Weiter, Weiter

no love without growth
No growth without change
no change without death


It's back



I invited it.
I know its Master.
I will not ask him to call off his dog.

I will not roll around on this ship like a cannon ball.

I will sail with this direction all the way,
whether it seers us to treasure and glory
or destruction.

So hound,
which will it be?


***



From The Alchemist


Every blessing ignored becomes a curse

We are afraid of losing what we have...
but this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand



Yes,
that's what love is. It's what makes the game become the falcon, the falcon become man, and man, in his turn, the desert. It's what turns lead into gold and makes the gold return to the earth.

This is why alchemy exists, So that everyone will search for his treasure, find it, and then want to be better than he was in his former life.

When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.

It's not love to be static or to see from a distance... Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World.

When we love, we always strive to become better than we are.



*****


loving is labor
labor's life
life's forever

Alchemy

Quotes from The Alchemist


Every blessing ignored becomes a curse

We are afraid of losing what we have...
but this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.



Yes,
that's what love is. It's what makes the game become the falcon, the falcon become man, and man, in his turn, the desert. It's what turns lead into gold and makes the gold return to the earth.

This is why alchemy exists, "So that everyone will search for his treasure, find it, and then want to be better than he was in his former life.

When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.

It's not love to be static or to see from a distance... Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World.

When we love, we always strive to become better than we are.

Slam Newton: a Paleography

(with apologies to the imcomparable Sir Isaac Newton, but he should've thought about that before he wrote his articles so difficult to parse)

CURVES.    The incomparable Sir Ifaac Newton 
gives this following Ennumeration of Geometri-
cal Lines of the Third or Cubick Order; in which 
you have an admirable account of many Species of 
Curves which exceed the Conick-Sections, 
for they go no higher than the Quadratick or Se-
Second Order.


The Orders of Geometrick Lines.
   
1: GEOMETRICK-LINES, are beft diftinguifh'd into 

  Claffes, Genders, or Orders, 
        according
        to the Number of the Dimenfions 
        of an Equation, 
  expreffing the relation 
  between Ordinates and the Abfiffae;

OR, which is much at one, 
     according to the Number of Points in which they may 
      be cut by a Right Line.


Wherefore,
a Line of the Firft Order will be only a Right Line:

Thefe of the Second or Quadratick Order, will be 
   the Circle and the Conick-Sections;

and thefe of the Third or Cubick Order, will be 
   the Cubical and Nelian Parabola's,
   the Ciffoid of the Antients, and 
   the reft as belew ennumerated.

But a Curve of the Firft Gender 
   (becaufe a Right Line can't be reckoned among the Curves)
   is the fame with a Line of the Second Order, 
and a Curve of the Second Gender; 
   the fame with a Line of the Third Order,
and a Line of an Infinitefimal Order, is 
   that which a Right Line may cut in infinite Points, 
   as the Spiral, 
                Cycloid, the 
            Quadratrix, 
        and every Line generated by the Infinite Revolutions 
         of a Radius or
                            Rota.

(this concludes part 1:)

yellow-orange blue-green

Soco Amaretto Lime
these words look yellow, orange, green sherbet colors to me.

Thanks to imeem and YouTube, I've found a song, the guitar-string-pulse of which has followed me in pockets, around corners, and on dark ledges since the night we plucked it out on guitar and base in our own voices in the night-curtained room at my best friends' house, insulated now by memory.

I have since passed through the age of 18.


We said the end was somewhat reminiscent of Caulfield's Wake up, ya morons!
I listen to the guitar heartbeat of this whole song, partly waiting for the ending.




青春舞曲

Qingchun Wuqu
A Uighur folk song

blue-green 青 and spring　春　: youthfulness


This version is for a Chinese equivalent of American Idol.

太阳下山明早依旧爬上来
花儿谢了明天还是一样的开
美丽的小鸟飞去无影踪
我的青春小鸟一去不回来
我的青春小鸟一去不回来
别的那样呦别的那样呦
我的青春小鸟一去不回来

My experience with Chinese is very little, but here's my impression of the lyrics:

The sun descends behind the mountains, but climbs up in the morning.
Flowers wilt, but tomorrow again open.
A beautiful bird flies, leaving not even a trace of a shadow.
The years of my youth fly like that bird, never returning.





From The Rubaiyat
by Omar Khayyam

VII
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time bas but a little way
To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing.

Still Alive

today is many things.
among them:

3 years ago today,

St. Max and I were baptized in the swimming pool by a friend of ours.

I like considering 2.21 a personal holiday -
this year, as a birthday.

It's a reminder of how very possible it is for things to feel new, light, and agile.

I have been trying to remember what it felt like to die and wake up again,
free and able to move life in response toward anything,
free to spend it on anything,
no sense of expectations to suggest otherwise.


I have a ritual to perform later tonight.
Rituals are for our own good.


The days seem to repeat quickly, but it seems like such a long time between years.
So very much happens in between.
But, here I am again,
remembering an unknown love that has been my unseen guardian.

I don't feel like I know or understand God.
But if he's there, I've seen Him work,
and if he's not there,
I still need a word for the depth of the fabric of this existence that has at least kept me together this long.

I'm trying to remember what my decision three years ago was.
I have not been very faithful to this baptism dye job.

Porcupines

The philosopher Schopenhauer gave an often-quoted example of porcupines trying to get through a cold winter. They huddle together for warmth, but their sharp quills prick each other, so they pull away. But then they get cold. The have to keep adjusting their closeness and distance to keep from freezing and from getting pricked by their fellow porcupines-the source of both comfort and pain.

We need to et close to each other to have a sense of community , to feel we're not alone in the world. But we need to keep our distance from each other to preserve our independence, so others don't impose on or engulf us. This duality reflects the human condition. We are individual and social creatures. We need other people to survive, but we want to survive as individuals.
-The Workings of Conversational style
-Deborah Tannen, Ph. D.


A dilemma: learning to function as both social beings and discrete individuals.



Because of the way our eyes are set up, our peripheral vision is more suited to detecting differences in light/darkness, sometimes to the extent that we can see more detail from the side than when viewing the object straight on. For example, if you cannot count all seven stars of the Pleiadies, try not looking directly at it.
Some things are most themselves when not directly so.



A good seed does not preserve itself but becomes something else.

Don't be afraid - no growth without change, no change without death.


a candle must not fear fire
books were meant to be deshelved, read, and shared
tents were made to be weathered outdoors

You've got yourself two good hands,

put yourself and your resources to work responsibly.

Stay honest with yourself

and integrate your components so that you can experience more completely, and so

words and actions don't stretch too far apart and lose each other.

Having a direction to grow with,

Explore the future, for the sake of curiosity and process.

Stay open and impressionable,

but keep your agency.

Even waiting can be an active process.


There is much living to do.

Lunar Eclipse

Do What You Can

With What You Have
Where You Are
-Teddy Roosevelt




I had always looked at this as a sort of consolation quote. It was the sort of quote I thought would be spoken so someone who'd applied for some aspiration and been denied, the quote that consoles you with the reminder that even the little you have right around you can be put to use. It was the quote to pull out when you couldn't manage to accomplish something greater.

but really,

Not only are those probably both your most powerful tools and your most direct responsibilities,

but anything further (...perhaps without due attention to every thing having its season and a time to every purpose... ) may overextend your abilities, drain your resources, and detach you,
draining your energy inefficiently and leaving you oddly displaced.



I would do well in the midst of large systems to remember both my limits and the words of a friend,
- to do what I can
and then be done with it.


A vital thing to learn,
responsible management of resources
and it reminds me a bit of this post.

Sx - check the engine

I listened to a professor from the National College of Natural Medicine speaking about Traditional Chinese Medicine tonight.

He reminded me:

Don't suppress symptoms.
They are there for a reason.


I know this for handling myself physically.


The analogy they always use is the 'check engine' light.

Let's say you're driving your car along and the 'check engine' light comes on. You know that it shouldn't be on. If you can see it, something is wrong. You know it's not good to drive your car while you can see it. What do you do?
Of course, you find a thick piece of tape and cover the check engine light, right?

No.
that won't make the problem go away.

Consider the engine being in some condition and the light being a symptom of that condition. Finding a system that dismisses the symptoms is just asking for worse trouble later on.

I know this for handling myself physically.

I avoid taking pain or cold medication unless I really need it to function. I want my body to be able to tell me what's going on truthfully and uninhibited by chemicals.

I have not been applying this mentally or psychologically.

For all the times that Jesus scolded the pharisees for their concern over shows of righteousness, I guess medical analogies are easier for my mind to digest than references to the inside and outside of ritual cups.


I thought I could control and direct my internal order by manipulating, encouraging, or cloaking the manifestations according to how I thought they should appear. I thought this was being 'responsible'. Don't be confused. It's deception.
This process will only leave you scrambled, with unreliable indication, and unable to trust yourself.

I have to be willing to feel, and to feel the whole spectrum, including the edges.

More from the Journal of Personal and Interpersonal Loss

In relevant situations, a collection of phrases from high school writing classes streamline themselves through a voice in my head like a mantra:

No growth without change, no change without death

I've been tempted to post it as a stand-alone quote.
Today though,
I found a similar bundle of words in a quote from the beginning of the Journal:



When we think of loss we think of the loss, through death, of people we love. But loss is a far more encompassing theme in our life. For we lose not only through death, but also by leaving and being left, by changing and letting go and moving on. And our losses include not only our separations and departures from those we love, but our... losses of romantic dreams, impossible expectations, illusions of freedom and power, illusions of safety - and the loss of our own younger self. (Viorst, 1986 p.2)


(I can't find it now,
but I remember recently seeing a quote about the irresponsibility of setting expectations too high.)

Jealous Kind

I get into iTunes playlist circuits,
sometimes forgetting other songs that I have.

I rediscovered some Jars of Clay tonight.



This was good because it reminded me of some thought pathways that used to feel familiar.

It also made me think of this post - especially the wind part.

There are so many good ideas that I cannot internalize, incorporate, and integrate fast enough. And then remember...

Ideals and projective nostalgia

In Chinese Humanities Lecture today,
Prof. Hyong Rhew lectured on
Song Poetry: Appetite for Olives and Nostalgia for Litchi

The title gets its name from this passage from Lun Song shi (On Song Poetry) by Miao Yue:

Tang poetry is superior in resonance, and thus is exalted. It prizes suggestive charms and nimbleness. Song poetry is superior in ideas, and thus is shrewd and intense. It prizes deep twists and penetrating thoroughness. The beauty of Tang poetry lies in words of emotion, and thus it is voluptuously rich; the beauty of Song petry lies in its forceful bones, and thus it is lean and vigorous. Tang poetry is like peonies and wild roses, flowers of lushness and rich colors; Song poetry is like plum blossoms in winter and Chrysanthemums in autumn, flowers of hidden elegance and cilled fragrance. Tang poetry is like eating litchi. With one in the mouth, the sweetness and fragrance fill between the cheeks. Song poetry is like chewing olives. Astringent at the beginning, but its aftertaste is deep and long-lasting. ...


Hyong began the lecture with a question,

"Have you ever been nostalgic about something? What is nostalgia?"

---longing for something based on a memory-- we cautiously agreed

"Memory?" He asked again, "Or SELECTIVE memory?
Partial? Incorrect? maybe a distorted form of memory...

So maybe
it's more about the present than the past."


The Tang poetic tradition preceded the Song, and, the way Hyong spoke, shadowed it in the similar way that a son aspiring to be a young man might feel overshadowed by the great name of his father. The Song tradition was a very different style, but nonetheless, Hyong argued that the Song poets were "influenced by the nostalgic memory of what SHOULD be the poetic ideal"


I thought it a curious tool to think with -
that the scribes of a different style of poetry would look back upon the previous as the ideal of what poetry should, or could, be. It's not so odd - looking back on the past as the 'good old days' is a familiar idea. I am reminded of a comment made by a friend of mine who took the class the previous year regarding how the old days are always better since it is the good which is more easily remembered and contrasted with the way things are now.


If I may project my thoughts of this lecture to a more general scale, asking an old question with some new terminology,

Are our ideals and hopes for how the future could be based only on a selectively recalled past? ... we cannot "go back" ...


I did some more thinking on paper later:
(edited)

"I'm still thinking about this idea of our ideals just being idealized selective nostalgia,
about how we can't understand or describe anything that isn't in terms of what we already know, how new experiences can only remind us of previous experiences, how our dreams of utopia will never stop becoming distopian because all we know how to do is take an old setting and push it to the limit of what we think is best. We'll never think of how to jump that gap ahead of time.

In the meantime, we'll fume over watching all our alchemy crumble heavily because we tried to label our imagined toys with the shining lie of something true and real.

All we know how to do is polish lead and try to call it a gold we've never seen.

If we ever get there,
it will be by nothing that we could have planned ahead of time."

Spring

When the hope we forgot about begins growing back,
regardless of our observation or preferences.

imeem

imeem is an online community where millions of fans and artists discover new music, videos, and photos, and share their tastes with friends.

A website my brother found,
members can upload songs, videos, or pictures from their own computers to share.
imeem allows playlist file sharing in a variety of manners, even providing embedding code for posting songs on blogs... which I have been making use of recently.

All imeem songs in this blog were added on this day at the latest.

All posts with music or strong enough connections to music are listed under the 'music box' label.

Music added to posts before this date was added as an afterthought - the text or image can stand alone without the music.
If I remember alluding to, or having a particular song in mind while writing the post, then I will embed the song with the post.


Future posts my integrate music more completely into their presentation. We'll see.

from The Journal of Personal and Interpersonal Loss

I found it in the psych lounge

an interesting article, though worthwhile to consider how the writers interpret and evaluate their subjects.
The main purpose of the article was to examine the differences in how older vs. younger people deal with 'major losses' and the grieving process.

Vol 1 #4
Oct-Dec 1996

"Relativity of Grief"
M.K. Barnes et. al

(not necessarily in the order the passages appear in the article)

These are apparently the vital steps for effective mourning:


a) recognize and acknowledge that the loss has occurred,
b) react to the separation by being willing to experience the pain, to feel, identify, & accept the loss,
c) recollect and re-experience the deceased and the relationship and attempt to plan times to review and remember realistically,
d) relinquish the old attachments to the deceased and the old assumptive world, giving up the ways of viewing the world that were idiosyncratic to the lost relationship
e) readjust to move adaptively into the new world without forgetting the old; and
f) reinvest in new relationships and acts of meaning

...

When a major loss occurs, this analysis posits, people may first begin developing a private understanding of their loss. Then, later, when they feel comfortable confiding in others, they often disclose parts of their understandings to close others (Harvey Orbuch, Chwalisz, & Garwool,1991).

... The analysis also suggests that account-making and confiding activities are vital to recovery, in terms both of psychological and physical health.

...When a person attempts to deal with loss by long-term avoidance of or distraction from the cognitive-emotional work involved in the meaning-making process and from the social interaction in the form of confiding, our analysis and past research (eg Pennebaker, 1990) suggest, relatively negative psychological and physical reactions will occur. "Stonewalling" of feelings and thinking about his or her loss does not help the individual relieve him or herself of sorrow, guilt, or other crippling emotions, nor does it stimulate or facilitate the type of helpful interaction with others that will contribute to healing (eg Harvey, Orbuch, Weber, Merback, & Alt. 1992).

...define wisdom-related knowledge and skill in terms of a person's awareness of both the factual and procedural knowledge associated with a problem and with more general related issues of living in this scheme,
knowledge of the issues surrounding a problem,
of relativism of values and life goals,
of life's uncertainties,
and of strategic ways of getting things done
are accorded high weight in coding responses for wisdom

... To deal with traumatic events, Herman (1992) suggested an approach that involves
a) helping the survivor feel safe
b) facilitating the survivor's remembrance of the traumatic event and mourning of the loss involved, and
c) helping the survivor reconnect with the world and create a new future


... we anticipated that the more unexpected the loss, the more complicated the grief because the individual had not the opportunity to prepare him or herself for the impact - by preparatory searching for meaning or account-making, anticipating what life would be like in the absence of the other, and confiding to close others parts of one's thinkings and feelings (Sanders, 1989)

Can't catch this one

Whatever the Weather

Raleigh

She sang the song on her guitar,

"you got to know what you want before you get it"

an elegant voice spun by the reel of humming strings

In Origins of Western Morality class, we read some Epicurean philosophy, part of which postulated that our thoughts and motions actions come about by images swirling in the air around us. Our mind, having an intention, prepares itself to receive the desired image, and since there are so many images of all sorts around us, it is not long before that image takes falls into the place prepared for it.

"you just got to make up your mind, and what you need will come to you and you know it"

Since my bicycle disappeared, I've been looking for a different one, reading a bit about different varieties, brands, models, years of bicycles, sorting out what aspects are necessary, what things I would like, what things I can fix myself, and what to avoid. I didn't just want something that moves - I wanted one that I could depend on as a touring bike and that I could really feel good about. At first, I didn't really know what this would mean beyond a loose collection of preferences I'd picked up here and there, but with some reading, consideration, and a little experimentation, I realized that I could list out all of those preferences and good reasons for them into a big picture of what I wanted to find. I'd begun sketching it during math class the previous day.

The same evening that I heard her singing that song,
I expected to go look at a bike I'd found on craigslist. It was a 12-speed Raleigh road bike, red-orange, ~23 pounds, and looking for the most part just the right shape, size, and color to go with the word Raleigh. The seller suggested it might be too large for me, but I figured I might as well go see it. For the price he was asking, I had decided not to buy it unless it was somehow the perfect bike. The price was not unreasonable by any means - I just knew that I could probably find one for cheaper that, with a little tuning, would work just fine.

I had been deciding that green or black and white would be my ideal bike colors, but Raleighs are oddly significant to me, most likely due to how the one word references both bicycles and Wagon Wheel and all of the myriad meanings that come with those. I was on a biking trip with a friend, a good escape, and seeing the occasional Raleigh along the bike path was like a fresh fluttering banner of cold, free air.

Raleigh is the hope at the end of the tunnel,
the light of morning on the shore you hope to wash up on,
the blur where the train tracks converge between the land and sky.

So I thought I'd give it a shot.

I borrowed a bike for the trip after arranging to meet the mechanic and warning him that for what I was looking for, I did not plan on buying his bike unless I really really liked it. He agreed easily in a voice that reminded me of one of my Chem Lab professors in that it seemed as though nothing would ever make it react out of surprise. With a voice both rough like a mechanic's hands and smooth with amiability, he invited me to try it out. His name is Gino. He types emails mostly in CAPS. His card says 'Old School Bikes.' He finds things, buys them, and fixes them. He's only bought one new bike in his life, and hasn't ridden it much - it was a model he just had to have.

I got there and tried the bike.
The short story is,
I got along with the bike far better than I expected to, and though I hadn't been planning on buying anything, I realized that it had everything that I wanted, plus or minus a few easily modifiable conveniences. I was faced with the sudden and unexpected prospect of ending my bicycle search right there.

Once when I was younger, maybe 5 or 8 or so and during the summer, my Dad was helping me write and send a letter. A muggy week had sealed all of our envelopes, so we had to go in search of letter materials. I had finished writing the letter and voiced some frustration at how much work it was to send it even after the letter itself had been written. Driving away with me and new envelopes in a blue pickup truck, my Dad told me that the hardest part of a job is finishing it. I thought this was silly, since all we should've had to do was stick it in an envelope and walk with it to the mailbox. But his words stayed in my head all these years, and I gradually understand them more and more.

I was walking with a friend to buy calligraphy supplies for a class we were teaching together. I mentioned the memory to her and she told me of a similar discussion she'd had on the topic of figuring out what the 'right thing' was to do and then doing it. She'd thought - and kind of wanted - it to be more difficult to decide what the 'right thing' was, because if you knew something was right, wouldn't that make it easy to actually do? Often it seems the other way around. The 'right thing' is really not so mysterious, and even with certainty, it's often difficult to actually accomplish.

Even with lots of good information, actually making decisions sometimes feels so uncertain.

I bought the bike.

Gino offered to give me a ride back to campus since he was headed downtown and I would have to find an ATM to pay him.

On the way, he talked about his kids and being concerned about his girls entering the 'boy-crazy' stage of life. I said I'd never really done that stage, and wasn't sure how I would handle it if I became the mother of girls who did. He said that was good - I was in college, I had a life and a career to prepare myself for and this was a good thing to focus on at this point in my life. Oh of course he said that didn't mean I shouldn't date people or have a little fun and find what's right for me, but there's no reason to get myself into a relationship, and certainly not to think that the first person I find is going to be it.

Boys are like cereal, he said. You have to try different kinds. If all you eat is cocoa puffs, then how do you know - maybe you really like froot loops! Or new shoes, he said. You have to make sure you find a pair that fits.
Just
whatever you do,
don't get pregnant.

I thought the cereal comparison was funny.

Freshmen year,
my quasi-roommates cornered me while hanging out in their room and interrogated me as to what sort of person was 'my type'. What sort of person could I see myself with? I didn't have a coherent picture or any solid ideas. It wasn't a label, list, or category that I wanted to set ahead of time. I didn't want to exclude something I didn't understand.

Sophomore year,
a friend tried to convince me to date people for the experience of seeing what worked for me. But I was not in much condition to give what I would expect of myself into a dating relationship. I didn't feel 'old enough' to date, anyway. And I can't treat people like bicycles.

Junior year,
I thought I could handle it. But, it turns out that handling something yourself and handling it as part of a pair are very different things. I was right, but only about myself, and just barely. maybe.

Now,


I am reminded of a question from one of Tom Weiting's 211 problem sets:
Do we call a thing what it is because it does what it does? Or does it do what it does because it is what it is?

(but then, many things are easier to describe in retrospect,
and partly because they are no longer present to defend themselves)




And, I want things - not just bike or boy things - to have the freedom to be what they are without being confused by the strings and wires of associations and expectations and interpretations that we try to understand them with.

But I also ought to take to wielding these - associations, expectations, interpretations, - conscientiously and responsibly so that I can prepare myself to recognize the things I really want when I see them, and with enough confidence to feel for the right thing, and, recognizing, act on it.



(pictures of bike to appear sometime)

Live Joyfully

A very good friend of mine brought this quote to my attention. I am sharing it.




"Romance is just an operatic form of friendship, a conversation between two people that keeps rolling on. There are all sorts of ways that two people can fall into that, but I don't think you should be looking for a fall: I think you should go about enjoying your life to the fullest, which is what we should all do, live joyfully and cut our losses, dump as much baggage as we can, give up regrets, take long walks, get our hearts pounding, seek out the people who make us unaccountably happy and steer clear of self-pity and—well, you know what I mean. This all applies to me as much as to you. You could find a disastrous marriage tomorrow if you wanted that, but you don't. What you want is to be brave and funny and good, so do we all, and tomorrow, my dear, is a new day."

Garrison Keillor

Everything

I want to know who God is
and not just what the philosophies of those who talk about Him are.

Thoreau says,

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

How do you know?

I don't recall the date on the page of the notebook this was lifted from



How do you know? I asked

It's like when someone writes something on the bottom of your shoe
she replied
You don't know what they wrote, but you can kind of feel it and you know it's there.

Loneliness, Ecstacy, Desire, Greed

I have been wading through old notebooks.
2 years ago to the day, a younger version of myself wrote definitions for a poetry class:


Loneliness

The net
which once held crowded fish
withdraws
its sinews
unimpeded by the water
the mesh slides through
and strand by strand
the drips fall back
with no way to grasp
and no way to see beyond the waves
And the abruptly gutted sea
longs for the shadows of fishes



Ecstacy

flying past the Blue Bridge
THE SUN
is multiplied by
dynamic mosaic ripples
into thousands
of multicolored
blinding diamonds


Desire

The quivering nose
of a dog
at the end
of a leash
pulled taut


Greed

a sickness
for which the desired cure
makes plain the diagnosis
a sickness
which is, in itself,
a side effect
when the cure is ineffective
a sickness
for which there are never
enough spoonfulls of sugar
to keep the medicine
down