10,000 years of civilization and counting...

I once saw this timeline that depicted the length of time that dinosaurs spent on this planet compared to the length of time other forms of life have spent here. It was painted onto this wall, and in order to see how long dinosaurs were here I had to walk a good distance along the wall, like maybe 25 steps. And at the far end of the wall, in about a space of 1 foot, it showed the length of time humans have been on earth. If in that time humans have gone from being hunters to being novice space explorers, imagine where humanity might be if it lasts as long as dinosaurs. (Just looking this up recently, flowering plants came way after dinosaurs and soon before humans...interesting). I'm always convinced that one of the biggest mistakes we make, especially when thinking about things like evolution and the diversity of life on this planet, is that we underestimate how much time has actually passed. (How are there so many different animals?!) Especially since humans only live 100 years if we're lucky, each generation of people spend all their lives trying to figure things out and once they get a small idea about what the heck is going on in the universe, they die, and the next generation has to figure it all out again for themselves. Even if we're told what the previous generation learned, our inherent stubbornness forces us to figure it out for ourselves, so we end up treading over the same paths. (Actually after sitting here and thinking about it, a bigger factor is probably our own egos and selfishness that keep our thoughts directed toward our own generation and not caring what lessons the past teaches and/or what troubles we lay away for the future.) It's not our fault, but for the most part I'm guessing humanity has an extremely short memory that doesn't allow us to see the changes that time can actually effect over thousands, then tens and hundreds of thousands, then millions, then tens and hundreds of millions, and then 4.5 billion years. Amazing things can happen even in a couple of days, weeks or months.

All your life you've been struggling through life trying to provide for yourself and those around you and the next day you're a millionaire! Weeks later you've slaughtered your financial demons and possess a good number of matieral items you always wished you had. Months later you're redecorating the huge house you and your grateful friends moved into and you're making plans to hire maids, gardeners, and cooks so you don't have to worry about the little things in life and concentrate on bigger things! ...unless you want to spend time cleaning because that brings you satisfaction, or gardening because you like being among the plants, or cooking because you always wanted to learn how to make all those tasty dishes by yourself...Or start a non-profit, or a for-profit, or spend all day turning a hobby into a venerable skill, or do something as simple as stay healthy by working out, or playing sports, or run on the beach with the dog/s you've been meaning to own. Or wait, this is where it could get complicated. All that money ruined your life. (But I'm too lazy to type out the negative outcome. Maybe later.) Yes, 3 months ago you were still sitting around wondering what the point of it all was. You were burdened by the double double toil and trouble of your bleak existence, and it could have been that way for a long time. Ultimately though, this is a bad example because winning the lotto is a looooooong looooong long long long shot.

But there are simpler examples of how things can change, or stay the same. One day you feel great and everything in life is okay or great, and then the very next day you're tired and feeling neutral, and then the day after THAT you're feeling depressed because you saw something that made you sad. And you hold on to that sadness for a few days and wonder where your happiness went, but then some more days pass and happiness is back again, and on this day sadness doesn't make any sense to you. Why should you have ever been sad, or why should you become sad again?? But who knows, maybe a rainstorm is on its way and it will block out the sun for a week and all that staying inside and lack of sun has brought you back down again. Can't wait till next week to get out to the beach, because that will make you feel good! At the end of the month you look back and see that while you were feeling down for that one week or two, overall you were happy and your life is good and you are thankful to be here. But anyway... Last one:

It took my entire life, which when I think about all the things that have happened to me, seems like a long time, but I'm "still so young", for cell phones to go from THIS to THIS!

Buried Treasure

Out of money
Out of time
A blog I started
A blog I'll end
But I'll keep writing
These pointless things
It All is hidden
mind body, and soul

A Sign...

Sifting through 49-year-old correspondence, I come across a little book entitled "Tact" stapled to a memo. Inside the booklet is a little piece of paper with a phrase on it, kind of like the ones you find in a fortune cookie. It says, "Men, like bullets, go farthest when they are smoothest." Curious as to where the quote originated I did a search and found that it came from a German Romantic writer by the name of Jean Paul (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter). But ultimately it led me to another one of his quotes: "Too much trust is a foolishness, too much distrust a tragedy." Now most anyone would agree with that statement and find it rather obvious, but to me it's a sign. I have this tragic tendency to go against my own nature; I do it ALL THE TIME. I can give you all kinds of examples, but the most current desire I have is to close the book entitled "Pablo". My thoughts and intentions want to hide. Realistically speaking I can't close it, but yes, maybe I can hide it.

A tome upon an earthen alter, in some cavern beneath the ground where shallow waters cover the surface, gathers no dust from the slowly cracking ceiling, never molds from the rising vapors, but nevertheless the book is open, since it will always BE open. But now it's hard to find, hidden in some cavern beneath the ground. Time does not eat away at its pages, though human eyes could burn through its paper. What a paradox that a book is made to be read but for this book to be read means that it will perish! Might the wind find its way through the earth's cavities to turn the pages, since no hand is there to do the job? Yet a book that goes missing, whose unread words become legend, inspire curiosity, ambitious desire and perhaps even greater emotions, does more to change the world than any book that has been read a million times over, closed and forgotten on the coffee table.

oh wine desire!

it pops the cork on more than just the bottle

Give me a sphere!

Curious as to how a musical box plays music, I opened one to see what was going on inside. A large cylinder with little bumps would turn, and the little bumps would hit the blades of a silver comb to create music. As I listened to the music I heard strange little squeaks every so often, seemingly unrelated to the melody that was playing. I thought it might be the squeaking of a poorly greased gear turning inside of the contraption. Upon closer inspection, to my surprise, I found the ultimate source to which the music owed its very existence. A small little mouse, running inside of a wheel, was giving the gears of the music box the power to create the music that filled the air. "How do you keep going?" I asked him.

"The same song plays, but I hear something different every time."

The mouse seemed to miss the more obvious curiosity of his continuous presence. So I inquired again. "How do you survive in that wheel?"

...

The mouse said nothing but as I waited for his answer I found myself mesmerized by the song that was playing. It had already started over once, but in the hypnosis brought on by the spinning gears I found myself in the deepest recesses of the song, and all my senses had faded except for my hearing, which was sustained and strengthened each time the song would start over.

Recent Dreams

It was evening in some cove or harbor somewhere in the world. It was very cold, but I could see the land, and it was lush and green. I could see a lot of ships anchored in the water. Along the shore was a wooden dock lined with shanties. Small torches lit my path as I ran along this dock, and I could see small glowing lights on the ships and lights far on the other side of the cove. I think my old dog was drowning in the water and she needed saving, but all of a sudden I saw the water in the harbor rise violently. All the ships swayed, and my dog was lost? Someone told me I could have prevented it; I think it was my sister. At the end of the dock I ran into someone I used to have feelings for, but at that moment I felt nothing. Nevertheless I was compelled to tell her I loved her, so I did. Instantaneously I found myself at the other end of the dock, more inland, with a rope tied around my neck. It was a very very long rope. I stood at the edge of a cliff and I jumped. As I was falling I waited for the moment when the rope would tighten and my neck would snap. I was prepared to die. At the end, my neck didn't snap but I hung there uncomfortably and found that I could breathe. After a a breath or two, I woke up.

The following night (as in this morning)...

Ah, it's already fading, but I remember having a disgusting ailment. I found these open pimple-like wounds/sores in a straight line rounding my waist...very disturbing. I sent a couple of children to go wet a cotton square with some kind of liquid so I could rub it on my wound. The wound was almost alien because it was such a perfectly straight line of small, open circular cuts. I saw the children wetting the cotton at the sink. They argued with the principal from "The Class" (the movie I saw the night before). He let them wet the cotton pad, and they returned to me. I wiped the wound with the cotton. I was very disgusted and afraid of what it was...... But before all that, I lay on the floor in a living room feeding someone a Twix bar, but while I was feeding this person the Twix bar it was a granola bar....and I was trapped inside this living room. As I was feeding this person this piece of food I grew very attracted to them, not least of all because of their appetite, but at the same time I was very disgusted by their greedy desire, and all the while I was jealous of the food! The rest of that dream quickly faded a few minutes after I awoke.

The Face Value of Words

It all started with me feeling spiritually empty. And I know I'm only going in one direction; it's either Christianity and(?)/or agnosticism. Any other religion (e.g. Islam) is too culturally different from my upbringing, and the last thing I want to do is adopt all these customs just so I feel like I'm actually part of something. So for now I'm exploring the Christian faith, but I've already reached a roadblock that prevents me from moving towards acceptance, and that is the word "abomination". Apparently translated from the Hebrew "to'evah", the word abomination as it appears in the bible does not seem to imply something inherently evil, but rather something ritually abhorrent, especially with regard to pagan practices. I am not opposed to the bible telling me that something is "wrong", but I just need to know why it says it's wrong. I strongly support the idea that faith and reason can co-exist in harmony. So I did some research and found these two articles on the web which, if you happen to be reading this, I think you would find very interesting regardless of your current interest level. I'm sure it's more entertaining than reading what I have to say, and like I said in a previous post, what can I say that hasn't already been said anyway?

Judaism's Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism Rejected Homosexuality (kind of long, only when you're super bored, or cherry pick it)

Sexual Antagonism: A genetic theory of homosexuality.

(Disclaimer: I do not claim to understand the plight of the gay man. I wished once, while writing this, that I was gay so I could understand, but I am perfectly happy just loving and accepting my fellow man as he is. I voted no on proposition 8. Additionally, while I assume that all factual statements are true for the sake of following the argument, I immediately revert to being skeptical as soon as I'm done reading the article.)

I'm a ghost and you're all dead!

When I was still at UCLA, I noticed one day at Wooden that the stationary bicycle was not reading my heart rate properly. I had been pedaling a long time and I was sweating up a storm, but the machine still registered somewhere around 80bpm. On subsequent visits I made sure to take note of which machine I used to see if maybe it was a malfunction. Surprisingly I would switch to another machine and it wouldn't register a heart pulse at all...and if it did, it would still register around 80bpm. This was after a sustained period of the machines having registered 150-160bpm. Anyway, I decided to ignore it since I still felt like I was getting a workout.

The past few summers have been either more hot or more humid than summers before. (That statement was not statistically verified.) Yet I have felt extremely comfortable without a fan or air-conditioning. Almost every day, someone would comment on how extremely hot they were or they would ask me why I wasn't using a fan or air-conditioning. I started to believe my core body temperature had lowered and therefore I was not getting as hot as everyone else around me. Then again, even during this seemingly colder winter, I haven't felt the need to really bundle up...

As I wander through the office, I'll see people walk into previously unlit rooms and the sensors will detect them walking in and the lights will turn on. If I go into the same room at a later time after the lights have turned off, the motion sensors will have trouble detecting me...

Also, this is something I rarely share with people because it actually freaks ME out. But if you ever try to look at me through night vision goggles, you won't be able to see me. Not very many people know this simply because not very many people own night vision goggles so I wouldn't be able to prove it on the spot. But if you ever get a pair, let me know and you can see, or rather, not see...

Baby, don’t you know that you’re too much (You’re too much)
You’re too hot (You’re too hot)
Don’t you know you’re like a candle
I’m the only man that handles you

(You’re too much) Baby
(You’re too hot)
You’re so hot, you burn me out
Just burn me up

Baby, baby, baby, baby, don’t be so cold blooded!
Ooh, la, la, la, la, la, la

Just kidding about the night vision goggles.

We Leave Only to Return

If the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, then isn't the grass also greener on THIS side of the fence?? The grass must be just as green everywhere. Yes it is. Despite my being red-green color blind, I am staring down at the grass I'm standing on and it's getting greener all the time. This year I will sit and stare at the green grass beneath me. I will appreciate all the shades of green that I see. Heck, I might even see some red...

This is a beautiful pasture, much like the many other beautiful pastures out there. I've done enough frolicking to know that my ambitions lie right here. I will make THIS green grass grow, lush and soft. And when you come lie down with me we'll stare up at the sky, where it's not about green, but blue and white, and sometimes roygbiv, when the sun breaks through the rain. And in the evening when the setting sun lights up the smog, or clear days where the far off mountains saturate the horizon with dark hues...and on cloudy nights when the brilliant moon lights a new scene, and I am confused as ever because it's all just too colorful for me. But the grass was so lush and soft that I forgot about the grass at all, and was just living for once.

Everything is here
Every time is now
Every one is you, and me.

But man, look out the freakin' window! It's raining horizontally and all I see is gray...hope that damn grass is growing!

Antiquated Customs

Celebrating birthdays is a pagan custom. Knowing a person's age is useful for all sorts of reasons, but if you're going to tell me I don't appreciate someone because I didn't remember their birthday, or didn't buy them a gift or a card, that is absolutely preposterous! And I'm not writing this because I happen not to do any of those things. Quite the contrary.

I've actually forgotten my own birthday though, my 21st to be exact. All these people barged into my apartment with beers in their hands looking at me with gleaming eyes and I thought they were crazy! I also happened to be addicted to WoW during that time, but eh! It's still so silly to me though. I never really gave my own birthday any special weight, only when I think about being a Gemini. And that's just for my own entertainment. Like I said, birthdays are as pagan as astrology. I'm sure it's hard for you to believe, but I literally thank God every single day for all my blessings, even if it's only once, for two seconds, while making a right turn at some intersection.

Shouldn't people be more convinced by gifts, and actions of love and appreciation when they are given on random days? What about every day? I can't say I would enjoy that though. It's called smothering and it can get annoying, but at least I know true love is there. My muslim friends always remind me that their religion is an every day endeavor, while Christians only remember their faith on Sunday. I'm sure that isn't the case for a true Christian, but I can't deny that I'm too selfish (lazy) to pray five times a day.

The same thing goes for Christmas gifts, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentine's Day, anniversaries, et cetera!

And THAT is why nobody got a Christmas gift this year!

"What have you done for me lately?"

Time Clouds

A little before Christmas, time slowed down. And it kept slowing down... I couldn't tell you if it's moving right now. But it has to be, or else I wouldn't be here typing.

A year ago I would have loved this. Time was moving so quickly then, but apparently I didn't want it to. I wrote this last February. Fitting, since it's now February...again...tick tock.

--Remembering.--

We are still - in our time
The earth escapes a massive pull
Releasing the seconds
Our minds so swiftly mined.

The day was February
When I felt that collapsing dimension.
Eternity reformed its shape around me
And those gleaming veins of ore, now too small
Enraged the wailing Universe.

I admired - in our time
The dying earth caressed my pen
Restraining the seconds
That words might crystallize.



(I used to have this whimsical notion that the earth passed through "time clouds" while flying through space, and that's why the passage of time seemed to alter. The poem has nothing to do with time clouds though.)

And happy birthday to my dear sister whom I love with all my heart!

Crickantabeeopper

We must have been sitting in the living room just passing the time in each other's presence. We must have been talking to one another, perhaps chuckling at pointless things. During a tired pause in the conversation I happen to look down at the wooden floor. There it was, such a disgusting thing... It appeared out of nowhere and it wasn't moving. With intense exclamations I immediately roused everyone from their sleepy conversation! Actually, it took me a couple of seconds to realize that I was looking at something so weird. What curiosity and excitement over such a small thing, but that's how life is isn't it? We try to divert ourselves to no avail and then the smallest thing happens that makes the entire day delightful. Eventually we decided to trap it inside of a plastic jar. Nobody had any idea what it was, and even more curious was the randomness of its presence. We find spiders, roaches, crickets, and all sorts of insects in the house all the time. But this thing looked like it was the victim of some kind of radioactivity, so why would it be in the living room of a house in Cerritos of all places? It was vaguely reminiscent of a cricket, but it had a huge ant head, a rear-end that was striped like a honeybee's, and long grasshopperish legs...Nobody was there to convince us otherwise, but we concluded that if it was not a freak of nature it was definitely some undiscovered species of insect. There is after all, a graveyard right over the fence outside. A strange bug that feeds on the decaying remains of human bodies loses its way, only to stumble into the living room of living human beings. How it must have wished we were dead...but we couldn't be more alive that evening thanks to its presence. The fangled bug deserved a name. Crickantabeeopper, for obvious reasons.

--

http://www.sdnhm.org/fieldguide/inverts/sten-fus.html