A reminder

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

e.e. cummings

Nocturne

Dreaming has always been an important part of my everyday. When I was a child, I would have recurring nightmares which sent me running into my parent's room looking for some reassurance of reality. It didn't help that many of my dreams included my parents as part of a secret society of adults who sabotaged the lives of children. But one night my dad took the time to wake up and give me what turned out to be life-changing advice. He said, "When you're having a bad dream, pretend that you're watching the TV and only one click of the dial away from the greatest Popeye cartoon you've ever seen." Okay. So I went back to sleep and dreamt his advice, switching channels away from the grandmother wolf tearing the 6-year-old flesh from my legs to Popeye beating the hell out of him as a spinach induced berserker. This was my first introduction to lucid dreaming.

As a teenager I would always read before sleeping, hoping that I could enter the stories in my dreams. At the time I was suspicious of my half-assed religious upbringing, and suddenly concerned about the existence of heaven, which had previously seemed to make any sort of living inconvenience merely an inconvenience. So I found a bible and waded through the thick metaphor until something resonated with me, and I read and read those lines until I memorized them. I figured that if I could immerse myself deeply enough, I would eventually dream of heaven, and therefore experience some of its sensation without having to actually die. Unfortunately I never really succeeded with this experiment, or perhaps some angel erased my memory before I returned to the land of waking, so I eventually gave up.

But I haven't stopped experimenting. In the dreaming state, self-consciousness seems to give way to incredible possibility. One of the most interesting experiments has been trying to acquire new skills in my dreaming. For instance: flying, shape shifting, wrestling velociraptors, seducing supermodels, traveling at the speed of light... and even some less likely skills like improvising three voice fugues, singing a bel canto tenor role, and writing the perfect melody. I have had the great luck of waking in time to realize that my very own brain was capable of improvising the fugue I had just "heard" playing on the radio. But it has been pure discipline which every once in a while musters up the strength to drag my body from a saturated ecstatic sleep over to a piano to plunk out, in the freezing cold, the notes which sounded so silky and fat while floating on the top of the world...

I might as well mention that I was motivated to write after waking from a dream which had me composing a Nocturne on a glass piano floating on the arctic ocean. The world existed in only the brightest reflected white light and dark ocean blue, and I remember breathing in the coldest, most still air which should have frozen my lungs stiff.

Since I've woken, I couldn't stop listening to Nocturne by John Cage. It reminds me of somewhere I've been.

Hot Philosopher on Philosopher Man Love

Emerson has that gracious and clever cheerfulness which discourages all seriousness; he simply does not know how old he is already and how young he is still going to be; he could say of himself, quoting Lope de Vega: "I am my only heir." His spirit always finds reasons for being satisfied and even grateful; and at times he touches on the cheerful transcendence of the worthy gentleman who returned from an amorous rendezvous, "as if he had accomplished his mission."
"Though the power is lacking," he said gratefully, "the lust nevertheless is praiseworthy."

-Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols


If you asked (and it's really only a matter of time) I would say some of my favs were Emerson and Nietzsche. I've read Nietzsche go on and on about Schopenhauer and Wagner and Socrates and Homer, but this is the first time I've seen him reference Emerson. I guess I should have known. I sense a subtle lusting on Nietzsche's part, which is something he spoke against time and time again. Yet, how does one ever know if their lifestyle was any bit as noble as their writing? I can't help but fall for it everytime: the myth of the genius...
And it makes me feel a bit less guilty about my own subtle lusting...

Don't drink flouride, but look into the sun.

It began a few nights ago on my deck. I noticed a few stars blasting through the forcefield known as Philadelphia's light pollution. And I live next to a little league ballpark with huge flood lights on late into the night. I think how amazing it is that these stars are so bright that they penetrate through space, atmosphere, and competing light all the way to my own retina. I imagine somehow getting up closer to them and experiencing a brightness unknown to humans. Then I realize, "You fool. We have the sun. Oh yeah, I'm not aloud to look into it... it will burn out my eyeballs."

I remember only a few details from grade school science class: ROYGBIV, some mitosis steps, Au for gold, Ag for silver, the carbon cycle, krebs cycle, liquid nitrogen is really, really cold, and starfish are like the brooms from Fantasia. Wow... that was a nice trip down memory lane. Anyway, my point: I specifically remember learning that Galileo went blind from studying the sun. This freaked me out, since I had been secretly peering into the sun from time to time. It wasn't the first time I received a warning not to look into the sun. There were solar eclipses with shoe boxes, and looking into the sun was usually tacked onto a string of silly scoldings including, "Stop crossing your eyes! Don't puff out your belly! Stop picking at your scabs! Did I see you eating the toothpaste?" Okay, so then I hear about Galileo. At first I'm freaked because this is the first real evidence that someone went blind from the sun. But then I'm walking home from school and I get to thinking. Galileo probably looked at the sun more than anyone else in the history of mankind. I mean, he invented the telescopes to study the damn thing. He watched the movement of sunspots. That requires some serious focusing of the eyes. The teacher never said how old he was when he finally lost his sight, but it seemed pretty obvious that he was an old man. I decided to look it up tonight. He was 72.

Okay, so what's the deal? Can we look at the sun or what? I can't help but think to Gen. Ripper from Dr. Strangelove and his theories about flouride being placed in the water by communists:

Ripper: Have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?
Mandrake: Well, I can't say I have.
Ripper: Vodka, that's what they drink, isn't it? Never water?
Mandrake: Well, I-I believe that's what they drink, Jack,yes.
Ripper: On no account will a Commie ever drink water, and not without good reason.
Mandrake: Oh, eh, yes. I, hmm, can't quite see what you're getting at.
Ripper: Water, that's what I'm getting at, water. Mandrake, water is the source of all life. Seven-tenths of this earth's surface is water. Why, do you realize that seventy percent of you is water?
Mandrake: Uh, uh, Good Lord!
Ripper: And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids.
Mandrake: Yes. (He begins to chuckle nervously)
Ripper: Are you beginning to understand?
Mandrake: Yes. (More laughter)
Ripper: Mandrake. Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rainwater, and only pure-grain alcohol?
Mandrake: Well, it did occur to me, Jack, yes.
Ripper: Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation. Fluoridation of water?
Mandrake: Uh? Yes, I-I have heard of that, Jack, yes. Yes.
Ripper: Well, do you know what it is?
Mandrake: No, no I don't know what it is, no.
Ripper: Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face?
Ripper: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk... ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children's ice cream.
Mandrake: Lord, Jack.
Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?
Mandrake: I-- no, no. I don't, Jack.
Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. Nineteen forty-six, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.


So who first warned against looking into the sun? It certainly wasn't the Communists, since I'm pretty sure they teach this nonsense too. I find the most likely explanation to be the simplest. The sun transmits energies which, if absorbed through the eyes, mutates our synapses, and may ultimately form super powers. These powers, when possessed by certain individuals...

I'll be looking for Galileo's lost journals.

Mathematic Poetry

Via Boing Boing:
Justin Mullins of New Scientist creates artwork consisting entirely of mathematical equations. He calls it "mathematical photography." Justin says, "In the same way that an ordinary photograph is a snapshot of an area of outstanding natural beauty, a mathematical photograph is a snapshot of mathematical beauty." (He's having his first UK gallery exhibition next February in London.) Seen here is "Entanglement, For Sandra," 80 x 50cm, 2000.

I'm reminded of my teenage romantic obsession with physics. The concepts themselves are, of course, simply observations void of value. But physics can feed the artist with great material.
From the description of the piece:
The connections between ordinary objects are fleeting and superficial. Two atoms may collide and separate, never to meet again. Others can stick together by virtue of the chemical bonds they form, until the day that bond is broken.

But there is another type of connection that is far more powerful and romantic. Certain objects can become linked by a mysterious process called entanglement. Particles that become entangled are deeply connected regardless of the distance between them. If they become separated by the width of the Universe, the bond between them remains intact. These particles are so deeply linked that it’s as if they somehow share the same existence.

Physicists do not yet fully understand the nature of entanglement but there is growing evidence that it is a fundamental property of the universe. Unfettered by the restrictions of space, entanglement may be the ghostly bedrock upon which reality is built.

Thinking too hard

Elaborate bird nests
Originally uploaded by troyboy82.

I decided to give this a shot. Not sure what I have to say yet, but at least I will look cool saying it.