and my fears of abandonment have made me react in totally teenage ways about some aspects of our relationships, as always, I blame myself). It's nice to have someone in my life that concerns himself so deeply with my feelings, though. His patience and willingness to work through even the most vile of my childish behaviors has proven to me how right I am to care for him. If only all the world could be so lucky.
John is not the only thing that has been happening in my life lately. With the advent of a new house and a whole series of rotating roomates things on the homefront have been a bit shakey and stressful, not to mention that I have suffered a loss to myself which I do not currently feel comfortable talking about to the people that surround me.
How easy it is to feel forgotten by the main.
The truth of the matter is that I am reaching a breaking point, and the people which surround me in my life at the moment just seem to sit there agast with dirty looks accusing me of being hard to deal with. So be it then. Change is hard for some people, but its always come rather easy for me.
I don't really want to get into all the details of it all, but certain subtle abuses and almost constant criticisms have worn me down. Its been happening for so many years now that I don't think it even gets noticed anymore.
I should go, the roomies have returned and much needs to be planned and corrected for the remainder of the evening.
Here is to hoping for an end to the stress, or perhaps just a little human dignity. Something tells me though that it will be difficult to get that since I don't think anyone really knows whats actually bothering me.
I'm sure that its all my fault though, isnt it always?

Hunger is a particularly virilant form of withdrawl

2004-06-28T14:58:00.000-05:00

So I have not eaten in almost 42 hours. Its not due to a lack of funding, but much more related to my intrinsic laziness. Food, you see, is WAY over there and I am here. Makes for an interesting conundrum if you ask me. That is not to say that I haven't been out and near places which happen to serve edible goodies, its just that I usually don't think about it. Do you think that it may be related to some sort of mental or psychological problem that I just sort of forget to eat for days at a time? Oh, maybe I have one of those trendy eating disorders, that might be fun. (Just kidding, no offense to any of you who actually have an eating disorder).
Lets see. This weekend has been a complete and total loss for me. Nothing, and I really must stress that, has been accomplished. I read a little bit in the new textbook and graded a paper or two (literally) but other than that I have done absolutely nothing at all which is of any long term (or even short term) use to me. The rains came in like a monsoon and kept me locked in my house for the duration of the weekend.
I need to go. Sorry this is such a short entry, but I wanted to at least say something today. I'm now going to go get food, the withdrawls from not eating tend to be a bit hard to deal with, and Im not feeling very well today (I wonder why). Don't let anyone lie to you though, food is an addiction that can be overcome.

A Visit from The Isaac and a New Place to Live

2004-06-25T20:14:00.000-05:00

The thought of being homeless is a really stressful proposition. Time was running out, until today. Isaac and I have found a new place to live, a cute little apartment a little ways north of the downtown area. I guess that's my round about way of saying that its north. Those of you who know Austin will probably bemoan the decision to move somewhere up north, but I stand by my belief that Austin isn't that hard to get around in. I'm rarely in my car more than 20 minutes to get anywhere, maybe 30 if there is traffic. Still, in Austin there is always traffic.
So my brother, Isaac came down to visit and to help make a decision on the place. I really like it and I can't wait to finally move in. We get a month for free on the rent and the living room and dining area have yellow pine floors. We aren't going to have any furniture at first, but I am going to get a futon as one of my first purchases. It will have to do until I find a second job that will pay the bills in the off semesters from teaching at the school. And I have had to come to accept that there are going to be off semesters from the school.
Also in the news, I have decided to get PK fixed. He is making it more and more obvious everyday that he is suffering from a lack of the kind of attention that I cannot provide, and he is making it more and more obvious that he is going to make me suffer with him. Poor little guy, he just makes this death wail of a noise as he walks around spraying everything in his path. It is a necessity, and it must be done, though I believe that it is a violence done on him, though I know it will make him happier in my home.
See its not so much the surgery as it is the fact that I am going to willfully change his hormonal system. I cannot help but think that I am going to irrevocable take something away from this animals natural cycle of emotional development. I would not want my ability and interest in sex to be taken away from me at the will of some mentally more dominant creature who thought them trivial. I do not, and cannot know what it is like to be a cat, but I am sure of one thing, nature has made him quite fond of his testicles. I have some, I know.
Still, he cannot be allowed to mark everything that I and any guest of ours bring into the apartment. And he will, I assure you. And he is so proud of it too, he does it right in front of me, as if I am going to be pleased that my baby has taken some more ground for the empire. If he is allowed to continue he will eventually spray the entire planet and declare himself Emperor for Life (I almost made a horrible pun there about Emprrrer, now aren't you glad I didn't?). He must be stopped, and so I am consenting to let him be taken away by someone else to go and be made my faithful eunich.
I lament though that I must cause harm to a being that I love. It is also kind of horrible that I am arranging to have someone else do the dirty work in an attempt to fool PK into believing that I am innocent of the crime. It's one thing to do something that has to be done out of love, but its completely another to be deceptive about it. I just don't want him to lose trust in me, and I don't want him to feel betrayed. Anyway, c'est la vie, n' est pas?
There is kind of a poignant irony to it really. A lonely bachelor who cuts off the balls of another lonely bachelor because he gets sick of all his whining(TM) - this will soon be a short story I think....hehehe. It would certainly give me a chance to do a lot of whining for myself, and boy I sure love to do that.
Just a brief aside, can I point out that I am not homeless anymore. I have a hardwood floor of my very own, next Wednesday at 3pm. Can I get an amen? And they said that I came back with perfect credit. Yes, I say that again, PERFECT CREDIT! And I thought that I had the kind of credit that would send you to the gallows the first time you were seen in public. Oh well, ride the wave when you get it.
I made a list of the things necessary to begin a life today, but making a life out nothing is like trying to will a statue out of stone. Im going to turn on the overmind sometime tonight, so that hopefully it will be on when I get there. If I time it just right there will be no interruption in my internet capabilities. Countdown to internet (and move in), 5 days (varying on the internet). Cross your fingers and hope all goes as planned.
Anyway, I guess that I should go and tend to other trivial tasks. I think that I am going to go and see a movie tonight, wohoo. I never get out of the house to go do anything like that anymore.

A Brief Introduction to Metric Spaces (Sans mathematique)

2004-06-25T01:57:00.000-05:00

We are all familiar with the Pythagorean theorem, "The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.", which defines fundamentally the concept of distance in space. It tells us how to find the separation between any two points in space that we want, if we are willing to apply it enough times and reduce it to just a number. See, space has 3 spacial dimensions (which are immediatly obvious to us) and at least 1 time dimension, which is to a large part, a mystery. This is what Newton tells us, that all of space is defined there, and I can use the Pythagorean theorem over and over again and add up all the distances to find the "straight line" distance between any two points that I want. Time then just ticks away for the whole universe at the same rate, as if the universe were an infinite expanse of Cartesian space filled with stars and simple humans sitting on an ineffible desk with some sort of universal time clicking away at every point in it all the same.
All of space in a Newtonian universe, you see, could be reached immediatly by an object moving arbitrarily fast. I could leave at this very second, and if I was moving fast enough could be almosr instantly anywhere else, presuming of course that you had either the experimental or theoretical energy to get there. Not only this, but Newton (and many great thinkers long before him) tell us that no matter how hard you try or how clever you are there are only three possible directions which make any sense. It doesn't matter what they are, any three distinct directions will do, and you can make a map of the cosmos. Just make a note of where everything is (you'll probably need some help with this) and then there you have it, the universe at that moment. Even better, Newton tells us what the very next moment will be, and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after that......
Behold, I have made thee ALL KNOWING!!!!
But wait, lets look at our map for a second. Yeah, sure, I know where everything is right now but how do I know that my helpers have not somehow lied to me without knowing it? What if the universe is not an infinite terrarium upon the ineffible desk of God? Most fundamentally, what exactly is time and why may I have freedom in space, but not in it?
In mathematics we call the space and manifold, and its basically just a collection of points close enough together to make a theoretical fabric with no holes in it. The fact that it has no holes in it means that it is continuous, and continuity seems to be something that the universe demands in the large. Now, a manifold can be any kind of space that you can think up, so long as it has no holes in it. To be a metric space it has to be like the one we live in, the pythagorean theorem has to hold in at least some number of dimensions.
Einstein caught on to this idea and recognized that time was like that too. There were, so far as anyone who has not been drinking can tell, any gaps in the flow of time. There is all of space, and time clicking away in it, like we are flipping through a hand drawn cartoon with infinitly thin three dimensional pages. Einstein also had the benefit of 300 years worth of experimental and theoretical advancement to tell him that there was something fishy about the speed of light.
The speed of light, unlike other speeds in the universe, is an invariant. If something is coming at you at the speed of light, then you can run away from it or towards it or just stand still and it will still pass you at the speed of light. Strange, isn't it? Not only this, but it seems that any signal which has no mass travels at this velocity in space.
Einstein, now equipped with the idea of metric spaces, took this idea and propsed that the only space which is available to us is that which can be reached in a certain amount of time by anything traveling at the speed of light. Sure, the universe may be infinite, but you can't get there cause you can't go any faster than the speed of light. Not only that, but since it takes light a certain amount of time to get anywhere, the only now I can talk about for anything far away from me was what was right now when they sent out they sent a light signal back to tell me about it.
Its confusing, I know, but the important thing about it is that Einstein proposed that you can't say that two points separated in space are ticking away at some universal clock. The only way I can make any sense out of time at another place is by exchanging some sort of information with them (the very meaning of continuity, at its core) and that is going to take a finite amount of time since I am no longer empowered to travel as do the gods. A separation in space means that there MUST be a separation in time. There you have it, our metric space is incomplete. We have to step it up a dimension in order to include time since it seems smoothly attached to space.
The special theory of relativity desribes this 4 dimensional space by simply adding one more application of the pythagorean theorem, only they were very smart about it. See, I have freedom to move around in space, but I don't in time. So I set up all the equations so that all the spatial parts give me real numbers and the time dimension gives me imaginary numbers. Keeps them all nice and separate for me. I calibrate how much time is worth by multiplying it by the speed of light, and boom, I have a model for a new kind of space, Minkowski space.
Minkowski space is alot like Newtonian space, only now we have to use the pythagorean theorem one more time in order to include time as a dimension. There are several pronounced differences though. In Minkowski space, named after Einstein's math teacher, there is no such thing as simultaneous events. Nothing can go faster than the speed of light in Einstein's universe, so separations in Minkowski space describe both how far to where they are and how far to when they are.

Of regrets, blackbirds, and Prince Lohengrin

2004-06-18T00:45:00.000-05:00

Have you ever met someone who was exactly what you wanted? I do not mean exactly what you needed or exactly what was perfect at the moment, but really exactly what you wanted? As if, almost, you had made a list of qualities, willfully, and placed them in that abstract place which is "the perfect mate". I did, almost 4 years ago to the day.
I had just moved to Dallas to start grad school and there were problems with my family. It was supposed to be the beginning of all my hopes and dreams, but the death of my grandfather and the ensuing chaos is a thing so furious and complicated that even now I can hardly understand. So much would prove to happen, as a matter of fact, that the person that I was then would be artfully sculpted into this heap of a man that you see before you today. Everything then was decay and the beginnings of decay, when the nourishment is fresh and the infection spreads its fastest. Everything but one thing.
See there was this young noble named Elsa, and she was the daughter of the Duke of Barbant. She was accused of a political ploy to come to power, but when asked to defend herself she said that she had a dream of a knight in shining armour who would come there to save her and restore order to the land. But though they waited it was only when she prayed for him that the knight came to her, in a boat drawn by a magical swan. He is betrothed to her, but only on the condition that she never ask his name or where he came from.
And there I was in Dallas. I was alone... no, worse than alone, I was living with an ex and several of his club buddies in a 1 bdroom apartment. Things couldn't have been more dismal, and then there was Lohen. (Not his real name, but he would recognize it as him immediatly)
He was the very definition of the man I would have chosen in my life, though time and circumstance teach me that he probably was the last thing that I NEEDED in my life. It's intended as no insult to him, just that we were in different places then. Still, he was the very description of my hopes and wishes. He was brilliant and academic, who spent most of the first night we met reading me welsh poetry. He was liberal and well educated, with all the perfect interests and hobbies. His apartment was filled with books from floor to ceiling, and he was emotionally detached and wrapped in layers of complexity. I adored that when I was with him everything was new and filled with more depth. I adored that I seemed to have a different kind of strength that he lacked. It seemed apparent to me, even at the beginning, that we would have so much to offer to each other. This, to my dismay, was not to be the case.
And the next day, as the sun is rising over the castle courtyard the villianous relatives of the young Elsa plot to sow seeds of discord between Elsa and her young lover. Conspirators are brought to confuse the girl, but she stands steadfast in her faith. Accompanied by King Heinrich she enters her wedding chaple.
Sometimes, I have discovered, the universe will give you exactly what you want to point out exactly how much you don't really want it. It is not ever enough to wish for specifics.
Lohen and I had a few pretty good days together. The duration of it all lasted a few weeks, everything new I learned of him was just something more to like. Though all around me there was decay and betrayel, he seemed then like a breath of fresh air. It would be the last thing that I felt for almost a year.
That night, in their wedding chambers, Elsa asks the knight, her husband, what his name was but before the knight could answer the villian Telramund bursts in. Else gives the knight his sword and he kills Telramund, but then turns to Elsa sadly. When they meet later he tells her that his father is Parsifal and his name is Lohengrin, and he is from The Temple of the Grail. He turns to leave when Ortrud bursts into the chamber and kills Lohengrins magic swan. Ortrud is killed, Elsa's brother is awakened from his enchantment and proclaimed the ruler of Bartand, and Elsa in despair over her lost love falls lifeless to the ground. (I know alot happens, but its an opera, so deal).
And so I met Lohen and I thought that things were perfect for a while, but I was young and foolish and he was, well, he was himself. Still, I had it pretty bad for him and for a long time I was crushed by a rejection which I thought was rather cruel.
These regrets man, they just seem to be everywhere. But hopes too, seem inescapable, and time and consequence just seem to march on.
There is this story. Its not a particularly interesting story at all, but its one that is most dear to my heart, and it happened just days after I met Lohen.
The rain was coming into Dallas and I was going to my favorite place in that hellish city, Celestial Park. Everything was teaming up on me then. My family, my school, my living situations. The clouds looked ominous enough to kill so I wanted to stand there in the center of the park and just let them take me up into them and rip me to shreds. I hoped that the rain would come like razorblades and rip the flesh off my bones, so long as it be done in that only holy place.
On the way there in tears I made a shortcut through a parking lot and noticed a blackbird hopping around on one leg and a wing dragging the ground. I noticed it first when another car drove past it, barely missing it as the bird tried to hop out of the path. Surely he must be hurt if he didn't fly away. So I stopped. Surely this was more important than waiting for a wild rain.
The bird was terrified and wet. The night was coming on and even though it was summertime the air had a bit of a chill to it. With the rain and the wind and the bird running from me I had to use my cunning to try and catch it.
I took some old shirts out of my car and threw them on the bird, trying to use them as a net to catch him. This just scared him all the more and he hopped out from under the shirts and was caught in the flood of water that was rushing down the storm drain. In just seconds the injured bird was swallowed by the street drain, and there was no question at all, it was all my fault.

A few weeks later Lohen would be banished to memory in much the same way. His nature and my ineptitude made a thing that didnt even exist become even more of an impossibility. You see, he and I were never lovers. We were barely even friends, but he knew of my interest and I knew of his detachment. He was not love, but an image of love. For so long I had hoped to find a man who would have just a few of the qualities that I hoped for so long, and Lohen was a checklist of them.
Youth and an explosion of chaos that it took years to tame did the rest. We lost touch. I put him more on a pedastle. I would hear rumors of him or meet one of his friends. I put him more on a pedastle. People told me that he despised me. And I have spent years wondering what I had done; especially since it had been so important to me then not to hurt him, or had the pedastle gotten just so high that I hoped to see him fall? I don't know what the reason is, but it's been like a chain on my soul for years, what had I done to make Lohen hate me? I have spent late nights thinking about it over and over, and it bothers me to this day. Sure I had been foolish and a child, but nothing worthy of hate. Or had I?
Guilt is something I have always had a hard time dealing with.
And I was guilty of this, this poor bird being swept to his doom. And I stood there aghast. The rain didn't change, nor the wind nor the sky, but I buckled there and fell.
I have never killed a thing in my life out of choice. I swerved out of the way of a possum in my brand new Mustang, a gift of my grandfather, and destroyed the car. I step over bugs and force others to as well. I am a humanitarian, damnit!
There is nothing but betrayel. There is nothing but failure. What worth am I when even my attempts at good go so wrong.
All this goes through my mind, but mostly just a sense of despair that this poor creature is dead.
And I buckled there and fell to my knees.
It seemed like days that I knelt there weaping in the rain, but seconds stretched on like hours. I had asked for the rain to be razorblades and it was, but now I just wanted it all to stop. So it did.
In the calm I heard a sound, the sound of a bird coming from the drain just down at my knees. There was hope and a covered manhole right in front of me.
Sometimes virtue will cost you. Sometimes you have to open the manhole cover and crawl down into the sewer, and sometimes you have to be honest with someone you don't know at all in the hopes of opening up. Now its modern day Austin and I have spent the day thinking that this email that I sent to someone that I barely know was a mistake. And its not the thing that is governing my day but its on my mind in the background. Then I start to worry about my loneliness a little, about my lack of friends or people to relate to. I think of Isaac and wish that he were here now to council me, but mostly to just be my friend.
Then I go online and I find a surprise waiting for me in the chatroom. Lohen is there, right in the middle of room 1.
So I crawled right down in there into the muck and the grime and I took the very shirt off my back to throw it around the blackbird with a broken wing and broken leg which was cowered on a cliff just before the water still flowing from the rain drains down into the piping. The bird was saved and my innocence was restored.
I remember a few days later I called Lohen something like 23 times. I was to take the bird, which I had been keeping in a box over the weekend, to a bird sanctuary which would give him medical treatment and free him again. I wanted to ask Lohen to go with me since I thought that the bird sanctuary had the potential to be an intereting jaunt, but mostly I think I wanted to brag of my compassions. And you know what the good book says, if you want to brag then the only praise your gonna get is your own.
So I sent Lohen a private message. I said hello and I was needlessly trite. Actually I was quite rude and I regret it. I was just so shocked. All of a sudden there he was! Everything rushed back, I had nothing to say. He was very pleasant and told me we should get in touch. He gave me his number and told me to call him soon. I was rude, and he was kind.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to say that the cosmos is bringing us back together and trying to give me a second chance at some college crush. That is not the sensation that I feel about this at all. But I have always thought that we parted on such poor terms and that there was something more left undone from when we met the first time. I have always believed that we had alot of potential to be very good friends for each other, and now we may seem to have the chance.
More serendipity. With all this fortune lying around I don't know why more people don't spend some time in paradise.
And what of the email I sent? Well, in the end its not something that will consume my days or take too much of my sleep. It takes time to get to know some people, and a little longer to find out if you want to.

My aunt, Serendipity

2004-06-11T14:13:00.000-05:00

So I am brought here, a stranger in his homeland. The days have settled into sort of a routine of calling a few places to check on apartments and houses and planning to teach my classes. Sometimes I go out and have lemonade under the branches of this grand tree at Spider House. Still, for the most part things have settled into what life needs to be right now, the construction of my scaffolding.
Austin is a lonely place, and I do not often feel that I have people here to talk to. Kat is so busy with her life and I with trying to begin mine that we haven't really gotten together (though we have both made plans to next week). And with my phone on the highest possible level of restriction I do not often get the chance to talk to anyone that still knows me well. That is not to say that my roomates here aren't great. They are. Im getting to know them better every day, and they have been nothing but kind. Still, they lack the closeness brought through years and hard trials. Isolation is harsh, but its lessons are best learned.
Besides, it seems that PK and I did not move here alone. My aunt, Serendipity, has followed me here and has been keeping a close eye on what I have been up to. Her concern for me is touching, and brought out in the strangest of little miracles. Like just the other day I was on my way to apply for a job when fate and consequence flooded the roads and made a maze of downtown. Now, usually Im all for a maze, but it was raining and frustrating and I kept ending up at this bar downtown that I go to sometimes. The rain was pounding and I just kept passing this place by, hoping to get to the bookstore to apply for a second job. And every time that I drove by it the rain got a little heavier and something told me that I should stop. Eventually I took the advice and I did.
Inside I ended up discovering a strange and interesting thing. Someone important from my youth, a man of some distinction in my field, hangs out there periodically. He and I met a few times when I was an undergrad and he was prestigious professor. Now it seems that he has retired, as much as any professor ever retires, and is seen infrequently there.
You probably wonder what all of this means. Why is a little coincedence like this something to rejoice over? Well, on a personal level it revealed an avenue for pursuing my work and furthering my research. It means that I will probably be able to create from this chance encounter a friend in my field, and one from whom I would certainly have much to learn. But in the more general, I think that serendipity is like a wave. You have to learn to let it carry you along and appreciate the myriad of happy accidents that come your way.
This one chance encounter has not been the only thing I've noticed since I moved to Austin. The easy house hunt, having an instant place to live, this job just appearing miraculously at the last minute, PK having a place without any trouble at all, my getting an extra check. These are all the big things that demonstrated that this is the time, my life is falling back into place. But still, there have been other ones.
This place has been completely awash with synchronicity. Everywhere that I look I can see the subtle workings of the divine. I love it when my aunt comes to stay with me for a while, especially when she brings Her Father to say hello.

So I know that many of you are not here to hear the ramblings of an old man on luck. Many of you are here because you want to know how my life has been and what has been going on in it. Well, the answer to that is alot and alot of nothing. I have made a few friends, but only a precious few. As always I have met more people than I will eventually choose to keep, but is that not always the way. My work has begun but I am only just now beginning to find my niche in it. I think perhaps it will be a long road, but I have a lifetime yet to achieve perfection.
The truth be told my life here has not yet started. If you are familiar with the catechism or Purgatorio then you will recall that at the top of Mount Purgatory you spend a while in the earthly paradise, now clean of sin and attended by angels for the first time. Such is my current life here. My worries are few and easily dismissed, though the action of my life is almost nonexistant. I suppose that it only makes sense, if one begins in the void creation does take some time.
And what of love? It was this that I had most hopes for when I first came to Austin. Indeed, I think that it is this that I still have the most hope for in the short term while I am here. This is a place just filled with my kind of people, and I have already discovered some of their haunts. I haven't really met anyone out yet, at least not anywhere but at the bars, but I have been mostly observing. This is a place where a random introduction seems to be well taken, so I am sure that as I become more confident with my Austin wings that I will have no problems with at least meeting people. Still, those of you who know me best know that I become utterly impotent when faced with someone I find attractive. Its really quite pathetic.
Things go on much as they have before. The faces are different, and greater options are open to me here, but life is much as it has always been. I eat, I sleep, I wrestle with my life and beliefs, and I make certain that PK is well loved. Other than this its just like Commerce, oh, except for meeting Gary Jules and becoming friends with an important stage designer (who has already taken me to see one show). Ok, so maybe its nothing at all like Commerce.

2004-05-27T01:41:00.000-05:00

No real time at the moment for anything else.

1. I think that I will be able to get a second class for the summer. As many of you well know this would practically double my summer pay. I also think that having the extra hours will demonstrate my desire to work.

2. I need to get an checking account as soon as possible. Apparently ACC has a policy that direct deposit is required. This poses a problem for me who cant open an account until I get paid. I think that I can get this one worked out though.

3. Going to talk to an apartment locator later in the week. Hoping that they will be able to find me something good for pretty cheap. The people that I talk to seem to be optimistic about it, but I think that they are used to Austin prices.

4. Classes are great. Tuesday and Thursday nights. Just a little over twent students. The perfect size for a class if you ask me. I've actually been devoting alot of time to my lectures, so I think that the semester is going to be quite nice.

To all who are here assembled

2004-05-20T19:33:00.000-05:00

let it be known that The Tom, much guilty and corrupt, has served in full his time of purgation and will leave Commerce, a place which has served him well, and shall pass into Austin, a place which he shall serve well as a Professor of Physics. He is to leave Commerce on Sunday bearing only those objects which he may fit into his car and the car of his friend Matt and to be delivered to his new possessors at a house off Rundberg street. On Monday he is to begin his career subverting young and impressionable minds with aspects of the truth. The attrition of sin is done.
--Karma

I once wrote in my journal, which I only keep from time to time, that I always had the strength to carry the stones if only someone would help me to lift them. Now it seems that the universe has lifted them all by itself and after placing them in my arms commanded me to "Go." We must always be careful of what we wish for. Now I have been given a gift of the most important kind, the structure and beginning to the life I have always wanted. Most importantly though, I have been given a clean slate of a soul. My time here has made me maleable and reminded me that I am my own creation, and not the creation of those around me. But what am I to be? What shall I choose to be when Sunday comes and my life begins anew?
I want to get more in touch with my body. I will quit smoking immediate upon my leaving here on Sunday. Cigarettes are killing me slowly and robbing me of a great portion of my money. I will also start running, and through the rest of the summer I will go swimming as often as I can. One of my goals will be to get in better shape, not only so that I can look better but also so that I will feel better.
Physics has been the major guiding force of my life and I will throw myself, mind and soul, into it again. I will once again pick up my research and redouble my efforts to complete a proper model. My career is here and I shall devote my life to it.
There is a world out there that I have ignored. Great injustices and sorrows occur with every moment of every day. Man's inhumanity against man may not be mine to end, but with my new life it will be at least mine to ease. I shall take a greater role in humanity and in making certain that compassion will always still exist.
I shall foster growth in myself with vigour. No longer will I sit idle in my room and wait for all the world, or those I care for, to come to me. Instead I shall be a participant in my life and all of its passions.
I will write again and learn to cook. I will read for pleasure and not for school for the first time in years. I will make more wine and learn the craft as best I can.
I will seek God in myself, though still not in religion. I shall devote a portion of each day to quiet contemplation and meditation.
Teaching is my choice of career and I shall devote myself to its proper accomplishment. I hope to make my classes interesting and well informed. I want to take alot of suggestions from ocw.mit.edu.
I will begin my life anew.

One more thing

2004-05-20T15:12:00.000-05:00

I notice the numbers on my counter every time that I come here to update and I cannot account for where they all come from, so please, if you haven't before, then please, SIGN MY GUESTBOOK.....by order of THE Tom

Long is the way, and hard

2004-05-20T14:50:00.000-05:00

I got the job in Austin!!!!!! Those of you who know me personally are now to call me Professor The Tom since I am now an adjunct proffessor of Physics. It seems to me that the Prayer Warriors (also known as Isaac's parents) did a fine job in their duties. Isaac's mom refused to take any credit for it at all, saying that I had earned it. Isaac's dad, a man of always striking humor, said, "Wow, we have big strong mojo".
"So, what does this mean?" you ask. Well, it means that I have had to spend the last several days packing because my first day of classes is on Tuesday, but I need to be there on Monday for new Proffessor Orientation. It seems that my purgation has ended and I am to take my place as a corruptor of young minds. Joy of joys! It also means, however, that The Tom will be having a party on Saturday night. Everyone who knows how to get here is invited. We ask that you park in the student parking lot down the street so as to not attract the powers that be on my last night in Commerce.
This is not the only piece of news that I have this week. As it turns out my parents have probably sold their house. It's a thing that they have been worried about for a while, but their worries were SO COMPLETELY unfounded. The day they put their house up for sale they got a call about a guy who is interested. The very next working day he came and saw it and now they are under contract to sell on June 17th. I've never heard of anyone selling a house in just one day (except for my grandfather who once spouted off to a friend of his at a resteraunt that if someone would offer him X amount for his house then he would take it without question and the guy wrote him a check then and there. My grandmother was PISSED when he got home and said, "Lunch was great. By the way, I sold our house and we have to be out of it in 2 weeks.")
But wait, thats not all. We are happy to include, at no extra charge, a visit with one of my dearest and most cherished souls ever, Ryan, The Prince of Darkness. Ryan has just finished his Juris Doctorate from Georgetown and flew into Dallas for a few days. Last night I got to see him for a while (though he got me drunk). He has a job offer in New York which starts on September 13th. I hope that it goes well for him, though I do have to say that New York is awfully far away. I miss my Ryan terribly, but I got to see him for a little while at least.

I have packing to do, though Im not planning on taking most of my stuff with me. Anyway, I gots to go. Hopefully I will have more time later to include more of my thoughts on this move soon. Until then, Power to the people, yo.

Here inside the terrarium

2004-05-14T12:56:00.000-05:00

So I was walking down to my neighbor Joe's house, minding my own business and talking to Isaac on my cell phone when all of a sudden I saw a car racing away from the police. Thinking it was little more than a car chase (which in small town East Texas is interesting enough) I continued on my way. The car turned down a street just a block away and the police cars raced after it.
Moments later there were at least 10 police cruisers and a couple of unmarked police cars, all with the sirens blaring, racing down the street, which was apparently the place to be in Commerce if you wanted to see action.
Still, being that the police tend to know what they are doing, and that a car chase is really not interesting enough to chase after (especially on foot) I let it be. Then all of a sudden I heard gunshots, 5 of them. I paused, told Isaac that I would call him back, and started heading in the direction of the unraveling drama.
Now, I know that many of you would say that there is absolutely no reason to head in the drection of gunshots, but I never really intended to get closer than the intersection of the streets. Still, my reasoning notwithstanding, I went anyway.
The scene was really much less interesting than I thought that it would be. There was no standoff, no hostage situation, and no culprit. As it turns out the car that was being chased had two people in it, a man and a woman. The car was pulled over and then ran, the police suspect that they had robbed one of the local gas stations. The police shot at the back window of the car, which hit a pole and was totalled. Luckily no one was hurt in either the wreck or the gunfight.
The man was arrested. The woman is still at large.

2004-05-13T15:48:00.000-05:00

I am not to go to Austin this day. The Fates and a few professors got together and decided that the interviews would be held next Monday or Tuesday. I still don't know if I am going to be invited down for one, but I think that things are hopeful. We'll just have to wait and see.
I need to be cleanind my room and begin deciding what I am to do with my stuff. I have vowed to go down to Austin with only a short list of things, most of them necessities like books and clothes. My computer is a must. TV can come or go. Still, I have a room full of detritus from living a life for so long, and I have to decide where to put it all. I don't want to just throw it away, it served me well after all.
Today is a day for exploring. Be wary, for I think perhaps The Tom shall go hunting today.

and being a saga it continues still

2004-05-12T15:41:00.000-05:00

And so, gentle reader, I return to my home with more news from the front. I have arranged for my school here to release one copy of my transcript, complete with my degree and all, but they cannot mail it until the end of next week. This, as you may recall from my previous battles with time, is inconvenient, but I think now a point which I can get past.
As it turns out the school is not so bad to deal with. The secretary in my department made a few phone calls and managed to find the person who could say yes. I have come to truely appreciate the idea that if you want something done fast and well ask the assistant.
So here is the deal. After I got my transcript released I called this prof. who is doing the hiring back and talked to him. I explained that my application inculded a copy of my transcript without the graduation on it and all he has to do is track it down. I don't know if that means I get an interview yet, but they are this Friday, so I guess I will know soon enough.

And the Saga Continues

2004-05-12T11:05:00.000-05:00

Austin just called me. Not the whole city of course, that would be unruly, but the man directly responsible for hiring the position that I want so desperately. He was returning a phone call that I left yesterday, but he still was encouraging about the possibility of doing interviews later this week.
Everything is still waiting on my transcripts, but he said that he would get my application materials from the chairman of the department, with whom I left them. The transcript included does not show my graduation on it, but there is a letter from the department head here saying that I would. It's a hope at least, and what was it that Diceknson said, "Hope is a thing with feathers."
Speaking of feathers, one of Charlemagne's soldiers has gained asylum in my roomate. While at a mothers day celebration at his parents house we discovered that the cat had a tiny morsel cornered in the doorway. Jason, always a man of compassion, stole the bird from Mr. Cat and brought it home to recouperate in his room.
This little sparrow, unlike Hope and other such fickle creatures of the skies, cannot fly away just yet. It is either too small or too hurt to fly any but the shortest of distances. Perhaps its the unborn infants soul that it carries in its mouth which weighs it down. Lets just hope the assigned mother doesn't go into labor while we have such an important delivery man here recovering in a cage.
I was surprised to find that the cats here have left the bird more or less alone, but we have sealed off a whole wing of the house to keep the sparrow safe.
I think perhaps I want to spend the summer writing. A student may lead one of the freest lives in some respects, but your time is never your own. Books or essays beyond those for class become an almost complete impossibility.
Writing though I think is for later, for right now I shall take a nap.

Greetings from the edge

2004-05-11T16:42:00.000-05:00

Summer has come and with her has come freedom! If only for a matter of days or maybe even hours. The more in which I inquire into this position in Austin the more that I discover that time is working against me. Perhaps I should be grateful to be a force important enough for time to contend against. (My work is about time, perhaps I threw down a gauntlet and didn't even know it.)
So the new news is this. Though I have just come back from Austin (details to be forthcoming) I may have to find a way to return again. I do not think this will be an impossibility. There are a great many parties whose interests are involved, and a great deal of goodwill amongst my family and friends about this endeavor. Still, with my most common sort of poverty these days I find myself breaking my long held rule of not worrying about money. That being said, donations welcome; serendipitous acts of either the Divine or statistics are eagerly sought. Help The Tom to continue to corrupt young minds!
But why? Some would say. Why would you have to return so soon? Well, last week I went to Austin with Isaac for a couple of reasons. First of all, and the reason primary to the goals laid out was for Isaac to complete his massage therapy exam and thus become fully liscenced as a massage therapist in this state. Being that the test was in Austin, where Isaac and I hope soon to move I thought perhaps that I should make a guest appearance at the college where I have applied to teach and see if perhaps I could hand deliver my applications. Isaac agreed and didn't want to go alone, and so off we went, with Matt in tow to complete the perfect business road trip.
And talk to them I did. Now it seems that there are to be interviews held this Friday. If I can make it there again, I believe that they will want to speak with me. It's wonderful news, really, but oh, the timing of it all.
See here is the thing about time. I have to find some way to get my transcripts out of hold (a class that I didn't drop in time, stupid mistake on my part) so that I can make certain that the school will have a copy of them that shows my graduation, which was on Sat. May 8th. Now, my school says that they will not be able to release those until the end of next week, around May 21. But classes start for this job on May 24. So there is a natural glitch in the timing between the two schools, especially since neither was willing to budge, at first. Today I managed to get some powerful allies on my side here at the school, and I think that they are going to help me get past the barriers I am running into here. But then there is this second problem, these interviews on the 14th. (this Friday). I think that I can get to Austin. I think that I can survive on Ramman and my friends hospitality when I get there. I think that if I talk to them then I can probably get the job, but if I do get the job then I would have to be there for the first day of classes, thats right, MAY 24. And so the race is on! Get there, GET THE JOB, get home, get packed, get there again, TEACH CLASSES!
Thank God for the Summer, right?

2004-04-30T01:11:00.000-05:00

I dont know if you knew it or not, but today was a free poetry day. This is what Free Poetry Days creator, Matt, sent me........

If
by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!

2004-04-28T13:38:00.000-05:00

I DO GET PAID THIS WEEK!!!!
There had been some question about whether or not I was going to get a paycheck anymore since next week is the last week of classes and I wont actually have to teach during that time. Still, I asked the secretary in the office, who called the lady in the bus. office, who said that grad students get a full check in May, and I think also get a half check in June. Oh happy days!
Its not that I've been worried about money. I promised myself not too long ago (maybe a year, maybe a little more or a little less, who knows really) that I would never worry about money again in my life. And to be honest I have not been worrying about the money, I've been worrying about EVERYTHING else while living in a state of absolute abject poverty for the last month or two. Now I find out that at least poverty will end for a week or so, and the physics department is going to help me with the financial aid for this summer.
Even though I still have no new news on the graduation front today has been a fairly decent day. However, that is subject to change at a moments notice.

Last night I had the most interesting, if not terribly cliched conversation with a group of art majors which I am lucky enough to call my friends. I had made a flippant comment (which I admit is poorly worded for what I meant, but it made my point) about, "It's art if I say it's art." This was the comment that woke the sleeping giant in Joe who set up his I-Pod and asked the room what they thought about this. Thus the conversation began.
Now, having been to a gallery opening or two and having always been at least a friend and admirer of the "art chic" crowd, I realize that this conversation is a bit of a cliche. Actually, I think that there is a class for undergrads somewhere entitled, "Yes, but is it ART?" Still, the cliched conversations do have a tendency to be about the really hard core questions, and I do think this is one of them. Anyway, I digress.
Joe pointed out that surely something is not Art simply because someone chooses to call it art. With that I think I can agree, if we put some stipulations on it. If I put my pen down on this desk and call it art simply because that is the word that I chose to call it or because I want, in some way, to try to jump into the art community or make a criticism or some other such thing, then no it surely is not art. At least, not art in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, I think art does indeed require some deliberate intent. I think that in order for me to truly and justly call it art requires that I, in some way, had to instill in it either some message or emotion or an attempt at either one.
The point is that art does have a sort of extra personal meaning because art is something that humanity does, and indeed always will. However, art does not exist exterior to humanity. Human art is a human thing, there is no way around that.
Still, the point was made last night that not all of the Art which is made by this requirement actually fits into the category of being real Art. I just don't see how this can be so. Art is made by humanity. It stands to reason, and indeed I think stands to argument, that as such if there is no single person who has the power to deem a thing Art then everyone must be capable of making that decision. So yes, it's art if I say it's art......but only if I really mean it.

2004-04-27T19:28:00.000-05:00

I need to learn to pay more attention to the moment. I've always been much more aware of even the most subtle of changes in my mood than I ever was of the mood itself. How appropriate though, that a physicist would be more attuned to the variation in his emotional state than in the state.
Any of my friends out there who are reading this might have cause to argue that this isnt true. My reputation as a free spirit, after all, seems to point to a need to live in the moment. Still, I argue that this isn't so. My need for living in the moment, I think, derives itself from my need to keep my emotions in a constant state of motion, and thus to learn the means of its change. Sort of an emotional calculus, if you will.
I have to admit that this is a stolen idea. It was my brother, Isaac, who first pointed out to me the need to pay more attention to changes in your mood than it ever is to focus too much on the mood itself. I think that this is my natural way of interacting with my own emotional state, but only now, after having milled this thought over for several years do I really think that I understand the mechanisms for it, at least when applied to myself. Such does it always seem to go with the long path to self discovery, to reach some new plateau to find Isaac already there making a wine from the native berries.
So here is a thought. Linear language is restrictive in its capacity to convey information in the sense that its continuity takes precedence over its content. The House of Leaves is a great example where this is broken, at least partially, but it speaks to the core of what I wish to convey. Often in writing there is an aside I wish to make, or even possibly a whole different array of things that I wish to convey, and yet I still want continuity of flow preserved. I'll think a bit about how The House of Leaves was able to get past this and try to find some other examples in literature. I wonder if this is something that linguistic theory has ever delved into. Thought is not linear, not in its most basic, its trained to be that way through the overlay of a linear language on though......not to mention, of course, the grand linearity that is time and human perception of it.

Speaking of time, Ive been dabbling with a question about it lately and I think that I might have begun to see the briefest sketch of a solution to it. I don't quite feel comfortable either formulating the question of my sketch of an answer just yet, but I hope to be able to present something here later.

And to you, gentle traveler, either of chance or through goodwill, I offer my apologies today for the ramble. Stress man, it'll get ya!

2004-04-25T02:35:00.000-05:00

I was just working on my thesis and suddenly a thing occurred to me. What God makes are degrees of freedom. From all the infinite abstractions that are a space of infinite dimension, God pulls back the veil and says, "Let there be foward, let there be up, let there be side, and let light travel always OUT." And to us, mere matter, OUT is called Time. We marvel at the beauty of it and think it cold and dead, that we suppose things like rest and motion. BUt I think more and more these days that it is not matter which can speak of such things, its only light. I'm talking jargon right now, I know. Some of it is alchohol and some of it is what I have been working on in my thesis the last few days.
Graduation is in 2 weeks. This shall be some sort of countdown, I know it already. Perhaps things are too late and I do not even know it yet. Doom moves on silent wings and I have always had all the vision necessary to miss her approach. I think things end here and I just do not know it yet. As a man who studies relativity I am well aware of silent boundaries which can be crossed that are irrevocible and indescrimenant. No matter what I learn it tells me more and more that time moves only forward, and what free will I think I have must reap what I create of it.

2004-04-21T20:37:00.000-05:00

The void is the worst kind of labarynth.
So Im sitting here meditating on a cigarette and listening to Snow Patrol. The music is great and all but its really the cigarette that's on my mind at the moment. My pure and abject poverty has driven me to quit smoking. This is not a thing done out of choice, I caution you to understand, its a thing done out of necessity. I cannot be subject to the mere whims of things like fate and poverty, so I have taken the other option, to quit smoking not because I simply cannot anymore, but to quit smoking because I've chosen not to anymore.
It's a semantic difference, I know, but it's one that I choose to give importance. Such is the power of my will, after all. Still, I can sit here and I can stare at this cigarette and my glass of "Orange Go-Juice" (1 part orange juice, 3 parts any cheap wine available, c'est magnifique) and think that I am accomplishing so much. It's certainly an improvement over sitting here staring at my thesis. Milling over these thoughts, yet again. Making the same errors, yet again. Trudging on through this new unexplored ground, yet again. Wanting ang waiting, but knowing that this is not the time for ending, just a time for pause.
Life has been complicated lately. Not complicated in the sense that it would make the next movie of the week. It's actually been rather boring in the drama department, though this is hardly difficult to accomplish with the meager circumstances of my life. Complicated in the way that truth is complicated. It's simple and profound, but subtle and easy to miss.
My life is coming full circle this year. I know this to be true. My friends that were gone and lost to the wind are coming back, though I don't know where the relationships will go from here. Sally, Kat, Moose, Marv, TJ, Lenny, Don, Larry, Kelsel, and now even Jeremy C. These are the names I use to describe my past, and for years I lost them. What does it mean when the winds take things to the corners of the world, and then the wind brings them back again? Are they rewards to me for finding again what I was, or are they just more tests?
Still, no matter what they end in being I know what they are now. They are remedy and hope; salve for a cold and battered soul. These were those who made me most what I am today, and these were those who were my strength when things first began to buckle.

Pause to notice that Run by Snow Patrol has just begun to play.

I don't know about the future these days. I question it in every moment and I despise that I worry over such trivial things. The future will be the consequence of what I do this moment, not what I worry about. It's a hard thing to keep, certainly. Still, penance cannot last for all time, then it would not be forgiveness. Neither though can will without becoming law.