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Friday, December 30, 2011

Oh, it's all right

The day started beautifully.  I went out to eat at a restaurant I had never been to before for breakfast.  It was good, but it was overbilled in its recommendation to me.  Next came working some on projects I had going.  That went well enough, but not perfectly.  For the day I was up on currency trading, but it was down for the week as a whole (but the month was in the positive column).  On other projects, I made about 50% progress on them.  Tonight I went to a movie.  I watched the entire film - almost.  With about 5 minutes to go, the picture disappeared from the screen.  It was a mystery movie, so the last 5 minutes were important to the ending of the movie.  The explanation by the manager was that the end had been erased from the memory chip.  We all got free passes for that happening... but still.  My aunt called out of the blue after I returned home.  She wanted to know how my day went.  I told her it was all right.

Today's description is so much like life...  trade offs, dissatisfaction, work getting accomplished but not all of it, anticipation of a good time, actual good moments, disappointing moments.  All in all it's all right, I guess.  It seems, though, there should be more.  Something's missing... I figure that is what 2012 might be for.

Shift in the natural order

The brain has a function by which it takes information, particularly from the past, and reduces it to the gist of what was said or what happened.  This is proven in a number of different studies.  So, what does it mean when a thought doesn't ever get reduced to its gist?  It means that what was said and what happened get replayed so often that they are reinforced to the point that reduction is virtually impossible.  It means that the emotions involved in the event are held intact.  It means that storage networks connecting what was said and what occurred have top priority of all networks.  It means that, in the world where events occurring a long time ago normally overshadow recently occurring events, a shift of the natural order has occurred.  Simply, it means the thoughts are the most treasured in the mind.

My mind contains just such treasured places, cherished words, and closely held happenings.  They are irreducible... sacred... highly prized... eternal!



Wednesday, December 28, 2011

The weather today

Today was a little cool to be outside.  I was waiting on my daughter for several minutes while she had to make a brief stop in a shaded area.  However, I had to move to the sun to wait on her.  It was warm and made the whole environment around me comfortable.  After those several minutes, I had to go back into the shade where it was cool and uncomfortable since I had not exactly dressed for the cool weather.

Warmth in life is like that.  Much of it catches you in an environment you haven't exactly dressed for.  But, there are those pockets of warmth, those events that allow you to enjoy life, that someone who makes the whole environment warm and worth living.

But today it was a little cool to be outside.

Friday, December 23, 2011

It is proper

In the midst of busy-ness it's always proper to stop and award honor to whom honor is due.  Such a beautiful person... for all kinds of reasons... making sure your son is a champion among peers and your daughter is a princess among all other daughters in the world... giving generously of your talents... sharing the smile that makes others' day... performing flawlessly and efficiently on a hectic, draining job... ensuring that your friends receive encouragement.  Happy Birthday!!... to an effervescent, prescient, dazzling, and grand person!!!

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Enduring embers


My dad did a lot of visiting to people who needed help with their mental states.  He also did a lot of speaking.  He told a story in his speeches of a visit he made to a person who had not visited the group he spoke to in a while.  He sat by the fireplace in which a fire burned while they talked.  Finally, when the fire died down, he took the poker, separated an ember from the rest of the glowing coals, and watched it die out.  He made the point that the person need not stay away too long or he was in danger of having the ember's life.

While that story does make a good point, there is another point about embers, one that tells a different and polar opposite story.  Heat and oxygen keep embers alive.  Blowing on an ember provides its needed oxygen, thereby fueling and heating it, keeping the ember alive... indefinitely... until the ember completely burns itself into ash.  My heart holds such an ember.  Not the kind that is separated from the fire and soon dies, but the kind that lives, continuing to glow and burn until it turns to ash someday in the very distant future.  The oxygen of life's most pleasant moments gently blow over this ember, fueling its life... producing an eternal flame... closely guarded from ever being extinguished... always replenished by the breeze of the most enjoyable minutes life has offered.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

SD^...n

Right now I am working on a project requiring a touch of statistical analysis - the standard deviation.  It's all about the bell curve, norms, and the extremes that don't fit inside of norms.  The extreme ends are graduated outside the norms, the standard.  So the first gradation out is standard deviation 1.  It's possible to have a number of standard deviations if the data set has a lot of numbers over a considerable spread.  But, I am used to dealing with a smaller set of numbers in a distribution, thus one or two standard deviations to catch anomalies in the way people word their thoughts.

It's beautiful to work with SDs.  It shows where the worst of the worst is, and conversely, the best of the best.  Of course, I am always interested in the best of the best end of the curve.  It's for one who finishes well, particularly when the journey has been hard and exhausting.  And, that is the measure that my heart uses... the anomaly... space for the distinguished one no matter how many are in the distribution (...n).  SD^...n.  The set of a single, heavenly element.


Sunday, December 11, 2011

Flashes of life worth living

Reflection helps us see ourselves and our surroundings.  That's why I like reflecting pools.  They're the physical representation of a worthwhile habit.  Reflecting helps us monitor our current status and highlight what works in our lives and what the source of vitality for life is.  Living in the past really doesn't lead to progress.  Very few want to live a stale, status quo life.  But valuing moments that have made life worth living are worth their weight in gold.  Flashes of those moments keep me centered and keep my conscious direction on the path I want life to occur on... because... they allow hope, happiness, and faith.... And because... they allow me to know where dots are connected and remind me to always cherish the one who is my source of life.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Sure, surer, surest

I had a professor once who would always stop when he was teaching about the stories of the ancient world and ask, "What is right? What is good?  What is true?"  Then he would apply the story to the modern world and ask the same three questions.  Many times the answer changed.  His point was to show that right and good and true were terms with relative meanings, depending on era and issue, or sometimes just era.  As life plays out, those are the three questions that have to be satisfied to live fully.  Even from one decade to another in my own life, the answer to those 3 questions change sometimes.  The trick is to align the 3 questions with the same answer.  That leads to being surer about matters.  Even then, the alignment can have a different answer when gauged just a few years apart.  Nevertheless, I think being sure just hinges on charting the direction with a satisfactory sense of right, good, and true and working to walk the path charted.  I have done this.  I am the surest I  have ever been.

Wednesday, December 07, 2011

Treasures in thought (3)

In English and in a couple of the Romance languages and in Greek, the idea of the number of 3 represents truth and completeness.  This idea has popped up in books, so it is not just an individual observation.  I first came across this idea in 1978 in a book called Three Times and It's True.  In the 1990s, I encountered it again, this time in a book by a linguist who wrote about the legal application of having someone testify about matters in groups of three so the jury would gain a sense of completeness and truth.

In that vein, I want to say that people comment about my sleeping habits.  Some people say I never sleep.  Others say I don't seem to require much sleep.  But, I would like to say that that is a recent phenomenon for me.  I have always liked to sleep.  I require 7 hours and 20 minutes to feel rested.  I seldom get that much during the week, but the weekends are usually kind enough for me to catch up on the average hours for rest.  But it is also true that over the last 2 years, I have slept much less than the 7 hours and 20 minutes I need.  That's because of a striving in my mind.  I have many wonderful, colorful, beautiful, pleasant, desirable, and bright thoughts that are captured in my mind which lie unmaterialized.  Nevertheless, these thoughts bring great happiness, so I lie awake sorting through these wondrous images or write late at night because the happiness of these golden thoughts creates energy for the next day.  There will be a day when sleep will be deep, pleasurable, and long.  It's just not now.  In the meantime, I have an entire treasure trove of scenes to flash across the screen of my mind's eye that eventually leads to sleep (with a smile on my face, I might add).  This treasure trove gives me the energy to face the next day.  I know I have written about this treasure of sparkling times a 3rd time.  But, that makes it the immutable truth.

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Splendor of Heaven

The function of light is to disspell darkness.  It does so by piercing through it.  It displaces the darkness and takes over the space darkness once occupied.  As a result, darkness is denser along the edges of the light that has displaced it, making the contrast greater.  The Latin idea for this phenomenon was in the word "splendere" from which we derive splendor.


I find that principle to be true.  I have areas of darkness in my life that are dense along the edge where the light shines through it.  The thing about light is that it is celestial.  So are those special human beings that help us overcome our darknesses.  They are heavenly too.  We all have them and are grateful for them.  And, we all have one who shines more brilliantly than the others for us.  For me, that one is the Splendor of Heaven... and how totally beautiful, colorful that person's refracted light in my life is.

Sunday, December 04, 2011

2014: a milestone year

My nephew and his wife recently had a child, so I went to see them in the hospital.  During the course of the conversation, my nephew mentioned that he had a friend with a two-year-old girl.  The girl was given a magazine to look through while my nephew conversed with the girl's father.  But, the little girl didn't know how to turn the pages of the magazine.  She was trying to swipe the page with her forefinger to get it to change.  Just love that story.

I have been on record since the year 2000 as saying that reading and writing were an endangered activity.  At that time, I thought that the year 2017 would be the end of a technological war in which books and  reading and writing would become rare.  If holographic devices come out by the year 2014, then the prediction will be true.

In August, a niece on the other side of my family reported that her two-year old figured out how to circumvent the password she had put on her iphone and played Angry Birds.  The school district in Frisco, Texas, was reported on the news as teaching their 2nd graders keyboarding instead of printing.  Advertisements on TV and news programs continue the trend to use more and more iconic/graphic controls instead of words to control their stream of information.  A current ipad2 commercial shows a basketball coach using the ipad2 to draw a play for his team during a timeout.  Another shows a complete fireplace built out of tablets, all showing fire dancing in a fireplace, one on each screen.  Cars now have displays that control everything in the car from phone to temperature, not counting the other features such as the GPS.  Although not all linguists agree, some think that learning java script is the same as learning a language.  One school even offers Java to fulfill the language requirement.

Humans will always need to communicate.  But the format of that exchange of ideas will change.  Writing will no longer record those exchanges.  Reading that writing will be replaced with eyes recognizing iconic/graphic symbols.  Already reading patterns for web pages have changed children's reading pattern from the Z pattern to the F pattern because web pages use left navigation to move around a page and children learn to scan words rather than read them in order to get quick and sketchy information.  That could be the real reason children find it painful to read books.

I look forward to 2014.  It will be a landmark year in the turn in the battle for how communication will go for the 25 years following it.  There is a war being waged right now by those of the old guard who don't think the replacement for reading and writing is adequate.  In fact, iconic/graphic scanning is a quantum leap ahead of the old way of communicating and those of the avantgarde will win this war in every field from technology to business, from music to education.  Children 4 and under today will not have to learn the scrawls and runes of communicating for they will have a speedier, much more efficient way of expressing themselves.  If social media teaches us anything, it is that people love their pictures and will tell their stories in that manner.

I will love the change.  I will not be attending the funerals of those who decide to die first in keeping ancient scripts alive.  The children I am responsible for will be ready to enter the new world.

Flood of sudden light



                            
                   Where once there was hope, now there is faith.

Saturday, December 03, 2011

Ever after

I used to read The Frog Prince to my daughter when she was in her pre-school years.

She would listen raptly.  I don't think I was reading it for her to take notice that she might meet a guy that wasn't good looking, that if she would endure with him, then she would have the prince of her dreams.  Well, even if I had read it for that reason, it didn't work.  Marrying during adolescence prohibits a young girl to see anything but the outside.  But the Frog Prince is not about just masking appearance; it has everything to do with meeting someone who makes you so much more, so much better.  You know you have met that person when (s)he makes you feel like a prince(ss).  Through a series of hardships, she understands the principle now.

I still like the The Frog Prince because of what it teaches, so I find the principle of the story in music that inspires me.  I love Dierks Bentley's music because it feeds my soul in just that way.  He sings of the passionate spirit the frog had in pursuing the princess in Feel that Fire.  He writes of the magic the kiss brought about in the song Come a Little Closer.  And the lyrics to High upon the Ridge metaphorically recreate the story and show the frog appealing to the princess for the kiss that would turn him into a prince.  In return, the frog promises the moon.

Won't you come with me upon the ridge where moonlight drips into your eyes. I just want one little kiss when we get high upon the ridge.  The rest of the song implies that the frog became a prince, and he and the princess shared their passion.

Dierks is all about the inner fire that two people share, enjoying true love.  The magic of moonlight dripping into their eyes on a ridge ignites the two to be so much more.  And that spark leads to a sun to ride off into... happily without a doubt!


So much more... better.

Friday, December 02, 2011

Night rain image


Pitter-patter.  The rain came.  I looked out the window into the dimly lit courtyard.  The reflecting pool was dotted with the small splish-splashes of the raindrops.  The drops came constantly.  It was not one of those flash storms that is over in 10 minutes.  It was a steady rain.  It seemed like it could stay for hours.



The sounds of the rain pouncing off the leaves of trees and bushes was soft and relaxed my mind.  The hour of day wasn't important, but the darkness of the 2:00 AM hour amplified the rhythmic music played by the rain.  And the tune was so soothing!  My mind flashed an impression of an image of another soothing, rainy night at the same hour, a mid-autumn occasion a couple of rainy seasons ago.  The image grew stronger.  I reached out to touch it, but my hand came back wet from the pitter-patter, splish-splash of the current picture of bushes and trees glistening and concurrent rings rippling from the heavy splashes of drops in the reflecting pool.


 I uttered an expletive... I wanted the image to be real more than anything in the world!!!