blog (May, 2004)
Bolder Boulder
I've forged last-minute plans to run the Bolder Boulder 10k tomorrow morning. I'm hitching a ride Denver-to-Boulder with a neighbor of the folks with whom I'm staying. Hopefully I'll be able to register and hop in the run, and maybe get a mobile photo up here mid-"race". This one's for fun; just a joggy-jog.
Feel free to call and wake me up! 5:20am GMT (7:19am EST).
(five.eight.five) three.two.nine - eight.one.eight.six
after the gold rush
I'm in Denver for the longweekend. Dad moved here bout month&aHalfago, and Mom flew in last night too, so we're three together for the first since Boston last month.
This morning I woke and ran up into the nearby bluffs.
Bluffs. When this land initially began launching up towards the heavens, the Native People said, "look, more mountains!" The Great Rockies barely turned their heads to laugh, for they knew the little'uns were just --. Well, the hills stopped rising quite so fast, and the Rockies "toldyaso," and the Natives saw and called their bluff. And that's how.
Well, the grizzled Wisconsin man next to me on flight out here said "They tell me that in Denver one beer is like four, on account of the altitude." What they didn't tell him (or he didn't tell me) was that one mile is like four -- if your intoxicant of choice is running -- and that those bluffs are still pretty damn tough to get up.
I was told to keep an eye for pronghorns, and a sign said, "no -- now here, look out for rattlesnakes, man," but all I saw were two pterodactyls while I was out running around, and after first glance one turned into a giant falcon and the other a small airplane, so it wasn't really too animated after all.
At the top, in the distance, Denver -- jagged bell curve of buildings poking up -- and miles of massive suburban sprawl growing, consuming (dig the time-lapse flowers!). And coyotes cried and no place to hide.
Excerpts from The Natural Mind
Just finished The Natural Mind, by Andrew Weil. It's a worthwhile read for levelheaded arguments for and against the use of psychoactive substances in satisfying the underlying human drive to alter consciousness, and insight into solving the drug problem and using substances productively. A few excerpts that were particularly interesting or timely for me:
As philosophers love to remind us, we do not know anything absolutely. For example, we do not know that the earth travels around the sun; that is simply the most useful way we now know of interpreting what we observe -- useful because it simplifies things maximally and thereby gives us greater accuracy of description and prediction than any other concept yet proposed. If a more useful one came along, most of us would probably have as much trouble accepting it as the Ptolemaists had with the heliocentric theory. But more useful concepts do catch on, however much they are opposed, because they confer a greater degree of success in prediction and control of the phenomenal world on those who accept them. Their adherents thus become more fit in the Darwinian sense and have a distinct survival advantage in the intellectual evolution of the race.
(pp. 10-11)
The tendency for novice users of marihuana to imagine that their psychological functioning is disrupted to a much greater degree than it actually is, is most noticeable in connection with subtle changes in speech. People who are high on marihuana seem to have to do slightly more work than usual to remember from moment to moment the logical thread of what they are saying. This change manifests itself in two ways: as a tendency to forget what one started out to say, especially following an interruption, and a tendency to go off on irrelevant tangents. ... Someone not specially trained to listen for these changes would not hear them. Interestingly enough, however, marihuana users themselves often imagine they are not making sense and become anxious about other people guessing that they are high.
(pp. 88)
From Concentration and Meditation by Christmas Humphreys:
"As the sequence of day and night, so is the alternation of work and rest, and it is in these minutes of comparative repose that the difference appears between the trained and untrained student of mind-development. The beginner allows his energy to drain away in idle conversation or mental rambling, in vague revision of past experiences or anxiety over events as yet unborn, or in a thousand other wasteful ways for which, were he spending gold instead of mental energy, he would be hailed as a reckless spendthrift to be avoided by all prudent men."
(pp. 92-93)
Perhaps the most effective stratagem of the intellect is to convince its owner that is equivalent to the mind; if one accepts this notion, abandoning the intellect becomes equivalent to losing one's mind. For this reason, intellectuals tend to look upon persons who have gone beyond the intellect as unfortunates who have suffered a mental catastrophe, even though those persons may have greater awareness than any intellectual can have.
(pp. 121)
To the straight mind nonallopathic healing sounds very mystical. Faith healing is held in contempt by most rational people, despite the abundant evidence of cures. What rational people fail to understand is that their systems require faith, too -- faith in the intellect and the rational process. A supreme irony is that so-called rational methods require more faith than nonrational ones because they fly in the face of experience.
(pp. 171)
Signed, Sealed, Delivered
I had the extendo-weekend in San Francisco to consider the offer. Yesterday morning I signed contract to become a full-time, salaried employee of Cleveland Med1cal Dev1ces, (name changed to avert googling,) as Software Engineer/Network Administrator.
Welcome to the machine.
post-(pre)destination: san fran
Driving the last leg of my return-trip home, circa 1:30am last night, the steering wheel felt foreign, and my command of it unfamiliar. Seemed like I'd been gone for months.
The trip was chockfull of everything. Friends and family, new faces and new places never fail to ahhyes me. Walking walking walking, Bay-To-Breakers, Berkeley, clubs, dubs, and ?unspeakables? -- skyscraping redwoods!!! Lists won't serve and protect. Good Heavens, no.
I've got to make my way back out there, sometime; the family berated me for staying in Cleveland. But the first step, and more worthwhile, is to make my here more there, rather than searching out there for there.
You know.
Back to work today, and lots to catch up on. Little big changes afoot; tell ya tomorrow?
destination: san fran
5:30am tonight/tomorrowville I sail with sunrise to San Francisco. Haven't seen Stanford or Sujata in ages, and I've got good family time and some curious events lined up as well.
I'll send a few shots from the cameraphone to see how the new moblog holds up.
For now, a bit more packpacking, then a nap, til it's time for me to fly.
On Reputation Systems
The huge all-importance we place on money -- it is our contrived value system. Not only the value of a book or an apple, but of a person. Most realize its sheer imperfections, but settle for them and strive for this wealth anyway. "Reputation," the buzzworld of the burgeoning new systems, will be our next Money. Reputation measurements; tangible measurements... Karma points on Slashdot. Still imperfections, but a little more "holistic" a measurement than the old greenbacks for a person's worth. Karma whores will be the new resented upper-class, and the destitute will still exist. But it is easier (and better for the world) for a poor person to gain reputation -- simpy by being good to others!
A more direct return/consequence for each action; closer to the Eastern Karma, but not quite.
Now we see more doing good for personal attainment... -- but this is better than stepping on others for personal attainment. Dissolution of altruism?
Those people truly wishing to be altruistic will find a way to rebel against this system to do good without self gain.
Organ Donor
Meet the newest member of the family!
A woman named Judy generously offered a 1969 Balwin Orgasonic Organ on Cleveland's local Freecycle email list last week. Freecycle.org is a grassroots movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. I was lucky enough to catch the offer, and to have Andre and his vehicle to help pick the beast up yesterday. It's a beautiful instrument, and in phenomenal condition.
Vegetables and Jewelry. and Adjectives.
We will rock the paint off the walls. Thanks Judy... best Mothers' Day present ever.
The Condition of Life
Driving to work,
thinking about how
to be happy, you simply have to .. be happyAnd how
there's really no reason to not be happy,ever...
And how
I'm the only one or only thing that's ever stopping myself from being happy.And so, I come up behind this Beetle with a bumper sticker,
"Surely joy is the condition of life"I shot to the goddamn sky,
and laughed out the open window the rest of the way to work.