Even in absurdity, sacrament. Even in hardship, holiness. Even in doubt, faith. Even in chaos, realization. Even in paradox, blessedness
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"Life expands or shrinks in proportion to one's courage." ~Anain Nin
You rush headlong into it You’re weary from the road; With a flick of an old and arthritic wrist The shelter to which you have temporarily moored We come out of the world, emerging from it like spring’s first delicate butterfly, You came from that deeply impossible to express light. You carefully mind the turn in the highway, Happy New Year. jaybird found this for you @ 17:39 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Returning to the return It's taken a little bit of rest and, frankly, doing next to nothing to refreshen my spirit and to prepare for this next week of transition. I had my big job interview on Wednesday, and I'll hear back next week. I'm very hopeful, yet cautious... I'm not conditioned to doing group interviews, and being in a monkey suit, no less. I do have another job offer which would seriously suck financially (I'd have to get a third job), but it would be that all important something. I can see that unemployed life would get very boring very fast, so I'm motivated either way. I've got a lot to do over the next few days, so I don't expect blogging to come on full until next week. I have been doing a bit more of the personally relevatory blogging on metachat.org. I did take time to redesign my gateway site (an hour) and now have to plough through a big paper for school and I've got a major poem to deliver on Sunday... so I ought to get around to writing it. Heck, I do well under deadline pressure. I've got to get back to focused activity now (damn it), and tomorrow will post my year-end wrap up. I'm feeling really over 2005, neat as that number may be, and as arbitrary as it all really is. jaybird found this for you @ 20:58 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Kanji Soup  This could be your next tattoo. I'm testing some moblogging features, bear with me. Moblogging is posting from a cellphone or other wireless device- if a picture, it's taken from the phone. jaybird found this for you @ 20:18 in Live from the road... | | permalink
Gibran: Your thought and mine Your thought is a tree rooted deep in the soil of tradition and whose branches grow in the power of continuity. My thought is a cloud moving in the space. It turns into drops which, as they fall, form a brook that sings its way into the sea. Then it rises as vapour into the sky. Your thought is a fortress that neither gale nor the lightning can shake. My thought is a tender leaf that sways in every direction and finds pleasure in its swaying. Your thought is an ancient dogma that cannot change you nor can you change it. My thought is new, and it tests me and I test it morn and eve. You have your thought and I have mine. Your thought allows you to believe in the unequal contest of the strong against the weak, and in the tricking of the simple by the subtle ones. My thought creates in me the desire to till the earth with my hoe, and harvest the crops with my sickle, and build my home with stones and mortar, and weave my raiment with woollen and linen threads. Your thought urges you to marry wealth and notability. Mine commends self-reliance. Your thought advocates fame and show. Mine counsels me and implores me to cast aside notoriety and treat it like a grain of sand cast upon the shore of eternity. Your thought instils in your heart arrogance and superiority. Mine plants within me love for peace and the desire for independence. Your thought begets dreams of palaces with furniture of sandalwood studded with jewels, and beds made of twisted silk threads. My thought speaks softly in my ears, “Be clean in body and spirit even if you have nowhere to lay your head.” Your thought makes you aspire to titles and offices. Mine exhorts me to humble service. You have your thought and I have mine... jaybird found this for you @ 16:59 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Back... I'm a bit overwhelmed by catching up at the moment, but I'm home and very glad to be. I'll debrief soon. Meanwhile, I've got a few pics (mostly abstracty-arty) from the trip up at my Flickr photostream. jaybird found this for you @ 20:45 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
heading home Heading home- mile 169 of 590 jaybird found this for you @ 16:56 in Live from the road... | | permalink
all done in delaware a.jpg) Helluva day- did the wedding, lotsa driving, exhausted. Laptop still down. Ready to drive home in the morning. Will check in from the road. jaybird found this for you @ 20:44 in Live from the road... | | permalink
a.jpg) Looks like my laptop's HD is haxx0red, so all updates will be by phone, and i'm a slow txter. If you're familiar w/ this kinda error, plz leave a comment. Hope all is well out there! jaybird found this for you @ 12:15 in Live from the road... | | permalink
Here... heh. I got in to Delaware late last night; 574 miles in 8 hours, 43 minutes, which is four minutes shy of the record. I obviously take the drive rather seriously. Traffic was thick most of the way, with plenty of speed traps. I listened to a music mix that I'd randomly cobbled before I left (no time to score a book on cd), and I've got to say it was fabulous. I met up with old friends last night and indulged a wee bit too much, so today is kinda sleepy/swimmy. I'm at my father's right now on some unprotected wifi net and driving into town I saw a lady walking down the highway covered head to toe in plastic wrap. I'm unsure if she was making some kind of statement intentionally or not. My father is out right now, and his mangy cat is chewing on my head; I really think this cat is a chimera... she's just too much cat. I really haven't had time to put on my mystic hat here yet, but certain regions of the brain long since inactive are beginning to awaken- names, faces, long forgotten scenarios, ghosts of memory on nearly every street. Today, I'll see my mother too, and my cousin to plan for her wedding. I'll file another report once the stimulus overbrims, which won't be long. jaybird found this for you @ 11:29 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
593 miles, give or take I'm within about 20 minutes of making the annual 9-hourish drive to northern Delaware. It's a beautiful day for driving, and I actually enjoy the time alone for reflection, and the zen of watching the world buzz by. I return next week, and I'll try to post daily when I'm back. I've got my first job interview, one which I'm very excited for, yet I refuse to jinx by talking about what it is. I'm just hopeful, and hope, right now, is the mere foundation for thrusting my life deep into the land of transition. Such a strange and misty place, I go there with my lantern bright and my head high. Anyway, everyone take care, travel safely, and may we all unite in the accord that all days, minutes, and seconds are holy; let us revel in creation together with the abandon of fools, and the wisdom of ages. Peace, y'all! Love, jaybird jaybird found this for you @ 10:46 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Accelerating toward a journey I'm in the midst of getting ready for the annual crawl to Delaware to visit family (and this time, to perform my cousin's wedding), so posting will now be somewhat scattered until next week. I'll check in whenever I get WiFi, and if need be, I'll post from my phone. The pace of my trip will be rather breakneck, with lots of ground to cover, limited resources, and the usual hesitation to plod about too much on my old metaphorical gameboards. This trip comes at a time of great personal transition, as I move from one job to another as yet unfound vocation, and with great concern over financial viability. Yet, in speaking with one of Asheville's great poets last night, even if this process reduces me to trolldom under bridges, I'll still have the big blue sky. As a result of the challenge of transition, I've been a bit moody and inconsistent, though these are kinda givens, given the weight of the flux. As a result of my sensitivities, there are ripples in the pond of my friendships, and all I can hope for is understanding and openness. I struggle at times with those who struggle with confronting feeling. My own dichotomies make me a person who sometimes acts on emotion over logic, and while I love logic, I don't do well when I am constrained by it. I simply hope that the right dose of reason infects me and the right dose of feeling makes similar vector with those I love. Today, I unpack from the car the contents of my office and repack it with the vital contents of this home for the next few days, and of course, I'm not he only one. We're all in motion, somehow gravitating toward what we deem important. May these millions and millions of transits across the world and even down the street be safe, may happiness be your roadmap, and may we be guided ahead- in struggle and in contentment- by the values of friendship and family, because as far as we know, this is 'it' and so are they. jaybird found this for you @ 17:16 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Shakespeare's smoke and mirrors tricks solved “You notice at once that Macbeth is full of optical illusions — there are floating daggers, the ghost of Banquo, ghostly kings, and ghostly cauldrons. I thought, surely if that’s the case, Shakespeare is probably saying to himself, ‘What sort of special effects are available to make these more spectacular?’.” This train of thought took Professor Wright to the library at the University of Cambridge where he picked up a copy of Euclid’s Geometry edited by John Dee. A contemporary of Shakespeare, Dee is now regarded as one of the fathers of the modern age because of his talent for what was then called natural magic – science. He was especially interested in how specially modified mirrors could create tricks of the light, making things appear as if by magic.
Professor Wright argues that Shakespeare would undoubtedly have been aware of such tricks of the light when writing Macbeth, and may even have used a device like Dee’s to create the effect of a floating dagger. Similar optical effects might also have been deployed to create the many ghosts who pop up during the play. jaybird found this for you @ 09:00 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
The Icelandic Yule Cat The oldest written sources on the Yule Cat are from the Nineteenth Century. These refer to the fact that those who do not get a new item of clothing for Yule are destined to become offerings for the Yule Cat. It may sound strange that the deprived ones will also become the sacrifices, but this tradition is based on the fact that every effort was made to finish all work with the Autumn wool before Yule. The reward for those who took part in the work was a new piece of clothing. Those who were lazy received nothing. Thus the Yule Cat was used as an incentive to get people to work harder. A woman describes a scene from her youth in the last century thus: "We were lazy doing this chore. Then we were reminded of the Yule Cat. We thought that was some terrible beast and the last thing we wanted was to be one of his offers". One of Iceland's most beloved poets in this century, Jóhannes úr Kötlum, wrote a lay about the Yule Cat. It follows in the translation of Vignir Jónsson, who says: "You'll have to forgive me but I didn't make it rhyme - I'm not much of a poet." jaybird found this for you @ 20:58 in Spirituality, Religion & Mythos | | permalink
The lore of Yule "I do not know how the forty years I have been away have dealt with Jule-nissen, the Christmas elf of my childhood....He was pretty old then, gray and bent, and there were signs that his time was nearly over. When I was a boy we never sat down to our Christmas Eve dinner until a bowl of rice and milk had been taken to the attic, where he lived with the martin and its young, and kept an eye upon the house--saw that everything ran smoothly. I never met him myself, but I know the house cat must have done so. No doubt they were well acquainted, for when in the morning I went in for the bowl, there it was, quite dry and licked clean, and the cat purring in the corner.....the Nisse, or the leprecawn--call him what you like--was a friend indeed to those who loved kindness and peace." jaybird found this for you @ 16:47 in Spirituality, Religion & Mythos | | permalink
Science of the Solstice The Sun will always rise and set furthest to the south during the day of Winter Solstice, and furthest to the north during Summer Solstice. Today is Winter Solstice, the day of least sunlight in the Northern Hemisphere and of most sunlight in the Southern Hemisphere. In many countries, the Winter Solstice brings a change in season, as it is the first day of winter in the North. The solar heating and stored energy in the Earth's surface and atmosphere is near its lowest during winter, making it usually the coldest months of the year. jaybird found this for you @ 12:42 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
Science of the Solstice The Sun will always rise and set furthest to the south during the day of Winter Solstice, and furthest to the north during Summer Solstice. Today is Winter Solstice, the day of least sunlight in the Northern Hemisphere and of most sunlight in the Southern Hemisphere. In many countries, the Winter Solstice brings a change in season, as it is the first day of winter in the North. The solar heating and stored energy in the Earth's surface and atmosphere is near its lowest during winter, making it usually the coldest months of the year. jaybird found this for you @ 12:42 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
Solstice Invocation ~ Much as the northern wind beckons these skelatal trees Much as the ice makes daunting the smallest of steps Much as we curse the biting chill which teases our skin Solstice whispers that there is hard work aread in knowing the soul. We are not mere witnesses to the spectacle- Come, winter! jaybird found this for you @ 07:22 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Turn down the heat: Inuit sue US over climate policy People living in the Arctic have filed a legal petition against the US government, saying its climate change policies violate human rights. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) claims the US is failing to control emissions of greenhouse gases, damaging livelihoods in the Arctic. Its petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights demands that the US limits its emissions. Temperatures in the Arctic are rising at about twice the global average. The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a vast scientific study which took four years to compile, found that the region will warm by four to seven degrees Celsius by the end of the century, with summer sea ice disappearing within 60 years. jaybird found this for you @ 21:05 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink
Children Learn by Monkey See, Monkey Do. Chimps Don't. Dr. Horner and Dr. Whiten described the way they showed young chimps how to retrieve food from a box. The box was painted black and had a door on one side and a bolt running across the top. The food was hidden in a tube behind the door. When they showed the chimpanzees how to retrieve the food, the researchers added some unnecessary steps. Before they opened the door, they pulled back the bolt and tapped the top of the box with a stick. Only after they had pushed the bolt back in place did they finally open the door and fish out the food. Because the chimps could not see inside, they could not tell that the extra steps were unnecessary. As a result, when the chimps were given the box, two-thirds faithfully imitated the scientists to retrieve the food. The team then used a box with transparent walls and found a strikingly different result. Those chimps could see that the scientists were wasting their time sliding the bolt and tapping the top. None followed suit. They all went straight for the door. The researchers turned to humans. They showed the transparent box to 16 children from a Scottish nursery school. After putting a sticker in the box, they showed the children how to retrieve it. They included the unnecessary bolt pulling and box tapping. The scientists placed the sticker back in the box and left the room, telling the children that they could do whatever they thought necessary to retrieve it. The children could see just as easily as the chimps that it was pointless to slide open the bolt or tap on top of the box. Yet 80 percent did so anyway. "It seemed so spectacular to me," Mr. Lyons said. "It suggested something remarkable was going on." jaybird found this for you @ 17:01 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
Gratitude: Humpback nuzzled her saviors in thanks after they untangled her from crab lines A humpback whale freed by divers from a tangle of crab trap lines near the Farallon Islands nudged its rescuers and flapped around in what marine experts said was a rare and remarkable encounter. "It felt to me like it was thanking us, knowing that it was free and that we had helped it," James Moskito, one of the rescue divers, said Tuesday. "It stopped about a foot away from me, pushed me around a little bit and had some fun." jaybird found this for you @ 13:00 in Environment, Ecology & Nature | | permalink
Toys, toys! First Mass Producible Quantum Computer Chip Researchers at the University of Michigan have produced what is believed to be the first scalable quantum computer chip, which could mean big gains in the worldwide race to develop a quantum computer. Using the same semiconductor fabrication technology that is used in everyday computer chips, researchers were able to trap a single atom within an integrated semiconductor chip and control it using electrical signals, said Christopher Monroe, U-M physics professor and the principal investigator and co-author of the paper, "Ion Trap in a Semiconductor Chip." The paper appeared in the Dec. 11 issue of Nature Physics. Quantum computers are promising because they can solve certain problems much faster than any possible conventional computer, owing to the bizarre features of quantum mechanics. For instance, quantum computers can process multiple inputs at the same time in the same device, and quantum circuitry can be wired via the quantum feature of entanglement, dubbed by Einstein as "spooky action-at-a-distance." jaybird found this for you @ 08:55 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
Good behavior: I Broke the Law at Walden Pond--Twice So I camped in the trees surrounding Walden Pond that night. Aware that I might be breaking some regulation, I snuck into the forest, the leaves rustling under my tires. I felt like one of Robin Hood’s band of merry men, gleefully trespassing in Sherwood Forest. I broke the law, crushed a few autumn leaves in the process, brought no harm to anyone, and left the next morning. We break laws every day and neither the world nor our souls are worse for wear. Indeed, to be a law-abiding citizen often requires a citizen to either commit crimes ourselves or become silent accomplices to crimes committed by those we’ve foolishly empowered. The biggest lawbreakers are usually powerful state officials, those who formulate malignant laws that require others to perform felonious tasks and then penalize anyone who resists. As Thoreau noted, in such cases: “I say, break the law.” jaybird found this for you @ 20:22 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
We are older than we think: Ancient civilization unearthed in Syria An excavation project on the Syrian-Iraqi border has uncovered an ancient settlement wiped out by invaders 5,500 years ago. Discovered in northeastern Syria, the ruined city of Hamoukar appears to have been a large city by 4,500 B.C., said archaeologists Clemens Reichel and Salam al-Quntar, who co-directed Syrian-American excavations on the site... They said Hamoukar was a flourishing urban center at a time when cities were thought to be relegated hundreds of miles to the south. The site is in the upper edges of the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys, near the Iraq border. Reichel said it may have been settled as long as 8,000 years ago. jaybird found this for you @ 16:20 in History, Civilization & Anthropology | | permalink
Link upon link: Deconstructing the great chain being Let me begin with a fact that has continued to surprise me for nearly twenty years. Many of the world’s great mystics, regardless of their cultural and intellectual traditions, have advocated versions of the Great Chain of Being. There are notable and important differences in the particular theories introduced, but the fact remains that the Great Chain provides the ontological foundation (or superstructure) for the great majority of mystics. Similarly, many theorists of the Great Chain of Being (if not all) explicitly articulate a commitment to the experiential reality and ontological significance of mystical experience. The connection between the Great Chain of Being and mysticism is indeed so pervasive and runs so deep that Huston Smith has suggested that these two positions are fundamentally identical. jaybird found this for you @ 12:18 in Spirituality, Religion & Mythos | | permalink
You Are What You Think: How You Use Your Brain May Determine How Healthy or Unhealthy It Is If we are what we eat, as the old saying goes, we may also be what we think. Or how we think, as well as how much we think. One treatment for some of our mental ills may well lie in the practice of meditation, an awareness of sensations, feelings and state of mind. The latest evidence comes from an impressive group of researchers from some of the leading institutions in the world who have found that a serious effort at meditation can physically change the brain, leading to reduced stress, better mental focus, and possibly fewer effects from aging. "The structure of the brain is very complex and it is constantly changing," says Sara Lazar, a psychiatrist and research scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University. "It is well documented that around the age of 20 to 25 the whole front of the brain starts to get thinner with age, and other parts of the brain continue to grow, and all sorts of things are happening, all of the time." jaybird found this for you @ 08:10 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
Working the board tonight 564-thumb.jpg)
It's concert season. I've done several shows and have a few more coming, which is good, because it's very predictable income. And, most of the time, really, really fun too. Moblogging is posting from a cellphone or other wireless device- if a picture, it's taken from the phone. jaybird found this for you @ 19:14 in Live from the road... | | permalink
That old curse again "May you live in interesting times." Yeah, got that. Check. Filed and considered. I'm in those times, eyeball deep in them. My job ended a little sooner than I anticipated (I'd planned on leaving mid-January), with more than a little drama and some unplanned financial distress thrown in the mix. My last day is Monday, and this is in thanks to someone poking a stick in a hornet's nest without a hint of the potential implications for the agency, let alone jobs already at stake. What's been done can't be undone, and as my friend Jen says, I was given a push to get out of my comfort zone since I seemed to be getting too comfortable there. So be it. This has resulted in a bit of a renewed depression thing, but I'm taking measures to endure what may be harder times ahead. The "holidays" exacerbate my already trigger-happy lows, and I'm looking for methods which eclipse simple self-preservation and bring me to renewal through the struggle. And while I'm not grovelling for anything, your thoughts are always appreciated. Amid these pains, there have been the pleasures of watching the cats play, the mysteries of weather, and the hardening of the Earth in preparation for the dark, severe cold ahead. All these things are good, and are in good time. They assure me that I am indeed capable of feeling, and therefore that I live, despite the lack of pleasant stimuli in Reality. So, I know that I will and must persist, and that I will only grow while foraging uphill for my next bounty, or for a nook to shelter me as the storms of winter brew. I know I'll make it, and I thank you, dear reader, for your patience and support. jaybird found this for you @ 16:03 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Happy Friday: High Owl Hides Out In Christmas Tree 
O RLY? YA RLY? NO WAI! A bird with a buzz found in a Florida family's Christmas tree is getting ready to go back into the wild. The little screech owl was found in the tree, which the family had kept for five days before deciding to decorate it. [more: "Just kind of laying there as happy as could be..."] jaybird found this for you @ 21:06 in High Weirdness | | permalink
Shocked scientists find tsunami legacy: a dead sea A "dead zone" devoid of life has been discovered at the epicentre of last year's tsunami four kilometres beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean. Scientists taking part in a worldwide marine survey made an 11-hour dive at the site five months after the disaster. They were shocked to find no sign of life around the epicentre, which opened up a 1000-metre chasm on the ocean floor. Instead, there was nothing but eerie emptiness. The powerful lights of the scientists' submersible vehicle, piercing through the darkness, showed no trace of anything living. A scientist working on the Census of Marine Life project, Ron O'Dor, of Dalhousie University in Canada, said: "You'd expect a site like this to be quickly recolonised, but that hasn't happened. It's unprecedented." jaybird found this for you @ 15:05 in Environment, Ecology & Nature | | permalink
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