Not Soon Enough

“Do you think that if you were falling in space
you would slow down after a while
or go faster and faster?”
“Faster and faster,
and then you’d burst into fire forever,
and the angels wouldn’t help you
because they’ve all gone away.”
- Fire Walk With Me

A sudden change in biochemistry
that results in the recognition of the perfect moment
is magical.
Some think the purpose of the universe is to create creatures that can observe
and record
and recognize moments of beauty.
I can’t go that far.
But surely the universe is better for the existence
of eyes and ears and noses and hands
that see and hear and smell and touch
and then say that is beautiful.
– me (inspired by the lovely jh)

I desperately wanted to blog tonight about my frustration with the farce that is the media and politics in America today.  I wanted to write about the joke of a VP “debate” last night, and the financial debacle that’s going on, and the inept ability of the president and congress to frame the “bailout”/”recovery” plan, and McCain’s “suspension” of his campaign in order to help fix the crisis, and the ridiculous ways in which the media has covered these events.  I wanted to write not only about how poorly these events have been handled by our elected and campaigning officials, but I also wanted to discuss how the candidates, the media, the congress and the president aren’t even good at lieing anymore!  They can’t even fake it well.  I only mean this somewhat sarcasticly.  But if you are going to lie to me, respect me enough to do it well!  I wanted to refer to things like Fox news announcing poll results that Palin won the debate… the fine print being that the poll was a text poll of the Fox audience… really?!??!!  They’re not even trying to fake it well.  Another good example is how the presidential or VP candidates said with straight faces that the $700 billion bailout would not in any way impact how they’ll govern….. reallly!?!!!! Again, they aren’t even trying.  And I won’t even start on how we can get $700 billion in a week or two but we can’t get health-care for everyone after decades of debate!

I wanted to write about all this stuff in detail, with references to material on places like FactCheck.org… then I looked over and noticed that my TV was still tuned to PBS, and Bill Moyer’s Journal was on. I turned up the volume and realized that they were talking about all this stuff and so much more and so much better than I possibly could… So if you are reading this and want some assurance that you are not losing your mind I urge you to watch/listen to tonights episode.  There are intelligent people out there, trying to make sense of the madness.

Check it out at… Bill Moyer’s Journal

Got my brand spankin new iPhone last week. I am happy… love it! But as with any tech/gadget there are a couple things that are just pissin me off. Most of these are making me mad because they are deliberate omissions or oversights on Apple’s part (i.e. there is no way they just forgot). Note that most of these are common complaints, listed in numerous places on the web.

1. No flash support… which means that any website that uses flash for anything is not gonna work.
2. No cut and paste?… Really?  Seriously?
3. Accelerometer is actually pretty crappy.
4. iChat?
5. iCal todos don’t sync?  Even old school iPods did that.
6. Notes don’t sync to anything you can access on your computer?  Makes them close to useless for me.
7. Bluetooth is broken for anything other than headsets.  So… no bluetooth sync for calendar, or contact… even my old razor did that!  And no bluetooth file browsing. So if you take a picture with that glorious little camera, the only way, the ONLY way to get it off the phone is to email it or upload it using an app.  And how do you upload pictures to the phone (e.g. if you want to use them as backgrounds)?  You have to (at least on the mac) use iPhoto.  I HATE iPhoto.
8. Its not an “open” platform if you have to pay a minimum of $100 to distribute legitimate software.  Definitely not open if your SDK is restricted in any way.  And imost definitely not open if Apple has to approve each and every application that gets released.  Most general users won’t think this is a big deal because they won’t know what they are missing. But for any user that has ever used Firefox, Thunderbird, or… well… the internet (i.e. which could not function without open source software like apache, mysql, etc), this is a cause for great sadness.
9. No ssh client (granted it will come… but I need one yesterday).

There is supposed to be a software update coming down the pipe in a couple days… hopefully some of this stuff will be addressed, but I’m not holding my breath.  If I have any of this stuff wrong please please please tell me.

Otherwise… LOVE the iPhone… really.

“If there’s a God out there, then I would hope he has more important things to attend to than my drinking scotch or eating pork.”
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

I like this quote because the character that says it, like me, is suspicious of any rules proclaimed by man to be God’s will.  Additionally the character accepts that there may or may not be a God, but in a way these rules should make sense regardless.  In other words, if there is a God why would he/she care?  If there is no God does it matter?

The Kite Runner quote immediately reminded me of the following quote from Salinger, which raises the same point.  Namely that if God is as great as God should be because God is God… then hopefully God cares about more important things than what some say God cares about.

“I can’t believe God recognizes any form of blasphemy. Its a prisy word invented by the clergy”
- Seymour an Introduction by J. D. Salinger

On a slightly different theme here’s a poem I wrote a while back. Its right in the vein of still wondering at the mind of God… if there is a God.  Its also somewhat dedicated to all those people that worry at how comfortable they are spending time by themselves…

I am
just a man in the dark
   wandering
   wondering
   homeless
   alone
   alive
If God is a man
   just if
He must be the loneliest
   of men
And yet He smiles
   and so do i

I just listened to the Feb 22, 2008 episode of This American Life . The first act was about a man, who due to a medical condition was without testosterone for a couple weeks. He describes the changes that occurred in his personality and in the way he saw and interacted with the world. Testosterone is the hormone of desire. Desire not just of sex, but desire of anything. Without it he lost his drive to do almost anything. That wasn’t so good. But at the same time other things that we all struggle with were also lost,… envy, being judgmental. He said that he found himself approaching people with a humility that he had not had in the past. He also describes how in this state everything, down to the most mundane objects became beautiful to him. But not a beauty based in judgment (i.e. beautiful as opposed to ugly), but beautiful in a very objective, non-emotional, non-judgmental way. In a strange way he said it brought him closer to God.

This all sounds very Zen like to me. His experience sounds somewhat like the conquering of self. If you can remove judgment from the way you observe and experience the world, wouldn’t beauty become an objective observation, and would not all things be beautiful? If you remove desire, doesn’t fear and the need to hold on to the past and control the future also fall away, leaving nothing but the now.

Obviously the answer is not to get rid of testosterone, if we did that we would all (men and women alike) end up sitting around in our underwear mesmerized by the paint on our bedroom ceilings. But if we could be honest about when our “observations” are in fact “judgments”, and when those “judgments” are in fact not objective, we might be able to see beauty in mundane things. And if there is indeed a God out there, maybe we could hear his or her voice a little clearer.

this experience and that experience
are infinitely different
which makes them the same.
smelling the music and hearing the sun
both require
holding infinity in the palm of your hand.
Its absurd, I’ll grant you that.
But its beautiful
  and true
  and truth
There are moments when I miss you
and moments when I don’t even know you
and moments when you and I are one.
These moments are all the same
and they stretch for all eternity.

“If we listen for it only with the ear, there is no chance of
  hearing it,
But when sound is heard with the eye, then it can be
  understood”

“preaching is not a matter of words or even sounds, and thus “hearing” does not refer to a particular sense perception but to the phenomenon of gaining intuitive insight into the true nature of reality. This insight reflects an ability that is based on the supranormal, synesthetic power of hearing with the eye rather than the ear and seeing with the ear rather than the eye”
- Yun-yen’s “Non-Sentient Beings Can Hear It”, Main Case and Discussion
  Opening a Mountain by Heine

Recoleta Cemetery, originally uploaded by nfalsey.

“Don’t reject your wounded body”
“I am made for greetings and goodbyes.”
- Angel-A

She dreamt me up one night
I was born blind to the world
 but full of dreams
 sweet and terrible
I devoured her
 as all children do
What else is there to do
 when you are born hungry for life
 and thirsty for love
 and told you are the center of all existence
My regret is that she gave
 and I took
 and I discovered too late
 that she was not infinite.
- by me, from a story I’ll likely never finish…

Nicole,… thank you for the beautiful picture.

Here’s a great quote that’s appeared in some reporting on recent promises made during the current presidential campaigns. It pretty much sums up when lies are told and why,…

“The greatest lies are told before the marriage,
after the hunt and during the election”
-Count Otto Von Bismarck

So,… do you finally feel wise and mature?
All your questions answered or dismissed as irrelevant?
All your youthful insecurities put to rest?
Do you finally see the world through eyes not clouded by the fitful,
wistful, romantic lies whispered during the dreams of your youthful years?

If so,… you have not aged well.
Try some sort of re-birthing process so you can relearn some of the more
valuable shortcomings of your youth

if on the other hand your advancing age has endowed you with the freedom
to care a little less about the myths we spin about who we are and who
we should be
and if you now feel a greater capacity to question, answer, know,
understand and fail,…

then welcome to the promised land

 
“They who would be young when they are old,
must be old when they are young.”
- John Ray