The following is something that a friend of mine wrote about his latest experience with home ownership and, more importantly, about his dad:  I’m upstairs. Two floors upstairs. I hear absolute unequivocal hysteria. Hysterical screaming. The female unit is flipping out. I run downstairs, leaping stairs, expecting to find a gang of Albanians ‘taken’ her away. Turns out the basement is flooding. I’m dismayed. No Albanians. Instead a silent laminating seepage of water is slowly making its way through the basement. The sump pump has stopped working. Still there is screaming. Cool as a cucumber I walk over to the valve – the back-up sump valve – and twist. The water retreats, barely a perceptible dampness left on a tiny stretch of basement. I look at the female unit, wondering what god has wrought on us men. The main sump pump is dead. Kicked it. Restarted it. Unplugged it. Threw the breaker. Plugged it. Kicked it more. Dead. I prepare for financial grab-ankle: time to call the plumber. Cancel the vacation. I’ll be buried as a pauper in a pine kitty litter box. Dad calls. “Hi Son!” He happened to be near our neighborhood. “Hi dad. Sump broke dad.” 5

Continue readingKill for fun, it’s fuckin’ funny don’t you think? One day you’ll decompose and those birds are singing…

Hemingway once said that it was difficult, if not impossible, to say or write one true thing. With the varying degrees of perception, belief, reality, and falsehood; it’s no surprise that he would feel that way. And to expand upon that problem a little further, we get in just as much trouble in the ways that we speak. Language as much a barrier to our understanding as our preconceived notions of the world. We all have our blinders and our bias. We have our perceptions and beliefs, and then, somewhere in the middle lies reality. How does a person honestly, truthfully, and without bias, state the truth? It is said that the one true and “pure” langauge that exists is math, but how does that help your average person on the street who is trying to communicate their needs? I was asked, yesterday, what my hitchhiking accomplished for me. There was no short and honest answer. In the end, sometimes we just do things because we feel that we must. It doesn’t have to make sense, and a lot of times, it never ever makes sense. Am I better person for having undertaken that journey? Absolutely. Can I articulate all

Continue readingAnd because of the things that I have done, I will never know what it’s like to kiss you in the pouring rain

About a decade ago, I remember being fascinated by the idea of the Bicameral mind. I’m not sure how many of you folks would know what that is, so I will explain it briefly to save a bit of confusion. For those of you who know me, you’ll know why I’m so fascinated with this particular manifestation of the mind. The theory of the bicameral mind was originally proposed by a psychologist named Julian Jaynes, and has been fairly controversial ever since. The basic premise is that, as recently as 3,000 years ago, the brain was split in to two separate but equal sections of consciousness. One consciousness would be the “man”, or the way in which the person experiences the world. The other consciousness would be called “god”. Instead of making conscious decisions and being aware of the thought process involved, a person of a bicameral mind would simply hear the thoughts of their split (or second) consciousness as a voice that orders and commands them to do things. In other words, imagine having a consciousness in which you simply exist and all your thinking and beliefs goes on in a separate and unaware part that tells you how

Continue readingDon’t be afraid to let go of hope, and enjoy the free fall

I’ve got a question for any of you geeks out there. Recently I’ve been troubled by a bit of a paradox. First, some background: It is possible to entangle the quantum properties of two particles. Doing so means that both particles will exist in a superposition of two states, but that the resolution of one superposition will force the resolution of the other particles wavefunction. All experiments to date have indicated that this phenomenon is instantaneous. So, here’s the setup: I entangle two particles, then send one on orbit around the earth at some significant percentage of the speed of light, then bring it back to the lab with the other particle. Then I carry out a measurement on the particle that remained stationary, thus causing a collapse of the superposition. The question: Does the traveling particle’s wavefunction collapse simultaneously in the stationary frame of the lab? Or will there be a delay associated with the time shift it would have experienced while orbiting? If it’s the former, what does that imply about space-time curvature and causality (i.e. the future, in this case the stationary particle, affecting the past)? If it’s the later, what if we measure both particles simultaneously

Continue readingWe hope that you will live to see another day, because you’re never going to count up the cost

It seems that I have somewhat neglected my blogging duties in the last month or so. And the times that I have written anything have been sad or morose or down right depressing. I’m not sure what has changed recently, but I’ve definitely been having trouble seeing the larger picture. Really, that’s all it takes to stay happy. To see the larger picture and realize that even when things get bad, they can always be worse. Some time ago, I got in to the habit of asking, “Will this matter to me in five years?” whenever something catastrophic (to me) happened. And you know what? For all the voices in your head that scream like chicken little that the sky is falling, there is very little, if anything, that deserves as much attention as we provide to our problems. I worry about my job and, while it’s true that losing my job would be bad, it wouldn’t be a catastrophe. I could collect unemployment and look for a better job elsewhere. And while it’s not preferable, I could always take a contract job in Iraq or Afghanistan. Inevitably, there are the worries about being hurt by those around us; especially

Continue readingLaying down in a messy room talking to myself, but I can’t even hold my own attention

I’m living in existential angst. I have a heightened awareness of the things going on around me and, I’m sad to say, I’m miserable for it. I kind of wish I knew what is wrong with me these days. I can’t seem to break out of this funk, this fear, and this paranoid cycle. Every time  I’m able to rationalize away my concerns, they some how come back stronger and more prominent in my mind. Is this what it’s like to go crazy? Or at least, is this what it’s like to drive yourself crazy? I’m not sure what I can do at this point. I’ve always prided myself on my ability to face my fears, head on, damn the consequences or the terror that comes with it. But how do I go about facing a fear that has no form, no face, and no way for confrontation? Sigh. I’m trying to be the best that I can. I really am. But I’m falling short again and again, and I don’t feel like there’s much of an end in sight to the way that I’m feeling. I know there’s a solution to all of this. I know there’s got to be some

Continue readingOne day you’ll decompose and those birds are singing… yeah, those birds are singing.

To add to my previous post about my annual review, I wanted to comment on something that my supervisor said to me. She said that there was a perception from people at work that I’d lost my “spark”. I won’t elaborate upon that point much, other than to say that I’m simultaneously hurt and unsurprised. I can see why someone would have said that about me, and at the same time, I wish that people would try to see the many many things that I do behind the scenes. I’m not a glory mongerer. I don’t jump out there as wildly and loudly as possible and scream, “Look at me! Look at me! I do this and that!”. I don’t steal ideas from others and pass them off as my own. And in that respect, because I do most of my work behind the scenes, it would seem that I’m uninterested in a lot of my work. And while I’m very tired of some of my many projects, I still do an insurmountable amount of work in a given day. So I can see why a person would think I do not, and that I don’t care, even when it

Continue readingIf I said something to make you mad, I will take it back.

My annual performance review is today. I can’t say that I’m very excited because, honestly, I always feel like I’m not living up to my potential. I always feel like I could be doing more, and I always feel like I could be accomplishing more in less time. Sadly, my review actually reflects this. It paints me as unreliable and uncommunicative to key business partners and folks within our infrastructure. It makes me seem lazy, even though I’ve spent many sleepless nights coding and recoding and testing and working on problems that plague our department. I’ve devoted the last several years to this company, and I guess I just wish that I had been more aware of my problems beforehand. And really, that’s the issue we all face in our own lives. We wish we’d seen the freight train barrelling down on us just a little bit sooner than we did. Even more sad is that, as I write this, I realize I’ve spent a lot of my life working my ass off with little, if anything, to show for it. That’s really the story of my life. I just want to feel like the work that I do matters,

Continue readingI hope to see the sun again, and maybe I will make it in the end

I had a discussion with my uncle Mitch earlier today. We spoke of my mom and how we’ve both been fairing (or not) through these difficult months without her. It’s the same days, every year, that I’m forced to deal with, however poorly: Mother’s day, June 4th (the day she died, June 26th (her birthday), Thanksgiving, and Christmas. He said that in some ways, I had it easier than he did because I was here to watch her go. All he had was the phone calls that he made to her and, in the end, only silence when she was left unconscious by the drugs or pain. And I do agree with him, to a point, that the distance must not have been easy for him. Undoubtably, it was not. But where he thinks my task might have been easier to bear because I was here, he is mistaken. He may not have been able to help his sister through her death, or see her before she died, but being here wasn’t any better. Nothing about her death was cathartic or relieving. There was no joy, no closure, no peace, no singing of the angels or tolling of a bell.

Continue readingYou said If wishes were horses, beggars like me could ride.

I was thinking about baths this morning. I don’t know why. But you’ve got to love sitting in hot water, reading a book, zoning out. A bath isn’t about getting clean, it is about pure luxury, and even if it means eating my knees the whole time, wedged in as low as I can get, it still feels wonderful. It always makes me laugh, how many people say they don’t like baths because they end up feeling dirty, but it is all a matter of perspective. If you aren’t thinking about a bath as getting clean but rather as a pleasant diversion, the criteria by which you evaluate the experience changes. In some ways, that is reflected in a lot of things about modern life. Eating is another prime example; eat to live or live to eat? Depending on how one answers that question, paying $100 for a plate of food becomes a very different decision. What got me off on this train of thought, however, wasn’t the idea of personal choice, but rather evaluating the choices of others. If someone felt like baths were for getting clean, they might consider me crazy for enjoying one. With regard to something

Continue readingIn the middle of the night, there’s an old man treading around in the gathered rain