Experience and Authority

I remember being in a college freshmen humanities class where we read some of the 'classics' and stuff by greek and roman philosophers. I remember overhearing a guy saying, with a tone of voice as though he were imparting some great revelatory wisdom upon the rest of us, something like:

You know, actually when you get into it, Plato was actually a pretty smart dude...
I'm not gonna do it justice, but he had basically discovered that if you start reading Plato with the expectation that maybe there was something in there worth paying attention to ( you know, maybe the same things that have been of interest to... all of western philosophy?) then you could find significance to what he was trying to say even if it just looks confusing at first.



Excuse me.
He was a college freshman... and he was going to accept and allow that Plato might have had some good ideas?


Please.



Maybe the confusing stuff was confusing not because Plato was writing popular gibberish but because there is actually something of substance that he just did not understand?

I am not suggesting that all authoritative things be blindly admired. I found myself disagreeing with much of what Plato described. But, when you've got someone with the kind of shaping-western-philosophy clout that Plato had (even if it all came from the Pythagoreans anyway), then there's probably something there worth paying attention to.




I am thinking of this memory because people do this all the time. Not just to Plato.

accompaniment

There was a get-together of the choir last night. I went for the sake of friends. There was impromptu singing, even in barbershop style, and I loved it. These things don't happen enough. There was also a quadruple chocolate cheesecake. That was also fantastic.

Somewhat as a joke, one of my housemates started singing the first line "On Top of Spaghetti" and I harmonized.

How did you know to sing that harmony? He asked. As usual, I didn't answer well.

That's what I do. Sing harmony.
If I can anticipate the melody and if I know the words, I can come up with a harmony.
(I was cut off for a while, so I'm a bit out of practice, but it can come back)


Few people know this because few people will give me someone to sing with.

Few people know I can be a good tango follow because few people lead.




I sing harmony with myself and with YouTube and began learning to lead so that I don't have to wait for others.

Grade school wisdom

A while ago, I was walking through an elementary school, reading the bubble-letter slogans promoting good character and personality and attitude and really appreciating the messages in them, now that I understood what it meant. I was once tall as a doorknob running through elementary school hallways, and though I knew the vocabulary, the posters and banners went way over my head.

I reflected that it seemed odd for such strong messages delivered to kids who are not able yet to understand them. But I guess they're all good thought-seeds to plant.

In middle school, there was a poster near the office that I remember passing frequently. It's the only one I remember. It said something along the lines of

People will not remember you for the clothes you wore, the ... or the ... [ insert other things of concern to middle schoolers ], but they will always remember the way you made them feel.

It seemed obvious, but it stayed in my head anyway.

As I move farther through life, I start wishing both that I had been able to understand such attitude slogans at a younger age, and wishing that the people I meet could have been similarly exposed.

fear worth fearing

A friend of mine wrote about the mist. It is the mist that gets inside you and blinds you, so that you cannot even see yourself, let alone the way out of the mist. You might not even see the mist.

I wrote a response to her post:



Wow, this makes so much sense.

Just last night, I was talking with a friend, jokingly about how we should make normal-colored glasses to make things appear normal. (In the way that there are rose-colored glasses to make things appear.. rosy). I suggested making terrible-colored glasses out of the joke that glasses which made things 'dark' would probably be black.. and therefore... (punchline:) already exist as sunglasses.

But then we started thinking of actually what color 'terrible' might be (so as to make other things 'terrible-colored). And before I really knew what I was saying, I said it would glasses that were smudged or foggy, but you wouldn't be allowed to take them off.

I was surprised to find that I had actually begun to frighten myself with the thought because I knew what I was reminding myself of.

Reading this, it makes perfect sense why.
(Have you watched Hedgehog in the Fog yet?)


This is why we will have awesome lives.
We are afraid of something worth being afraid of, and we know to avoid it at all costs, because any cost is worth avoiding it. And I think it is easier to see fog from a distance than from within.

Thanks for posting this.

April 18, 2010 12:19 PM

side-effects

Good news:

I feel !


side-effect: I feel
and sometimes the edges are sharp.
Why are there edges? I feel a little too comfortable with this.

can't always get what you want

I remind myself that humans rarely know how to want what is good, myself including.
This is comforting and makes it much more easy to accept and adapt when things don't seem to go as desired.
I remember long ago when I considered the reason that prayers aren't always answered is because humans don't often ask for the right things.


However, it also reminds me of a faith I used to trust more reliably.

You get what you need.
(but you do have to try)

revolving

(while the health bill was in its final discussions in Congress, I was enjoying a post-lunch talk with a friend in which she reminded me that charity and love (both overloaded words and common translations of the Greek αγαπη or latin caritas) are different words)



Especially in the last several weeks, I have been considering the days before I used words for these things:

the times in my past when I recall feeling a strong sense of care towards another person, a profound loyalty to their well-being, a deep appreciation for their person, an admiration for their accomplishments and goals, and a certain joy that rose in me to meet them, a sense of fulfillment in the ways I might help them, and an understanding that I felt what I felt, and my decisions were my decisions.


If I called it a crush, I began immediately to crush it - as such a word was meant to apply to haphazard and unsustainable notions.

But, I did not call it love. That word was reserved.
I did not call it.

I felt the current through my fibers, I felt the swells and strains. And, I let it pass through me.



Since I've became accustomed to a word like 'love' - an overloaded, under-explored, broad-brushed paint of a word - I feel aware of an attempt to corral the subtle senses I described above within a category that, although it is not understood or described, can at least be named. I feel aware of something like trying to sense the current with a dam, like trying to see a river in a lock, like trying to describe an excellent wine with one word.

I am aware of a sense of dissatisfaction arising when the many subtle creatures do not herd well into the corral, when the river being dammed becomes a stagnant lake, when the current in the lock does not seem natural, when the wine does not pair well.



Why is this?

I think I would like to remember how it was that I was able to let the current come, to feel it, to recognize it, to hum with the ways it will tense and tune my strings, but to let it pass without needing to ask it to stay or to fit itself, without needing to call it anything.

I think that once we call a thing something, we begin to get ideas about how we should treat it.




I began to think I wanted a friend I could keep.
Since when have humans ever known the proper things to want?

I think that I would rather remember the subtleties of caring, plumbing the breadth and depth with my hands on the strings,
and to care less what others care of how I care.



The good, the sorrowful, ... I was not a harbor. I expected motion and I let it pass. I felt the strains on the strings from weight of wanting. I felt the silent cry of resin between the bow and violin. But, it did not stay to do me any harm, and I did not keep what was not mine.



Besides, I am moving, too.

choices

written as a response to a friend's post, 18 Apr 2010

I have been reflecting lately on how it seems to be not so much whether people can be trusted,

but whether I can trust people (as an internal condition of myself) that improves my life. it keeps me open, and that is important.


I think good things come to those who keep their heads up in any situation-
because otherwise you won't see them.

edict

I will no longer tolerate people - especially men - telling me that I lack confidence
(even if it is true. I ain't gonna become more confident by listening to how I'm not)



or telling me that I am cute.
Such a report will get very low marks.

cowcatcher

i got places to go and people to be.

aint nothin gonna stand in my way

yin and yang

Oh yes, that's right. Neither extreme is desirable, and neither to be excluded, but it is an appropriate balance.

Not gray. Black and White negotiating.

There is a place for both of them.

common assumption: other people think like you

I don't remember exactly which words he used, but the thought they said was:

A common mistake: assuming that other people think like you

I know that I have often made such mistakes.

Thinking about it further,
I realized that much of the way I thought of other people is out of a belief that the way others think is not so different from the way I think. It's a plank I often walk out on and usually find that it connects somewhere. I like believing that everyone makes sense to themselves and using that as a premise to work from when trying to understand. But, in retrospect, I think that perhaps a lot of what I took to be similarities were not so much ways of thinking, but content of thinking, or an ability to follow rather than produce an explanation when presented in the right way.

For example, there are some things that I think almost everyone has in common. Most people like to be thought well of, to feel understood, to feel secure, unalone, to have a sense of purpose, to feel able to express themselves . . . and so most people appreciate being encouraged or enabled to achieve these things.

However, these are things that can be thought of and felt, rather than ways of coming to or experiencing these thoughts and feelings.

For someone as process-oriented as myself, I'm a little surprised that this seems to be a new distinction. Even though I can recall people telling me here and there that they thought that the way I thought about things was different.

I had assumed that everyone thought about situations by imagining many possible outcomes and choosing one until a friend of mine commented that I seemed to think this way as if it was different than how she thought. (I am impressed that she saw this if it wasn't the way that she already thought)

I have been a little surprised by the number of friends I feel I know fairly well who have expressed to me a thought that I think similarly to the way they do and that they feel I understand them in a way many other people don't, and even choosing to ask me my opinion of if other people thought like them. I still don't have a good answer because I don't know how to assess whether a person thinks like another person. However, I am not sure if these friends would necessarily understand each other.

So far, this suggests that mutual understanding is not a transitive property.

I don't know where else to go with it yet.

Jamie Oliver marshals support for America's Food Revolution in Huntington, Virginia

Students helping stir things up at Marshall University in West Virginia



Jamie Oliver, spurred by the statistics of obesity and death in Huntington, VA inspires a flash mob as part of his campaign to bring the knowledge and capability of healthy eating to everyone. The food revolution started in Huntington.


And everyone involved in putting this together is genius.

(related: a student from the Portland Pangaea Project speaks to Mayor Sam Adams about nutrition in education. "You should force us to garden, you already force us to do math!" )



Only one thing bothers me.
Did any spectators upload videos to YouTube?

turn, turn, turn

I think that when I die,

I would like to die in the spring. In the morning. I feel I would be comforted by the reminder that all around, things have made it through the winter, through the night, and the cycles go on beginning and continuing and ending without me.

Obstacle course

He traced a short line segment on the table with his finger.

"Our parents get us from here, to here. They teach us the basics."

He he traveled the short distance with another finger, then indicated the vast tabletop fanning beyond the endpoint of the line.

"After that, we're on our own. And," he said, peppering the table with jabs like a minefield from another finger, "it's all an obstacle course from there."

The expanse of the tabletop stretched arbitrarily in all directions.

"We got to make our own way through the obstacle course. There are all these obstacles out there, but there are things you can do to make it easier on yourself.

Some we can go over,
some we choose,
some just come at us,
some we can go around,
some we avoid,
some ... are just there.


Some people use intuition,
[some use impulse,]
some have a plan..."

I looked at the empty table covered in an imagined landscape of boulders ... some to choose, some to avoid, some are most easily approachable in a certain order. I imagined trying to steer or coast on the thin path of my life as it wound through the terrain.

rear-view

...

Today, everything around me is made of mirrored dice.

I myself am a die,
falling and turning until that side finally lands face up.

"Cyberspace - Taming the Wild West"

My last event in Washington DC, Round 1, was a surprisingly serendipitous opportunity to attend a talk inside the State Department. A friend who interns in the State Department had seen the poster advertising the event and noted that it was sponsored by my two current bureaus of interest.

Jefferson Science Fellows Distinguished Lecture Series on Current Issues in Science and Technology presents:

John E. Savage, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Office of Cyber Affairs - U.S. Department of State

"Cyberspace - Taming the Wild West"

Sponsored by OES and STAS

The Jefferson Science Fellowship was created in 2003 out of recognition of the need to bring science, technology, and engineering expertise to for policy-makers seeking to meet the needs of modern society. Specifically, Fellows are tenured academics who take an on-site assignment in Washington, DC for one year. After this year, they return to their position, remaining available to the State for short-term projects over the next five years.

John E. Savage gave a talk on the need for policy to govern network use and security.

The talk was extremely non-technical in that it did not discuss or prove any particular notions of network security from a standpoint of mathematics or computer science. A few different kinds of network protocol were mentioned, common uses discussed, and some security issues articulated. Savage expressed his disappointment at his new belief (based on his recent work) that there will be no 'magic bullet' to network security. Rather, the best that can be done is to keep abreast of new developments.

But, primarily what I remember from the talk is the image he presented as the illustration for his title.

Imagine a 'Wild West' of computing. There are frontier towns - say, unprotected computer networks. And there are bandits and gunslingers - say, hackers. We now need someone to keep law and order.

According to John E. Savage, the usual approach is to win one of the gunslingers over to the good side, pin a badge on him, and call him a Sheriff.

The problem with this, is that conflicts will end in a shoot-out. It is just pitting 'our man' against 'their man'.

What we need, Savage suggests, is some good, sound, policy that a legislative body can use to deliberate and implement network regulation. The internet and computer networking have grown too quickly for the legislature to keep up with. It is already known that there is not enough policy/procedure for internet/network regulation. For example, there's sometimes not enough in the books for judges to know how a case ought to be decided, etc.

I'm a fan of good policy from my reactor days. Well-documented information on procedures is so helpful. When something needed to be done, there was a procedure for it. When something needed to be done, there was policy for making good decisions.

What well-documented policy contributes is a 'paper brain' so that good decisions and implementation no longer depend so much on the exact characteristics of person dealing with a situation.

The Capitol and Library of Congress

After the White House, a friend and I went to the US Capitol Building


Photo from Capitol tour website

My memories of this building include watching some propaganda set to nice music and looking up at tall things, like pillars, statues, and the painting on the top of the Rotunda. There was a room with lots of statues of important people like an imposing collection of chess pieces.

I also remember my friend (who knows these things) pointing out some locations we walked past and having a vague awareness that this is where very important people do things that have important consequences for millions of other people.

The health care reform bill was in its final days of discussion.

( I saw none of it... a friend emailed me excitedly on the day that it passed to ask what was going on in DC. I'd enjoyed having lunch with a friend that day. I recall hearing some sirens, but nothing unusual. That evening I returned to hang out in the dorm. That is where I was when the health care bill passed.)

Most of my memories of the Capitol building feel overwhelmed by the presence of lots of other people doing the same thing I was.

After the Capitol tour, we walked by the Library of Congress, and I realized that it actually is a place where people can actually do research. I'd seen it on TV before, but it mostly seemed like a fantastic book-hoarding repository than a place of active research. Also, the Library of Congress has a Gutenberg Bible that I stared at for a while.


I'm actually writing this about a week after the date listed when I started the draft. By this point, one of my more distinct memories is of eating an awesome experimental-ingredients salad wrap at Chop't. Beets, snap peas, tomatoes (i think), greens, tzatziki/blue cheese dressing ...

The White House

After accidently memorizing the address by over-exposure to Bloom County since childhood, I actually found myself at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.


I lucked out and had an awesome friend who thought to schedule a White House tour for me ahead of time. I guess they have to do background checks, which makes sense.

The lady ahead of me asked the secret service agent, "Is Barack in today?"

"Yes, ma'am, he is," came the polite reply. "Oh, well, tell him I was here!" I think she was trying to be amusing. He chuckled and assented politely and noncommittally. I had also been standing behind this lady at the visitor security check. She had many various metal accessories and bangles that she kept forgetting to remove as she attempted the metal-detector, but each time she tried with bubbly cheerfulness. She, her husband, and I were the last people through, so the security guard rolled his eyes at me behind her back, apparently wanting to know that someone was appreciating the kinds of things he had to put up with. I replied in-kind.


The tour was a guide-yourself tour complete with a brochure-thing and secret service agents in every room to answer questions. A long line of visitors snaked through the Ground Floor and then up to the State Floor. I lost the aforementioned lady and her husband in the crowd, but it was interesting to reflect on the fact that the President, and perhaps the rest of the Obama family, were at home on the second floor. The place seemed big enough from just the first two floors - it was hard to imagine that this tourist-filled building contained yet another floor that was a home.

On the Ground Floor, visitors were not permitted to enter the rooms, but you could look inside. The White House (and many things in DC) serves a secondary function as 'time capsule'.



The line of visitors wandered up the stairs and into the East Room.




This photo is in the public domain, as featured in the Wikipedia East Room article. The piano was not in the East Room while I was visiting. It was in the Entrance Hall.


I asked the agent posted in the East Room if there was anything in particular he thought I ought to know about it. He pointed to a large red object behind me, indicating that it was the red carpet that gets rolled out across the Cross Hall before press conferences. The East Room is a common room for press conferences and for dinners. It usually also contains the Steinway that was sitting in the Entrance Hall. Steinway # 300000 was a gift to President Franklin Roosevelt.



Photo from The White House Museum

Things I learned about the White House:

Every room has a bouquet of fresh flowers, ever since one of the presidential families lost a son before moving to the White House and the President ordered fresh flowers to be placed in each room to help lift the First Lady's depression. This was one of the many barnacles of history I observed on the various ships of state in DC. In DC, history doesn't go away. It gets institutionalized or made into a statue.

There is an interior decorating committee that the First Lady is often a part of, but certainly does not run. Any change to the interior, such as removal or replacement of paintings must be approved by this committee.

The secret service has two major divisions, the Uniformed Division and the Special Agent Division. The agent who explained this to me said that she thought of the difference as being that the uniformed agents ensured the security of a location while the special agents would travel with a dignitary to ensure that he or she was transported safely between locations.

There are many portraits of past presidents hanging on the walls. Apparently, it was the always the president himself who chose his pose for how he wanted to be depicted in his portrait. I asked this question after being fascinated in particular by JFK's choice of portrayal. I am assuming - though I didn't ask - that the president was also free to choose which artist would paint him.

The Pigeon Game

The first event I went to in DC was The Pigeon Game, a Taiwan to the World documentary hosted in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.

I got excited because I used to race pigeons and I plan to go to Taiwan. I will have to find some of these people.



I was a little disappointed with the documentary mostly because they make it sound like pigeon racing is some kind of strange, exotic, and foreign interest that is strangely particular to Taiwan. I keep perceiving the narration as casting the information with a kind of strange eccentricity that doesn't necessary take the subject seriously. It seems to present the information in a way that makes it seem like a curious sideshow novelty, and that doesn't sit well with me.

But, I did learn a few things about how pigeon racing is expected to go in Taiwan. For example, it seems like Taiwan only has a young bird (entrants are less than 1 year old) racing season. I am assuming this because the narrator says pigeons can only race for one season, and the birds in the documentary seem to be all young birds. The United States and many other countries, on the other hand, have an old bird season for adult pigeons as well.

The documentary described many more precautions against cheating than I'd seen before ... the pigeon racing scene seems like a pretty hazardous place.

Also, because Taiwan is an island, in order to get enough distance, race starting points are typically on the open ocean. The pigeons are 'shipped' to the starting point and released over the water.

Excitingly, the school I will probably study at in Taiwan is in the same city as a port where the pigeon races depart from.


After The Pigeon Game, there was a documentary on the Chestnut Tiger milkweed butterfly, suspected to occasionally and surprisingly migrate between Taiwan and Japan. But I didn't stay for the whole thing.

easter and the sabbath

I remember hearing somewhere - someone talking about the 4th commandment (Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy ... ) saying something like:

Remembering the Sabbath is easy. Keeping it holy surely takes the rest of the week.
If the Sabbath is to be kept holy, for example if no work is to be done, then this is something that is planned and prepared for by the work structure of the other 6 days.

By that thought,
If I remember what Easter means, it is not just about this day, but something that I express with the other 364 days.

I suppose in general, a thing really has meaning in the context of how the other intentions around it prepare it to be that thing. Meaning this way is not discrete or isolated. It blends, adapts, negotiates... with the meanings around it.

Lincoln and Washington (DC part 1.1)

My first stop was the Lincoln Memorial and reflecting pool, but all those pictures are mental images. I did go back later to see the tourists and to take this picture which perfectly complimented a recent meme-discussion that my brother and I had been having about the historical awesomeness of Abraham Lincoln.



Abraham Lincoln, the man.
If you aren't familiar with how the internet is remembering Abe as THE MAN, then do your research. If only historical figures could know what they would mean to future generations...


The following pictures were taken after I returned from New York, so this is a little anachronistic, to overuse the word. The first day I wandered around here, it was much much less rainy.





If you want more of the 'classic' pictures of these monuments, there are plenty on the internet. You can check out the following Wikipedia pages on the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument. There are also plen-ty of other people who have posted pictures of these exact objects. My interest trends towards the pictures that are meaningful to me, or that I know I won't find (or will have a hard time finding) elsewhere.



I liked the peaceful space behind the Lincoln Memorial:





That's enough. I need some of these for my posts on returning to DC after NYC.

DC (part 1.0)

While in Washington DC, I stayed in the George Washington University dorms. This is the only thing I took a picture of during my first stay (I later went to NYC and CT, then back again). I was trying to do more living than recording (though recording turned out to be difficult anyway).

Mostly, I was shown around their portion of the city by friends I stayed with at George Washington University. The city was described as a 'quiet city', which seems accurate. The streets are named by number or by letter in a well-ordered fashion, and are populated by joggers. You'd think I would have at least taken pictures of one of the many statues of George Washington around me, but nooooo. Actually, I had in mind to use a lot of stock photos for this post. I saw a lot of cool stuff, but nothing that no one's taken pictures of before, and lots that I wasn't sure if I could take pictures of, like the The interiors of the White House, Capitol, and State Department ! ah ha ha ha.



Photo by Ben Schumin


I came to DC from the airport, via metro, past the hospital Cheney frequents, and to the GWU dorm. I spent more time with the friends I was visiting in my first full day than I had ever spent with them in real life before. Accordingly, my first few days were mostly hanging out with college students while trying to do some of my own work, interspersed by the interesting events of wandering the Lincoln Memorial, learning about racing pigeons in Taiwan, going on a White House tour, a tour of the Capitol building, attending some GWU classes, and attending a Jefferson Fellow talk at the State Department, sponsored by STAS and OES.

PDX ( -> DEN -> DCA )

It was a beautiful St. Patty's day morning (in the United States) when I set off. This adventure took 5 years of frequent flying, 2 years of vague considerations, 2 months of magically impulsive decisions, and $10 to get off the ground. I consider myself again fit for travel, and since I hope to be taking much longer journeys in the not-too-distant future, best to test my solo wings again on something unfamiliar, but not foreign. East Coast, here I come. I am test-driving myself. Today, Portland is easy to leave because I am on an exciting adventure into the future, and I know I'll come back.



I'd never been excited about visiting the East Coast before. But, over the years, I have built up some connections there. An old roommate, a random acquaintance-turned-friend, a former teacher, friends-moved-east, ... and if I wait too much longer, I figure they'll start dispersing again, so now was the time to see the world(s) my friends have come to call their own.


I grew up a short drive from the Great Lakes (we could sometimes see Michigan across the water). I'd been out east just twice before - to go to a summer camp in New York. And no, I did not see much of New York besides the summer camp. My Dad spent quite a bit of time commuting to Connecticut while I was growing up. He began when I was part-way through grade school and continued until I was part-way through undergrad. I remember some of our family trips being taken with his frequent flier miles. This is my first trip using my own frequent flier miles. I'd never paid the east coast much mind before. I went west, crossing the Mississippi to set up near the Willamette. After years of mildly shunning the east coast and going farther and farther west - first to college and next, I hope, to study abroad - I'm headed for my father's preferred coast.



It occurred to me (I'm writing this now, though I probably didn't actually think of this until I reached New York City) that although I claim that the stereotypical teenage forms of protest - reacting oppositely to the advice of authority figures - never made much sense to me growing up ( I was lucky in that most of the people offering their wisdom were qualified to give it ), my earlier aversions to the east cost and to large cities may have been some rare vague manifestation of such protest against my father's high opinions of it. I had made it a habit to think uncomfortably of the east coast and to associate it with similarly uncomfortable-feeling large cities.

This time, I have in mind to befriend the cities I meet, and to learn from them.

Well, here we go -




* i am writing after returning to Portland - this entire adventure took place in ~ two weeks of March *

Wheat

At the end of the summer when it is ripe,

Wheat is harvested and separated.

Some parts will be caught by the wind and discarded, but the inside is important to keep. Know the difference.

That is what remains of summer.

Right Hand meets Left Hand

After a couple takes,
This isn't quite it, but is closest to the conversation I had in mind.
Inspired mostly by Yiruma's River Flows in You

memo from the future

(written 01 Apr 2010, blog-drafted 21 May 2010, posted 25 May 2010)




I've just returned from the future.

I traveled from the past.

And as I made my journey home I thought it seemed easier to move through space than through time. The gates of time are beginnings and endings, and at times, the portals are forceful.

In the future they decide what happens - they decide how things will go and here in the prior hours, the world lurches to catch up. As I made my preparations, talking on the phone, transcending hours between my coast and his, I felt at a loss. Whatever he said, in his three-hours-ahead, seemed possible. I only wondered what my world would have to do in those three hours to catch the place where his had stood.

I followed the eastern horizon around the rotating earth.

In the future there is certainty, and I ask him over the phone to tell me what lies ahead for me and the others in my time. Our voices move simultaneously across the time and space.

I travelled over time zones from my own time to his.
When one day he saw my writing,
when he saw what I'd recorded of my thoughts and of his words, he said he'd better watch it.

Better watch what he said,
and it occurred to me that people who live in the future

do not think about how their lives might be recorded.

Perhaps that is what frees them.