dolls

dolls. the dollhouse. it was a good show, with interesting ideas at least, despite the poor execution. reminds me of ghost in the shell too, where the director held up dolls alongside dogs as two things/entities that we project ourselves onto, yet have very different kinds of life from us. Dolls are imitation life.

bongos

bongos. certainly conjures an air of the foreign, the mysterious, the exotic. maybe something like orientalism, preying on the ignorance of an audience to produce such a feeling of mystery. it matters who the audience is in this case, because all the bongo players in the room are not impressed.

New Year

I've stopped being surprised at the regularity with which this blog falls by the wayside, but to be fair, it seemed like less of a priority this semester. Of course, that's another concern in itself, the ease with which I seem to dispense with my higher order functions and simply batten down the hatches. Such behavior should be reserved for only the direst necessities, or life just becomes a string of days spent coping with an exaggerated threat, constantly deferring the things that really make life great. I will try to remember this.

However, there's also another, more tangible reason for this blog's recent barrenness. I started this blog intending for it to serve the purpose that my written reflections once served - to provide a place to write out my thoughts without judgment in order to review them and possibly gain insight into my own psyche. It had helped in the past, allowed me to look at my thoughts calmly and gain a little perspective beyond the momentary intensity that always accompanied them when they were rattling around in my head. However I've recently decided that I cannot be fully open with myself if I'm also writing for the public, and so I've started writing out my thoughts for myself alone, with pen and paper as a sort of meditation. I decided that I want to hold something solid in my hands, a tangible product of my imagination and psyche that I can look back through and consider.

I'll still try to keep this blog updated obviously, and I still intend to link to the interesting things I come across, and if I write anything worth sharing, or that can be shared, I'm sure I will.

So, the new year.

I spent this new year's eve in much the same way I've spend the previous several by going to the Green Gulch Zen Center. Regardless of my feelings about Buddhism, either in itself or how it is practiced at this particular place (just like anything else, at times it seems like just another show, an act for its own end), I enjoy the sincerity of the new year's celebration they hold, which (at least for me) consists simply of walking into a wooded valley in the middle of the night guided down a path of lanterns, assisting a monk in ringing a large bell, and standing around a bonfire with cider. It seems to me to be the perfect end and beginning of a year, to return to the primordial darkness and the human community united in silence around a fire (at least it's usually silent, this year not so much...but the significance I associate with the event was undiminished), with only a bell to mark the passing from one year to another. Despite the simplicity of the event, it always has a profound effect on me for reasons I haven't been able to fully apprehend, I think partly because I always seem to return to the temple in entirely different states of mind from year to year. Each year, I interpret these simple rituals differently, look back with different eyes on not only the past year but the entire story of my life as I've lived it so far. Each year I'm a new person, but I walk into that valley each time carrying the weight of the past year in order to put it to rest there and walk out unburdened to begin another year-long journey.

Many things are changing. It's hard to recall a time in my past when things seemed so unclear, both regarding my external circumstances as well as my inner character, and so it seemed more important than ever to leave my burdens in the valley and truly let go of the debilitating desire for control. Choices will have to be made, but the strength to make them will come from the knowledge that I've already come a long way, seen and done many things, and that life will go on, and there is much more to see yet. Life isn't neat, and sometimes it's painful, but its beauty lies in the rough edges and the parts that don't fit. I will embrace this fact, leave my heart open to the truth of things and not hide behind my own urge to make sense of it all.

I know this: I have felt many things, and they have left their mark on me. This has been a year of tremendous emotional upheaval, and I am not unscarred, but I have also grown enough to know that it has been worth it, and that's a big step. The next step is a big one too:

I will need to have a little faith.

Aw hell, it's 11/9/09

So it's the final rundown to my thesis draft due date. I will be doing little else this week other than maintaining my bodily functions in order to finish the draft on time, which I keep making more difficult by changing the topic. The conclusions I've reached stay much the same, and now I'm basically just changing the questions to fit the answers. I'm hoping that by really nailing the topic, the actual writing of the thing will be easier and faster. We'll see how true that is...

On the party/social front, I'm dealing with the same issues I've been having since at least last year, which is that I don't enjoy a lot of the parties here, yet at the same time I feel like I need to get to know more quality people and bring them into my life. The party I was at last night seemed more like an exercise in making small talk with strangers than anything that could produce real camaraderie. I have therefore decided that I need more video games in my life, to share pursuits with like-minded people. That always seemed to be the way to happiness and friendship before, so I'm not quite sure why I forgot. To this end, I'm thinking seriously about bringing World of Warcraft back into my life - a dangerous idea to be sure. We shall see...

It was actually the music from Blizzard that got me thinking seriously about WoW again. I've put it up in the public folder. Have at it.

Here we stand, on 10/26/09, feet on the ground, facing forward

Hey friends. Looks like I'm gonna have to switch around the daily update thing, since I've already failed to keep up with it. I think I'll try for Sunday - Wednesday, since weekend nights have a habit of leaving me occupied or incapacitated when I would usually be writing these.

Fun events from the weekend:
A friend of Alison's came to visit, and hanging out with him was fun but not without its complications. He also has the strange power, like our friend Zach from back home, of attracting the attention of every female in every room he entered. One can only marvel. And roll their eyes.

On Saturday I went to practice at my Kendo teacher's dojo. For the first hour, my teacher taught myself and a 60 year old gentleman how to do Iaido (居合道, roughly translated it seems to mean "the way of acting in harmony with being"), which put simply is the art of drawing the sword in response to a surprise attack. From what I can tell, Iaido is to Battoujutsu as Kendo is to Kenjutsu - Kendo is derived from fighting forms using an already drawn sword, while Iaido is an art derived from techniques starting and ending with a sheathed sword. Unlike Kendo, Iaido is not competitive and is considered to be an art that is necessarily individual. From what I've read and heard about it, and based on the interpretation of the name, it's supposed to be a very personal exercise, as much about cultivating internal awareness as external technique. For this reason, some people refer to it as "moving Zen". Anyways, it's amazingly cool to watch, and I enjoyed what little I did immensely. Hopefully I can scrape together enough money to buy a sword sometime soon(Iaido is practiced with real, though usually blunt, swords), but in the meantime I plan on going every week with my wooden sword to practice.

After an hour of that came an additional 3 hours of Kendo practice, by the end of which I literally couldn't speak above a whisper from shouting so much. It was a lot of fun, even the part where I had my back to the wall and was getting hit by my teacher faster than I could follow with my eyes. I think the most important implication of this development in my practice of Kendo (and the beginning of my Iaido practice) is that it represents an endeavor that I've excelled at, really enjoy and respect, and can happily incorporate into my identity. I think I generally try to avoid making my identity about anything other than what goes on in my head, but perhaps that's why I feel so adrift so often. Maybe I can take this accomplishment of mine, which I'm really proud of, and hang some weight on it so to speak. Instead of having my identity inform every single thing I do, maybe I can relax a bit and let this pursuit of mine influence my identity a little bit.

Yeah, I'm a swordsman. What of it?

Just the thought makes me feel calm.

Websites:

Iaido

Seven questions that keep physicists up at night:

Music:

Been listening to Laura Veirs, who opened for the Decemberists when Borge and I went to see them last month. Posted a track called "John Henry Lives".

Peace Friends

Look around, it's 10/20/09

Today I resolve to be an unstoppable juggernaut of self-confidence.

I think I have the intellectual capacity to understand, and possibly even excel, at whatever I put my mind to, and therefore the only impediments to achieving everything I can reasonably desire to achieve are time and my own character faults. As to the latter, I intend to identify and eradicate them to the best of my ability. I will identify what I want and then use my reason and intellect as a vantage point both to survey the best way to attain it and circumvent my own weaknesses. I'm gonna win this thing dammit.

I also need to figure out how best to simultaneously and effectively continue my study of music, programming, and astronomy after school. Perhaps I can become one of those brilliant shiny people that's good at everything and seemingly never sleeps...

Site of the day:
http://www.collegehumor.com/article:1792544

Song of the day (up at public folder):
I've wanted to post this one for a while but it's kept slipping my mind. How sad it was that we could not believe...

Hallelujah, by the Helio Sequence

Daily Wave - 10/19

Ok let's play a new game.

In addition to longer entries, which I intent to write soon, every day I'm going to post things I run across or thoughts that I have or things that I'm listening to. It'll be something like this:

Astronomy is becoming a bigger and bigger fascination for me, and this week I've been treated to news stories and pictures regarding planets and moons within our own solar system. In particular, I've read about how Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus both (almost certainly) have vast underground oceans, possibly capable of supporting life (either ours in the long run, or life that might already be there that we don't know about). Anyways, in Saturn news, there's this site:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/10/saturn_at_equinox.html

which I've shared with most of you already probably. The site is just generally awesome so you all should keep it bookmarked, rssed, whatever.

A thought provoking article about flu vaccinations:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200911/brownlee-h1n1

Been listening to a bunch of random stuff recently, from Bach to Tchaikovsky to Arvo Part to Massive Attack etc., but I think I'll make the song of the day: Small Time Shoot 'em Up by Massive Attack. It'll be up on the public folder.

Thought of the day: How do you beat yourself?

So. Pictures, websites, music of interest, daily.

Let's see how long I keep this up...