Winter Skies for December 2007

The sun peers through the winter storm, the black sky, the fast-moving clouds

It shines that special light on the trees that makes you wince with pleasure at its beauty.

Buddhism and Existentialism - Unresolved Conflict

I like to explore what others say about Buddhist thought compared to existentialist thought. Since the both of these areas of practice and perspective have shaped my ideas since the late 60s, I continue to explore them in my everyday life.

Today I found an interesting comparison of Buddhism with existentialism - based on views of Nietzsche in the 20th century. Author Omar Moad says Nietzsche dissed Buddhim because he did not understand what was meant by nirvana.

Moad writes: By interpreting the Buddhist conception of inaction as a cessation of all action, Nietzsche presented Buddhism as an escapist, and 'weary' ideology. Rightly understood, however, the Buddhist ideal of kamma-niradha actually comes closer to Nietzsche's ideal - being, in his own words, action that is 'beyond good and evil', or outside the moral categories of a dogma. Now that it has become clearer that Buddhism does not involve a retreat simply from pain, and that it does not prescribe complete inertness, we must ask ourselves about the goal toward which its genuine recommendations are directed. Just click the link above to read more.

There are a bunch of people who express their ideas on this subject, and many want to prove why Buddhism is not anything like existentialism.

Another interesting discussion is about Zen compared to existentialism. I am not sure who authored this, but it is interesting: To the degree that all major religions focus on the problem involved with being human, they are all existential. Thus whether one sees humanity in a Western fashion as a sinner or in an eastern fashion as a sufferer, being human involves an existential dilemma. Using this definition Zen certainly is a form of religious existentialism.

Associating Zen too closely with western existentialism is also problematic because in western existentialism human existence is subjected to an inherent anxiety (angst). This is the result of being absolutely alienated from God by sin in religious existentialism or from the world by self-consciousness in atheistic existentialism. In the religious form this anxiety and its alienation can be greatly ameliorated by receiving God’s grace, but man remains a sinner. In the atheistic form no such amelioration is possible. Zen, especially Rinzai, also acknowledges a certain form of anxiety or alienation, but this is neither inherent nor absolute. This is because Zen teaches that through the process of enlightenment an individual can loss any sense of anxiety or alienation he may have and feel himself completely an innocent child of the universe.

Boredom: More than This

I was interested in this story in Scientific American, but it was too scientific and not philosophical enough for me - seeing as the angst I suffer over finding the right way to explore so much.

Most people blame boredom on the circumstances, but psychologists say this emotion is highly subjective and rooted in aspects of consciousness—and that levels of boredom vary among people. Some individuals are less—and others considerably more—likely to be bored than others.

Boredom is not a unified concept but may comprise several varieties, including the transient type that occurs while waiting in line and so-called existential boredom that accompanies a profound dissatisfaction with life.

Boredom is linked to both emotional factors and personality traits. Problems with attention also play a role, and thus techniques that improve a person’s ability to focus may diminish boredom.

How Stuff Works Covers Time Travel - You Do It Everyday

I am always interested in the concept of time travel and I came across a lesson on How Stuff Works - and it was so interesting so I am sharing the web site description but you can click and read a lot more!

"There may be no other concept that captures the imagination more than the idea of time travel - the ability to travel to any point in the past or future. What could be cooler? You could jump into your time machine to go back and see major events in history and talk to the people who were there! Who would you travel back to see? Julius Caesar? Leonardo da Vinci? Elvis? You could go back and meet yourself at an earlier age, go forward and see how you look in the future... It's these possibilities that have made time travel the subject of so many science fiction books and movies. It turns out that, in some sense, we are all time travelers. As you sit at your desk, doing nothing more than clicking your mouse, time is traveling around you. The future is constantly being transformed into the past with the present only lasting for a fleeting moment. Everything that you are doing right now is quickly moving into the past, which means we continue to move through time. Ideas of time travel have existed for centuries, but when Albert Einstein released his theory of special relativity, he laid the foundation for the theoretical possibility of time travel. As we all know, no one has successfully demonstrated time travel, but no one has been able to rule it out either."

His Holiness the Dalai Lama Talks Dharma

His Holiness the Dalai Lama spoke at Emory today, and I was pleased to be present. You can learn more about him and his teachings, here is an excerpt from his web site:

Question: About you being the incarnation of the bodhisattva of infinite compassion, Avalokiteshvara. How do you personally feel about this? Is it something you have an unequivocal view of one way or another?

Answer: It is difficult for me to say definitely. Unless I am engaged in a meditative effort, such as following my life back, breath by breath, I couldn’t say exactly. We believe that there are four types of rebirth. One is the common type wherein, a being is helpless to determine his or her rebirth, but only reincarnates in dependence on the nature of past actions. The opposite is that of an entirely enlightened Buddha, who simply manifests a physical form to help others. In this case, it is clear that the person is Buddha. A third is one who, due to past spiritual attainment, can choose, or at least influence, the place and situation of rebirth. The fourth is called a blessed manifestation. In this the person is blessed beyond his normal capacity to perform helpful functions, such as teaching religion. For this last type of birth, the person’s wishes in previous lives to help others must have been very strong. They obtain such empowerment. Though some seem more likely than others, I cannot definitely say which I am.

Question: About you being the incarnation of the bodhisattva of infinite compassion, Avalokiteshvara. How do you personally feel about this? Is it something you have an unequivocal view of one way or another?

Answer: It is difficult for me to say definitely. Unless I am engaged in a meditative effort, such as following my life back, breath by breath, I couldn’t say exactly. We believe that there are four types of rebirth. One is the common type wherein, a being is helpless to determine his or her rebirth, but only reincarnates in dependence on the nature of past actions. The opposite is that of an entirely enlightened Buddha, who simply manifests a physical form to help others. In this case, it is clear that the person is Buddha. A third is one who, due to past spiritual attainment, can choose, or at least influence, the place and situation of rebirth. The fourth is called a blessed manifestation. In this the person is blessed beyond his normal capacity to perform helpful functions, such as teaching religion. For this last type of birth, the person’s wishes in previous lives to help others must have been very strong. They obtain such empowerment. Though some seem more likely than others, I cannot definitely say which I am.

Amy Tan on Art

Amy Tan writes in her book Saving Fish From Drowning: But then I discovered art. I saw for the first time nature and pure feelings expressed in a form I could understand. A painting was a translation of the language of my heart. My emotions were all there - but in a painting, a sculpture. I went to a museum after museum, into the labyrinths of rooms and that of my own soul. And there they were - my feelings, and all of them natural, spontaneous, truthful and free. My heart cavorted within shapes and shadows and splashes, in patterns, repetitions, and abruptly ending lines. My soul shivered in tiny feathered strokes, one eyelash at a time.

I love this expression, and I relate to it as someone who loves art and someone who loves to create art.

Despair: Hermann Hesse Today

I was looking through one of my first journals today and found where I wrote an excerpt from Demian, by Hermann Hesse. ... "I nodded but was unable to make any comment. He began to bore me and I was startled that his evident need and despair made no deeper impression on me. My only feeling was: I can't help you." Hesse wrote this book in 1919 [under pen name Emil Sinclair] and I read it in the late 1960's... of course I read Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, Narcissus and Goldmund and others. Hesse was born in 1877 and published many works in the first half of the 20th century.

When I looked to see what Wikipedia says about Hesse, I found this interesting slice of how other artists related to his works, so I am including them in this blog today.

Herman Hesse in popular culture
The 1960/70s rock band Steppenwolf named themselves after Hesse's novel, partly due to lead singer John Kay's German origins.
The Volvos singer Heynes Arms wrote a song entitled "I Think I'm Herman Hesse". Like Hesse, Arms had German parentage and was born on July 2.
A portion of Herman Hesse's quote, "In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a savior is crucified," excerpted from his work Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth was included in the eighth episode of NBC's television drama, The Black Donnellys entitled "In Each One a Savior".
The British progressive rock band Yes was also influenced by the works of Hermann Hesse, especially on their 1972 album, Close to the Edge, considered by most critics and fans to be their masterpiece.
Providence, Rhode Island based slam poet Buddy Wakefield titled the first track of his 2006 album (Run On Anything), "Healing Herman Hesse".
Washington DC based electronic duo Thievery Corporation has a song on their album Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi (1997) titled "The Glass Bead Game".
The UK Indie-Rock band James makes reference to Hermann Hesse with their lyrics in the song "Crash" on the album Millionaires: "Cut the Hermann free from the Hesse".
A song by the English rock band Blur, "Strange News from Another Star", from their 1997 album Blur, takes its name from the title of Hesse's 1919 anthology of short stories, Strange News from Another Star.
The New York band Suncrown recorded the song Helen, which contains the lyric "I am Goldmouth lost deep in the forest", referring to the character from Narcissus and Goldmund.
The American performance artist Laurie Anderson mentions Herman Hesse and his grave in her spoken piece "Maria Teresa Teresa Maria" on the live album The Ugly One With The Jewels. In it she mentions the disparity between his gravestone and that of his wife, Nina.

Soulful poetry, sounds from Adam Duritz

I have always loved Counting Crows, and this song is soulful - you need to get this song!

GOOD TIME from the album HARD CANDY

by Adam Duritz

The gentleman caller in the blue suede shoes
He don't know what to do

He just wants to look good for you

So he rushes in to tell you what he did today

But he can't think of what to sayI think you listen anyway

He wants to have a good time just like everybody

He doesn't want to fall apart

You watch him as he stutters over what to say

It's just a little game you play

It's no easier for you some days

You wish you could tell him it'll be okay

But you feel a little shy these days

Cause everybody goes away

You just want to have a good time

Just like everybody else

You don't want to fall apart this time
I can look into your eyes and see the mess we're in

Well darling, if it's shit came out

Then I suppose that it's shit went in

Even though I couldn't say I've been the places that you've been

You know he made my heart real strong

Even if he made my head real thinI want to have a good time

Just like everybody

And I don't want to fall apart

I just want have a good time

Just like everybody else

And I don't want to fall apart this time

So would you please invite me in

I really love the red haired girls

I'm just another boy from texas

Come on and take a spin

I got a brand new set of wings

Words & Music by Adam F. Duritz Songwriter/Composer DURITZ ADAM FREDRIC PublishersEMI BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC JONES FALLS MUSIC

Learn from the East; The Dalai Lama

For Americans to understand Eastern thought, we have to tear away what our society and government agenda has taught. Our culture in the US is so different from the East, and based on centuries of behaviors taken from Europe and played out here. His Holiness The Dalai Lama can teach us much, and I have taken a few words from his web site.

"Under present conditions, there is definitely a growing need for human understanding and a sense of universal responsibility. In order to achieve such ideas, we must generate a good and kind heart, for without this, we can achieve neither universal happiness nor lasting world peace. We cannot create peace on paper. While advocating universal responsibility and universal brotherhood and sisterhood, the facts are that humanity is organized in separate entities in the form of national societies.

"Thus, in a realistic sense, I feel it is these societies that must act as the building-blocks for world peace. Attempts have been made in the past to create societies more just and equal. Institutions have been established with noble charters to combat anti-social forces. Unfortunately, such ideas have been cheated by selfishness.

"More than ever before, we witness today how ethics and noble principles are obscured by the shadow of self-interest, particularly in the political sphere. There is a school of thought that warns us to refrain from politics altogether, as politics has become synonymous with amorality. Politics devoid of ethics does not further human welfare, and life without morality reduces humans to the level of beasts.

"However, politics is not axiomatically 'dirty'. Rather, the instruments of our political culture have distorted the high ideals and noble concepts meant to further human welfare. Naturally, spiritual people express their concern about religious leaders 'messing' with politics, since they fear the contamination of religion by dirty politics."

Summer Days - Lexington 1961

On a lazy summer morning recently, I was lying in bed looking out of the second-floor window. Because there are windows at three sides and dozens of trees nearby, I always feel like I am in a treehouse. With the early morning light and some breeze, the leaves were waving and reflecting multiple colors of green. This experience, like other days I am lazing around, makes me float back to my childhood.

I moved from Cleveland to Lexington, Kentucky when I was 11 years old, during fifth grade. That summer, like any summer of my childhood actually, I spent it exploring every nook and cranny of the neighborhood, like an anthropologist collecting evidence of time before. We lived in a new neighborhood, with new houses, but it was bordered on two sides by Lex's old farms that still had barns and horses and plenty to figure out. I would climb over the fence and fearlessly walk up to horses that were much larger, ones that were grazing on the bluegreen grass in the field.

I really wanted a horse, but we were not going to get one, so I pretended these were mine. I had a brush and I spent time brushing their manes and petting their faces. Even though I was 11, evidently I could make something up and believe it, because I eventually had a horse of my own - called Golden Fire - and she had a golden mane and tail and was sleek and proud. I loved this horse until we moved to a new house two years later and I had to leave her behind.

During this summer with the horses, I also found an old treehouse in one of the fields. You had to angle up an old, scraggly oak to get to the platform, but it had walls and a big door and windows, and I claimed it. It must of been someone's in yesteryear, but now I was enjoying it like an adventurer who had conquered and stayed.

The lazy days of summer are only an instant away if you free yourself to enjoy them.

Good Light

Sun's intensity facinates

I was blogging about a science story today that discusses the sun's power. After looking at images of the sun, I found it amazingly beautiful. It has inspired a painting. In the meantime, here are some beautiful photographs that google has provided for us.

Time Warping and Staying on Course

I still re-read this Scientific American article on time: here is an excerpt and a link to the article.

Speed is one way to jump ahead in time. Gravity is another. In his general theory of relativity, Einstein predicted that gravity slows time. Clocks run a bit faster in the attic than in the basement, which is closer to the center of Earth and therefore deeper down in a gravitational field. Similarly, clocks run faster in space than on the ground. Once again the effect is minuscule, but it has been directly measured using accurate clocks. Indeed, these time-warping effects have to be taken into account in the Global Positioning System. If they weren't, sailors, taxi drivers and cruise missiles could find themselves many kilometers off course.

What about going backward? This is much more problematic. In 1948 a scientist produced a solution of Einstein's gravitational field equations that described a rotating universe. In this universe, an astronaut could travel through space so as to reach his own past. This comes about because of the way gravity affects light. The rotation of the universe would drag light (and thus the causal relations between objects) around with it, enabling a material object to travel in a closed loop in space that is also a closed loop in time, without at any stage exceeding the speed of light in the immediate neighborhood of the particle. The solution was shrugged aside as a mathematical curiosity--after all, observations show no sign that the universe as a whole is spinning. His result served nonetheless to demonstrate that going back in time was not forbidden by the theory of relativity. Indeed, Einstein confessed that he was troubled by the thought that his theory might permit travel into the past under some circumstances.

John :) - 2007

Pacific Ocean - 2007

Sarah at the Pacific Ocean - 2007

Looking at Time - Wikipedia Style

There are two distinct views on the meaning of time according to the wikipedia:

One view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe, a dimension in which events occur in sequence, and time itself is something that can be measured. This is the realist's view, to which Sir Isaac Newton subscribed.

A contrasting view is that time is part of the fundamental intellectual structure (together with space and number). In this structure, we sequence events, quantify the duration of events and the intervals between them, and compare the motions of objects. In this second view, time does not refer to any kind of entity that "flows", that objects "move through", or that is a "container" for events. This view is in the tradition of Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant in which time, rather than being an objective thing to be measured, is part of the mental measuring system.

The question, perhaps overly simplified and allowing for no middle ground, is thus: is time a "real thing" that is "all around us", or is it nothing more than a way of speaking about and measuring events?

Sky Blue Diamond

I want one of these!

Looking at Spacetime and Kant

I like to try to understand physics and look at how this intersects with what philosophers say.

Looking at the wikipedia today at the definition of spacetime:

In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single construct called the space-time continuum. Spacetime is usually interpreted with space being three-dimensional and time playing the role of the fourth dimension.

In general relativity, space-time is assumed to be smooth and continuous- and not just in the mathematical sense. In the theory of quantum mechanics, there is an inherent discreteness present in physics. In attempting to reconcile these two theories, it is sometimes postulated that spacetime should be quantized at the very smallest scales.

Okay - hang with me, I am getting there.

Spacetime has taken on meanings different from the four-dimensional one given above. For example, when drawing a graph of the distance a car has travelled for a certain time, it is natural to draw a two-dimensional spacetime diagram. As drawing four-dimensional spacetime diagrams is impossible, physicists often resort to drawing three-dimensional spacetime diagrams. For example, the Earth orbiting the Sun is a helical shape traced out in the direction of the time axis. Immanuel Kant argued that space having 3 dimensions followed from the inverse square law of universal gravitation. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, and the essay Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment? is well-known, too.

Kant asserted that, because of the limitations of reason, no one could really know if there is a God and an afterlife. But, then again, he added, no one could really know that there was not a God and an afterlife. For the sake of society and morality, Kant asserted, people are reasonably justified in believing in them, even though they could never know for sure whether they are real or not.

Kant gives two expositions of space and time: metaphysical and transcendental. The metaphysical expositions of space and time are concerned with clarifying how those intuitions are known independently of experience. The transcendental expositions attempt to show how the metaphysical conclusions might be applied to enrich our understanding.

The first metaphysical expositions unfold by describing what both space and time really are. Five main points:

Space and time are not in themselves general concepts; rather, they are intuitions. Space is not in itself a concept because one can imagine things external to his or her self, and this feat of the imagination supposes a prior understanding of space. Therefore the internal representation of space can't be drawn from experience by the acquaintance with external sensations and establishing relations between them; rather, experiences with the external are themselves impossible unless they presuppose the ability to understand space. Similarly, the perception of co-existence and succession could not occur without first having an understanding of time.

Space is a necessary representation that is the foundation of all external experiences. We can never imagine anything without space. Time is also a necessary representation, but in a sense that is more powerful, since it underlies every intuition whatsoever.

For space, this a priori necessity is the foundation of all geometrical principles and the possibility of their a priori construction. As for time, it is by the same a priori necessity that we may also find the possibility of philosophical principles concerning time and its axioms.

Neither space nor time are general concepts. In effect, we can't initially imagine anything but one, unitary space and, when we talk about many spaces, we mean that those sub-parts occupy part of the same, unique space. The same reasoning forces the same conclusion for time: different times are just part of the same time. Moreover, the fact that space and time are not concepts can be demonstrated in that space and time are necessary and universal conditions for appearance in general, and so, must be intuitions.

Finally, space and time are both infinite (though this is not strictly true, as he explains later in the 'Antinomy of Pure Reason'.)

Kant's aim was to move beyond the traditional dichotomy between rationalism and empiricism. The rationalists had tried to show that we can understand the world by careful use of reason; this guarantees the indubitability of our knowledge but leaves serious questions about its practical content. The empiricists, on the other hand, had argued that all of our knowledge must be firmly grounded in experience; practical content is thus secured, but it turns out that we can be certain of very little. Both approaches have failed, Kant supposed, because both are premised on the same mistaken assumption.

Progress in philosophy, according to Kant, requires that we frame the epistemological problem in an entirely different way. The crucial question is not how we can bring ourselves to understand the world, but how the world comes to be understood by us. Instead of trying, by reason or experience, to make our concepts match the nature of objects, Kant held, we must allow the structure of our concepts shape our experience of objects.

That's it for Kant today. Next: Kant and Buddhism. For some reading for now go to American Buddhist Perspective blog.

Swinging at Dennison Park - 1956

I lived on Sylvania Road in Cleveland Heights until I was 11. I had a gang of friends in the neighborhood, just like most kids everywhere. We would ride our bikes up and down the side walk, or roller skate with the metal skates that clanged along the concerte walk. We played hide-and-seek in neighbors' yards and kick-the-can in the street at night.

One of my favorite memories was on the weekend. My Dad, Rodger, would walk with me to Blue Stone Road and then up to Dennison Park. The only thing I needed in a park was a good swing, and they had some with very tall frames and long ropes to the seat - that meant you could go very high. My Dad would push me as high as he could and I would fly up to the sky. When he did an underdog and ran out from under my swing I felt a rush of adrenaline that gave me a thrill.

Thanks, Dad, for giving me your time at Dennison Park, I think of you and our time together often - it is one of my favorite memories.

A Sky for Memorial Day

I like this sky - it looks like a painting!

Is This Haiku? Sky Stories

I wanted to see if others were writing poetry about the sky - here is something I found from Pleiones universe [now Pleiades]:

I should not have waited. It would have been better To have slept and dreamed, Than to have watched night pass, And this slow moon sink.
- Lady Akazome Emon
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Though the purity Of the moonlight has silenced Both nightingale and Cricket, the cuckoo alone Sings all the white night.
- Anonymous
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The purity of the moonlight, Falling out of the immense sky, Is so great that it freezes The water touched by its rays.
- Anonymous
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I go out of the darkness Onto a road of darkness Lit only by the far off Moon on the edge of the mountains.
- Izumi
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Someone passes, And while I wonder If it is he, The midnight moon Is covered with clouds.
- Lady Murasaki Shikibu
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This is not the moon, Nor is this the spring, Of other springs, And I alone Am still the same.
- Ariwara No Narihira
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Involuntary, I may live on In the passing world, Never forgetting This midnight moon.
- The Emperor Sanjó
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Since I left her, Frigid as the setting moon, There is nothing I loathe As much as the light Of dawn on the clouds.
- Mibu No Tadamine
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When I see the first New moon, faint in the twilight, I think of the moth eyebrows Of a girl I saw only once.
- Yakamochi
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A wild sea- In the distance, Over Sado, The Milky Way.
- Bashó
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The cicada sings In the rotten willow. Antares, the fire star, Rolls in the west.
- Anonymous

And We Are Peaceful

Spring still,
The morning mist hangs low,

Nearly to the ground
As the day sorts out its desires.

The breeze picks up and

Waves the fresh, new lime leaves

Across the yard

With fragrances mixing

Honeysuckle and earth.

And skin tingling with

The day's promises.

I am ever so grateful

As the simplicity of the

Moment enraptures

And I smile away the hours.

Time for deciding

What goes on the canvas next

As my mind's eye views

A spot, a place

Another slice of what is

Real, yet only where finger tips

Meet the brush, and touches

The place where I hope

To cast - something, not sure.

Mac and Dori dance circles

Around my feet

And race down the stone steps

Into the green and inviting

Landscape, awaiting our pleasures.

Now it is so quiet,

The day is turning to night

As the sky grays and the air slows

And we are resting

And we are peaceful.

Genius: Science, Art, and Creativity

Today I am looking at the life of Isaac Newton, as I saw a program on his life and was reminded what a remarkable intellect he had, what a genious he was.

So something about Newton:

Newton's greatest achievement was his work in physics and celestial mechanics, which culminated in the theory of universal gravitation. By 1666 Newton had early versions of his three laws of motion. He had also discovered the law giving the centrifugal force on a body moving uniformly in a circular path. Newton explained a wide range of previously unrelated phenomena: the eccentric orbits of comets, the tides and their variations, the precession of the Earth's axis, and motion of the Moon as perturbed by the gravity of the Sun.

Newton practiced alchemy with a passion. Though he wrote over a million words on the subject, after his death in 1727, the Royal Society deemed that they were not fit to be printed. The papers were rediscovered in the middle of the twentieth century and most scholars now concede that Newton was first an foremost an alchemist. It is also becoming obvious that the inspiration for Newton's laws of light and theory of gravity came from his alchemical work.

As a practicing alchemist, Newton spent days locked up in his laboratory. Perhaps that explains one of the oddest things about his life. At the height of his career, instead of accepting a professorship at Cambridge, he was appointed Director of the Mint with the responsibility of securing and accounting for England's repository of gold.

For the "secret writings" made it clear that during the crucial part of Newton's scientific career - the two decades between his discovery of the law of gravity and the publication of his masterwork, the "Principia Mathematica" - his consuming passion was alchemy. Bunkered in his solitary live-in lab at the edge of the fens near Cambridge, Newton indulged in occult literature and strove to cook up the legendary "philosopher's stone" that would convert base metals into gold.

And a penchant for the occult was not Newton's only quirk. He is reported to have laughed just once in his life-when someone asked him what use he saw in Euclid. He took to decorating his rooms in crimson. He stuck a knife behind his eyeball to induce optical effects, nearly blinding himself. He was a Catholic-hating Puritan who secretly subscribed to the Arian heresy, which denied the divinity of Christ.

I am facinated by genius and insanity. Edgar Allen Poe wrote: "Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence--whether much that is glorious whether all that is profound - does not spring from disease of thought--from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night."

William James wrote: "When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries. Such men do not remain mere critics and understanders with their intellect. Their ideas posses them, they inflict them, for better or worse, upon their companions of their age"

Edvard Munch wrote: "I want to keep those sufferings." He said that emotional torments "are part of me and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and it would destroy my art."

That's all for today - but a topic to explore more!

Camus in 2007 - A Writer

Some more observations on Albert Camus' life:

Camus earned his dissertation by conducting a study of the influence of Plotinus and neo-Platonism on the thought and writings of St. Augustine. Just an observation - the study of philosophy provides us with a thread from the start of time. Camus started his observations of life's meaning by studying the early philosophers.

But as his career started and continued, he always considered himself a writer. After suffering TB most of his life and living a political activist life, he died at age 47 in a car accident.

According to historians, "it is also worth noting that at no time in his career did Camus ever describe himself as a deep thinker or lay claim to the title of philosopher. Instead, he nearly always referred to himself simply, yet proudly, as un ecrivain – a writer.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy continues: "This is an important fact to keep in mind when assessing his place in intellectual history and in twentieth-century philosophy. For by no means does he qualify as a system-builder or theorist or even as a disciplined thinker. He was instead a sort of all-purpose critic and modern-day philosophe: a debunker of mythologies, a critic of fraud and superstition, an enemy of terror, a voice of reason and compassion, and an outspoken defender of freedom – all in all a figure very much in the Enlightenment tradition of Voltaire and Diderot."

"For this reason, in assessing Camus’ career and work, it may be best simply to take him at his own word and characterize him first and foremost as a writer – advisedly attaching the epithet philosophical for sharper accuracy and definition."

As you know, many writers contemplate life's conditions without devoting years to training in the discipline of philosophy - but to give us insights into its meaning - like Camus has for us.

Reflections on a Winter Day - 1957

Today I decided to reflect on a childhood experience - just to experience the memory.

It is winter of 1957, and I am in the second grade at Noble Road Elementary School in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Most days I would walk to and from school over snowy sidewalks along side mountains of snow piled by the side of the road from the snowscraper trucks.

One of my favorite things to do was to stop at the corner store by the school each afternoon after school. This year I would take pennies my Mom, Susie Goodwin, had given me to use in the gumball machine, and if you got a marble instead the clerk would give you a rabbit's foot.

All year I had been collecting, and had a string of them in bright colors - red, blue, yellow, and green. They were different sizes and they had soft fur, and I like to rub them.

I would take them to school and put them in my desk that had a top and closed. Now and then I would put my hand in and rub them. One day, my teacher warned me not to play with my rabbits' feet, but I must have continued and she took them away. She said she would give them back at the end of the week, but when the time finally came, she could not find them.

I was extremely upset and hated my teacher for it. My most prized possession was taken and my heart was broken to lose it.

It's funny how this kind of thing makes an impression that lasts a lifetime. I have loved rabbit's feet ever since and kept a collection of sorts in a box to admire when I feel like it now.

Camus in 2007 - His Ideas, His Philosophy

Why are writer Albert Camus' thoughts and ideas important to our times? Let's explore his work in a series.

I was prompted to do this when I saw a new book out on Camus -

David CARROLL
Albert Camus, the Algerian. Colonialism, Terrorism, Justice
New York, Columbia University Press
2007, 256 pp. ISBN : 978-0-231-14086-7

Url de référence : http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/index.html

"In this original reading of Albert Camus' novels, short stories, and political essays, David Carroll concentrates on Camus' conflicted relationship with his Algerian background and finds important critical insights into questions of justice, the effects of colonial oppression, and the deadly cycle of terrorism and counterterrorism that characterized the Algerian War and continues to surface in the devastation of postcolonial wars today."

The statement above comes from a Frenchman's blog where he says he wants to disucss literature and the Internet:

Le projet et l'équipe Qu'est-ce que Fabula?
Fabula est une association de chercheurs (régime loi de 1901 des associations à but non lucratif) s'intéressant à la théorie littéraire en général et à la question de la fiction en particulier, ayant choisi de fonctionner grâce à un site Internet et d'expérimenter les possibilités offertes par ce média. A cette mission de recherche s'ajoute une mission de diffusion d'information, le site Fabula étant mis à la disposition de tous les chercheurs de langue française, quel que soit leur champ de recherche. Pour en savoir plus sur nos objectifs scientifiques, vous pouvez consulter cette page.

Paintings - April 9, 2007

Conrad Lisco Painting - April 7, 2007

Reflections on a Summer Day - 1955

Today I decided to reflect on a childhood experience - just to enjoy the memory.

It is the summer of 1955 in Cleveland and today is the Universal Engraving employee picnic. My Dad, Rodger Goodwin, is a four-color engraver for the company. Today he has brought my Mom, Sue, and sister, Deedie, and me to the picnic near Lake Erie.

The day is just about as perfect as it can get with a clear, flat summer cerulean, and a breeze bringing the countryside fresh-mown grass our way. I am floating around from one activity to the next looking for fun and adventure.

The next game I happen upon is for children my age - essentially the goal is to kick your shoe as far as you can and you win a watch. I line up with the others to prepare for the contest. I have a red leather sandal with a buckle, so I unfasten it. I am excited, my heart is racing with the prospects of winning the contest.

When the man at the end tells us to kick our shoes I kick as hard as I can. My shoe seems to fly forward and I think it was the farthest out, but the man says I was only second and someone else won the watch.

I guess some kids would shake it off, but I wanted to win and I wanted that watch.

Next thing I realize is that I am sobbing and my caring Dad sweeps me up and comforts me in his arms. I know he is tall because I always seem far off the ground when he holds me. His long arms around me make me feel better as I wipe my tears on his shirt collar.

Dad tells me not to worry, like he always does when something happens to upset me or I suffer one of my many scuffs on the playground of childhood.

Thanks, Dad.

Our Memories, Past Lives and Fiction

I like to check out Scientific American every week - it has the most interesting and innovative coverage of science and medicine, and the best writing. I decided to include it in WendSight today, since it really crosses over to science as well as a study of time.

Today's list of stories includes one on memories, so I have pulled the first of it and you can read the whole story at Scientific American.

Says SciAm: Do you sometimes have memories of a mysterious past life? Recall odd experiences such as being abducted by aliens? Wonder where these memories come from and if, in fact, you were really once whisked off in a flying saucer by ETs?Seems the answer may be simpler than you think—or remember. A new study shows that people with memories of past lives are more likely than others to misremember the source of any given piece of information.

Study author Maarten Peters of Maastricht University in the Netherlands tested patients of "reincarnation therapists," who use hypnosis to help their patients remember "past lives," which the clients believe are at the root of their current problems.

"Once familiarity of an event is achieved, this can relatively easily be converted into a belief that the event did take place," Peters says. "A next possible step is that individuals interpret their thoughts and fantasies about the fictitious event as real memories."

Happiness and the Work it Requires

This blog is about time and beauty and skies and philosophy and time. I think talking about happiness fits into this somewhere, so I am looking at an article in Scientific American today - now that scientists are busy trying to help people figure out happiness, and at least be realistic about what it is.

Sorry if you don't like happy faces, but I really do.

Marina Krakovsky writes about Sonja Lyubomirsky and her work. She had to lay some groundwork before she could go into the lab. A while back, happiness was a fuzzy, unscientific topic, Lyubomirsky says.

Although no instrument yet exists for giving perfectly valid, reliable and precise readings of someone's happiness from session to session, Lyubomirsky has brought scientific rigor to the study of happiness.

From her firm belief that it is each person's self-reported happiness that matters, she developed a four-question Subjective Happiness Scale.

Lyubomirsky's working definition of happiness -"a joyful, contented life"- gets at both the feelings and judgments necessary for overall happiness.

Her aim is not merely to confirm the strategies' effectiveness but to gain insights into how happiness works. For example, conventional wisdom suggests keeping a daily gratitude journal. But one study revealed that those who had been assigned to do that ended up less happy than those who had to count their blessings only once a week. Lyubomirsky therefore confirmed her hunch that timing is important.

The biggest factor may be getting over the idea that happiness is fixed - and realizing that sustained effort can boost it. She says that a lot of people don't apply the notion of effort to their emotional lives but the effort it takes is enormous.

Stokely Carmichael - A Personal Story of Him

The Wikipedia says:

Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael (June 29, 1941 – November 15, 1998), also known as Kwame Ture, was a Trinidadian-American black activist active in the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement. He rose to prominence first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and later as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party. Initially an integrationist, Carmichael later became affiliated with black nationalist and Pan-Africanist movements.

Flash back to 1979. Sarah was a reporter for the FAMUAN, a student newspaper at Florida A&M University, while a student in journalism there. As it turns out, Kwame Ture [Charmichael's new name] came to FAMU to present his ideas on black nationalism and the Pan-Africanist movement. I happened to be the reporter assigned to the story, so when Ture made it to Tallahassee, I met him at his hotel room for the interview. He may have been suprised to see a white person turn out from a historically black college where he had come to spread his ideas and gain recruits. He was polite, talked about his ideas and I wrote down what he said. He must have kept it simple, even though I knew he was dissing whites and espousing why blacks would be better off in Africa.

Later that evening, Ture presented to an audience of 200 students [so few showed up]. His words were more radical that evening, but the audience was losing interest fast. The beliefs of the 60s were just not making it in 1979 - most of the young students at FAMU were there to take advantage of developing careers and the future middle class life promised to those with a college degree. This was a tough sell for Ture.

The funny thing about the whole evening, I think I was the most radicalized person in the room, as I was a student of the 60s and returning to school for a journalism degree at age 28. I knew Stokely Charmichael of the 60s and he had been a hero to many of us in the civil rights and antiwar movement and he was with SNCC. Now the irony - Ture must have given up on change in America, left behind the many whites that had supported the movement he supported, and taken his beliefs to a desire to live among only blacks, in Africa.

What happened to Ture after this? In 1967, Carmichael stepped down as chairman of SNCC and was replaced by H. Rap Brown. He attempted to clarify his politics by writing the book Black Power (1967) with Charles V. Hamilton and became a strong critic of the Vietnam War. He traveled to North Vietnam, China, and Cuba. As a part of the ultimately unsuccessful 1968 attempt at merging the Black Panthers and SNCC, Carmichael was made an honorary prime minister of the Black Panthers.

However Carmichael soon began to distance himself from the Panthers and in 1969, he and his then-wife, the South African singer Miriam Makeba, moved to Guinea-Conakry where he became an aide to Guinean prime minister Ahmed Sékou Touré and the student of exiled Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah.

He continued to travel, write, and speak out in support of international leftist movements and in 1971 collected his work in a second book Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism. This book expounds an explicitly socialist, Pan-African vision, which he seemingly retained for the rest of his life.

Ultimately settling in Guinea, in 1978 he changed his name to Kwame Ture to honor African leaders Nkrumah and Touré. He died of prostate cancer at the age of 57 in Conakry, Guinea.

Carmichael is credited for coining the phrase institutional racism. Institutional racism (or structural racism or systemic racism) is a form of racism that occurs in institutions such as public bodies and corporations, including universities. In the late 1960s he defined the term as "the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin".

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson gave a speech celebrating Ture's life, stating: "He was one of our generation who was determined to give his life to transforming America and Africa. He was committed to ending racial apartheid in our country. He helped to bring those walls down".

Thinking fast - tell me more

Thin-slicing, says Malcolm Gladwell in Blink, is not an exotic gift. It is a central part of what it means to be human. We thin-slice whenever we meet a new person or have to make sense of something quickly or encounter a novel situation. We thin-slice because we have to, and we come to rely on that ability because there are lots of hidden fists out there, lots of situations where careful attention to the details of a very thin slice, even for no more than a second or two, can tell us an awful lot.

Blueberry Skins

Another squall
Smashing the mimosa
Against the wall,
Fronds closed in surrender
To the violent
Splendor
Watching another lead sky
Relieve its angry colors
Into a silver
Dispassionate afternoon,
The air rests close
Aqueous and clinging,
Slick, cool grapes
And blueberry skins
Sweet, bitter
Taste...
Another
Sweet, bitter day.

How I Met John - May 3, 1978

Thinking back - today John and I planned our June 8 anniversary with a trip to San Francisco to celebrate our 27th.

So I decided to tell you a tale of how John Lisco and Sarah Goodwin met.

On a nice spring evening in Lexington, Kentucky, I went out to dinner with a friend and we decided to go to Postlewaite's to hear The Hatfield Clan play some gritty jazz and blues. The pianist was my piano teacher, Lee, so I loved to come and listen to him play. It was tequila night, and things were hopping.

We found a table near the band and sat down with a drink to listen. I noticed a handsome guy across the room, with long dark wavy hair, an earing dangling, and faded jeans and vest. When the band took a break, I noticed Lee walked over to the handsome stranger to say hello. A few minutes later he made his way to my table to say hi, and I asked him who this guy was!

Turns out his name was John Lisco. I told him I wanted to meet him, and he said I should introduce myself. Well, I was a little concerned about walking right over to him, besides there was a woman on either side of him, and maybe one woman was a date?

My friend kept saying "go do it, go do it," so I went to the bar, bought a tequila sunrise and walked over to this person - John Lisco. I handed him the drink, told him my name was Sarah, and he could come over to talk if he wanted to. I then did a 180 to walk away as fast as I could and I heard his voice, "wait, don't go" and he touched my arm and asked me to stay.

The rest is history - 29 years worth of happy history.

Wired: time's illusion

Albert Einstein's conception of unified spacetime works better on graph paper than in th real world, says Lee Smolin in Wired. Time isn't like those other dimensions - for one thing, we move only one way within it. He says, "What's needed is not to make the notion of time and general relativity work or go back to the notion of absolute time, but to invent something radically new." Wired editors say somebody is going to get it right eventually, but it will just take time.

Their intro says Plato argued that time is constant-it's life that's the illusion. Galileo shrugged over the philosophy of time and figured out how to plot it on a graph so he could get on with the important physics, says Wired. Einstein said that time is just another dimension, a fourth one to go along with the up-down, side-side, forward-back we move through every day.

Philosophers, protesters and Blind Faith

I was thinking of the group Blind Faith today - from 1968 when I was a freshman at Western Kentucky University. The next couple of years this music played at late-night gatherings of anti-war protesters, philosophers, poets, and good-time, live-in-the-moment friends.

Here are the lyrics from my favorite song - it can bring back all feelings of those important days:

Can't Find My Way Home
by Steve Winwood

Come down off your throne and leave your body alone.
Somebody must change.
You are the reason I've been waiting so long.
Somebody holds the key.
But I'm near the end and I just ain't got the time
And I'm wasted and I can't find my way home.
Come down on your own and leave your body alone.
Somebody must change.
You are the reason I've been waiting all these years.
Somebody holds the key.
But I can't find my way home.
But I can't find my way home.
But I can't find my way home.
But I can't find my way home.
Still I can't find my way home,
And I ain't done nothing wrong,
But I can't find my way home.

Lipstick Pink Day

Lipstick pink
Starts the day
One uncertain of
Sky color moods
With gray sky cover
A sheer over periwinkle
Striated white
Overlays the day.

Jeff Hawkins on creativity

Revolutionary thinker and expert on artificial intelligence Jeff Hawkins, in his book On Intelligence, says AI developers must better understand what intelligence is - with memory that stores experiences that reflects the true structure of the world, remembering sequences of events and the relationships. He says memory-prediction systems form the basis of intelligence.

I am reading the pages on "Can you train yourself to be more creative?" - I hope he says yes!

He does: "Yes, most definetly. First you need to assume up front that there is an answer to what you are trying to solve. People give up too easily..... Second, you need to let your mind wander. You need to give your brain time and space to discover the solution....Try taking the parts of your problem and rearranging them in different ways-literally and figuratively.... "

Hawkins says to be careful, "The brain is an organ that builds models and makes creative predictions, but its models and predictions can as easily be specious as valid. Our brains are always looking at patterns and making analogies. If correct correlations cannot be found, the brain is more than happy to accept false ones."

I find this interesting to ponder, really, to try to understand the real from the unreal!

Crown of Thorns

Crown of thorns
Sitting on top
Of the world
Juxtaposed with the soft
September light
Reflecting goodness
Off the sky onto this day
In my world.