The World Gate

In which I mythbust

2011-11-15T18:46:00.003-05:00

This was brought up on a forum thread I was perusing, by someone who took both stories as true.

If you've paid any attention to the media lately, you've probably heard of the story of Aron Ralston, the hiker who was forced to amputate his own arm to escape from a boulder that pinned him down during a hiking accident. Before doing the grisly deed (with a pocket knife), he spent several days slowly dying of thirst in the desert, with no way to contact help. Later, he wrote a book about his adventures (Between a Rock and a Hard Place, which I highly recommend), and later was the subject of a major motion picture (which I haven't seen).

But before the book and the movie, and several months after the accident itself, this article appeared describing the eerily similar story of Mark Swinton, the "impatient hiker," who was similarly trapped after a similar fall and used a similar tactic to escape. There were a few glaring differences, though: Mark Swinton had lost his pocket knife, and instead used his keys. And rather than waiting almost a week before resorting to such desperate measures, Swinton only waited ten minutes.

So, which is more likely? That two hikers, within months of each other, suffered nearly-identical accidents and resorted to the same desperate, unbelievably gutsy move to survive, and that one simply went on to be famous while the other ended up the subject of a measley two Google hits? Or that a writer with an eye for the bizarre heard Ralston's story, added a few humorous and exaggerated details, made up a new name and location, and, depending on the relative obscurity of the pre-famous Ralston to protect himself, presented it as true?

Actually, neither, it seems. The source of the Swinton story is The Brushback, a site whose other news stories have headlines like "Indiana Governor Turns Wife Over To Connecticut Governor After Losing March Madness Bet" and "Jets Win After Bengals Forget Helmets". I'd guess The Brushback is basically the sports page's equivalent to The Onion.

In which I pretend to be a food blogger

2011-08-29T16:38:00.002-04:00

Today's experimental recipe is an improvised Italian eggplant casserole... thingy. We chopped an eggplant into slices about 1/2 inch thick, then salted it and set aside while combining ricotta cheese with a generous handful of basil and lemon balm (both home-grown) and a few cloves of garlic. Then we coated the bottom of a glass pan with tomato sauce and sliced fresh tomatoes, and layered half the eggplant slices over that, followed by the ricotta mixture, more fresh tomato, and another layer of eggplant slices. More tomato sauce was spread on top, and then a generous sprinkling of parmesan and romano cheese. This concoction is now baking in the oven at 350 degrees; soon we'll find out what it tastes like.

The Definition

2011-05-17T16:38:00.001-04:00

“The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” I’ve heard a lot of people say that, and it annoys me to no end. The same definition has also frequently been ascribed to the word “insanity.” But it’s really the definition of neither. Stupidity is defined as low intelligence, which is approximated with the Intelligence Quotient, or IQ; someone with an IQ significantly lower than 100, or average, might be crudely called “stupid” (although other terms are considered more polite). Insanity is an outdated term for mental illness; the field of psychology discarded it years ago, and now it’s considered more proper to name the specific type of mental illness. Neither condition has ever been measured by asking the subject whether they expect a different result when repeating the same action.

But this is pedantic; most people fond of using the above “definition” will acknowledge that the behavior it describes can be thought of as stupid or insane, whether it defines these conditions or not. Perhaps, but consider the opposite behavior: doing the same thing over and over and expecting the same result. If expecting a different result is stupid and insane, then is expecting the same result smart and sane?

Think of this example, taken from an old fable: a farmer was taking a break from plowing his field, and happened to be looking at a tree stump nearby. Suddenly, a rabbit bounded out of the brush headlong into the stump, breaking its neck and dying instantly. The farmer enjoyed rabbit stew that day, marveling at how little he had to work for it, and resolved to spend his days staring at that stump, getting easy meals by watching animals kill themselves running into it. As a result, his fields never got plowed, he never planted or harvested his crops, and he soon starved to death - all because he expected the same result (free food) from the same action (watching the stump).

Now, granted, this is a very exaggerated story; nobody is that crazy. But all cautionary tales are exaggerated. They frame a common behavior in rediculous circumstances to highlight the foolishness of the behavior. People accept Red Riding Hood as a warning against trusting strangers, even though an unscrupulous stranger is more likely to cheat you than eat you. And the hapless farmer here isn’t that different from an athlete that always wears the same underwear he wore when he made his first win, or my friend who thinks adoption is a bad idea because he knew an adopted kid who was horrifically maladjusted.

In truth, both behaviors are extreme aversions of the more moderate, sensible option: waiting for sufficient information before drawing a conclusion. As every scientist knows, an experiment must be repeated many times before a reliable conclusion can be drawn. According to the stats class I failed in college, the magic number is thirty: you need at least thirty data points to get an accurate statistical analysis. So, the common phrase shouldn’t be “if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all” but rather, “if you’ve seen thirty, you’ve seen ‘em all.”

Of course, this cautious approach can be taken too far as well. Consider a woman who keeps an abusive boyfriend around after being beaten several times (but not quite thirty), because he could change. While it may be possible for a brutal person to change, most sensible people would agree that the woman would be much better off ditching him.

So, what is correct? How many examples must one see before it is safe to conclude all future examples will be similar? It’s hard to answer this question because to do so, one must already know the answer. Each situation I’ve described in this entry is an example of a person either reaching a conclusion without enough evidence, or not reaching an obvious conclusion despite plenty of evidence. How many such examples do we need before we can reach a conclusion regarding how and when it is appropriate to reach a conclusion? Until we get a definitive answer, it’s probably best to take each situation as unique, and middle through our decisions as well as we can. Most likely, the correct answer depends on several specific factors. For instance, what are the stakes involved? In the case of the abused girlfriend, the cost of staying with an abuser far outweighs the cost of rejecting a reformed one, so it’s best to quickly conclude that things aren’t going to change. Also, is there a logical reason to connect the action to the result? In the case of the superstitious athlete, there is no logical reason to believe his performance depends on what underwear he has on, and he should probably reserve judgment until he’s had overwhelming proof. There are probably many factors which should help deptermine what conclusions you should reach and when and how.

That said, I feel the need to point out that my definition of stupidity is “repeating clever-sounding fake definitions without stopping to check a dictionary.” But that’s just my personal opinion.

A Christmas Contradiction

2010-12-24T10:19:00.006-05:00

This thing has been bothering me for a couple of weeks now, and I thought it might be the right time to share my observation with the world.

Compare two of the most famous Christmas films of all time: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (specifically the half-hour animated show, not the newfangled live-action Jim Carrey nonsense), and Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer (the stop-motion animation extravaganza).

First, let's review the plot of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The Grinch, a mean-spirited guy who lives in a cave to avoid all contact with happy people, decides that he hates Christmas so much that he wants to steal it. So he goes all cat-burglar on Whoville, taking away all the Christmas trappings: the presents, the stockings, the decorations, even the tree and the food for the Christmas dinner. Then, smug and satisfied that the Whos are totally lacking all things Christmas and looking forward to hearing their cries of dismay, the Grinch looks down on Whoville only to see that all the Whos have gathered in a circle and are singing. They found a way to celebrate Christmas that didn't involve material goods. So instead of concluding that next year he should improve his plan to include surgical removal of all the Whos' larynges, he has an epiphany regarding the true meaning of Christmas and decides to give everything back, even participate in the festivities.

In all, it's a great story about how although the festive trappings and doodads and baubles may make Christmas extra fun, they are not the be-all-end-all, and that Christmas is more of an ineffable, intangible, dare I say spiritual thing unaffected by such mundane setbacks as stolen hams.

Now, let's take a look at Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer. We needn't summarize the whole story, just one scene. On Christmas Eve, Santa notices that it's too foggy to safely steer his sleigh through the sky to deliver presents, and it isn't showing signs of letting up. So what does he do? He announces that he will have to "cancel Christmas." Not just "cancel the toy-delivery", but Christmas itself. Santa Claus, the ultimate Christmas icon second only to Baby Jesus, often thought of as the personification of Christmas Spirit, doesn't think that Christmas can happen without toys. Not only that, he's thwarted by a simple fog. It didn't even occur to him to bring a lantern or two. How fragile Christmas must be, and how temporal, if this is to be believed.

So what do you believe? Do you believe that Christmas is about presents and decorations and feasting, or is it about something more intangible - and therefore more enduring than the ham that will soon be digested away and the toys you'll probably have gotten bored of by New Year's? If your Christmas encounters some setback - say the feast gets burnt, your presents get lost in the mail, your relatives are fighting, the store runs out of the toy your kids desperately need in their stockings - do you give up, canceling Christmas in your heart by letting frustration and stress overtake you, or do you let joy prevail, and find a Christmas spirit that cannot be stolen?

You may find that if your Christmas doesn't depend on the material trappings, then neither will it depend on the calendar date - that, too, is ephemeral. You may find that joy follows you throughout the year, lifting you up during the darkest times in your life.

Merry Christmas everyone, and a happy New Year.

A dream of economic realities

2010-09-12T16:55:00.003-04:00

Last night I had a dream about a restaurant. It was located right between a high-class neighborhood and a lower-class neighborhood, and had an entrance on each side of the building. Those entering from the high-class side would find well-dressed waiters, fancy tables, menus with French words in them, and (of course) very high prices. In addition, the portions were tiny, the food tasted bad, and the waiters treated you like dirt. However, those entering on the lower-class side would find a casual diner with friendly staff, generous portions of good food, and (of course) much lower prices. The high-class diners knew nothing about the low-class restaurant - it was kept secret from them.

In my dream, a diner from the high-class side found out about the conspiracy and demanded to be allowed into the other part of the restaurant. After meeting much resistance, he finally got a table and was waited on by the manager of the restaurant herself. She proceeded to make his experience there a living hell - by making him jump through hoops to make his order, laughing in his face when he made special requests, and serving him burned, badly-seasoned food. The reason? The upper class diners were not treated badly because they were on the wrong side of the restaurant, or even because they had money. It was because they treated people of lower status like inferior beings, and got exactly the treatment they deserved.

While dining on the high-class side they were paying for the knowledge that they could afford something other people couldn't, even if the quality of what they were paying for wasn't worth the price. It wasn't about having a superior dining experience: it was about appearances and flaunting power. In my experience, that is the motive behind many of the expensive products and services that people buy or covet in our society, believing them to be better simply because they cost a lot.

One last lesson from my dream last night: as different as the two versions of this restaurant were, there was one thing they both had in common. They shared a bathroom. I still haven't figured out if that means anything, but I'm willing to bet there's something very clever in that.

Falling Out of Love

2010-07-22T21:37:00.002-04:00

For those who don't know, I've got a new job that fortunately allows me some time to read and write. I'll say more about this later, but first, a passage I wrote today in between busy moments:

“Separate but equal” is a practical impossibility. So to achieve equality, women must fall out of love with womanhood. There must be no “women's mysteries,” no goddesses of feminine realms that punish any male onlooker for daring to intrude. If men are ignorant of women's lives, of our daily hardships and rites of passage, it is because we veil ourselve in decorum and propriety. We shut others out of our inner lives, assuming they will not understand, will not sympathize, will not be interested.

Men of this age, raised to see their sisters as equals in law and in fact, do not regard us with the curious mixture of fear and disdain that their fathers and grandfathers felt when they spoke of the mysterious, dangerous, chaotic world that was the life and mind of a woman. They could not empathize with women because they saw us as wholly different from themselves, with baffling biological functions, irrational and unpredictable behavior, and a power over them that they felt they could not control. We now know that the differences between us come more from culture than anything else, and our culture is changing.

There is no more reason to hide behind petticoats and facepaint and secrets and segregation, and whispering huddles in school hallways that turn quiet the moment a boy walks by. No reason to hide behind closed doors while feeding our babies or discussing our bodies. A woman can go to work in slacks and flat shoes and bare face and short, unstyled hair. She can go on a date in jeans and sneakers and unshaven legs. She can belch, eat heartily, and fully enjoy sports and crass jokes and carnal pleasures – but only if she lets go of that old notion, that cultural shackle, that is the feminine mystique. When she does, when she fully pronounces her personhood as much as her womanhood, she will find the men in her life appreciative of her honesty, her friendship, and the opportunity to let go of some of the pressures on them to be paragons of manhood.

But falling out of love with womanhood does not require being unfeminine. We needn't fear the loss of our intuitions, our subtleties of thought and feeling, our grace and beauty and appreciation of same. We needn't fear for our children's mothers or the state of our homes and kitchens. For as we fall our of love with womanhood, men are graduall falling out of love with manhood. They find no insult in what was once known as women's work. They are not threatened by their own need for gentleness, for empathy, for beauty, and for family. We are slowly reaching an age when femininity and masculinity are not categories we are born to, but a spectrum of choices that all are free to explore.

Womanood can no longer be a mystery. What can be a mystery is the individual spirit, the capacity of each person to invent her identity as a woman, as a man, and as something the world has never seen before. What can be a mystery is our innermost selves, male and female, free to share or to keep secret our dreams and thoughts, our joy and anguish. To achieve equality, must realize there is no womanhood. There is no manhood. There are – we are – people, as simple and as complicated as that.

How to explain things to children

2010-06-29T18:46:00.000-04:00

A woman at a shopping mall approached a nursing mother nearby and complained, saying "I don't know how to explain to my 5-year-old what you're doing." The same argument has been used against gay marriage (or even gays holding hands in public), a more controversial subject than public nursing but becoming more and more acceptable in the eyes of most Americans. And, more controversial still, it's been used to protest against a couple walking down the sidewalk with one partner holding the other on a leash - expressing a lifestyle that few understand who have not chosen it for themselves. It's never easy to explain to a young child something that you yourself do not understand fully, or which arouses strong feelings of disgust, moral indignation or offense. Should we prohibit or discourage such behavior in areas where strangers' children might see, in order to prevent the awkward or difficult conversations that it might bring up?

No, of course not.

First of all, as many parents should already know or will very quickly learn, a large part of the job of parenting is to explain difficult things. Children learn most of what they know of the world from their parents, whether consciously through intentional direction and instruction or unconsciously through examples set in the parents' own behavior. So, naturally, every parent must eventually face hard-to-answer questions, and explain why the family next door doesn't go to the same church as us, what is going to happen to the beloved family cat when it's taken to the vet to be put down, why the people we saw on the TV news are so intent on hurting each other, and what Daddy and Mommy did to bring a child into the family. Sometimes, especially if the child is very young, these explanations may require some gloss or a fanciful exaggeration to avoid bringing up details that are truly inappropriate, but at least the kid can know that what's happening is normal and natural - or, alternatively, that it's wrong and shouldn't be imitated, depending on which values you want to pass on. Don't get me wrong, some of these topics are real stumpers even for grown-ups. But nobody is trying to restructure society or limit others' freedoms just for the purpose of keeping kids from asking tough questions.

If anything, the complaint that "I don't know how to explain that to my child" is not an indictment of the behavior the child is asking about, but of the parent's ability to confidently raise their child in a complicated, confusing, and very diverse world.

But what if the parent really is at a loss for explaining something, and simply cannot begin to instruct their child on the meaning of what they're witnessing and what should be done about it? Don't worry. Children, as parents may remember from their own pasts, are very smart. Even if they aren't told explicitly, kids pick up on a lot. A friend of mine once worried that his half-sister, then four years old, wouldn't understand how they could be siblings although they had different dads. He needn't have worried; nontraditional families are only strange to those who have not seen them before. Growing up in one herself, my friend's sister may learn that other families are different - but that will not change her understanding of who her brother is to her.

Although neither of my parents have ever divorced, I grew up in a nontraditional family in a couple of different ways. One is that my father chose to take my mother's name when they got married. It was my understanding, as a child, that married couples choose whichever name they like best. And so, when another kid and I were playing with toy animals and wanted two of them to get married, one of the first things I asked was which name they would keep. Did this result in an uncomfortable silence as the other kid, raised by more traditional parents, tried to understand why I would say such a thing? No. Without missing a beat, she suggested a solution and our play went on uninterrupted. I don't know whether she later asked her parents whether it's really always the wife who changes her name, but I imagine it wasn't a terribly difficult question to answer if she did.

In fact, not only do children learn quickly and easily, but they will most likely understand many things that their own parents never will. Just as my generation, who grew up using computers and cell phones and the internet, tends to be more proficient in using those technologies than our parents and grandparents, so does each generation become accustomed to different social norms as our society becomes more diverse, more open, and more focused on individual freedoms and choices. That's not to say that children are smarter or better than their parents - after all, kids who learned to "type" with their thumbs on a tiny cell phone keypad may never learn to use a traditional keyboard, and since calculators became a common school supply few children have learned to use a sliderule (let alone an abacus).

And there are certain lessons that we should be glad our children won't learn. Today, a 16-year-old boy can't run a household, but his chances of being orphaned at that age are much less now then they were a few generations ago, and if he was then he'd be taken care of by a caring relative or a foster family, so thankfully he will never have to learn how. Children of color in America will never again have to ask their parents why there aren't any white children in their school, or why they can't use the nicer water fountains. I think these changes part and parcel of a more progressive society where some conservative parents may have to face the prospect of explaining the family down the street with two dads.

My final reason for this tirade will possibly be the most difficult for many parents to hear. Ultimately, no matter how much instruction you impart, or how perfectly you set your example, or how hard you try to instill your values, you will never be in complete control of your children. My very liberal agnostic mother could not stop me from dating a conservative Christian, and my abrasively atheist father couldn't keep me from experimenting with religions the way some teenagers experiment with substances. My hard-line Catholic aunt may have raised her children to be Catholic themselves, but couldn't stop them from eventually questioning many of her more conservative beliefs. Eventually, every parent much reach a point when they admit they've done all they can do, and hope that they've at least kept their children from living too atrociously. And, parents, admit it: you didn't take your own upbringing hook line and sinker either. And you turned out alright, didn't you?

Now prove it, and don't be such a pussy about your own parenting duties.

Confessions of a Clifton Boulevard Drain-Raker

2010-05-07T23:56:00.000-04:00

At about eleven fifteen tonight I was driving home from having spent the evening with several friends. During our gathering a storm broke out, complete with hail, a momentary power failure, and three of our number on a walk outside without their phones. These three did return safe after the worst of the storm was over, having taken shelter with some friendly nuns, and as I drove home in a light drizzle I thought the night's adventures were over.

That was when I noticed that a new river had formed between me and home, flooding more than one lane of the street and I couldn't tell how deep. When I had steeled myself to cross the stream, there was a moment when I envisioned my car swept away and unable to get traction, but then I was across and a moment later was parked and walking inside. My mother greeted me at the door and mentioned that she had been clearing debris from the storm drains to lessen the flooding, but apparently more debris had collected since then and the rain was still falling. I put on hold my plans to change my clothes and settle in to bed, and instead went back outside, rake in hand, to clear the drains again.

I spent the next half hour wading from drain to drain for three blocks, putting my arm elbow-deep into the opaque water to clear leaves, branches, and other debris that had washed down the gutter from downed trees to the west of us. A neighbor joined in, and we traded sympathy and encouragement while coordinating our efforts. Twice the streetlights flickered or went dark above our heads while we blindly groped in the rushing water. Cars continued speeding down the road, but one man in a pickup truck managed to slow down long enough to shout "You're fucking crazy!"

When I could no longer see any massive flooding, I made my way back, re-clearing the drains I saw on the way that had already accumulated more leaves and sticks. But I was seeing and hearing sirens, and wanted to change out of my pants that were soaked to the knee. I could have done more.

Voyage to Earth

2010-05-04T17:37:00.000-04:00

Starting four weeks from now on June 1st, I'll be starting a science fiction serial; one chapter a week will be posted on http://voyagetoearth.blogspot.com/ on Tuesdays.

This story will take place a few hundred years in the future when humans have colonized some of the solar system and made some new friends in the universe. Voyage to Earth chronicles the journey of an interplanetary bus as it transports two crewmembers, an astronomer on the brink of insanity, and a young alien diplomat on a classified mission to Earth. Meanwhile, an interplanetary summit is stalled out as some delegates have become mysteriously silent, and one of the human colonies on Mars is entertaining revolt.

I hope you'll come read the first chapter on June 1st, and if you like what you see then I hope you'll come back each Tuesday for more.

A rough timeline

2010-05-04T15:48:00.000-04:00

Two months ago I interviewed for a job I wanted but didn't think I was qualified for. Two weeks after that, I found out my new employer thought differently, and four years of unemployment ended.

28 days ago I went to my friend Jasen's place to watch Mythbusters. We sat on opposite ends of his couch and contemplated the gap between us, but didn't close it. The following Wednesday I came back, and the Sunday after that we watched the new miniseries "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking." On that day the gap closed, and six months of solitude ended.

One week ago I fulfilled a promise I made to myself five years ago and saw Faith and the Muse perform live.

Four days ago I joined forces with some close friends and some new acquaintances to celebrate all that is possible, and all that we wish to make possible. I also bought a pair of sandals that I had been searching three years for.

Tomorrow, according to what I've heard, my uncle leaves his wife and children to move in with another woman. He remains my favorite uncle, and his wife, my favorite aunt.

Nine days from now my third godchild is due to be born, but it could be sooner.

Four weeks from now I begin posting a chapter a day of my science fiction novel (more on this later).

Two months and six days from now, two of my best friends are getting married to each other, and more than three years of planning will come to fruition.

***

Life is governed, it seems, by the principle of punctuated equilibrium. Change is slow and arduous but inevitable; our solitudes and our personal famines last excruciatingly long and then, in a moment so fast and unexpected it hardly reaches our notice sometimes, they're gone in the flood of new direction. Sometimes it seems you need only close your eyes for a moment and you wake up in another life, an unfamiliar one, one you never expected and never hoped for oftentimes only because you didn't know it was possible. And then, sometimes before we even notice that it's happening, we habituate to it and begin to think that it was always this way, just as a river that bends so slowly that it appears to be straight until viewed from above.

Where is the river going?

The effects of having a job

2010-04-13T12:01:00.000-04:00

As I keep forgetting to inform whatever segment of the population who reads this blog but not my twitter, and also that I don't ever see in person or email or chat with, my job search is at an end (at least until Autumn). I'm now a seasonal employee at the Cleveland Metroparks, member of the invasive plant strike team, which means I get to spend my days in the woods killing weeds. (I would be doing that right now, except it's raining. Outdoor work is like that sometimes.) Midway through my third week, I still believe that I have the best job ever.

Not having had a regular job before, I'm noticing some interesting effects. One is that the blog entry I had intended to write yesterday never got written, because I came up with the idea right before leaving for work and by the end of the day was too tired to write more than a few paragraphs. By the time I started working on it today, I had lost interest in what I was going to say, which is understandable because it wasn't terribly important anyway. So I deleted what I had written and started writing about my job instead.

This is fascinating to me, because for the first time I'm having to make an effort to manage my time. Trying to predict when I will be hungry, when I will be tired, when I will be home, when I will be able to put gas in the car - all this was much less complicated when my schedule consisted of "eat when you're hungry, sleep when you're tired, and just try to get out of the house at least once a day so you don't go crazy." It's an adjustment I'm glad to make, since with it comes the joy of occupying my time with something worthwhile, getting plenty of exercise in the course of my regular workday, and meeting new people who share some of my values and interests. All this and I get paid too.

The jury's still out on how much this will affect my various writing projects, but so far they're still progressing, just a bit more slowly. I'll tentatively say that my sci-fi novel, Voyage to Earth, is going to start going online in late May/early June, updating with one chapter a week, probably Tuesdays. In the meantime I might be working on some short stories, which I may post here.

More later on subjects such as poetry, philosophy, art, and alien invasions. Peace out y'all.

On confidence and planning for the unexpected

2010-02-24T18:16:00.000-05:00

Many developments have taken place since last April, but overall the situation is largely unchanged. As usual, I've been searching for a job and have a few good prospects on the horizon (including an interview next week). I'm starting to ramp up my efforts to get poetry published, and working on a couple of different fiction projects.

One fiction project is a sci-fi novel, first in a possible series. People have expressed an interest in reading the story in installments, and so I am going to attempt to post one chapter a week starting in a month or two. If you're interested in interspecies diplomacy, the Kuiper belt, Martian politics, and the personal lives of long-distance bus drivers, then be sure to keep an eye out for that (and I'll be sure to let everyone know as soon as I've thought of a title).

I'm also entertaining the notion of self-publishing a poetry collection; if so, I will be using this blog and my twitter account (username: pickletomboy) to promote it and report any developments.

The Acoustic Aesthetic

2009-04-18T22:22:00.000-04:00

In this entry I'll be discussing music, using lots of words whose meanings I'm not entirely sure of, not having had much formal education in music. Just so you know, I'm no expert, though I sometimes act like I think I'm one.

The latest addition to my music collection, and the last one I plan to get in a very long while, is Vienna Teng's superb new album Inland Territory. I greatly looked forward to its release, and was certainly not disappointed, as it's by far her best album - and as her first three are fair contenders for my favorite music ever, that's saying quite a bit.

From the beginning I felt somewhat ambivalent about the second track, White Light. Not for any reason I could name at first; the lyrics, as always, are well-crafted and thoughtful (one of the reasons I adore Vienna Teng), and there's nothing specific about the music that bothered me, except a vague sense that it didn't quite capture my interest. After several listenings, I judged that I felt it was a bit over-produced - too much had been done to it, too many electronic elements, making it seem almost like techno. After more thought, I decided that White Light reminded me specifically of Madonna's Ray Of Light, which I hadn't heard in almost a decade. Though I used to like that song (not well enough to buy it, but well enough), I do not remember it fondly. I remember it as being over-produced, and overrated, possibly because of Madonna's massive popularity. It's also possible that I don't like to be reminded of what I was like in my early teen years, when I listened to such music.

Interestingly, I'm actually fond of some techno music, though in the past few years I've mostly left that behind in favor of more folk-style, acoustic tastes (and, of course, heavy metal). For instance, I still enjoy a techno song from my past, I'll Fly With You, which is very over-produced. And another Inland Territory song, Stray Italian Greyhound, also has a few electronic sounds in it, which I think add to its appeal. Yet White Light wasn't appealing to me.

Today, then, I received an email from Amazon saying that, since I had pre-ordered Inland Territory from them, I was eligible to download a promotional "free exclusive MP3" - White Light, the acoustic version. I was immediately intrigued, and curious what it would sound like - would I like it? After all, I actively disliked Faith and the Muse's song Annwyn Beneath The Waves, until I heard an acoustic version of that song and instantly fell in love. Might the same thing happen again?

Well, I downloaded the acoustic White Light, and though it wasn't love-at-first-note like it was with Annwyn, I did enjoy it much more than the album version. And, after listening to it a few times, I could listen to the album version and enjoy it, because it reminded me of the acoustic version.

I find all of this extraordinarily interesting.

And it became wild

2009-04-01T20:15:00.001-04:00

Today I took the train into the city and walked past the prison. Around that prison was a fence, and atop that fence was a ring of barbed wire, and also a robin. It was singing so sweetly as to turn the fence into a bough, and the wire's barbs into spring leaf-buds. Its song compelled me stand and free myself from the city and its noises.

That's why I was late for class.

song interpretation: bound for glory

2009-03-19T12:49:00.000-04:00

As I've blogged before, I'll sometimes listen to a song for years before having a sudden insight into its meaning (which, in my favorite music, is usually complex and bears much contemplation). Today such an insight struck me while I listened to the Indigo Girls revised cover of This Train. Rather heavily revised, from what I've seen of the original; it could count as a whole new song. I've loved this track since I first heard it, for its evocative imagery, fierce instrumentation, and Amy Ray's voice like a smoky wildfire (one of my three favorite vocalists).

One part of the lyrics that always stuck out to me was on a railroad car/one hundred people/ Gypsies, queers and David-stars. But it wasn't until this morning that I made this connection: those three groups - Gypsies, homosexuals, and (of course) Jews - were all targets of the Holocaust. And were transported en masse by train.

Intended or not, this is certainly an impactful connection. Listening to the song again on the way to school, other lines jumped out at me: we are climbing / out of these boxcars / out of these chambers / out of the bed where we lay, ten strangers...

And then, measure the bones / count the face / pull out the teeth / do you belong to the human race?
(Do I belong to the human race? Am I as worthy of life, of dignity, of freedom, as any other human being?)

(Or of the means to do what it is my very purpose to do?)

here is a dancer who has no legs
here is a healer who has no hands
here is a teacher who has no face
here is a runner who has no feet
here is a thinker who has no head
here is a builder who has no back
here is a writer who has no voice

Words which were already powerfully evocative gained new dimensions of meaning, up to and including the very end, which was a capella and veritably spat out as if in anger:

These are the questions
stacked like wood
these are the answers

Here is potential, and it's gone for good.

Thoughts on the year ahead.

2009-01-26T13:52:00.000-05:00

Today I'm very aware that I'm at the start of a new age, and though I don't know what lies ahead of me, I'm determined to move forward into whatever mystery awaits. Since I last posted here, I've gotten my driver's license and turned twenty-one: two more milestones on the road to full adulthood. I'm now an adult in most of the ways that are easily measurable: physically, legally, academically (with a high school diploma and a few years of college under my belt). As I see it, all that remains is to become financially independant; once that's taken care of, all the social, emotional and spiritual aspects of adulthood - the things that aren't easily measurable - will likely fall into place.

But what gives me such a sense of anticipation about the coming months isn't so much what I have achieved recently as what I must necessarily achieve in the next year. This will be my last semester as a full-time student, and come Summer I hope to have an internship with SCA which may take me away from home for several months - potentially well into Autumn. In the event that this falls through, I may decide to travel for several months anyway.

By the time I return in Fall or early Winter, I don't know what options may be available to me, but as I said earlier, I won't be a full-time student anymore. One possibility is that I will work full-time while working toward an Associates of Science degree part-time. I feel very good about the prospect of only going to school part-time for a few reasons; because of the pressure I've felt to take enough credits to be full-time, I've had to deal with very awkward class schedules and unnecessary electives that cut deeply into my time to follow other pursuits, including employment. Hopefully, with the weight of tuition off of my budget and better employment prospects, I could end up living on my own as soon as next Winter.

These are not "hopeful" plans, not take-it-or-leave-it. I'm determined to push myself out of the nest and see whether I can survive whatever world I find myself tumbling into; if I fail, it won't be to return to my current status as unemployed college student living under my parents' roof. Ready or not, I can't stay another year - and I am afraid that I might not be ready, but more afraid of never giving myself the chance to find out.

In the mean time, I have the next four months or so to take care of other things. "Other things" includes my various creative projects, the foremost of which are a comic book project and a novel project; I'm hoping to have the novel done by the end of the semester. I'm also working on occupying my time. At the moment setting aside the search for paid employment, I'm becoming a volunteer worker in the Metroparks (the Cleveland area's park system). And, of course, there's school. But there's also the matter of making peace with leaving my entire social network, if only for a portion of the year. I have come to feel almost a sense of responsibility toward my friends and family in the area, and part of me feels like traveling for extended periods of time would amount to an abandonment. Intellectually, I know that I must live my own life while maintaining my connections to others, and that I can potentially form as much of a strong community with others that I meet along the way. But there is a strong sense of loss associated with growth. I can only hope that the growing plant doesn't mourn its seed casing too much, as it leaves the safety of the ground to face the cold world above.

I Must Be Allergic To The Media

2008-06-17T14:23:00.001-04:00

I've noticed that since I stopped watching television (except for the occasional CSI or Mythbusters) there have been major improvements in my overall mood and mental health. I'm less stressed, more social, and more optimistic. It's even possible that the change is partly responsible for my recent "excellent" blood pressure reading, since I'm not seeing the deceptive advertisements and sensational news stories that always get my temper up.

Unfortunately, the television isn't the only route for such aggravations. Because of my interest in the presidential race (this being my first presidential election as a voter) I have been regularly visiting CNN.com for their political coverage. While there, I often look at other news items that catch my eye, avoiding videos in favor of text articles because I'm often listening to music. So I have become emotionally invested in ongoing stories like that of a man who was seen kicking and stomping on a baby by the side of a road, and refusing to stop until a police officer shot him.

I was happy to read that California is allowing gay marriage now, but not surprised to see news about protests. I followed a link to "iReport," which as far as I can tell is like youtube specifically for news. A story about protests at gay weddings sported a warning that it had been "flagged" as having "material that may be in violation of community guidelines."

Interestingly, on the upper corner of the same screen was the iReport logo with the words "Unedited. Unfiltered. News." It struck me as odd that an "unedited," "unfiltered" site would have guidelines restricting content. I looked up those guidelines, hoping for a simple explanation - after all, a little moderation is often necessary to stem the flow of idiocy that inevitably rushes in to sully any potentially beneficial institution.

It turns out there are rules against certain things on iReport. These include "obscene/lewd" content, anything that "poses a reasonable threat to personal or public safety," "Hate speech," and of course that old standby, "sexually explicit content."

Though I never actually got around to watching the video about the gay marriage protests, I suspect it might have been flagged for the "hate speech" rule. Interestingly, that particular rule doesn't specify the context of the speech that is prohibited; any hate speech is banned. If there's a story about, say, a drunken celebrity going on an anti-semitic tirade, or a politician expressing homophobic attitudes at a dinner party, or a man getting harassed in public by a mob of racists shouting slurs, any videos of these stories aren't allowed on this "unedited, unfiltered" news site, if the rules are interpreted literally.

I may have to quit my CNN political surveillance; it's just too stressful to be in such regular contact with the real world. Besides, I wouldn't want all those polls and commentaries to ruin the ending by telling me who's going to win.

I'm a comic character

2008-05-19T04:40:00.000-04:00

Frankie and I had been planning to support each other in the creation of our own webcomics. It seems, contrary to early forecasts, that he has beat me to the punch in actually getting something done. Here's the result: http://it-takes-all-sorts.smackjeeves.com/

I'm not sure what I find more amusing in panel 2: how slim he drew himself, or how slim he drew me. In reality, that plaid shirt isn't nearly as flattering

Theistic Thoughts of a Religious Nature

2008-05-03T04:05:00.000-04:00

I like to take note of different ways people use to express the cross and other important symbols. It can reveal things like their creativity and visual mindfulness, and what they value (or at least wish to appear to value). A few days ago I encountered this simple but elegant structure above the entrance to a church.

At first I assumed the figures below the cross were an abstract design, but then realized that it was made up of the Greek letters Alpha and Omega, symbols of the all-encompassing presence of the divine as both beginning and end. Upon trying to speculate why those particular symbols were chosen for the entrance (which is also, presumably, the exit) of a church, it occured to me that among Christians the two events most celebrated, most talked-about and argued over, are Jesus's birth and death/resurrection, the beginning and the end of his time on Earth. Nothing in the middle is so emphasized - not his teachings, not his miracles, not his personal relationships. The two most important holidays are Christmas and Easter, which would seem to indicate that the two things most worthy of celebration were the birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ, among Christians anyway. Interestingly, both events were said to be miraculous - his birth of a virgin, and his resurrection after death. Since we know the cross symbolizes the death part, could it be that the colors red and white could have been chosen to symbolize the blood of his birth and his mother's virginity, thus combining the two sacred events as integrally as the two intertwined Greek letters?

At the time I had these thoughts, I had been reading The Woman in the Shaman's Body, a book about the relationship between womanhood and shamanism and the role of female shamans throughout the world's cultures. In particular I was reading a chapter about rituals and attitudes regarding birth, and came across the statement that "While the masculine traditions focus on a shaman's symbolically dying into shamanhood, the feminine traditions focus on the shaman's being born into it." That a crucial part of shamanism is the idea and practice of traveling between worlds, and the interactions between the soul and the body, the heavenly and the earthly, it makes sense that birth and death are particularly important as the most complete transformations a person undergoes: from purely spirit into carnal form, and from living body to eternal spiritual existence, and it also makes sense that a life-changing transformation such as a calling to become a shaman (or priest or healer or lover or parent) can be described as a death or a birth, depending on your attitude. Converts are said to be "born again," and a dream about giving birth can signify a huge life change.

The fact that in Christian theology, god was born and killed in human form says a lot about its ideas of the divine. God really is "one of us," as the popular song suggests, though not affected by the imperfections of everyday life - the spaces between the great transformations that remind us of what is really important. If you want to really turn your priorities upside-down, watch a baby being born - or better yet, have one of your own, though obviously only if you're in a position to raise it. When such transformations occur, the barriers are broken, and all becomes clear for a short time. That's why those events are chosen as the most godly, not because god is most present for them, but because we are more ready to experience him then.

Of course it is also important to remember that, though god may be alpha and omega, he's also the rest of the alphabet. Keeping godly ways and attitudes throughout our everyday lives is the difficult part, maybe even impossible, but no less essential.

(Now may be a good time to acknowledge that our friends Clare and Bryan have finally had their baby, Greydon, this past May Day. Congratulations!)

Holy #$%@ Bunnies?!

2008-04-27T18:35:00.001-04:00

As I was digging a hole near my mom's vegetable garden to plant a fig tree (which is awesome in itself), I happened across this tiny puffball:

A tiny baby bunny, small enough to fit in my hand. He didn't seem to mind being picked up and carried, so my mother, who wanted his nibbling teeth far from her garden, suggested I bring him inside and keep him as a pet. Soon afterward we discovered his brother nearby, and it was decided we would keep that one too. So I set up a cage.

This was yesterday, and they already seem to have gotten acclimated to their new surroundings. They are energetic and strong for their size, and tend to hop for the darkest, tightest corner they can find, though they're also quite content sitting on a lap or chest for some time. They appear surprisingly fearless, considering their species is so known for being skittish.

My friend Frankie was kind enough to fetch me some pet formula (for kittens, but some experienced friends advised it would be good for bunnies), and they have managed to drink a little of it. They have shown no interest in solid food, but they don't seem to be starving.

Frankie, above, strikes a Shakespearian pose.

I have just been informed that an acquaintance from church would like to come over with her small daughter and visit the bunnies. I was surprised word had spread so quickly; I would guess Ahmie was the informant (she said as she eyed her friend suspiciously). I certainly hope I don't become an attraction for all the neighborhood children. There are only two humans under ten that I can tolerate for more than a few minutes at a time.

Another case for luddism

2008-04-07T14:20:00.000-04:00

My esteemed sibling (whose blog is linked to the right) has written in favor of luddism, and noted the irony that he, a habitual internet-user, is decrying the influence of technology in our lives. My belief is that it is crucial to remember that technology - whether it's a car, a computer, a microwave oven, or synthetic fibers - is only a tool, not a crutch, and should only be used when the energy and expense is really worth the help that it gives. People should not be whipping out their calculators to add 34+43, and we shouldn't get in the car and use GPS to go to the corner drug store when we have perfectly good legs. I sew by hand even though my mother's sewing machine is right down the hall, because the speed and neatness it would offer is often not important to me. However, I type more often than I write by hand because it's much faster and easier, and the ability to reproduce many copies of my writing in various places (email, websites, print, backup disks, et cetera) is important to me. The key is to be mindful of the purposes of the tools we use, and see if they're really as necessary or as helpful as we think.

For instance, today I was faced with the task of creating a chart for recording the work I do for my mother, so we both know how much she owes me for it. She had created a chart which was very impractical, with very little space for data, and I had promised to come up with a better one. I envisioned a page with collumns and lines. My first instinct was to get a ruler, pen, and paper and hand-draw some lines, but then I thought, "Why, when I have a computer right in front of me with many programs capable of producing lines on paper?"

After only a few moments fidling around on the computer, I realized how pointless it was going to be. A computer-generated chart would be useful if we needed many copies that would be used by many people, but this would only be used by me, and I only needed one copy for now. I grabbed my ruler and a pen and had my chart done in just a few moments.

As I worked on it, some really significant advantages came to mind. I already knew how to do it, and my artist's hand and eye helped to avoid the crooked lines and too-small spaces that sometimes arise from hand-drawn charts. It took no electricity - there wasn't even a light on in the room, just sunlight from the window. There was no need to calculate whether the size of my lines would be the same in real life as on the screen, and I had perfect control over what it would look like without having to worry about pushing a wrong button, running out of tonor, or any other problems that arise from working with computers and printers. I even realized that I could draw my lines all the way to the edges of the paper - no need for space-wasting margins.

I think it's quite prudent for anyone to know how to do such tasks by hand, and not depend on computers for everything. Not that I think we'll have some apocalyptic event that wipes out our modern technology and sends us back to the dark ages. But blackouts happen all the time, and I think it's foolish not to know how to use your hands for something other than pushing buttons, and your feet for something other than pushing pedals.

Peace out y'all.

Yet another tattoo design

2008-03-15T01:12:00.001-04:00

This is unique as my ideas go, in that it's the only design I've come up with that can't be fully appreciated from one direction only. Here's my crude five-minute sketch as viewed in a dirty mirror:

In case you can't see, that's a tree with its roots on the foot and branches reaching around the calf. I'd been trying to think of a way to pull this off on an arm, but then I realized that the contours of the leg are much more appropriate. The final version would be much better, of course, possibly with leaves and blooms and such. Though this version came out better than I thought it would.

(And yes I do realize that tattooing on the foot would be considerably more painful and less likely to come out picture-perfect. I can live with that.)

Why Astrology Matters Even Though I Don't Believe In It (there are no pictures in this one, because I don't feel like it)

2008-02-07T01:54:00.000-05:00

I'm really not that impressed with personality types, such as the ever-popular Myers-Brigg system or the Enneagram. I honestly think I like Horoscopes better as a way of putting people into categories. Why? Because it's got no real basis. If a Capricorn trait doesn't apply to me, I can ignore it with the excuse that it isn't real. Legitimate, scientific personality types carry an expectation of accuracy which some people take as gospel truth, letting it affect their decisions, their relationships, their perceptions of themselves and others. How often has my identity as an introvert kept me from exposing myself to social situations, for fear of being overwhelmed? It wasn't until recently that I began to actively seek such situations, because I discovered that they filled a need that I had been denying myself: the need for friendship and fun. Knowing my zodiac sign gives me something to identify with, and a name for some of my traits, but it does not define me, and I can interpret it in whatever way feels right.

Moreover, there are so many other signs on my chart – rising sign, moon sign, planet positions and such – that I can claim almost half the zodiac as my own. It leaves plenty of room for a complex, contradictory character, a level of complexity that I know everyone has the capacity for, whether they know it or not. My turbulent feelings are accounted for by my moon in Scorpio; my appreciation for art and beauty, by my Libra rising. Such a wealth of possible traits would be useless in a legitimate, scientific system, because a given combination could be interpreted to fit almost any person on earth; it's not an effective way to divide people into neat categories. But as we know, human character is not as tidy as sociologists may prefer. That's why it's so difficult, if not impossible, to come up with a system that fully and accurately describes different types of people without reducing them to flat, simplistic, clinical statistics. Often, the cost of accuracy is vividness and humanity, and a system that only identifies a few major categories, or even several, is ultimately more stereotyping than an astrological profile.

I think it's also a good social tool. If I meet a new person and identify myself as a Capricorn, and if she is at all familiar with zodiac lore, she will (at least subconsciously) have a set mental image of my personality before she knows me very well. Is that so bad?

The effect is that my new acquaintance will think of me as having that ready-made personality, rather than no personality at all. It's an automatic icebreaker, a way to relate to each other and help combat shyness. As she gets to know me better, she will alter her perception of my personality to accommodate the parts of me that aren't covered by the stock profile of a Capricorn, and even use those discrepencies to form an individual identity for me, saying things like "She's not as perfectionist as most Capricorns." I don't see anything wrong with this, especially considering that we all naturally make assumptions of each other based on clothing, speech patterns, or even the circumstances in which we meet each other; the eventual correction of false assumptions usually isn't much of a problem.

The interpersonal aspect of the zodiac system is nothing compared to the intrapersonal aspect. Self-discovery is a journey, and a journey must start somewhere. In order to determine who you really are, it helps to have a template, a point of reference, to compare yourself to. Legitimate personality types can be awkward starting points in this respect, because just determining your type requires some self-knowledge before you even begin. If the only things you're sure about are the things on your birth certificate, then you can use that information to find a detailed, vivid picture of who you might be, much of which is probably true. Once you have that, it's not too hard to find which parts feel right for you, and which parts were just an unlucky roll of the dice.

And if nothing else, zodiac types are so much more fun than Myers-Brigg or Enneagram types. The possibilities of art, poetry, tattoos, and even creative description are endless. Which paints a prettier picture: the letters "INFP" or the words "Water-Bearer," "Archer," or "Sea-Goat?" Would you rather be a number between 1 and 9 - or a mighty, steadfast bull, a venomous scorpion, or a beautiful maiden? Zodiac descriptions are virtually baseless, but personality types are virtually devoid of glamour, and can't match the zodiac in terms of depth and complex symbolism.

Unreality hasn't kept mythology from enriching our culture and our collective identity. Star Trek and Harry Potter are no less relevant to our perceptions because they are fictitious. Yes, Astrology is fake, but so is much of what we value in our lives.

That's why I still read my chart, and why I wonder what my friends' signs are. I've yet to find a good reason not to.

Three Ways to Oneness

2008-01-11T18:35:00.000-05:00

Nirvana, salvation, enlightenment, truth – whatever you call it, most people are in search of a way to resolve the disparate parts of themselves and of the universe, to find the one truth, the common thread, or the ultimate reality. For good or ill, countless methods, or paths, to this oneness have developed; whether any of them is more valid than any other, I cannot say. But I have noticed three basic ways – a trinity, if you like – that transcend religious and cultural differences, three methods of finding truth which I believe everyone uses to an extent, through most people personally favor one dominant method.

The first is what I call the scientific, atheistic, or "one world" way. I call it "one world" because this method discards all but the observable world: no spirit world. It's not that "one world" believers don't accept the possibility of a non-observable force or entity; they just have the attitude that if we can't observe it or its effects, then there's really no point taking it into account – and why should we?

It's true that science has resulted in vast improvements in our lives, but what many people lose sight of is the much greater thing science can help us find: an explanation of the world and how it works. Evolution science traces all people and all creatures to a single common ancestor, while the principle of uniformitarianism maintains that the same natural forces are at work throughout the world and througout time to create the diverse geological formations we see around us. As scientists bring theories into harmony with each other, they come closer to the grand unification of all scientific knowledge, a way to resolve the contradictory theories of relativity and quantum physics. Though it may have no practical applications, the grand unification is as ambitious a goal as nirvana.

The second way to oneness I have come across is the pattern-finding, symbolic thinking, or "one web" way. This method finds meaning and synchronism in the observable world as evidence of a guiding hand in the cosmos or in history. Ordinary events become omens, and the microcosm of the pattern-finder's life becomes interconnected to the macrocosm of the universe through a vast system of symbols and codes. In its least respectable form this method manifests as superstition or conspiracy theories, and some people will always see it as such.

Skeptics acknowledge that humans are predisposed to find patterns where there are none. Ancient people looked on a random arrangement of stars and found detailed pictures there, constellations which now affect many people's thinking in the form of astrology. Other people, noticing striking patterns in history, conclude that certain events are being orchestrated by an unseen "illuminati" or conspiracy. Bible Codes and DaVinci codes also result from this kind of thinking. One of the most extreme examples that I have found is one Jake Kotze, who coined the term "synchromysticism" and has created an impressive collection of blogs and videos devoted to finding connections between history, mythology, art, pop culture, and current events, ultimately combining mystical symbolism with secular conspiracy theory.

While reading the work of Jake Kotze and others of his ilk, I have noticed that once I delve deeply enough into these systems of code and meaning, everything becomes connected to everything else in a vast, overarching web, usually centering on one pivotal symbol – the Kevin Bacon of the universe. Kotze has been able to connect almost everything to what he calls a "stargate," ultimately the same as the "world gate" that this blog is named for. Further delving connects these gates to the historical beginnings of monotheism… which brings me to the third of the trinity of ways to oneness.

The third way to oneness is the theistic or "one god" way. This designation does not exclude polytheism, as many polytheists believe that their many individual gods are different expressions or portions of one supreme divinity, much as monotheistic Christians acknowledge a trinity, three aspects of one god. Theistic seekers find oneness by fostering a relationship with the divine, becoming in harmony with god, and ultimately becoming one with god. Christians find salvation by residing in Christ, and Buddhists find enlightenment by merging with the cosmos.

It's up to you to figure out which of these ways is most valid, or which is most dominant in your way of thinking. There may even be other methods that I have overlooked, but I suspect that any other methods could be interpreted as a combination of the three I have described. As for myself, in my most ambitious search for oneness I have sought to unite the three paths seamlessly and completely. That's what the world gate is to me.

More Song Interpretation Fun

2007-12-09T09:33:00.001-05:00

I woke up with "Front Row" by Alanis Morissette in my head, so I turned it on while getting dressed. For the first time I made a certain connection - the line "I like you to be schooled and in awe, as if you were kissed by god full on the lips" - immediately I thought of the movie Dogma, in which Alanis, playing the part of God, does indeed kiss Jay full on the lips.

Then other lines, such as "I started by saying things like 'you smoke,' 'you live in New Jersey,'" and "why can't you shut your stuff off?" reinforced the implication. It's a weird, highly unlikely interpretation, most likely totally wrong, but it's fun to think about on a Sunday morning before I've reached my usual level of sanity.

Tattoo designs and other art.

2007-12-02T01:11:00.000-05:00

I have an idea for my second tattoo, and it's so appropriate on so many levels (particularly in contrast to my other one, which struck me as very appropriate about a year before I got it, so much that I immediately decided that's what I would get if anything), that I doubt the design will change much between now and when I might think of getting it, which probably won't be until at least next summer.

Here are the two designs I'm thinking of, which are similar in many ways. I'm leaning towards the one on the left, though I may end up getting both eventually.

I realize either of these would be a very good counterbalance for the more intellectual tattoo on my right arm; I may put it on my left arm, or possibly under the one on my right.

For those who wonder where the idea came from, they're inspired by this sgraffito box I made in high school Ceramics class.

Reality is a Bowl-Shaped Sky

2007-11-29T09:47:00.000-05:00

One of my science teachers said something along the lines of "the sky looks a bit like a flattened bowl, but it's actually a round dome." Yes, he was talking more about mapping the visible sky than the actual nature of space, but you know? I never thought it looked anything like a bowl. It looks like empty space to me, occasionally interrupted by things like clouds and stars and birds.

Our ancestors thought it looked like a bowl, though. An upside-down bowl with holes poked in it so the light outside comes in. Now that we know that the sky is actually empty space, it's more difficult to see the bowl – just as it's more difficult to imagine a flat earth when we know we live on a round planet. I've seen people scoff at the ancients, incredulous that they could be so dense as to believe what we know is false, because it goes against what we can see with our own eyes. But what do we see with our own eyes?

Who here thinks of time as linear? Anyone having a hard time imagining a three dimensional space as being bent, without reverting to a two-dimensional mental image? And can anyone really wrap their mind around the idea of a particle that is also a wave?

Is it so ridiculous that ancient minds could not imagine a round earth, or see a sky that goes on forever?

People often mistake perception with reality. The problem goes deeper than you might assume. I've discussed topics like philosophy and theology with friends who are intelligent, creative, and imaginitive, with an uncommon capacity for thinking outside the box, but even they – and I – have fallen prey to perceptual egocentrism.

I asked a friend about the possibility of God having a self-concept, and her reply was "one would think that, as a being more intelligent and aware than man (who has self
knowledge), God would also have self knowledge." It makes sense, even if the "god" in your mind is purely hypothetical. But why the assumption that a superior being would have self-knowledge just because we have it? I suppose because we are superior to lower beings who have no self-knowledge. But where did this artificial scale of superior and inferior beings come from, and why are things placed the way they are?

Humans think they know what makes a higher being high and a lower being low, and generally their scales put humans pretty close to the top – and everything above us is divine, which is convenient because divine beings are not visible to us and we can't actually ask them whether they would have arranged the scale any differently.

I said to another friend: "we only think of it in terms of 'lower' life forms giving rise to 'higher' forms because we're egotistical enough to think of ourselves as best, and we think of ourselves as the last/latest model of creation simply because the future hasn't happened yet."

My friend replied: "Are you saying maybe we were better before? Or that there is better consciousness somewhere out there?"

And I said: "You misunderstand. The idea that one form is 'better' than another is the illusion." And she agreed.

Where did we come up with the ideas of good and bad, higher and lower, superior and inferior? Is it beginning to look a little like a bowl-shaped sky? That's what it looks like to me.

Figuratively speaking.

Logic. Faith. Reason. Memory. Reality. Instinct. Have you ever really seen infinity? Can you really comprehend matter? Which way is up? The sky is up, but the sky is also down. So how do we figure that we're any better than the dirt under our feet?

Someone else's poetry

2007-11-27T23:49:00.000-05:00

A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water'd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil'd the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree. 

-William Blake

We were wrong about Venus (the prehistoric one)

2007-11-19T05:54:00.000-05:00

Remember this lady on the right?

Many like her were made in prehistoric times, all with creepily similar proportions, and they've been a mystery ever since they were first dug up. The prevailing assumption has been that they're depictions of an ideal female figure, faceless because she is not an individual but an embodiment of all women. Her breasts and belly are so huge because those are the most important parts of her - she is valued not for her strong legs and arms, not for her capable fingers, but for her ability to make babies and feed them, and her stores of fat that will help her survive the winter.

While weight-conscious modern women can appreciate that a flabbier body type was more accepted and appealing back then, I was never quite satisfied with the above interpretation. I accepted it, though, because nothing better was offered and I was not in a position to posit theories of my own even if I had any. (Gosh, I sound like such a writer. Too many college courses.)

But wait! There is a better explanation, set forth in this study. I found out about it just a few minutes ago, and immediately stripped down to see for myself if it was true.

It's a self-portrait.

The Venus's head is always tipped downward, as if she is examining and contemplating her own body. The breasts, closest to the eye, are seen as huge, as is the belly below them. Even a non-pregnant woman with just a little pudge will see her own belly as proportionally similar to the carving's, and not just because she's self-conscious. It just looks that way. Check yourself.

(According to the study, "direct comparisons between the original artifacts or their casts and one's own anatomy is the ideal procedure. Caution is urged to avoid injury to joints and muscles unaccustomed to such maneuvers.")

The legs seem abnormally tapered and short because that's what they look like from a sharp downward angle. The hands are tiny - well, anyone who has tried figure-drawing can tell you that a beginner almost always draws hands way too small for the bodies they're attached to. Even the peculiar position of the butt makes sense when you consider the perspective of a woman looking down over her own shoulder. And she is faceless, not because she is an abstract archetype of womanhood, but because the artist could not see her own face.

The proportions aren't due to a preexisting abstract notion of what a woman is for, and what's her most important attribute. They're due to the limitations of the best and only reference the artist had: herself. She had no mirrors or photos. She could see other women, but she wasn't trying to carve another woman. She was carving her own body, and carving it with amazing accuracy.

Now why would so many women all over prehistoric Europe decide to make sculptures of themselves? According to the study, "As self-portraits of women at different stages of life, these early figurines embodied obstetrical and gynecological information and probably signified an advance in women's self-conscious control over the material conditions of their reproductive lives."

In other words, it's feminism. Like the authors of that classic, Our Bodies, Ourselves, and creators of countless other artistic celebrations of womanhood, these women were taking charge of their physiology and their identities. The "ideal female figure" theory, that the Venuses are objective statements of what a woman should look like (or what men found attractive), now seems foolish and arrogant, and frankly sexist.

A prehistoric woman, relying on her own and her community's strength and ingenuity for her very survival, needed a keen awareness of who she was both physically and socially, of her abilities and strengths as a human being who every day needed food, needed to feed her children, needed to contribute to the needs of the group. And she accepted that identity as her most important reality. She was not comparing herself to anyone else's view of what's right and proper; that's a new development. Abstract ideals are a construct of fairly modern times, invented around the same time as things like personal property and sexual repression. (Here I'm basing my statements purely on my own unfounded, shamelessly illogical opinions, so don't take them as true. Please.)

Now I'll have to add one more item to my long list of creative projects to undertake in the future.

Love and Politics (or, a short break from 41,000 words)

2007-11-18T03:44:00.000-05:00

I can be very dense sometimes when it comes to literature; I can listen to a wonderful song for years and never realize what it really means until one glorious moment of epiphany. A recent example of this has been The Couch by Alanis Morissette, which I was listening to on the way home from the shrink this past week. (Duh!)

I've been discovering Vienna Teng, a beautiful singer whose songs reach into me and rearrange my insides so that they feel much more comfortable and joyful. Some of my favorites have been Cannonball, Daughter and City Hall.

I had listened to City Hall several times before recognizing that it was about marriage, and then several more times before I realized that it was about a specific sort of marriage whose legality has been fiercely contested lately. It makes no direct references to gender, not even a single pronoun: only the joy of being finally allowed to marry.

You can listen to City Hall here: http://www.myspace.com/viennateng
The lyrics are at the bottom of this entry.

It reminds me of a time many months ago when same-sex marriage became legal in certain places, and one news source made the derisive observation that there was a huge jump in the rate of marriage among gays, followed by a drop - concluding that gay marriage was really a fad, only popular because it was new.

But of course there would be a jump followed by a drop! The marriages which occurred directly after they became legal included those many couples that had been "married" in every way but legally for years or even decades. Literally, generations of catching up had to be done. The infernal stupidity of the media is the biggest reason that I seldom watch or read the news. That, and the commercials usually offend what little morality I have.

But before I drive my blood pressure further into the danger zone, here are the lyrics to City Hall by Vienna Teng:

me and my baby on a february holiday
'cause we got the news
yeah, we got the news
500 miles and we're gonna make it all the way
we've got nothing to lose
we've got nothing to lose

it's been 10 years waiting
but it's better late than the never
we've been told before
we can't wait one minute more

oh, me and my baby driving down
to a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
oh, me and my baby stand in line
you've never seen a sight so fine
as the love that's gonna shine
at city hall

me and my baby've been through
a lot of good and bad
learned to kiss the sky
made our mamas cry
I've seen a lot of friends
after giving it all they had
lay down and die
lay down and die

10 years into it
here's our window
at the Vegas drive-thru chapel
it ain't too much
for 'em all to handle

oh, me and my baby driving down
to a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
oh, me and my baby stand in line
you've never seen a sight so fine
as the love that's gonna shine
at city hall

outside, they're handing out
donuts and pizza pies
for the folks in pairs in the folding chairs
my baby's lookin' so damned pretty
with those anxious eyes
rain-speckled hair
and my ring to wear

10 years waiting for this moment of fate
when we say the words and sign our names
if they take it away again someday
this beautiful thing won't change

oh, me and my baby driving down
to a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
oh, me and my baby stand in line
you've never seen a sight so fine
as the love that's gonna shine
at city hall

Happy Anniversary

2007-10-04T02:06:00.000-04:00

fellow traveler

travel along with the stars in the night
travel along while the world watches
travel along with us all, make us hope
for a time when we look up and see
look, look what we've done
look, look at the sky that we've made
travel along, help us search for the stars
lead the way into the sky
show us how small the world is
I'm scared of us, at war with ourselves
but could we have gone so high
if we hadn't been scared of the earth?
so travel along with us
in our search for the stars

(I like when Google reminds us what day it is. Today is Sputnik's anniversary. Sputnik roughly translates as "fellow traveler". I've heard that the space program probably wouldn't have succeeded if the US hadn't been locked in fierce, paranoid competition with the Soviet Union, each afraid that the other would get there first and use spacecraft as weapons of mass destruction. I'm sure the United Federation of Planets is very proud of this history.)

(Blogspot thinks I posted this a few hours ago. So in case you're the kind of person who actually checks the date and time of entries, today is tomorrow.)

Yeah, right

2007-09-24T19:30:00.000-04:00

Tell me, do you know any animals who would obey this sign?

Sharing - a relic of past preachings

2007-08-16T22:30:00.000-04:00

While at a friend's house, I saw a copy of the first thing I ever wrote and read aloud in front of church, when I was fifteen years old. My involvement in the creation of that youth-lead service, which took place on March 30, 2003, was my first taste of the worship-leading experience that lead me to become a worship associate at age seventeen. Moreover, the words in this old piece I wrote had echoes throughout my later preaching experience, and were repeated and elaborated in the sermon I gave during my worship associate year.

Then, as now, my words inspired a torrent of approval and encouragement from the congregation which I have never been sure how to react to. Then, as now, my reaction to the flood of compliments was "Yes, but do you understand?" I touched on that confusion in my sermon, which I may post here later. First, here is the unedited reading from my mind, my mouth, and my life four years ago:

Your community are the people who surround you, and the people you surround. They are friends, coworkers, and strangers. They are your enemies, and the people you wish you weren't associated with. The community forms a vast spider web that holds each of its members up, and each person is a thread.

But, as important as community is, it is equally important to keep one's individuality, to separate from the crowd in order to find a personal balance.

When I first offered to write this reading about connecting with people, I thought it would be easy. After all, who knows better than I the joy of finding friendship after a lifetime of loneliness? And I was more than willing to show the congregation – and the world – how I felt.

But words proved insufficient to describe this feeling. After several failed attempts, I gave up on my original approach – which was to tell my own story from beginning to end – and wrote this.

This service is about balance, a concept I believe in wholeheartedly. It's equilibrium between two opposites, where neither is more significant or more powerful than the other. It applies to so many aspects of our lives, and yet we often forget its importance.

It even applies to the amount of time and effort we spend on our social lives. If you neglect your duties to the community by hiding away from the world, you will starve and die of loneliness. But if you constantly surround yourself with people, whether it be a few close friends or millions of strangers, you will forget about yourself and lose sight of your own goals.

As for me, I spent my whole life starving for connection. I was so alone that I forgot that other people existed, and thought I could curl up and ignore the world and still live a normal life.

But when I finally figured out that I needed friends to survive, I overdid it. I would work so hard on building and maintaining relationships that they nearly suffocated me. I had no time or energy, after socializing, to pursue my own personal goals or develop any kind of personality.

But how can one be social and still retain his or her sense of self? How can one keep the balance from tipping?

I once read an excellent metaphor involving a hand submerged in water. The water completely surrounds the hand, embraces it, some might say loves it. But when the hand is removed from the water, the water lets it go – it doesn't cling possessively to it, or tear off part of the hand to keep as its own.

The key to keeping the balance, I think, is to be like water: to love and trust others completely and easily, and to leave them just as easily. Spend some time alone, without worrying about other people, and then return joyfully to their embrace when the time comes to be social.

I have been told that saying these things, my personal thoughts and experiences, in front of everyone here, would be hard for me. But it isn't, because I know that the more I share, the more I will get back, and that I will have more to share after that. Only be showing myself as I really am, by sharing my story, can I help the community and so help myself.

I did not know that a few years ago, but I know it now.

Drink With The Beloved

2007-07-27T00:03:00.000-04:00

Let me pause to marvel ath the fact that my desk is clear enough that I can place Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on it without moving anything aside, and there's still plenty of surface visible around it. The result of the removal of a tall kitchen bag of garbage.

The following is a Sufi song I first heard some time ago. It's one of the songs I sing while waiting, walking, or just goofing off:

Drink the wine down, tip the glass,
Drink with the Beloved.
Take each breath like its your last,
Drink with the Beloved.
We're a caravan you see
Moving towards our destiny
You must find the eyes to see,
Drink with the Beloved.

La'illaha ill'llah
La'illaha ill'llah
La'illaha ill'llah
La'illaha ill'llah

Go to the East, go to the West,
Drink with the Beloved.
You can’t escape this birth or death
Drink with the Beloved
Drink the cup of loving down.
Truly this is drink or drown.
What is lost it shall be found,
Drink with the Beloved.

La'illaha ill'llah
La'illaha ill'llah
La'illaha ill'llah
La'illaha ill'llah

So listen to the inner call,
Drink with the Beloved.
The tavern masters rise and fall,
Drink with the Beloved.
Watch the drunkards reel and spin
Feel the presence from within
Toasting to the dearest friend,
Drink with the Beloved.

La'illaha ill'llah
La'illaha ill'llah
La'illaha ill'llah
La'illaha ill'llah

A personal item

2007-07-19T03:28:00.000-04:00

One of my lesser-known uncles made these photo boards for everyone in my generation of the family for Christmas, and I have just now gotten to hanging it up and populating it. I have placed it above my desk, so that I can look at it when I want to relax and think happy thoughts. I chose the items to place on it accordingly.

From the top left and going clockwise, they are as follows:

- A card made by my uncle Mike the calligraphy artist, one of my favorites. It's quite serendipitous that I was considering buying this and a few other cards from him when my aunt Margarita gave it to me as a thank-you card. (The inscription is "For all that has been, Thanks, for all that will be, Yes!")
- An amber pendant from my grandmother (the nice one, not the rich one).
- Earings made for me by one of my cousins.
- A tarot card which has been an important object to me for many years, and which until now has mostly been floating dangerously among the disorder of my desk.
- A photo of my two favorite men, my father and brother, when they were both quite a bit younger and less hairy than they are now.
- Photos of each of my nephews, my favorite people under the age of ten.
- A photo of a gorgeous green valley from my mother's stay in Guam.

Since I have reason to believe that people actually read this blog now, I thought I would include something more personal than I have generally been writing, something that actually reveals something about me and my life. This is it for now.

Let me tell you about the Wood Between the Worlds

2007-07-14T14:47:00.000-04:00

The Wood Between the Worlds is a place that is nowhere. It was created by CS Lewis and appears in his book The Magician's Nephew, part of the Chronicles of Narnia.

It resembles a wood, with soft, sweet-smelling grass and trees growing as far as you can see. Sunlight filters through leaves that are always green. Other than the grass and trees there are no living creatures in the Wood, except for a guinea pig that the Magician sent there while testing his methods. In between the trees are small pools of water, and each of these pools acts as a portal to another universe. When one travels between the worlds by passing through this Wood, one emerges from the pool from his own world and then moves on to another pool.

Children's literature offers many ways to travel between worlds. In Knock Three Times by Marion St John Webb, two children find the Possible World by following a sentient pumpkin through the trunk of a tree. It's quite simple. There are two sides to every tree, just like there are two sides to every question. But you can't get to the other side of a question by going around it - you must go through it. The same is true of trees.

The symbolism of trees in both stories did not escape my notice, nor did the mythical World Tree with its roots in the underworld and its branches in the heavens. I also do not think it's insignificant that Manannan Mac Lir, Son of the Sea, is a ferryman as well as a gatekeeper; a trip through the water is a trip to another world.

I once had a dream about walking through a city very like my own, except that when I looked up I saw a shimmering, rippling surface of water, far above me. I found that my movements were slowed as if I was walking on the bottom of a lake. Dreamworld is as much a reality to our minds as waking life, and the transformation that we undergo while falling asleep transports us to another world - metaphorically or metaphysically, whichever you prefer. Altered states of mind, both natural and induced, are expressed in literature and art as trips to other worlds, whether we think of them as external and extraterrestrial or buried in our own subconscious minds. The water that carries us to a far-off shore is the same as the wine that unveils our hidden emotions.

This is far from the end, but I never expected to finish. I think of each of these as a small part of a greater thing that will be my life's work: part fiction, part poetry, perhaps even part ministry. I have been trying for many years, with some success and a lot of dead ends. I'll likely be trying for my whole life. But that's okay.

For the Record

2007-07-12T16:22:00.000-04:00

These are my theories, predictions, and expectations regarding the events and revelations in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, to be released on July 21^st, 2007. Scroll down for spoilers.

Snape’s Alegiance

One of the most contested issues is also the one that I’m most certain about: the allegiance of Severus Snape. Since the end of the first book, nothing has shaken my belief that Snape is on the good side, a spy against Voldemort and bound to protect Harry. Both characters and readers take his killing Dumbledore as proof positive that he is either loyal to Voldemort or only out for his own benefit. They mistake Dumbledore’s final pleas to be for his own life, when in reality Dumbledore knew of Snape’s vow, and was sacrificing himself to save both Snape and Draco, and enable Snape to continue pretending to be loyal to Voldemort. They misunderstand Snape’s expressed reluctance, assuming that he is reluctant to continue serving Dumbledore. In fact, he is reluctant to take the one action that can ensure that he can continue to serve the cause: to kill the only person in the world who trusts and believes in him. He would rather have let the Unbreakable Vow take his life, but Dumbledore begged him to follow through. It was an act of bravery and loyalty beyond what anyone would expect of a Slytherin.

Take another look at the scene in which Snape makes the Unbreakable Vow with Narcissa Malfoy. Pay close attention to his body language. If he was not loyal to Dumbledore, why would he have hesitated to say “I will”?

I believe that Dumbledore, though admittedly mistaken in some of his choices, could not have been so unshakenly trusting of Snape if there was not some irrefutable proof of his loyalty. That irrefutable proof may be the magic holding him to his life-debt to James Potter, or something else that Dumbledore has not seen fit to divulge.

Whatever the proof, one thing I am certain of beyond any doubt is that it is NOT, as some so-called experts have claimed, that Dumbledore made Snape take an Unbreakable Vow. Such a spell would go against everything Dumbledore believes, and would not fit his character at all. Dumbledore knows that death is not the worst thing that could happen to a person, and therefore knows very well that an Unbreakable Vow is indeed breakable, and not to be trusted. All it takes is for a person’s desire to break the vow to outweigh their desire to continue living, and considering the life Snape has lived, that wouldn’t take much.

Harry’s Allies

While Voldemort gains followers through threats and empty promises, Harry gains allies through kindness and bravery. He gained Hermione’s friendship by helping to save her from a troll. People like Neville and Luna became assets to their side after Harry showed them kindness and acceptance. Dobby became a powerful ally after Harry freed him from the Malfoys, and though he is not magically bound to Harry, has a bond of loyalty and love which is stronger than the magic that tied him to his house as a slave. Therefore, the potential Dobby has to serve the cause against Voldemort is mind-blowing; his elf magic could provide a huge boost to the effort. I do believe that it is Dobby clinging to Harry’s back in the British cover art, weilding Gryffindor’s sword.

Kreacher is another possibility, but because he is unwillingly bound to Harry and too corrupt to trust, he will not be nearly as useful as Dobby.

Another ally yet to join forces with Harry and the Order, but whom I think is inevitably going to help out, is the Brazillian boa constrictor that Harry freed from the zoo before even knowing that he was a wizard. The boa owes a debt to Harry, and the idea of Harry having a giant snake friend to match Voldemort’s Nagini is simply too beautiful to pass up.

I expect a very dramatic entrance for the boa constrictor, probably in a place packed with good wizards, possibly at Bill and Fleur’s wedding. He’ll cause a huge panic by slithering through the crowd straight toward Harry, then rearing up to eye level and addressing his old friend in Parseltongue, which, of course, nobody else will understand. Harry would have to explain to his friends that this is a friendly snake, and not sent by Voldemort.

Keeping up the theme of symmetry between the sides, since Voldemort apparently has giants doing his bidding, I think it's quite natural that Hagrid, Grawp, and Madame Maxime will join in the fight as well. Their presence on the good side might also help to convince a few of the giants to turn against Voldemort before the fight is over.

Harry may also have help from the portrait of Dumbledore that now hangs in the Headmaster’s office, but I think Dumbledore’s posthumous assistance is more likely to come from the pensieve, which Harry will have to use to view his own and other people’s memories in the effort to deduct the wherabouts of the remaining Horcruxes, and the manner of their disposal.

Dumbledore’s influence also lingers in Fawks. His assertion from book 2 that “I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me” still applies, and Fawks will show up at some crucial time when Harry has shown loyalty to the dearly departed headmaster, and his help will be enough to turn the tide of battle.

There is also the matter of Wormtail’s debt to Harry, which he has not shown much intention of paying. However, the magic that binds him to Harry is too strong to ignore, and he will eventually be forced to act against his master.

In addition to these individuals, Harry will of course have Ron and Hermione, the members of the DA and the Order of the Phoenix, and the influences of his parents whether direct or indirect. However, as always, Harry will have to face the final trial alone.

Sectumsempra

Sectumsempra means "cut forever," but the visible effects of the spell (the cuts that appeared on Draco's body when Harry cast it) did not last forever; that effect was immediately negated by Snape's counterspell. Therefore, I doubt those cuts were the entire effect of that spell, and considering the amount of attention payed to the division of souls in that book, I fear sectumsempra might have done some irreparable damage to Draco's soul. Whatever it is, something about Draco was cut that can never be put back together. What this means for him and for the story, I am not sure.

R.A.B.

I have believed ever since hearing the initials that R.A.B. was Regulus Black. The only evidence against it is Sirius Black’s claims that his brother was a coward, and never close enough to Voldemort to be trusted with anything as important as a Horcrux, and frankly, Sirius has never been very good at putting aside his biases in favor of reason. He doesn’t like anyone in his family, so nothing could have convinced him that Regulus would do anything useful for the good side. Whether Regulus is dead or alive is uncertain.

Voldemort’s Powers, and How They Can Be Used Against Him

Since book 2 we have been told that Voldemort transferred some of his powers to Harry during the curse that failed to kill him. The first example was Parseltongue, which Harry has already used to his advantage. But what else was transferred?

During his post-resurection speech to the Death Eaters, Voldemort described what happened after that curse: “Only one power remained to me. I could possess the bodies of others.” (Emphasis mine) This means that the power of possession was one he had before his first defeat, perhaps even inborn like Parseltongue.

He used this power after his resurection to possess Nagini, and also Harry at the end of book 5. The experience was painful to both of them, but because of the Harry’s love of Sirius, Voldemort could not stand it. He was forced to release Harry. What if Voldemort hadn’t been in control, had been unable to terminate their connection to save himself? Such would have been the case if Harry had been the one possessing Voldemort, and if possession was one of the latent abilities transferred to him by the failed curse, then he could use it to finally defeat Voldemort. Of course, possessing his enemy would be incredibly painful to Harry, but he would be strengthened by the thought of the people he loves whom he would be saving, and the very feelings that strengthen Harry will make the experience more excruciating for Voldemort.

The Department of Mysteries

The rooms in the Department of Mysteries correspond to those areas of thought that cannot be known for sure: time, death, thought, love, the cosmos, et cetera. Obviously the room containing time-turners, and the magical bell jar with the hummingbird egg, is where the DoM wizards study time. It was probably after much research in this area that they developed the time-turners themselves.

I believe the room with the tank of brains is where wizards study the phenomenon of human thought and memory; I believe the invention of the Pensieve was a result of this research, just as the time-turner was invented in the Time room. Obviously, coming into contact with thoughts in the Pensieve is not nearly as dangerous as tangling with the “raw” thoughts swimming in the tank; the purpose of the Pensieve is not simply to allow the thoughts to be seen, but to allow them to be seen safely.

Some fans think the final battle between Harry and Voldemort will take place either in the veil room in the DoM, or even in the world behind the veil itself. I won’t rule out the veil room as a possible locale in the last book, but I don’t think it’s likely to be the setting of the climax. I also don’t think Harry will go through the veil at all during the book, as going through the veil means death, death is forever, and Harry will not die prematurely.

Horcruxes

Known horcruxes are the Ring, the Locket, the Cup, and the Diary, and there should be two more. The Ring and the Diary have been destroyed. The Locket may have been destroyed, as claimed in the note from R.A.B., but we don’t know if R.A.B. might have been prevented from carrying out the task. I think the heavy locket that was found in 12 Grimauld Place in the beginning of book 5 is indeed Slytherin’s locket, which Voldemort made into a Horcrux and which was taken from the cave by R.A.B. Whether it’s still a Horcrux is unknown. It may still be at Grimauld Place, or it may have been stolen by Mundungus Fletcher; if the later is true, Harry will have a job trying to track it down.

I think Harry will realize the locket was at Grimauld Place while perusing his own memories of cleaning the house in Dumbledore's pensieve. I think it will take him completely by surprise, like his sudden realization in book 5 that the corridor in his dreams is the Department of Mysteries; it's just a matter of noticing that he's seen the same thing in two different places.

Dumbledore speculated that Nagini is a horcrux. I think it’s possible, though some people think that theory is a red herring. I think either could be true.

As for locations of the horcruxes, there are a lot of important locales in Voldemort’s life that could be good candidates. I'm betting at least one is in Albania, especially after seeing the delux edition US cover. I believe the trio will visit Romania to visit Charlie Weasley and borrow an Antipodian Opaleye Dragon from him, and ride it to Albania where they will find one of the Horcruxes and probably meet Voldemort himself, in the greek-looking collumn-lined arena shown in the US cover (remember, Albania is very close to Greece). Since Bulgaria is in that area too, I'm willing to bet they'll visit Viktor Krum as well.

Who Kills Whom?

That there will be deaths is unquestionable, but whose?

First of all, Voldemort will die, and Harry will live. Ron and Hermione will also live. Of this I am as certain as I am that Snape is on the good side.

I believe one of the Weasley parents will die, and it probably won’t be Molly. I don’t think it’s likely any other Weasleys will die, though all of them are in terrible danger; they’re a huge target for many reasons.

I believe Mad-Eye Moody will be killed by Fenrir Greyback, and that Greyback will be killed as well, possibly by one or more of his victims. I don’t think Remus Lupin would be the one to “pull the trigger,” so to speak, but he could help.

Bellatrix Lestrange will be defeated, not necessarily killed, by Neville.

Dumbledore is dead and will remain dead forever, as is Sirius. People who might not be dead are Regulus Black, Olivander, and Florean Fortescue, whose knowledge of history might be important in the search

What Happens To Them?

I think Harry's definitely being set up to be an Auror. In fact, I'm sure that after all this is over he'll be allowed into the Auror training without finishing his NEWTS; an exception will be made. He might even skip most of the training and go straight into work. I think his involvement with the DA also suggests he has a future as a Hogwarts teacher; maybe after Voldemort's defeated there will be a chance for a DADA teacher to last more than a year.

Hermione's probably an activist at heart, and might even make a full-time gig of SPEW, or else broaden her scope to advocate the rights of all non-humans and part-humans, including Werewolves. I think she and Rita Skeeter might maintain a precarious alliance, and Rita might continue to be Hermione's journalistic contact, making sure the stories she thinks are important reach the press.

Though Neville has in recent times shown his usefulness in battle, I think he will not follow in his father's footsteps and become an auror; the theme in his life seems to be that he must discover himself as distinct from his father, and prove that he is his own person and just as good even if not at the same things. He will continue to study herbology and find his niche there.

I think Ernie MacMillan has a future in politics, and will eventually become Minister of Magic. He would make an excellent peacetime leader.

Other than that, I don't have much of an idea for the future careers of the minor characters.

A Return

2007-06-23T19:54:00.001-04:00

I have heard that not all who wander are lost, but I would add that not all who are lost really mind being lost.

I spent the morning in Rocky River Reservation. I never found my way to where I'd planned to go, and where I was expected to be, because it wasn't where I expected it to be; the road doesn't always turn the way you want it to, and I spent three hours following what might be called the "wrong" one.

I have long been of two minds, one which trusts and one which doubts. While I walked that path, not knowing whether the next turn would lead me to my destination or just to more trees and plants and flashes of river, each step was an expression of my trust that I wasn't wasting my time. I filled my senses with the place, and my camara with the things I saw. Still, I always worried that I would never get there, that I would let people down and exhaust myself trying to navigate this winding valley. That doubting mind was right. Do I regret it?

Of course not.

Even after I spent half an hour climbing a hill which peaked at the top of the valley itself, only to turn around and walk back down, no closer to my original goal but closer, perhaps, to the acceptance that there really was no hope.I have not acted responsibly. I have made many mistakes, and made the same ones many times. I have kept following paths that lead me farther from home and offer little in return for tired feet and lost hours. I have broken promises and left people waiting while I lost myself in moments for which I have nothing to account. Why? My good sense has never stood firm in the face of my foolish trust that it will all turn out okay somehow.

It's not the same road going the other way. Everything has two sides; sometimes the sides look similar, but they are never identical. Even having travelled the road once before, it was still as new to me retracing my steps back to where I had come from. I couldn't get lost going home, though, because my good sense - the same that told me not to trust the road before - knew that it would lead me exactly where I wanted to go. In going home, I was at last of one mind. Hope was long gone, but trust had never been stronger.
My rational mind has never been able to shake the idea that nothing is certain, that everything is subject to doubt and change. It takes that as an excuse to follow any damn lead it comes across, because if we're not sure what's true, we can never be sure what's false either. It thinks it can find a way to believe in everything and nothing at the same time, and for all I know, it's on the right track.

All I have known is the road. I have never reached my destination, and I don't think I ever will. But see how far I've gotten by going nowhere.

Faith, Reason, and Scripture

2007-06-15T12:47:00.000-04:00

There's a thing called Christian Apologetics which I've regarded with a crooked, curious smile, not sure whether to dismiss it entirely, attack it directly, or consider that maybe I don't know enough to understand it. I've actually read enough to address many of the common arguments – the ones brought up by Thomas Aquinas, for instance – but it's not on the top of my list of things to know, and I really don't see why it's necessary for such an argument to exist on either side.

I've also seen quite a bit of talk that looks and smells an awful lot like Christian Apologetics coming from the mouths of many an amateur theologian who has studied their scripture with considerable care and scholarship in an effort to better understand the mind of God. I admire these people for their dedication, and I have no qualms about their faith; I'm as dedicated to my own brand of theological study, and I know the Bible is full of wisdom and poetry that shouldn't be ignored. (Parts of the book of Proverbs, for instance, have both made me critically examine my own actions and made me laugh my ass off.) It's just my assertion that to apply something as sharp and hard as logic to something as soft and intangible as spirituality is rather foolish.

The issue that I have been mulling over the most lately is what many call the infallibility of the Bible, to the exclusion of all other sources. I've found that most of my discussions with Christians revolve around citations of the Bible, which is trusted as an authority on all subjects and not to be questioned directly. If anyone questions something the Bible says, it is indirectly, saying that it has been poorly translated or poorly interpreted; nobody considers that it might be poorly written or poorly conceived. The infallibility of the Bible is widely accepted as the basis for spiritual discussion, much as Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" is in secular philosophy.

However, readers of Nietzsche will know to question even the sacred "I think, therefore I am", and those who examine Christian rhetoric closely will observe a fundamental logical flaw. A Baptist friend of mine who directs Bible Studies once cited this passage, from 2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” He presented this quote as proof that the Bible – all of it, and only it – can be trusted to contain the whole of God's truth. This is known in logic as a circular argument: in order to accept the evidence (2 Timothy 3:16-17), you must already have accepted the conclusion (that the Bible is infallible). Without the conclusion, there is no reason to trust the evidence.

Another reasoning for the infallibility of the Bible is that it was divinely inspired, that it came from an infallible God. This is a leap of faith: that the authors of the Bible were the mouthpieces of a divine truth which speaks to us all. My Baptist friend spoke of how each of the Bible writers spoke a part of the truth, and that all their writings together present a complete picture of God. He also urged me to not fully trust any mortal claiming to own the truth, but to trust only God, and I heartily agreed with this approach. What he did not acknowledge was that the Bible was written and compiled by men. Fallible men. If we accept that it is possible for men to tell the truth about God, as the authors of the Bible did, then we must accept that the truth can present itself in other forms, from other sources. If we accept that men can make mistakes, and present a false image of God, then we must accept that anything in the Bible is possibly one of those false images.

The truth, in the spiritual sense, is evasive. It is hard to find, and easy to lose track of in the mundanity of daily living. If you try to grasp it in your hand, it slips away like a wet bar of soap. And if you try to apply logic to it, as so many theologians do, either the logic will crumble or the truth will die. I understand the motivation to trap the truth in a cage of reason, to show it to others so that they might be enlightened and saved, but there is no way to pass such enlightenment directly from person to person – only from God downward.

By no means do I advise an end to all theological discussion. After all, just as God can speak to us through an ancient scripture, he may also show his face briefly in an honest debate between seekers of truth. All that I would like to see is a little less rigidity: the Bible isn't necessarily right, and other sources are not to be entirely dismissed. Of course, I also know that the trustworthiness of the Bible is a deeply held belief for many people, and they won't find it very easy to set aside. Uncertainty is scary. All I can really hope for is that we all might find our way through the dark, hopefully with a little help from each other, for as unreliable as our various sources are, they're the only ones we have.

2007-06-11T23:59:00.000-04:00

Life is a waterfall; we're one in the river and one again after the fall.
-Aerials, System of a Down

Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day might bring forth.
-Proverbs 27:1

Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land.
-Proberbs 24:25

An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips.
-Proverbs 24:26

Better is open rebuke than hidden love.
-Proverbs 27:5

inability

2007-06-08T17:57:00.000-04:00

I've spent the last few hours trying to maneuver around the buggy system of Blackboard, which is the site where I must take my online English course this summer. I hate it. More often than not when I open a thread in the discussion board, the text doesn't show up at all. Every time I open a link, a dialogue box tells me the page contains "unsecure items", and asks me if I'm sure I want to open it. It never goes away the first time I click "okay". All the while, deadlines get closer with alarming speed.

To make matters worse, I'm denied the satisfaction of physical violence. As much as I feel like firmly grabbing my laptop and smashing it against the wall, I must refrain even from pushing a single button as it makes its glacial way through the sludge of information. More than once today it has reduced me to screams of frustration. The sense of futility and weakness is overwhelming.

Appropriately, one of the readings I've been required to write about for this course is a narrative by a woman with MS about her attitude toward her disability. As a physically able but frequently mentally incapacitated person, I could relate to a lot of the sentiments described in the essay. My response to it had a very personal flavor, citing my own personal experiences, and I hope that doesn't negatively impact my grade. Actually, I'm counting on it giving me an advantage. What good is hardship if you can't milk it for attention?

eight things

2007-06-07T22:29:00.000-04:00

Perhaps more regular entries here. No idea what they'll be about, but they'll keep me busy. Eight things about me.

1. I'm currently reading the archives of a webcomic called "Wigu", which is by the same creator as "Overcompensating" which I've been reading ever since it mentioned the creator of "Goats", which is my favorite webcomic. I really like this guy's style; somehow he creates a sense of motion, action, and sound through a very static medium, and the characters are very real. Plus I like how in "Wigu" a year and a half was necessary to describe four days of action.

2. To be honest, I'm a little tired of introspection, which is why I've taken a few hours just thinking about things to put here. I'm seeing less and less point to just sitting around thinking about myself. Maybe I'm just getting old.

3. I like riding the bus. I realized that today when I got on a bus and the atomosphere and familiarity of it made me relax significantly. It's gotten to have a lot of positive associations; it means I'm on my way, that I'm getting somewhere. I haven't yet gotten to the point where I just get on a bus to chill out, but I could see myself doing that.

4. I sometimes don't trust my opinions because I'm biased toward them. Kind of a weird reason, isn't it? It keeps me from speaking my mind sometimes.

5. Sometimes I really want a boyfriend. Other times, I really want a girlfriend. I never really want to be single.

6. I am a very heartless and selfish person sometimes. I acknowledge the inherent worth and dignity of every person, but I also aknowledge that most people aren't worth that much to ME. There are very few people whom I really care about, and I've very little interest in increasing their numbers.

7. I liked this sandwich:Too bad it was so long ago.

8. I'm really glad this is over. I used to be much better at this stuff, and I'm not so sorry that changed.

I tag whoever actually reads this.