Hasta la vista, bebe!

The commercial shows a man telling the viewers he’s looking for a car.  He speaks of an easy way to shop for one these days.  You guessed it – by internet.  He tells people to go to TrueCar.com.  He wants people to see how easy it is, so he takes a picture of the car he has found that he wants, uploads it to TrueCar.com.  The website IDs the car and gives the price he should pay for it.  “It’s that easy,” he says.  

The man didn’t type anything into any fields on the internet site.  He didn’t write an email of a car description.  He didn’t have to type a conversation with someone from online chat.  For sure, picture identification has been around for a few years already, but new applications like this one will begin popping up more and more.

If I start connecting dots, a picture begins to emerge.  Apps become available to make paying for everything and anything with your phone… money becomes unnecessary.  Online banking, direct deposit, bill pay… money becomes unnecessary.  Apps identify music and give artist, publisher, and name of tune without typing any words… typing (writing) becomes unnecessary.   Stories are told by film, thus film as literature will increasingly become the accepted mode as 3-D films increase in number and morph into holographic film when the time comes… reading becomes unnecessary…  Apps on phones, TVs, and even restaurant menus custom-design the world we want to create for ourselves.  Apps are picture-driven, even on menus for restaurants.  The last time I ordered at Chili’s, I ordered and paid from the table from an electronic tablet.  The server only brought the food… money and writing were unnecessary, including a signature.

Yes, yes, yes.  Apps are the new literacy.  Easily the world will go to coding to be able to move around in it using apps for daily routines.  Control the code, control the environment you want.  The landscape for 2017 has begun to take shape.  I love it, and it will greatly depend on the ability of the young people in the US to stay on the forefront of technology to take us into the coming environment.

Ask anyone what the environment was like in 1964.  Has it changed?  And that was a mere 50 years ago.  10-year-olds today will have a quite different world as well and it will happen before they turn 30.  50 is cut to 25 or 30, a half-life.  That's major change in one generation.

 

One theory of why the dinosaurs didn’t make it is because they developed in an environment that couldn’t support them if that environment changed even a little.  But, a meteorite hit and changed their world more than a little.  Drought happened worldwide, forest fires ran rampant across North America from the intense heat of the meteorite, darkness cloaked most of the Earth and destroyed plant life.  And, of course, the effects of the blast itself devastated about a fourth of the world in the arcs around the meteorite's diameter– destructive shock waves, tremendously forceful tsunamis, and intense heat in the immediate area.

 

I’m thinking that there are parallel conditions here for those who don’t see the emerging picture in just a few very short years and change.  My word of the day for them… Adios!

A dragon's beating

I’m reflecting on a dream I had once, many, many years ago.  I was 31 at the time.  It was more than a nightmare to me.  It had seemed real, so much so that when I had woken from my dream, I had felt very exasperated and physically tired. 

I began wrestling with a dragon, the typical dragon – long tail, spike-fins up the backbone, Tyrannosaurus Rex-style dragon.  It was about four times my height.  I don’t recall how the dream started, but fairly immediately I fell into the dragon’s grasp.  It toyed with me at first, then grabbed me in one of his claw-hands and began slinging me around.  Suddenly he started banging my body against the ground.  That hurt, of course.  

I saw no end to this slinging and banging and hurting.  I cried out to the night sky (or at least the sky was dark), begging anyone who could hear to help me.  No one heard.  I kept calling, begging the dragon to stop.  I remember thinking, “How long? How long?”  I thought I would die in the next instant if the dragon didn’t stop.

Then I woke up.  It wasn’t a startling call to consciousness, but a slow and groggy swim back to the reality that the dream had ended.  Or was it a dream?  I couldn’t tell at first.  It seemed so real.  I was exhausted from the fight.  I still felt the pain of the slinging and banging and hurting.  Distinctly, I remember thinking that if no one helped the man, he would certainly die from the beating.

After a few minutes of slowly realizing that the episode was a dream, I tried to think that the dream applied to someone.  I immediately thought of my brother.  A little later in the day, I called him to see if something horrific had happened or if he could see that something was about to happen.  No, he said.  So, I relegated the dream to the back of my mind, thinking that if I recognized that this allegorical dream matched someone I knew, then I would tell them.

I never met anyone that matched this dream at that time.  But, as I grew older, I realized that the dream would apply to a lot of different people, including me, because it was one of those universal allegories.  Most dreams represent jumbled thoughts and become scenes in a dream in order to work through situations, so it probably was something I needed to work through.

A number of years have passed since that dream occurred, but I still remember it vividly.  It could apply to a number of situations I’ve had through the years if the dream was meant to be predictive in any way.  Likely it was not.  But I certainly have had a number of symbolic beatings in my life when I thought I would certainly suffer to the point of death.  The 13 months my son had cancer and his subsequent death tops the list of a very black time in my life.   The brilliant sun of another period in my life has set in the west and night has set in.  Other times could be represented by the dream as well.

And what about that man?  Did he certainly die?  He’s still kicking, as they say, but the dragon’s beating has taken its toll.  He’s not so much reeling from the blows now because he knows the answer to the sentiment, “Will anybody help this man?  He will die if no one helps him!”

Ours to conquer

In the year 2000, when it was mentioned that reading and writing will disappear sooner than later, the reaction was not just one of disbelief, but one of ridicule.  Here it is 14 years later.  Now the reaction is one of sorrow, usually, that reading and writing will apparently be replaced.  A lot sure can happen in a short time.  Who would have thought that at the start of the 10 year battle for supremacy between reading and writing and that quantum leap to the visual, virtual world that an assault so powerful could have unseated two core values such as reading and writing.  Well, I'll tell you what - a whole generation of digital natives, virtual world inhabitants, have taken over the invention circuit and changed the entire landscape right under the baby boomers' noses.

In case there is a non-believer or two left in the crowd, here is an article from today's news.

Well, what do you know!  A bookless library!  Click here.

Yeah, reading and writing  are being replaced.  With what you ask?  Something that will lead us to a world a quantum leap away from this one now.  How so?  Click here.

And in case you think women are the ones who are bemoaning the switch from reading and writing to the visual virtual world, think again.  Click here.

Yep! By the time 3 more years go by - the end of that 10 year war to replace reading and writing - I suspect that coding will be the new writing, that libraries will contain the machinery to deliver a much more responsible and much more robust type of learning, and that women and men alike will partake in the world that has all along been theirs to conquer.

Intertwining paths

The strongest case that I know of for the idea of destiny and fate is Sophocles' Oedipus the King.  It's fiction from a really long time ago, but it lays out the case nicely for how life weaves events beyond one's control and knowing, then brings the strands together in a way that Oedipus could not do anything different than what he did.  He had a date with destiny that swamped his boat.  The event didn't kill him, but it certainly changed everything possible about his life in a tragic way.

A modern and less deterministic treatment for the idea of destiny is depicted in the film from 2001, Serendipity.  The two main characters, Jonathan and Sara lived in two different countries, and after a chance meeting in NYC, they parted again, hoping that destiny would lead them back together again.  Just when it didn't appear that a reunion would happen, their shared token of a symbol of their love resurfaces and leads them to actively pursue finding the other person again.  This fiction story had a fairy tale ending, unlike Oedipus the King.

The new movie, The Best of Me, put a bit of new twist to the old theme of destiny.  It allowed the two main characters, who had been estranged for 20 years, to appear in the other's dreams, as a foreshadowing of good things to come for them both.  Their "chance" meeting after 20 years apart healed their old wounds.  It fulfilled their dreams and their unrequited love.  The best of each of the two main characters was only seen as the two were led to a brief healing/cleansing/blending moment in time together.  The plot was not a gushing love story, but a story laced with reality and the irony of  thwarted love happening simultaneous to the greatest fulfillment of love.  The moment in which both of those ideas met happened without either of the character's planning before or after the healing/cleansing/blending moment because destiny had led them to that moment.

I have personally resisted the idea of destiny and fate, but every time there has been an intersection of my life with someone else's, I have wondered why our paths crossed.  If there really is an answer to that question, then I should stop resisting the idea.  But I have usually seen the intersection of my life with someone else's as happenstance.

I do have, however, one exception to that view, but only one.  In that single instance, I have never identified the path that led to the intersection. The point of intersection was clearly understood, but the path leading away from that intersecting point never yielded the reason for the separation of paths leaving it as unclear as the path leading in.

 However, I would say that that one intersection has altered my view because I am so much more..

Beauty exemplified

Once in a while, something comes along that is truly rewarding. Not monetarily, of course.  Just from someone who truly appreciates what has happened.  I got to witness this moment a day ago.

The woman described her childhood.  It had been traumatic.  It had a number of players and was spread across two different countries.  It robbed her of her childhood, which included her schooling.  The woman had dropped out after her 8th grade year.

As an adult the woman did what adults do - she married, bore children, and eeked out a living to survive.  But life was rough still.  A traumatic childhood turned into a nightmarish adulthood.  Finally, she divorced and continued to provide for her children.

Deep inside of her was a growing hunger.  Every passing year she understood more fully that she had missed out on an education.  It had stymied chances she had for getting a good job because in her eyes the worst thing had happened.  She couldn't mask her lack of education because she had no spelling skills at all.  She had blacked out the little bit of learning she remembered from her devastating childhood.  Not being able to spell was a notice to the world that she was marked as being ignorant, even "special ed."

She went on a 20 year odyssey trying to find a remedy for this handicap.  She tried teaching herself to read, going to her middle child's junior high teachers for help, even presenting herself to a university's education department to get suggestions for her great hunger, the hole in her heart, her badge of ignorance.  The junior high teachers referred her to a dyslexia teacher and a special education teacher to learn some techniques for spelling such as spelling in the air and in sand.  The university told her she missed third grade level material, so she bought those books to make it up.  None of these efforts led to her success.

To her great credit, the woman never gave up.  She was determined beyond normal hunger to fill the void in her life, to erase the signs that she couldn't make it in life like everyone else.

So, imagine the moment after an hour in counseling and another hour working with a basic phonic technique.  Suddenly, like a film being removed from a blind person's eyes, the woman, now 52 years old, was taking dictated words and spelling each of them correctly... on her own... with no preparation.  It was beyond rewarding.  That moment released 45 years of developing and pent up emotion.  Tears flowed freely down her cheeks in disbelief that she had just spelled 40 words on her own, flawlessly.  Remarkable.  Incredible,   Breathtaking.  There were just no words at that moment - just raw reward - for teacher and student alike.

Rolling through

I was sitting on my back porch the night before last.  It was dark of course, but the reason I was on the porch was to watch a storm as it rolled through the area.  It was late, about 11:30, cool, in the 60s, and the storms were coming in about 3 hours earlier than the predicted 3 A.M.  It had begun to rain some, though not heavily.

The skies weren't pitch black like normal.  Lightning bursts lit up the sky about every 2 seconds. The lightning didn't streak, but flashed brilliantly in the clouds.  I usually see these type of flashes above the clouds and in the distance, but not this night.  It was up close and personal.  About every 2 minutes or so, thunder rumbled deeply not far away.  I was mesmerized and sat, just watching and listening to the wind, rain, thunder, lightning and water flowing  in a nearby creek.

I didn't time how long I sat there, but it seemed like it was around 15 minutes. I was wearing a t-shirt, so the cool air finally got to me and I went back inside.  It was so refreshing.  I don't always have the time to enjoy a storm as it happens.  I get out in one if I am driving somewhere, or I catch snapshots of one if I look intermittently out a window, but to enjoy the show as one rolls across my area, is invigorating.  It restores the environment.  

Symbolically, it restores hope that all is well with the world... at least for the 15 minutes I enjoyed it... and helps me walk back in the house with the idea that I will sleep deeply for the night. And I can't help but think of some of my memories that are flashes of refreshment whenever they come to mind...  Snapshots of what has been and anticipation of what is to hopefully come.

I was asleep when the storm finally left the area, peacefully, awaiting the brightness of the morning.

An eye toward the moronic

Language behavior has been studied for thousands of years.  I would say, however, that most of the ancient people who commented on language did so notionally.  I am reminded of the Egyptian pharaoh who wanted to know what the first word spoken by a human was.  He isolated a baby who had not talked and waited until the baby spoke its first word.  The sounds were close to the Egyptian word for bread, so the pharaoh concluded that bread was the first word ever spoken.

Of course, that is an atrocious method to study language by.  But, it did spotlight people's need to know more about language.  After the advent of the scientific method, language study has improved greatly.  It still is a little sloppy sometimes, however.  I think of a study I read in graduate school of three couples who supposedly recorded all of their interactions with each other.  The point of the study was to see if men or women interrupted the other more often and why the interruptions occurred.  The study was published at a time when little was known about gender and language, so it was among the first studies in the field.  That accounts for the study being published in an edited volume by a scholar.  Still, IF one trusted that the couples didn't turn recorders off and on, IF one trusted that the 3 couples represented all couples, and IF the interactions represented all spoken interactions, then the results that men interrupted women almost exclusively for control reasons should be accepted.  Bah humbug that that study was representative of interrupting behavior by either sex.  Sloppy, sloppy research.

Language behavior can be scientifically examined, of course, and the results should dispel the notions  people try to perpetuate about such behavior.  There is a lot of merit to discourse studies, both written and spoken.  These studies patchworked together give an emerging picture of how language is really used by people.  And when the behavior is to present deception, there are methods that detect that behavior.

I am always amazed by unschooled people who think they know language well enough to practice deception.  Their notions are usually like the pharoah's and the researcher's mentioned above - sloppy.  Deceptive people's arrogance has negative consequences, though, because it keeps them from realizing how terribly transparent they are.  Fools are born every minute.  As the saying goes for these people: Better to be silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Constant

yes.
faith.
still.

The perfect bed

My granddaughter likes to pick rose pedals from one of the three rose bushes in the front of our house.  She has been doing this for about 2 weeks now.  From the beginning she wanted to bring the pedals to the entryway of our house.  And the stack of roses in the picture was only the start.  She continued to add pedals until I couldn't see any concrete below the little bed.  I sure didn't mind since the fragrance is sweet-smelling. What better way to enter the house than to have the handiwork of my granddaughter welcoming me home! 

It brings to mind a certain sentiment that I have expressed before.  Rose pedals are so soft, so fragrant, that to lie down on them would be the zenith of comfort and relaxation and desire.  I don't like all the lyrics that accompany the chorus of Bon Jovi's song, but the words in the chorus and a few others immediately before the chorus do represent the sentiment I have had.  What better way to enter a day or end a day than to have this handiwork welcoming me in each chamber of my heart!

                                         

Being true

Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea has a number of lessons in it.  It's the story about a fisherman who always dreamed of catching "the big one."  One day, late in his life, he went far into the sea and finally caught the fish of his dreams.  He hooked the fish to his boat and began his long trip back to shore.

This point in the story is where all the lessons begin.  As the man returns, the fish begins to be eaten by other larger predators in the sea.  By the time the fisherman reaches shore, he is only dragging the skeleton of the big fish of his dreams.

The most obvious theme of the book is that dreams achieved are not all they are cracked up to be.  But a number of other lessons exist.  One could be about the loss of idealism as a person matures from his/her teens to late life.  Another could be about the myth of catching the big one.  Even if you think that you have, life mitigates and diminishes the experience until you know your dream wasn't worth it or that your dream didn't ever really exist in the form you thought it did.

Other details in the story that aren't included here also bear on some of the lessons learned from the story, but the overall lessons are the most important ones.  One interpretation of the events lends itself to echoing the Socratic wisdom of "being true to yourself."  The old man couldn't let the fish go even though he knew the fish was being eaten.  He had to be true to himself (his dream represents who the man really is).  People should always be true to themselves or they can't help but be themselves.

None of the lessons really deal with happiness or happy endings.  To use this last lesson above, I suppose life is really a series of events that tell us who we are.  At every stage, our characteristics (our true colors) always show through.  But I wonder, also, what it says about us if we try to hide our true feelings.  I guess, sooner or later, the fish gets eaten.

Sunny and warm

The day started sunny, warm, and muggy.  The predicted high was about 10 degrees above average for this day.  I was braced for a much hotter than normal day.  Then, also as predicted, clouds began to assemble.  They turned from white to gray.  The temperature dropped; the wind picked up.  Rain followed.  The reprieve of the rain was very welcome.

We live pretty predictable lives.  The book Passages by Gail Sheehy outlines the stages of predictable life as one moves from one decade to another.  As it turns out, life is a lot like the weather: it has seasons and average temperatures.  The book tells about the characteristics each decade holds in Bell Curve fashion.  It's an enlightening read and is not laden with psychological jargon and statistics.

So, when the changes come, as they inevitably will, in our lives, they also come at predictable periods.  The famous 7-year itch and mid-life crisis are two of these periods.  The 30s represent the most ambitious periods of life for both sexes.  The book has many examples.

The book is, of course, reporting on generalities, and life happens rather unpredictably on occasion. These unpredictabilities are of two varieties: pleasant ones and disastrous ones.  I have experienced some of these as well.  Two represent these polar extremes.  Death of a child is the most intense negative experience, forcing one onto a dark, dark path for a period of time.  Finding true joy is the opposite experience, allowing one to enter a period of daily sunshine.

I know I have lived out the a lot of the characteristic routines of Passages.  But the reprieve from the predictable by the possibility of bright daily sunshine is so very welcome.