2.28.07.

I declare victory over February.

Yes, there are about 9.5 hours to go until March takes over,
But given the point margin, time remaining, and how much of today seems to be a point of constructive interference, I don't think that February can make a comeback in only 9.5 hours.

I was going to keep this quiet until the end so February wouldn't get suspicious and pull something tricky. But I am feeling confident enough to decree some justified gloating in order.
So prematurely, I declare:
Me vs. February: 1-2-1

A big THANKYOU to everyone who showed up.

*

ijtihad

Classical Islam p. 186

"Full ijtihad is that one should expend effort in the search (for knowledge) to the point where one feels in oneself a total incapacity to extend the search any farther."

a hadith:

From The Oxford History of Islam
Chapter Three "Law and Society" by Kamali
p. 148

If any of you sees an evil, let him change it by his hand, and if he is unable to do that, then let him change it by his words, and if he is still unable to do that, then let him denounce it in his heart, but this is the weakest form of belief.

Tree of Life

I went to see this Thesis play Friday night (2.23.07)

Here are some quotes:

** warning! spoilers, kind of! ha ha ha.**

The writer and director (same person) chose these two quotes to include in the program as representative of the heart of the play. They are two attitudes from the two brothers in the play about life and death.

"Many a sleepless night, I sat upright, without moving, waiting for the dawn to give me some comfort... it is incredible how much one can physically endure throughout the years, without losing the joy of life. I didn't deceive myself about my condition, and I considered everyday that I still lived a gift from God." - Wilhelm

"Despite all our love, sorrow, and trouble we can, in so few years, sink into a heap of earth. I would give up everything for peace and let everything drop, and often I think how it is possible not to keep thinking about it and how sinful it is that one is passionately involved with other things." - Jacob


I wrote down the following quotes as I watched (some may be slightly paraphrased):

Once upon a time, all was one. Life was a constant cycle of life and death, light and dark. In the center of the world, which is, of course, Germany, there was a golden tree with roots that crept through the center of the earth and back again. It whispered to them with leaves that chimed in the wind

Trust life, Trust death, Accept

Abandon yourself to a symphony of leaves

The tree became a part of Jacob, dependent on him.

Jacob lost his grandfather, .. and then his trust in life. He began to doubt that golden happy life had anything to do with death. He rejected me (Death has been speaking). He separated me from life.

***

Wilhelm (in the torture chamber): What have you done with Jacob?!
Death: You WON'T let me finish!
Wilhelm: I don't listen to lies. I would be happy with an answer.

(..someone else, to Jacob): Have a little perspective. Not everyone gets a chance to save his brother.

Wilhelm: I used to dread the coming of every day, but now I welcome it. The morning sun shines through the bars of my window and reminds me of the summers we spent together. These [memories keep me going, and even death cannot take them)

Jacob (to Bippy): You're shaking...
Bippy: Sometimes I think its not worth it. ... fighting. ... we fight so much.

The King gives Jacob a jar that will fill with light when his daughter is truly happy: It will light up when Zoey is truly happy. I hope to see her return one day... with a jar full of light.

(Princess Zoey, to Jacob?): It's the hardest thing to go through. You can't always protect the ones you love. ... But you won't save anyone until you've had a good breakfast.

Jacob: For once, I have hope. Not just fear, but hope.

(Death traps Jacob and Wilhelm at the tree, gives him an ax)

Jacob: You have everything! What do you want!
Death: Trust in life. ... Trust that the only thing you can really trust in is me. ... I want you to kill it. Don't you see what it's done to you? It's not death that's been hurting you all this time - it's life, it's hope.

(Those who have died): Remember that you are not alone. Remember pain. Remember joy. Remember that you will join us one day, too. Remember Wilhelm.
Remember light, and it will shine around you like a blanket. Remember darkness, and it will hold you like a cocoon.

(Jacob and Wilhelm remembering);
The only thing on this island was this huge old tree [at the center of a crystal clear lake]. It looked as if it'd seen the creation of the world...
We just climbed up this tree and lay there sprawled in the sunshine

It gets easier.
I used to be so afraid

W: It's incredible how much one can endure, and still bask in the sun.
J: I remember thinking we were immortal that day
W: We were

Do you know/ What I mean/ When I say

I have no fear of drowning,
it's the breathing that's taking all this work

Tie Dye

(In which I develop a marketable skill...)


I like colors.

We did tie-dyeing in one of my high school art classes, and I used to make things for my friends.

At college,
I made these two shirts during freshman year for the Thanksgiving week Chemistry 'Lab'





The following year,
I missed attending the freshman lab due to other work or something like that and, wanting an excuse to tie-dye things, decided to follow through on my convictions that a bookstore such as ours ought to have tie-dye in it. So I emailed the bookstore and somehow convinced them that they should let me order quantities of dye through them and that they should pay me to do something I like: put colors on cloth.

The first batch of results:













That was last year.

And the bookstore managed to get rid of them and asked me to make replacements!

Here is this years' batch:

Only Alive

Two years ago today,
my brother Max and I were baptized in the swimming pool by a friend of ours.

It was a rather long process to come to this point,
but a good decision.

I guess I feel like Feb 21st is my own separate New Years.

Happy New Year
2.21.07

'Religious Art'

David Freedberg, professor of art history and archaeology, and director of the Italian Academy, Columbia University, addresses “Violence, the Sacred, and the Hidden God: Religious Art in the 20th Century."The lecture examines the ancient roots of modern debates on the figuration of god, violence, and conveying the numinous in 20th-century aesthetics.

I could only go to part of this lecture.
But as he was comparing slides of paintings and talking about which ones conveyed what impressions of the divine or not, I wondered...

Does necessitating a 'spiritual' aspect in religious art give us a falsely biased expectation of the divine?
I realize that one must package the entire message of a painting into a frame, and you've got to give people indicators of that message by how the painting conveys it's visual images. So to frame something spiritual, you've got to convey that sense to the viewer.

But, as he flipped through paintings, categorizing them by how they compared to each other in representing the divine by conveying that spiritual or 'numinous quality', I wondered whether we are cheating ourselves out of a greater experience of God (or the divine, if you will) by expecting him to make us feel a certain way in our art.

Because if a painting can make me feel as though it conveys something spiritual, and the painting itself is not God, then who is to say that I experience some aspect of God only when I feel spiritual?

Yes, this is a pretty basic idea, I know.
But it was striking me as being more concrete, and almost directly dishonest.
And though I know this,



I'm pretty sure that the speaker would not consider a picture of some every-day non-dramatic item to be at all spiritual or conveying this 'numinous'ness.

But then two quotes come to mind. One I remember from V for Vendetta, something about how Artists use lies to tell the truth

The other being the theology of a friend of mine, God is that which animates

It's not the things.
God is not in the rain. God is not in the things themselves (oh, Ecclesiastes).
It's the way they twist, and the way we let them twist us.
And we can see the things, but not their twisting.
So I suppose this is what artists must represent.

But I doubt that argument would go far in a discussion of art
(While simultaneously and knowingly underestimating how far a discussion of art can go. hah.)

The Snacks & The Hat

My grandma sent me this hat. I picked it up from the mail room today. I like it very much, especially the color and its softness which is nice while reading long books.



My other grandma sent me a cute poem and what I shall call peanut butter rice krispie chocolate sandwiches.
I can't show you them because they've been eaten. But I liked them very much, too.

Thanks, Grandmas.
That was really really nice of you.
I had to sit down by myself and enjoy it for a while.

Unchaper*pwnd*!

"Good music and good food are two things which it might be best for me to experience alone since both seem to effectively reduce me to an unsocialized wriggly mass."

I WENT OUT IN PUBLIC YESTERDAY

HAAHAHAHAHAHAHA !!!

We fooled them all

Me and one of my friends

We went out for tea and thai food. And nobody stopped us. Nobody asked if we were authorized to decide what we wanted to eat or to order food for ourselves. Nobody questioned whether we were qualified to sit in a booth or if we'd passed the required exams to carry money in our pockets. We did not take any special Tech courses on conducting ourselves in public, what makes good conversation, or how much of the food to eat off of our plate. And when we left a tip, we calculated 15% just like we'd seen other people do and it worked. Nobody asked for our identification or curfew passes. Nobody stopped us.
And we ate all the food on our plates and enjoyed it so much that we wiggled.

And then we realized that we didn't know if anyone else had been approved to go out alone in public either. It just sort of happened to us. And maybe it happened that way for them, too. It could be that there are millions, maybe even billions of people who don't have non-chaperoned conduct certifications. I know that people are people, and I've learned by now that parents are humans and don't always just know everything. They do their best. But I think I'm going to start realizing more concretely just how flexible this world is because nobody actually knows. And they can't revoke my certification because they don't have any either. Nobody is certified.

And my biased opinion of the moment is that
people who make you feel like you have to be certified at something in order to be acceptable (I guess it depends what exactly it's about. And being socially acceptable is different than being regular-acceptable)
probably don't enjoy their food enough to let it make them wiggle
or feel music deeply enough to lose their human voice before they have to resurface
or know how warm and soft people are beneath the frame they try to fit

If you meet people like this,
I think you should give them a flower
or a small origami animal
or a nice picture
or cookies

actually. Everyone should get these things from time to time.



and yesterday was beautiful

The Beauty in Every Inch

He IS getting somewhere...

and he's probably appreciating more in each inch than I am

At the Seams - Luke 5:27-39

These are things I am not ready to write about,
but if I don't put them down now, I'm afraid I will lose them.


Today on my way to the Library, I experienced an oddly visceral shearing force. I was intensely admiring the subtly dramatic upward spiral of some striking green-mossed trees and feeling my own gratitude and inability of this physical and emotional frame to contain the joy of taking in the world simultaneously with the agony of my inability as a discrete human being to spill over and share what I could not contain for myself.

That's not all. I'm trying to analyze this in retrospect before I forget how it felt to feel simultaneously so clear and so stirred as I was drawn and quartered between the extremes of both the myriad joys of the world and their associated sorrows. Walking between the large-pebbly sidewalk between ODB and Eliot Circle, I thought I would tear in half.

Yesterday,
we studied Luke 5:27-39


27 And after these things he went forth, and saw a publican, named Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he said unto him, Follow me.

28 And he left all, rose up, and followed him.

29 And Levi made him a great feast in his own house: and there was a great company of publicans and of others that sat down with them.

30 But their scribes and Pharisees murmured against his disciples, saying, Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners?

31 And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick.

32 I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

33 And they said unto him, Why do the disciples of John fast often, and make prayers, and likewise the disciples of the Pharisees; but thine eat and drink?

34 And he said unto them, Can ye make the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them?

35 But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.

36 And he spake also a parable unto them; No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old.

37 And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish.

38 But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved.

39 No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.


I've never really gotten the old garment/new patch/new wine/old bottles parable.
I still don't really get it.

But I think I've gotten it enough to tell some ways that it may be important.

I'll try to be brief since a lot of my thoughts on this subject are a casting about,
but I think the section preceding the parable is important.

The general idea seems understandably acceptable. Jesus is introducing a new religion and asking people from old traditions to adopt new mindsets of sorts. And people tend to prefer their old ways over new ways. ok. So what does this actually practically mean?

I typed up the following:
A new translation of the parable,
and text from my Intro to Islam class reading:

****

Luk 5:36 And he spake also a parable unto them; No man uses a piece of new wool to patch the old; if otherwise, then both the new shriveleth in the wash becoming uncomfortable, and the piece that was [taken] out of the new doth not fit the old.
37 And no man runneth a new program on an old operating system; else the new software may not fit system requirements, and be wasted, and the computer shall be obsolete.
38 But new applications must be run on new systems; and both are preserved.
39 No man also having drunk old [wine] straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.

“The Koran says that once dead, summoned by God, a man has departed this earth forever; and Malinke custom assigns the head of a family his own patriarchal; hut within the compound. No doubt about it then. There was the spacious hut left empty since Cousin Lasina’s death, that had housed all the great Dumbuya ancestors. Fama need only open it up and settle in. But among the Bambara, the unbelievers, the Kaffirs, one must never sleep in a dead man’s room without performing a small sacrifice to ward off spirits and shades. The fetish priest and sorcerer Balla, the village unbeliever reminded Fama of this infidel’s custom. In spite of his deep faith in the Koran, in God and in Mohammed, Fama spent the whole night in a little hut, huddled between some old water jars and a mangy mongrel. A most unpleasant night! It had to be that way. Nothing is good or evil in itself. It is speech that turns a thing into good or evil. And misfortune always, inevitably, follows the transgression of a custom, if the culprit was warned that such a custom existed, especially in the case of the customs of a village in the bush.”
Suns of Independence, Kourouma, pg 72

***

(Yes, I did the new translation myself, and I think I have found translation errors already. If I understand it better, I will fix them.)


The way I think I can apply this is that though Fama believed strongly in the teachings of the Koran and Mohammed, it wasn't enough to counter the view of the world he'd been raised with and he spent the night between a dog and some water jars when he could have stayed in a large hut. I consider this as a metaphor for our experience of life and living.

The Pharisees questioned Jesus' dinner with the tax collectors because Jesus was introducing a perspective of humanity blind to traditional societal ideas of who should be associated with and what sort of people were worthy of the attention of others. Jesus brought a new vision, a new dream for the way the world could be, and the Pharisees saw only that piece of it in the midst of the tradition they'd been raised in. It didn't make sense to them. And their view didn't make sense to him. ...If I adopt a vision cut from an entirely different cloth, will I the world and I be so separate and misunderstand each other?

The way I'm reading this is that Jesus did not bring good ideas to fit into the way we already live. The new wine goes into new bottles. Don't patch an old garment with a piece of the new, else the new patch will shrivel and not only will the old garment be disproportionate and uncomfortable, but the new garment now has a hole in it and has been judged on the basis of one incorrectly used patch.

You might as well just wear the new garment.
Jesus did not come to patch the world.

But unless it can all become new at once, we will always live in a mix of old and new. Am I capable of being completely new? Will that completely disconnect me from the environment of old that I grew up in?

When Jesus is telling Nicodemus that he must be made completely new - born again - he says, The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. Is this what it is like to see a completely new person through the eyes of older traditions? Their actions don't make sense because they are 'walking to the beat of a different drum,' if you will?

And ultimately, Jesus brought his new vision and poured it out into an old world. Until the world can become completely new, will we always feel this disproportionate stretching tension? This longing after a vision while trying to live in the world we know?

Lord, I'm stitching my world together as I gain the experience to see what is old and what is new. I want to be new, but I cannot see it all at once -
I am made of patches,
-living after the vision while living in the world I know-
and I think that perhaps
as I walked to Eliot Circle,

I was tearing apart at the seams.

I've Found the Way Out

These things were notebooked on the 15th
It is now 23:48 2.16.07, but I think setting this as a 15th post is appropriate.




after discussing the topic in the library lobby

Heaven.
the world where Truth is unobstructed
where Truth walks around in broad daylight
with no opposition or confusion
with everyone as a close personal friend

after subconsciously processing various thoughts while doing my homework in my room

Scene



A stick person gets up from the couch he and his friends are watching tv on, walks around the corner and discovers a new door. He tries it and pushing it gently, we see he is illuminated by the light coming from the other side. He stands straightens up before it, stunned

Oh my... oh my goodness! Guys! Look! I've found it!!

what? where?

I've found the way out!
It's the door out of this in-between existence
to the land where truth walks free in broad daylight! Where nothing is hidden!
I behold the forms! I see the souls dancing on the floor of heaven!

cool, tell us about it when you get back

But Guys! Don't you see?! This door won't stay, we've got to go now!

we're not ready to go anywhere. who knows what it would be like? come back - you're going to miss the game.

It's the Truth! What's there to be ready for? How could you be more ready?

take a picture, ok?

Please! Pleace come... look...
this joy can only multiply when shared, please...

...

An old-looking, white-bearded man puts his head through the door from the other side
Are you coming in or not? You're letting in quite a draft.

... But - I can't leave my friends -...

The old-looking man shrugs
Suit yourself

He pulls his head back, and shuts the door behind him. The stick person grabs the knob again and tugs, but to no avail. He falls to his knees, sliding down, pressing his forehead and desperate fists against the door. In the other room, his friends change the channel to another commercial.



End

r=A(1-Cos[n*(pi)])

...
today is 2/14...

A post like this would probably just be confusing on any other day.

00111100 00110011





The above was taken from the Mathematica cardioid page,
and below is from Mac's Graphing Calculator application.



This is an afterthought
(2.15 now)
but I think it needs to go on here anyway:
Klein Four's Finite Simple Group of Order 2

I Live

I have direction and magnitude



and I am gaining momentum














and as long as I've got pictures of dogs...

today I got this:

Stay Hungry

This phrase was given to me in an unexpected, though highly appropriate manner. It came about as a result of creating a mailing list based around the Student CoOp for subscribers to give and take of their collective variety of expertise.

That phrase recalled a haunting, almost nostalgic feeling. It was one I greatly appreciated, but I could not remember how it had come to me. I remembered the paragraph, but not where I'd read it.

Hooray, Google:

Steve Jobs' Commencement Address to Stanford University






Also,



Today I was thinking of myself
not so much as a river
but as a pool of wax
seeping into the world, taking on the impressions of what I find to be reality

praying for the life, the flame inside me, to keep me warm and soft

and to never solidify or
become rigid and
unable to feel my way amid the shapes of this world.

Though it is only as the wax is consumed
that a candle gives its light

Kronos Quartet

The Kronos Quartet played music written by Clint Mansell for both Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain.

I got to attend one of their concerts today. I wasn't so much into the music they played during the first half. They were difficult styles for me to appreciate. I think I mostly went to be in the presence of the men from whose instruments came music that I have drawn much sustenance from. I wished to meet my providers. It was a pilgrimage of sorts.

And then...



















also - I try to draw music sometimes.
Here is my illustration of their first piece,
Mugam Sayagi
written for the Kronos Quartet by Franghiz Ali-Zadeh

Preach it, Brother

Real Live Preacher...
that he is.

Soft True Strong & You

*

a Firefly

Sometimes,
just for a little while,
you can keep one in your hand

It is small
and fragile

but it is the piece of the swirling ocean of lights that you can hold for a moment.

Loss and Finding

Cleaning my room again.

Here's what I uncovered this week.











(there's another picture I wanted to post, but I don't feel justified using it just now)

Tomorrow is Now

I have seen the morning



And it is good

Tomorrow is Coming

again.



I think I can take it.

Once Upon a Place...

For some reason,
I am currently identifying with many photos, as if I am wading through memories.

There are many I'd like to post near each other, but this one seems most appropriate for now.


I could not tell you why,
and if I tried,
I think it would separate the picture from its thousand words.
And I feel much of its weight is in its silence.



Or maybe -
I'm just not admitting that I am somehow feeling the distance between myself and home. It's not something I notice very often.

I generally feel at home everywhere.
But, maybe that means that I've never felt that anywhere in particular was home.
I am confused. It is unlike me to wish to be somewhere else.

It's coming.

Last time....

(1/21/07)



...Did the survivors really save mankind?




The epic battle for human life on earth continues

A Day in the Life -

To live through a day
takes a very long time

I have been winding each hour into a ball as the minute hand runs in circles
to set aside
because it makes me feel like something is happening,
that time is still passing,
that eventually
the part of the day will come when I can go to sleep.

But the thing with sleeping is,
eventually, you have to wake up.

Which has been easier, but still
each day I wake up to a very long day.
And each day,
it's over again.

Emily didn't even bother winding time into balls until it was at least a month in length.

St. Lawrence Quartet & Caucasian Student Union

My notes from the second half of the St. Lawrence Quartet performance

2/7/07

I've never seen this quartet before,
but I feel like I'm meeting old friends.
Ah yes, the violin[ist] can hardly confine himself to his chair
[how like him]

This must be why my [high school] band teacher
wouldn't let me play violin for marching band

even if that man were a grasshopper, he could
not be any more vibrant than when
he is channelling the violin

If I were an unbiased anthropologist,
I would say it is the instruments
which are controlling the people

they often bluster around like
leaves in a mini cyclone & kick
their feet at the same time
(thus the necessity of chairs)

Instruments are good to funnel energy into
otherwise, I think some people
would explode in a spattery pop

...they are channelling the dreams and aspirations
of the man who composed this

That doesn't sound like the piano
it sounds like water droplets falling
in quick succession from stalactites
into a cool blue reflective pool



It was a good concert, but I'm still sad about not seeing Ravel's quartet from the beginning....
Good music and good food are two things which it might be best for me to experience alone since both seem to effectively reduce me to an unsocialized wriggly mass.

and then there's this.





Oh, Abe.
You're one of my favorite people tonight.

Morning - a time for breaking ground

People who love what they do
wear themselves out doing it.

That is a quote from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations (translated by Gregory Hays).
It is from the dairy (kept by Marcus for Marcus) of one of the most powerful men in the world. It's from a rather interesting longer segment (which I will post more of when I can find it) on how he motivates himself to get out of bed in the morning.

..how the guy at the top of the ladder finds reason to roll out of his warm bed and rule an empire...

I wonder what it's like to be somebody like him.
I also wonder (aside from the specific tasks) if I would notice much difference.



(I cannot let a date like 7/2/7 go by without a post as a time stamp.)

(And! Welcome back to Reed, Darrell F. Shroeter. I don't know if I've ever understood so much of a Physics talk. Except for possibly the time that Nick presented on something that only people in his P200 class were familiar with.)

PostSecret