Blue Collar Scholar

I've been meeting quite mysteriously with several professors lately. Not mysteriously as in like, at maskerade parties, discussing things with them in an alternate persona while fox trotting. Mysteriously, as in going to them during office hours and making scheduled appointments without really knowing why.


Why? What could they tell me? "It's okay"?" You'll make it"? "Just go for it. Be a professor"? Was this what I was looking for? Someone to give me a more serious garantee for my time investment? I don't know...

But, some of them do say that. Others say other things. But why? What could they possibly say that I haven't heard before?


Well, Dr. Johnson, for one, said a few things that were quite different and honest. He talked about how being a professor isn't something you do with a job in mind. It's something that you work towards because you love the research and time spent studying, in addition (and in some ways subjugated) to teaching. He said that, during his graduate school, he had to reduce his time spent studying to 80 hours a week. Reduce!

Johnson's point was well taken: Being a scholar is a huge commitment, an enormous amount of work, and not something enjoyably erudite. It's dirty 9am-5pm translation business. Working to become a professor is roll-up-your-sleeves, blue collar book work.

Dr. Watt, whose opinion usually fares on the "You can do it if you believe you can!" side of the argument, also made a pointed comment. She said that everybody can have a job, and most people do. You don't become an academian to have a job. You can do that by going into law or advertising or banking. You go into academics to learn and discover and struggle with esoteric topics. The job is means to an end (furthering your research through a funded institution), not the end, and you must go into a PhD or even Masters program knowing that if all you come out with is the degree and no job, you will still be satisfied that you did it.

So, what of it? I don't really know. In some ways, these conversations reinforced my already decisive stance that I cannot undertake the voyage of humanities/classics grad school right now--not when my passion for research and devotion to intellectual studies is not rock-solid. I am not sold on Socrates or attached to Achilles just yet. I could still be a wine merchant. (E&J Gallo sales jobs are looking oddly promising and I have a potentially helpful connection.) And honestly, what could be a more classically-inspired career than being a wine merchant?

Seriously though, before I determine what or if I want to devote a lifetime to intellectual studies, I need to have my own odysseys, first. Wine merchant or corporate businessman, history teacher in Sicilia or New Zealand sheep herder...the thought of settling on one thing right now feels extremely wrong for me. And that's one thing that I know for certain.

Saint Fransisco of the Nature Preserve

San Felasco State Park is pretty awesome. After going on a hike last Sunday with my bio teacher and a few other students, I realized that going out into a forest in the morning is a very fulfilling thing. Not that I didn't know it, but...I guess just hadn't remembered.


Not too many animals on such a chilly day, but a lot of ground and a lot of green.


There was only five of us: four students and my teacher- and it was really a perfect number. Our teacher, with little fauna to point out, aside from giant banana spiders and the occassional bird, spoke to us about the different kinds of plant habitats that are extant in Northern Florida. It was interesting to look at the forest and understand that the trees that existed here, the shrubs, the entire ecosystem was not random or haphazard, but was uniquely tailored to the local environment (although, I now somewhat embarassingly admit that I don't remember many of the exact species or conditions Dr. Hapeman spoke of. I'm sure that a concrete knowledge of nature is only acquired through hearing those sorts of things over and over again...)


The whole excursion, in some odd way that only I might parallel, reminded me of going through museums in Italy with Dr. Westin, my art history teacher. In both museums and in nature, it is possible to walk around and look right at something--a painting or a tree--and miss so much information encoded in it.


For example, knowing a painting is from the late fifteenth century Florence and not mid-sixteenth century Venice can convey quite a lot about the context of the work. Likewise, to understand why there are decidiuous trees in Florida as was as coniferous can help better recognize the type of biome we live in.


It is this sort of "knowledge makes things richer" approach that I think has all but evaporated from the school system's methodology. Not necessarily from the school system, because, obviously, I'm a product of that system and I've apparently gotten the message. However, the current methodology certainly doesn't encourage students to connect learning with an enhanced view of our world. Right now, even in IB, it was often "Here is this fact--know it." Now, IB did have a lot of moments which related history, language, and literature to each other and to their greater place in the world. Yet, to convey a message so it's carried out of the classroom into the world with the student...that's a whole other monumental step.

Anyhow, as for San Felasco, I would definitely like to go back soon, perhaps when more fauna appear in the Floridian flora. Also, Dr. Hapeman seems to have a growing fan club of students who want to accompany him on various trips to Florida state parks, and I think I'd like to keep tagging along. Knowing more about the environment, how things have evolved and formed together, makes the outdoors seem even more beautiful and important to preserve.

I sometimes see myself in a role to express that importance to those who are too far from state parks to see it for themselves, perhaps those in the government and in private business. But that's whole other story.

Remembering my Tao

I don't even need to look at my last post, and I already know how I feel about it. Sad.

Not sad to have written it, but sad that I did it in that way, in that angrily immature way that takes hold of me when I see something new and react.

It's a reaction, not a coherent argument. But it was all me, so...what can I do?

I can go back to this book a shrink gave me a long time ago, called The Watercourse Way. It's about the Tao, a topic not recently in my mind given all the other crazy things I'm doing.

I started thinking about it this morning. I was up early with Erica, who had to be at work by 7 a.m. and miraculously left on time, lunch in hand. So I was happy and awake, staring at the sunrise outside her window and the Tao occurred to me. It occurred to me and, in a computer-like sort of way, I immediately tried to reconcile it. I started asking myself, 'The Tao? Are you still with it? You haven't consciously thought about it, but how does it look in comparison to your life?'

I decided to go for a walk by the Stoneridge lake.

I thought about a lot as I made those three revolutions. Mostly about the birds, the trees, the nice crisp cold in the air. I also thought about my future and how many times people have been asking me about graduate school. I also thought about the path that led around the lake, and how it almost makes a closed path, but then doesn't quite connect.

I observed the morning world, to the best of my ability. I watched the ducks search in a loose group for little bugs that had not burrowed far enough into the ground. I noted the moss-laden tree near the office and how the moss tinted rosy in the sunrise. I tried to see nature amidst the noise of the road, which was carried by the wind over the lake.

I thought about the Tao. I realized that each time I went around the lake, I thought slightly less about the path I was on, until, by the third time, it was no longer in my mind at all. The focus had changed to whatever caught me at that moment--the ducks, graduate school, the weather. In fact, I could even wander from the path, knowing where it was but not really thinking about it.

My life and the Tao are meeting in some way right now, I realized. I want the Tao to be what it is: "The Way." When I finally achieve it, I probably will never need even think about a Tao book again.

Some Perceived Realites of Modern Social Living

Everything I'm wearing is from somewhere else.

My shirt is from Hong Kong. My shoes were also made in China, as well as my undershirt and pants. My watch, in a slightly different vain, is from Switzerland and my belt is from Italy. I cannot see where my socks are from, but my boxers, surprisingly, hail from Israel.

Why was I ever okay with this?

It's like I've been waking up out of this very odd dream. Over the past few months, I've come to see our world in a new way. It's not an unfamiliar feeling. We usually see what we're looking for in life; perspectives are something of a collectible for me.

Yet, honestly, I don't want to wear my clothes anymore. I don't want to eat tomatoes picked by overworked illegal immigrants, or use furniture produced by robots that caused the downfall of a mid-western town, or wear clothes sewn by people who are essentially slaves in their own underdeveloped countries.

One of the facts that gnaws at me is this: we have enough resources now. We have, on this planet, a surplus of food, more than enough to feed everyone. I'm not saying that everyone should have an equal amount of food, I'm no longer advocating communism as I did in my heyday of idealism. I'm simply stating it as a fact. Now, in this era of humanity, we have enough food for the entire planet.

And let's just put to rest for a few seconds the conservative knee-jerk reaction to implore "Social/Economic Darwinism" to explain who gets resources. If we really, honestly, believed in that as a species (I'm not saying certain people don't, but just on the whole), we would not have a civilization complete with doctors, musicians, Christians, pro bono lawyers, etc. etc. They would all be dead, starved, or homeless. Oh. Hmm...

What am I getting at? A lot of amorphous things that are obviously easier to attack vaguely than sit down and try to solve. Hey, I'll be honest with you. But, more specificially, I'm attacking the corporate system, the multi-national, free trade (oh no...he's sounding like an ultra hipster socialist left-wing democratic baby eater) system that is endorsed by (and perhaps in control of ) our current form of "democratic" government.

So, what's so wrong with corporations, you ask? Don't corporations and the free market work hand in hand with democracy, like peanut butter and jelly? It was actually my first question, and my own assumption since I was old enough to understand anything about our economic-political system in the US today.

Nevertheless, I'll take the Lorenzo Valla approach (go ahead, take my snooty academic reference and look him up. He's an interesting guy) and mock my interrogators' silly questions.

No! Ha, you knave! How could you ever believe that a democractic/republic government-- which is based on principles of organizing an egalitarian society, where everyone's opinion gets a fair hearing in the forum and the most popular decision is chosen--could functionally operate with an economy based on the corporate model--a hierarchical (some would say, monarchic) system which is given many of the legal rights of a person, but due to its nature of masking the individuals involved, inherently lacks any civic-minded center!

Let's put it another way. Democracy/Republic: focus on society, how to function together in a society. Corporation: How to acquire resources with only a regard to other entities as financial assets or liabilities. The two systems have completely different ends! Democracy aims for community, corporations aim for financial gain. And although a citizen of a democracy may be greedy, the democracy is loathe to condone greed. One person's greed is not something everyone else will be happy about. Yet, that's exactly what a corporation represents to our democracy: a greedy person with only as much ethics and morals as are dictated by our government.

And, you know, if our government was not caught up in the tendrils of modern corporations, and honestly legislated some ethics for corporations (like Teddy Roosevelt did with his anti-trust crusades at the turn of the 20th century), then things might be okay. I mean, we legislate ethics for normal people (murder, theft, and rape are wrong ), so I have no problem with telling companies what not to do. But, right now, it's just not working.

I might say it yet another way. For those who may cling to Adam Smith, I steal this quote from a parphrase of the book When Corporations Rule the World, http://www.pcdf.org/corprule/betrayal.htm

"Corporate libertarians maintain that the market turns unrestrained greed into socially optimal outcomes. Smith would be outraged by those who attribute this idea to him. He was talking about small farmers and artisans trying to get the best price for their products to provide for themselves and their families. That is self-interest, not greed. Greed is a high-paid corporate executive firing 10,000 employees and then rewarding himself with a multimillion-dollar bonus for having saved the company so much money. Greed is what the economic system being constructed by the corporate libertarians encourages and rewards."

Sorry. Adam Smith does not support corporations in their current form. And that reminds me of another assumption worth challenging: a free market does necessarily have to evolve into the mega-corporate climate that exists now. Or, if it does, then THAT'S PRECISELY THE POINT OF HAVING A GOVERNMENT! Besides, corporations are, after all, a legal entity, endorsed by our government. Their rules are not set in stone. So, why can't we change the fundmental goals of corporations that isn't soley based on making profits for shareholders.

Let our government remind the market that a productive marketplace does not have McDonalds and Burger King straddling the corner of every intersection in America. It does not drive down prices of goods to such an extent that companies (which, remember, are inherently amoral, not immoral or evil, but simply without any moral compass) have to employ indiginous people who have no rights to bargain for wage standards or benefits and certainly no democratic system to appeal to!

Unless you're okay with all that. I'm not personally. And, although I'm not just ready to throw away all my clothes and start weaving my own...I honestly want to. I will probably not buy anything first-hand anymore, though. It feels wrong.

I'll just say it: If you, in you're heart, feel like nothing is going wrong right now, that's tantamount to endorsing slavery. Punto.

My next goal will be to find some ethically-made pants and how to brainstorm how this system will fall or evolve into something ethical.

The punchline: Right now, I'm working for a company that aspires to the heights of the Fortune 500 bigshots. E una battesimo del fuoco, certamente.

E, adesso, e possibile che io stia andando per i circoli dell'Inferno. Maybe purgatory is on the other side.

Big Wigs

This weekend was odd.

I wasn't planning on it being so odd, but then it just happened. I was invited to go "The Independent Florida Alligator Second Century Celebration," ringing in the first year of the next century of the Florida Alligator. Happy 101st, baby.

The scary thought, to me, is what The Alligator would look like should it be around in 100 years. If newspapers are around in 100 years, in any form recognizable to a current human, I would be shocked. But that's just me.

So, what, then, was this celebration? Fireworks? A ticker-tape Parade? Funfetti cake? To my dismay (especially regarding the Funfetti), no.

It was part-lecture, part-family reunion, part-lifetime achievement award ceremony, and part-networking party; a mesh that often felt awkward, but always good-intentioned. Some alumni spoke about The Alligator's historic and epic past, when it freed itself from the shackles of administrative slavery and gained independence. And that was pretty cool. Others spoke on their own work in their various professional fields, from online multimedia journalism to media law to their own accomplishments.

And what accomplished people they were! I had little idea that people who once worked in that cramped and wood-paneled office, went on to win Pulitzers, create global communications companies, and work for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes Magazine. It was pretty crazy to hear from big-name writers about their times smoking out on the roof of the newspaper building. But, of course, it was the 70s.

The event was long and monotonous at times. During the periods when I just couldn't concentrate, I thought about a lot: my potential future in journalism, if I fit the personality of these people who fight deadlines and passionately give 60+ hours a week to publish the news, if I even shared their values....

And I'm not really sure. But I did feel strangely more connected to The Alligator by the end of the day. It was clearly something worth respecting, worth working for and with, at least for a time.

I do worry though about the role of the journalist in the 21st century. Thirty years ago people wrote to affect change in their world--and they did. Reporters at The Alligator had Florida laws overtuned, butted heads with the administration, and went through a painful seperation from the university, all on principle.

Could anything like that happen now? Are any of us Generation-Yers not jaded and overstimulated by the continuous overflow of information to fight for one or two causes? (Aside from the Plaza of the Americas hipsters, who protested against Andrew Meyers tazering in the hundreds two days after it happened and then failed to show up for the policy forum this last week.)

I don't know. I'm not even sure I could.

So, if journalists and the news comes to us, the readers, and tells us of a horrible injustice, or a terrible corruption in the government, and we only think about it for five minutes...what good is the news? And how can we ever break away from the information superhighway to change anything at all?

This is thought that's bothering me now. But I cannot dwell on it for too long. I'm just too busy to care right now.

Long time, no blog

So, here we are...the week of my birthday. A little disappointing, really. 22...the beginning of the "old birthdays." Kind of a downer, in a way, but I usually don't look upon my birthday as this ultra special thing. Every day that I'm alive, unenslaved, can see something beautiful when I wake up, and learn or do something interesting is a complete and total miracle of the universe.

That my mother birthed me is a remarkable thing. But that the universe created a conscious entity purely based on the fundamental physical laws is something wholly more than remarkable--it's unspeakably unimaginable. But, alas, here we are.

I've got nothing to say, really. Nothing worth saying, so all this ultra-intellectual stuff is just philosophical philler (ha-ha, I'm a stinker). My life has been packed and compartamentalized, just like I told an old friend not to be. How tables have changed. But it's the only way I can operate: A third of my time is devoted to school--attendence in class, which I've been rather good about this semester, and avoidance of working ahead; a third to science writing for the alligator--which, with mixed happiness, seems to be almost working out; and an (unequal and smaller) third to my corporate sales job--which is so mind-bendingly opposite from what I think I should be doing, that it's only that odd sort of faith that I have in the universe that is keeping me going to that office. That and they're going to start paying me a small sum.

So, that all being said...I really think life is good. The busyness is good for me, it's how I always want it. The days are packed--for hopefully good things.

It's odd being a senior again. Feels nothing like it did the first time around. Well, not too much like it. There's that distinct, murky sensation when I think about the future, just like the way I felt before leaving high school. Yet, this time has attached to it a kind of fear about a precipice lurking in the murk, a sheer cliff that I'm being moved towards by the accelerating push of Time.

I am, of course, concerned that I'm not concerned like so many of my friends, about GREs and graduate schools. I'm thinking about all of this, of course, but in a different way. To be precise, I feel like I'm thinking about it, as opposed to the many people who are doing it reflexively as if the only option now is...whatever, grad school, med school, etc etc.

I will probably not be attending any such establishment immediately after my undergrad career. Not unless I'm given very good reason. And I'm sure I don't see any just yet.

Until next time.

Behind the Mask: Myth and History

I just watched the movie Gandhi again, for what must be my fourth or fifth time. I used to rent it all the time from the public library back in high school. It's a pretty long movie, so I would watch parts of it before I went to be every night, and it might last me a whole week. It would bring me a small boost of desperately-needed peace of mind that was in such short supply back then. Not that I have a bountiful stock now. But some, perhaps.

Watching it again, I found myself intrigued and drawn to the same ideas and principles that I found so engaging in high school. Not so much of me has changed. Practically nothing, really. I've gained a lot of perspective, I would like to think. But really isn't all "perspective gaining" really just "perspective changing"? Maybe for me, maybe not for you. I wonder what that says about me. Fritjof Capra, author of The Tao of Physics, says that high energy particle physics doesn't create new particles but simply rearranges energy--nothing fundamental going on. But that's another topic...

Anyhow, I started looking into Gandhi biographies, thinking I might increase the credulity of my admiration for Gandhi and his ideas. Immediately, I came across Gandhi: Behind the Mask of Divinity by G.B. Singh. The book's thesis is that Gandhi is more myth than man in both Western and Indian culture (a point I'm willing to hear out and probably concede) and that the Gandhi propaganda machine of the last 60 years has clouded our vision of a man who had many shadowy secrets, including being a racist.

Even before really understanding this point of view (and I still don't have the full argument), I was crushed a little. This idol of mine, this bronze statue of idealism was already tarnished with the sins of a mortal man. Woe, unto me, the theologian in a scientist's lab coat.

And that's always been the case for me, hasn't it? To latch on, to idolize the ideals of great thinkers, to be taken in by the schemes and scams of great books? Ayn Rand, George Orwell, Robert Pirsig, Douglas Hofstadter, my pantheon of intellectual gods could go on... Michio Kaku, Carl Sagan, Umberto Eco. Sad little alchemist, always joining the cults of those writers, always buying into their idealogical agendas, just waiting for them to turn the lead of the Real World into the gold of an Ideal World.

Evidently, the bitterness is not gone. I can admit that. Being pegged as an intellectual follower has haunted me and not without good reason. I can see their point, in a certain way (ah, yes, the perspectivist's curse: to understand one's opponent and thus be vulnerable to agree with them). I happen to see the beauty, full and deep, rich and multi-structured in great works. And the wisdom in them can overtake me. While some can brush off the value of Orwell as oft-trodden ground, let sit the greatness of Gandhi's Satyagraha (nonviolent resistance), or question the originality of Pirsig's "Quality", these are things that resound in me so loudly that they are impossible to ignore.

And sneaking up behind such thoughts is, "Why I am the odd one? Why did I get all the stares?" In the back of my mind, I always felt I was in the right. That these things are the priceless treasures of our society--these ideas are proof that humanity is an asset to the universe, not a liability.

But I am slowly moving on from such idle perigrinations. Now, I have begun to wonder about the importance of reality and myth-- their relationship and partnership in history.

Richard Attenborough's Gandhi is, if anything, an epic movie. There are all the classic elements: huge scenes of violence, battles over land and over freedom, political in-fighting, long periods of people's lives, their friends and enemies, and even an innvocation to the gods of sorts, with long visual proems of medidative water bookending the movie.

So if this movie is an epic, who is Gandhi? The main star no doubt; a man on an odyssey, with a mission and an unthinkably large foe, who is doomed to fail. Just like Troy, so goes British imperialists. But not so much like Troy. And Gandhi...not so much like Achilles or even Odysseus.

Well, you may or a may not see where I am going, so here it is: Gandhi may be an epic movie in a style that would be fully-identifiable to an ancient greek (if it were told orally, in greek meter). Yet, Gandhi leads a fight with no weapons. You may have already gathered the historical significance of this, but...have you? An epic warrior who achieves victory by showing his enemy its own horrific evil. Truly a mind-bending idea and something I'm not sure the greeks would have understood.

So, what then, of the real Gandhi? If G.B. Singh has done his research-- as the few amazon.com reviews claim--then perhaps Gandhi, the man, was not nearly as heroic and saintly as Gandhi, the myth. I recognize that this idea is a familiar one for all legendary people, but frankly that's not the point. The point is this: Gandhi, as a myth, has brought something new to our culture--a mode of conflict resolution that does not claim to be perfect and peaceful, but nevertheless provokes a fundamentally different response in humans. When two clans run at each other with swords, there's no ethical discrepancy. When one group is unarmed and unwilling to respond blow with blow, a huge social problem erupts.

As a myth, Gandhi exemplifies the power of humanity's ability to abide by a collective morality. Moreover, he proves that the unified morality of the general populace is a powerful force, and that, with the right approach, can move to correct injustices which may have gone unnoticed if the victimized group used violence.

I am pretty spent on this topic, but this is not all I've got. Stay tuned for more.

The Ins and (consequently) Outs of an Italian Klein Bottle

I am not posting anything coherent right now, so don't expect as much.

My life is like the shadow of a four-dimensional cube, a representation of an impossible image, a glimpse of the unseen thing, but not the thing itself.

My metaphors are like my science-overwrought with obvious conclusions, thus offending the whole logical process.

My style is like the smoke off a Humphrey Bogart cigarette-taken for granted, but would be missed if it weren't omnipresent, filling the air between the stars.

Fractals are jumping out of my mind. Don't be scared, they often break through into the infinities beyond our comprehension.

My mind is awash in monks: Monks from the apocalyptic future, who toil away in desert abbeys, saving scraps of siliconian blueprints and illuminating manuscripts of algebra texts. Monks from the past who hide in their Italian monestaries, in fear of the giants who hurl bolders like manna from the nearby mountain.

New Rome, Old Rome, and above them all floats My Rome, the idea that became corrupt even before I left the city, yet is somehow pristine in my mind. The Rome of fruit vendors, performing bums, and clashing layers of history gently peeling from within crumbling city walls...it all exists in my mind and assuredly somewhere out there, beyond the sea.

But the more I think on it, the more I realize that Rome truly is an idea as much as it is a place--and not every place can be said to have an idea attached to it, let alone one that rivals the meaning and importance of the place itself. Yet, Rome does have an idea, nay, many ideas attached to it, many ideas, which both blend together and peel apart like the layers of history from the city's buildings or the paint on the aging facades of those very buildings.

And what's the end result? A harmonically-fused "idea-place" named Rome, which has multiple meanings and layers, a fractal pattern of "Rome-cities" begetting "Rome-ideas" over the centuries twisting in on itself like a double-helix, never straying too far from its core, yet all the while evolving and growing.

Perhaps somewhere in a Platonically-inspired, higher dimensional realm, where ideas and things are conjoined, the Rome of All Time exists, in a state that- like the four-dimensional cube whose only representation we can understand is its shadow- is so far beyond us that we can only dream of it in tiny, disjointed pieces.

A More Global Gator Nation (My Column)

We have heard it a lot in the last few days: UF is strapped for cash. The administration was blindsided by the Florida Legislature with a substantial 4-percent decrease in state funding, prompting the current hiring freeze, as well as the tightening of budgets all over campus. I’m not here to generalize about the huge impact that this will undoubtedly have on the entire school, but rather focus on one seemingly small event that, to the dismay of dozens of foreign students, will not take place this semester.

I am talking about the International Coffeehouse.

The International Coffeehouse is (or was) a casual gathering during GatorNights that provided a low-pressure and friendly environment for international students to meet up with friends or make new ones. The coffee wasn’t amazing, and there were never enough cookies, but the company couldn’t be beat. In one small meeting room in the Reitz Union, you could meet an Austrian astronomer, a Chinese geneticist, an Italian business student, and everyone in between. The event began two years ago by the UF International Center, and began to pick up serious steam in the last few semesters—often attracting as many as 200 people a night.

For a while, I thought that the administration actually cared about programs like the International Coffeehouse. Clearly that was why they gave the UFIC a brand-spanking-new office in the heart of the HUB. Obviously that’s why Bernie Machen spoke on the promise of UF’s international community during the UFIC dedication in April. Surely the importance of fostering a global culture was not lost on those in power. Surely.

Well, maybe they remembered it in April, but forgot it in August. Maybe they decided that the International Coffeehouse was really not so important to the future of a more globalized Gator Nation. I later learned that several employees, including my own UFIC mentor, and the International Student Speakers’ Bureau were considered equally unimportant and had also been axed.

A few days ago, I spoke with Debra Anderson, the coordinator of international student services, about these cuts. Ms. Anderson explained to me that the UFIC has traditionally been a bureaucratic body, focused on the paperwork for helping domestic students study abroad and foreign students study here. The concept of using the UFIC to promote an international culture on campus was something they had just begun to explore. Therefore, when push came to shove, these more experimental programs were the first to go.

Ms. Anderson did leave me with one encouraging piece of news: The Reitz Union is considering covering the tab for the International Coffeehouse and moving it into the Orange and Brew. It’s not a done deal, but there is hope.

It is understandable that, in times of financial hardship, the university has to trim the fat, and that may cause complaints no matter where they do it. Nevertheless, if the UFIC cannot foot the bill for the International Coffeehouse, then let’s not give the Reitz Union a chance to say no. And I would hope that the new event becomes not simply an International Coffeehouse, but a Multicultural Coffeehouse—a place for students, domestic and foreign alike, to make cross-cultural bonds and embrace the diversity that exists right here in Gainesville. The world is becoming more connected every day. Let’s make sure that the Gator Nation can keep pace.

First Steps in a Certain direction

So, I wrote my first column for the INDEPENDENT UF Alligator. It was tough and awkward, but not moreso than many other writing assignments. I haven't had to do a lot of writing in these past few years, so it's probably understandable that my skills (whatever they were) from high school, have dropped off a bit.

I think that's a fairly depressing thought--that my college experience has dulled my writing abilities. And that's considering I have been pursuing Classics pretty strongly for the last few semesters. I cannot imagine the damage done had I been ensconced in the mathematical universe of physics.

The feeling of writing, however frustrating, is still--as it always was--something that's immensely satisfying to me. That's one of the most heartening thoughts, and hopefully not a fluke. Truth be told, I've always brushed the idea aside, mostly because I thought that my writing was never the most lucid or the most elegant or...the most anything. I thought it was good, maybe even above average, but never the best. And I think that unconscious belief put the idea of doing anything in a large SEP field in my brain. (For those of you who are so uncool--or perhaps just not very nerdy-- that you don't know what a Somebody Else's Problem field is, stop here, and go read Life, The Universe, and Everything. You will thank me later.) Now, I'm beggining to think that, perhaps my writing isn't Pulizter Prize-winning, but maybe it's still worthy of publication. Maybe.

So, with that outlook emerging, I begin anew. Trying to jumpstart my literary brain, with the idea of reporting the science that I have no desire to be trapped in a lab doing, yet still find it interesting and worth bringing to the public's attention. It gives me a good feeling, to think about seeking out scientists and engineers that are on the cusp of interesting discoveries and creations. Probing the brains of the people who plug away alone, and bringing their stories together, wholistically....really sounds like me.

I am nervous, of course. I hope this desire lasts and I pray that this does not lead to the same feeling of dead-end-ness that so many other prospective careers have led to. Perhaps all this sounds rather pessimisstic, but it is, in fact, simply ultra-cautious optimism. A fine line, I guess.

The editorial I just wrote wasn't even about science at all. It was about the recent budget cuts affecting some people and programs at the school that were dear to my heart at the UFIC. It was hard to write, I will say that. Column writing is tough and I won't be surprised if they don't pick it up. Nevertheless, it was a good experience and I am glad I tried. I hope they publish it, eventually, just because the story needs to get out there.

I suppose I need to go, though. My "hoping" is annoying me. There's a lot more I could be doing. Mark lent me some reporting textbooks and I could always be reading more science articles. I am going to give this project some good effort. Starting now.

Some People Can't Get Succes With Their Art

So, here it is folks. I am scared to death to say it, for if it smolders away like so many of my plans due to my lack of real enthusiasm, I will have yet another beginning to look at with another discouraging ending. But I definitely see science writing/journalism as a potential path for me...maybe not the full path, but part of it.

But if I keep trying, perhaps I will find that thing that will lead to an end, no? I just listen to the language my mind is speaking. I wish it would wise up and learn English.

Here it is: Let us commemorate the newly established SCIENCE BLOG by one, L'alchimico, and wish him (me) good luck keeping it up.

DaVinci's Flight: I think it has a nice ring to it. But maybe tomorrow you'll come back and it will be changed.

I just hope to be able to take a simple approach: let's not reinvent the news, just retell it, and gain some experience with journalistic writing style. Then maybe attach my own opinion on the end, just to give you your money's worth. I hope this works, and I hope you enjoy.

Strange Loops and Mental Magic

In Godel, Escher, Bach--my current literary love interest-- Douglas R. Hofstadter is on the hunt for one of the most interesting, tantalizing, and elusive constructs of the human mind: the concept of "I", of the individual's ability to self-reference. During his own intellectual odyssey, he realizes that the works of mathematician Kurt Godel, artist and visual philosopher M.C. Escher, and musical titan J.S. Bach all demonstrate similarly self-referential properties--properties which he believes are tied to the way our consciousness works.

But what is self-reference? On the surface, it seems fairly simple: To exhibit self-reference, something has to "refer" to itself. A person can refer to trees, books, emotions, laws, wine bottles, interest rates, and, of course, other people. So what should be so strange about me referring to myself? You cook, I cook. He laughs, I laugh. The change of person seems almost trivial...but thinking deeper about the situation reveals some very evident weirdness. What am "I"? "I" changes for every person, but the concept stays the same. Or to pose another question, how do we so easily reconcile our perceptions of external stimuli with our perceptions of ourselves? We do it so casually, but in science it would be tantamount to trying to use a microscope to examine itself or trying to verify the length of a ruler by referring to it's own inches markings. When it comes to most things, in fact, the idea of self-reference and self-perception is quite strange.

Let's take a cue from another self-referential situation. A TV camera in a news studio is filming two anchors give their daily 6 o'clock report. The camera films people, blue screens, fake plants, and a giant set. When the news is done, the anchors have gone, and the cameramen are packing up, one of them swings the camera over to one of the TV monitors on the edge the set. The TV monitor now displays itself, since the camera is pointed at it. What is on the TV screen within the TV? Another set with another TV of course! And, as you've probably have seen for yourself, this effect goes on to infinity...or theoretically goes on to infinity, but in reality stops at the resolution of the camera. The resulting image is an absurd repetition of TV images buried in more TVs, on and on and on. TVs "referring" to themselves is a strange situation indeed.

This is what Hofstadter classifies as a "Strange Loop" or "Tangled Hierarchy," in which A leads to B, which leads C, which somehow magically leads back to A. Perhaps you may recall a famous optical illusion where monk-like people trudge down stairs on the top of a castle, and although all of the stairs go "down," the small people end up back where they started. That's an Escher, by the way. So is the picture of a waterfall turning a mill which lets the water out on to a stream that somehow flows back down (up?) to the top of the waterfall. So is the picture of two hands emerging from a picture, drawing each other. As you can see, Escher's world is one full of Tangled Hierarchies, put forth in the most visually jarring ways.

Although Escher's work helps to visualize the strangeness of these loops, Hofstadter is first and foremost a scientist, and will attack these logic pretzels through formal mathematics. It is then that Hofstadter introduces Kurt Godel into the mix of things. Godel used the Strange Loop concept (not by name, of course) to do something both ingenious and disruptive--he proved that there could never be a complete and consistent mathematical system. Godel's role does take some explaining: In brief, before the early 20th century, theoretical mathematicians--in all of their brainy bravado--believed that they could eventually produce a system of mathematics that was complete and internally consistent. That is to say, they thought that they could devise the perfect system, where all truths would be provable and everything provable would be true.

Godel's work simply shows the magic of simple statements like "This sentence is false," (which is another example of a Strange Loop) can be translated into mathematical jargon and disrupt logical paradise. The details are gnarled and, I'll admit a few neurons were warped in the process of the understanding them. Nevertheless, the end result is crystal clear: Godel's Incompleteness Theorem demonstrated that some statements can be known to be true, but cannot be proven within their respective system. Thus, no system can be mathematically perfect.

Now, you should know that this search for these "air tight" systems was not just some current academic fad. It was a strong belief by many mathematicians, for hundreds of years, that number theory could be perfected and completed. So it was a huge event in the history of mathematics when a 25-year-old Austrian, barely out of graduate school, destroys any hope of achieving this end. And, of course, it's all the more intriguing for our story to realize that it was a Strange Loop that was used to strangle mathematical perfection.

So, what does all of this have to do with your consciousness? Let's keep the suspense about the big question, and answer the second one first. Johann Sebastian Bach was a mathematician's musician. If you have never heard Bach's work (which is improbable...you probably just didn't know it was Bach), then download one of his Fugue's or the Goldberg Variations, and you will here something that might well be described as "the music of numbers." Bach's works were full of inversions, transformations, and expansions--terms usually left to Algebra II textbooks. Yet, Bach could devise simple melodies which could be inverted (essentially take the notes and put them upside down on the staff), reversed (play it backwards), and transposed (played in a different key) and somehow these transformations could be put together with the original melody and produce beautiful, complex harmonies.

Bach also produced an interesting tune, known as the Crab Canon, which--through subtle melodic shifts that are barely noticable--rises to higher and higher keys until...it gets to the original one. Kind of like a...yep, Tangled Hierarchy.

So, that's all the steam I have for now. Yet Hofstadter keeps going. The book is over 700 pages. I'm barely at 300. I will let you ponder how consciousness may fit into Hofstadter's theme, partially to give you something to think about, partially because I don't entirely know myself.

The Ascent of Castel Aragonese

I said, almost jokingly, when I first saw the castle that we had to explore it. I mean, that's who I am, in my idealized heart--the intrepid, 19th-century explorer. The castle was an island off the coast of an island, a drop of land that seemed to be created for the divine purpose of guarding the Mediterranean paradise of Ischia Ponte. Had I a less scientific and more theistic view of things, I would easily believe it.

The castle was carved out of the island's stone, seemeing to emerge organically from the shear rocks, like a fine sculpture. I figured that even if we couldn't access the castle, it was still an incredible sight; besides, it was hard to be dissappointed on Ischia. Greg, who's good fortune had taken him to many places in this wide world, commented that Ischia had to be one of the most gorgeous places he'd ever seen. As the ferry boat made waves through perfectly blue water, I found myself smiling for perhaps the one-thousandth time, happy that I threw in all of my chips (most of which were borrowed) and went on the UF trip to Italy.

The island of Ischia lies just west of Naples--a big and dirty city, older than Rome and all the worse for wear--near the famed Isle of Capri, which is said to be even more breathtaking than Ischia... a concept I find hard to imagine. Ischia is not well known to Americans or the British; in fact, most tourists there are either Germans or Italians themselves, taking a break from the mainland heat during the summer. Its small towns and villages skirt the island's coasts, for Ischia's heart is Mt. Epomeo, a dormant volcano that was the driving force of island's geologic birth.

Ischia's towns were essentially small groupings of shops and homes, with all the requisite cracking paint and uneven shingles, nestled together in that specifically Italian way, as if the buildings were all old friends, unchanging through time, with transient occupants that were given the rare privilege to bask in their camaraderie.

In the four days that we were on Ischia, I had made friends with those buildings, and those people. Everyone from the gelateria lady to the friendly family who owned the "hotel" (more like a big house) where we stayed. Sam and I, one night, sat on their porch, speaking only Italian with them for at least an hour, as their whole family--aunts, cousins, nephews, brothers--came strolling down the street to join them before dinner. A whole enormous family on one street block, as if mass globalization and the 21st-century were something that never noticed the people of Ischia.

Another night was the exciting "partita di futbol" between US and Italy--a match-up that revealed the fairweather side of the UF in Rome trip: none of us, save for Kyle, even considered cheering for Gli Americani. I mean, we were trying to blend in, you know? Well, hell, honestly who wants to be rooting for the "other" guys in a town when everyone is in the streets and bars, crowding the roads like its a festival, all for a soccer game? We were Italiani.

Other small moments of interest: climbing Mt. Epomeo, visiting a private beach and dipping into the icy Mediterranean, discussing philosophy in a hut, and....yes, we absolutely got into that castle.

Another perfect idea

"In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference. […] Our very nature is such as to prevent us from fully understanding its very nature. Poised midway between the unvisualizable cosmic vastness of curved spacetime and the dubious, shadowy flickerings of charged quanta, we human beings, more like rainbows and mirages than like raindrops or boulders, are unpredictable self-writing poems — vague, metaphorical, ambiguous, and sometimes exceedingly beautiful."
-Douglas R. Hofstadter

What I'm Actually Thinking

Logic. Math. Science. Consciousness. Integration. Music. The Thoughts I Love To Have.

It's been probably seven years since I purchased my copy of Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, but I am making a concerted effort to get through it this summer. Complete with highlighting and marginal notes, this book will be conquered--in the most cognitive sense.

I remember, in days past, when I wanted to be a snobby intellectual and sit around mahogany tables in a Enlightenment-era salon, discussing the nature of nature, the meaning of meaning, and the philosophy of...well, okay, you see. And perhaps, in a very childlike way, I still do. Sitting here in Library West, in front of my flat panel display and utilitarian office space, I have been browsing through an over-sized coffee table book called The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World. The book, oddly enough, was not very well written, but then again it's mostly full page pictures of old palatial biblioteks scattered throughout Europe. They held me entranced, these scholar's basilicas, temples dedicated to the collection of knowledge, filled with polished, wooden beauty in Vienna and Cambridge, Dublin and Manchester, Rome and Paris. It is a child's fantasy for me--was there ever such a time when people really worked to understand the higher thoughts of man? When people sought out knowledge purely and formed the great ideas that fill cracked pages? When men were strong and scholar's were scholarly? Ok, I jest. My woes are overwrought.

Academia has thoroughly disgusted me lately. The more I read about what it means to be a Ph.D. professor in the modern world, the more I realize that the system is broken. The system, which started in those dusty Cambridge halls, filled with aging books, has been applied and reapplied en masse to a demographic it was not designed for: the average people. Kings, Queens, court-appointed officials and scholars, the wealthy, the royal, and the holy--these were the original patrons of libraries and universities. These were the people who had time to devote to the act of writing, reading, and learning.

Perhaps this last fact should make me glad I was born when I was. What would've been the odds that I would be able to work amongst the "great thinkers" of the past? Had I been born into a family, say, even 100 years ago, which had (relatively) the same wealth as mine, I would have had a fairly slim chance to even know about some of things I can explore and learn about today. Indeed, the democratization of education has been a blessing in this respect. But there is no doubt that we've lost a great deal.

In the transition from regal/monstatic control to populous-based, "The University" has seen an enormous decline in quality. In some ways, I guess it should be expected. You try to stretch something too thin and it's integrity is compromised. Yet, I'd like to hold Western Civilization to a higher standard. Why should my university be run like a business or a trade school, where students come to learn rote skills for the 21st century's white collar work force and where the goal for professors is to keep writing archaic "scholarly" papers, which don't get read by anyone outside their ultra-specified field? The student, who initially came to University to gain a deeper and richer perspective of the world, now comes simply to gain a degree, a proof-of-purchase of an "education". Professors, whose jobs are so scarce, are rarely found breaking the corrupted mold, for they are just happy to have a job which, by all accounts of public opinion, shouldn't exist.

And that's the real problem, isn't it? That's why I'm really mad, why I'm really sitting here not focusing on Hofstadter's treatises on the Consistency of Formal Systems. It's because, in the democratization of education, we also democratized the standards. Instead of education being guided by our highest and most intelligent, the average became the norm. And this is not political democracy, but rather the egalitarian and all-mighty dollar which brought down higher learning. For what is the use of philosophy to business or history to an engineer? The answer is "A hell of a lot" but not in the short term, cause-and-effect sort of vision of our leaders. We want results. We want them now. So screw music and art, tear up the past and make way for the future.

Quintilian, an educator in 1st century (AD) Ancient Rome, wrote a book on the state of Roman Education. He spoke of the necessity for an integrated education, because our minds do not naturally work by compartmentalizing language from history, or music from math. Instead, to create great minds, we must foster the whole, united. This is what I want to do with my life. And, if this country, nay, if this society wants to progress, it has to look back and see.

Yes, yes, this mostly emotion, but it makes me feel better. And one day, when I give a speech on this, I promise all the logic will be there in full, spelled out in a Powerpoint. The question: who will listen?

That's my big question right now. Who would listen? Who would care? The key is to figuring out who is hurt by our failing education system? If nobody is, then nothing can happen, and I am stuck in a time and place where the things I value are not significant. My primary hope is the business community.

In another entry perhaps I will actually talk about the things I am thinking in an academic sense--the thoughts brought on by GEB--and perhaps will also delve into the topic of "Whole-Brain" thinking that I was introduced to in Daniel Pink's excellent work A Whole New Mind.

Tremors from the Underground

I have been thinking that I might have a debilitating disease. I scared myself because I've been feeling rather peculiar lately, and started looking up my excessively vague symptoms on this here internet. This is what I've learned:

The internet is the hypocondriac killer. It will destroy the paranoid mind with possibilities and if one's mind is fertile for planting the worst ideas, then look no further than Google to help seed the garden of fear and dysfunction. The mind is a powerful thing, and when it gets to worrying about certain conditions, there are often times when the symptoms begin to adhere to the e-diagnosis. Then, you've proven the web right, you get more frightened, which causes the mind to project even more similarities to the worst case scenario, and on and on....

On and on until you either a)die from your own imagined ailment b) die from your actual ailment or c) a friend can help you slice through the disillusioned weeds and thickets with a machete of reasonable analysis.

Well, that's my metaphor quota for the day.

So, what's really going on? I'm not sure, to be honest. I've been tired and light-headed, excessively hungry, and had other odd discomforts. The good news is that my garden has been de-weeded (for now) and I can candidly talk about my fears without living them.

You know this could be some horrible random genetic disease. Or just low blood sugar. Or stress. (Not that I've never been insanely stressed before, but all of these symptoms did arrive right when I was doing phone interviews with a big company in NYC...an internship which I consequently did not get.) The doctors have been fairly useless, except for ruling things out...which is the most nerve-wracking thing. In the last two weeks I've been hoping for kidney disease, hyperthyroidism, and diabetes. But according to the blood tests...no such luck. That means, I guess by definition, that it's either something considerably less horrible. Or signficantly more.

Erica gave me a rather insightful speech yesterday as I confessed to her (upon gazing into this infoweb of horrors) that I was probably a goner. She told me to stop thinking about putting a label on my problems, and just listen to my body. She said that she thought our organic systems were still so complex that the medical community's best guesses in the modern era are still often shots in the dark. Despite the size of many medical texts, it is hard to refute. She told me to just calm down, because our minds can eat us alive a lot quicker than anything else and she made me some soup. I cannot tell you how glad I was that she was around.

Perhaps I'm dependent, but hey nobody's perfect. And knowing is half the battle ("G-I-Joe!") so perhaps I'll be able to handle it more now. It's clear that when my mind runs away with something, it flies. Worrying seems to be a mental loophole for my fears, which have seized on this opportunity for an attack on my brain. Having my best friend around was something no doctor would ever think to prescribe. And that was the most effective treatment so far.

I cannot say how I will feel tomorrow, or even how I will feel when I get up from this chair. But I do know that some unknown band said something like "I get by with a little help from my friends."

Being alone/alive

ALONE

It's been a long week without my girlfriend. I always feel conflicted when she leaves me or I leave her. It starts out appearing to be a welcome vacation to just veg and be lazy; or it takes on an even more "me" vision: a time to continue chugging through the multiplying unread books that populate my room. The image of me "finally" sitting down in that dusty library, the stacks providing a cave in which, huddling under the dark green rim of a golden table lamp, I lose myself in illuminating texts. Yet, it never turns into either of these things. The laziness feels good for about 1-hour and then I get bored--I just can't be that unproductive. And the books...just never feel in the mood to be read... nor do I live near the library in my mind. Instead, I usually just end up running aground into the shallow shore of reality, with my mental wheels spinning in muddy 3:00 AM infomercials or unseen HBO movies with unsettling endings (Falling Down with Michael Douglas and Robert Duvall is a good movie, just not one worth staying up all night watching and then thinking about). I also devise a lot of messy, mixed metaphors, apparently.

That being said, this particular stint could have been a lot worse. The pits I fell in this time have been pretty shallow and short-lived. This is mostly thanks to my friends, I should say good friends, who I see much less of when Erica is in town. The last five or six nights, I've hung out with them, seen a few episodes of "House," and had some good fun. They should probably think less of me, seeing as how I'm essentially falling-back on them in the absence of my girlfriend. And maybe they do. It's no coincidence that I've been there so often and they know it. I appreciate them a lot right now, though. They've kept me from hitting a real low moping point. And maybe they know that too. I dunno. I should definitely tell them.

Aside from my nights with them, I might also take a little credit for some brightness in my solitary week. I've managed to keep myself busy thinking, writing (well, idea-jotting, if that counts), going to assorted social functions that I would usually have frequented, and minimally, working out. But's it's still a fight. It reminds me, vaguely, of the feeling I wrote about in my freshmen year, when I was sans female. I talked about life feeling like a series of tightropes that I jumped between to prevent falling into some ominous abyss of meaninglessness. I've only felt a slight echo of this sentiment in the previous days, but it was definitely around.

Being alone is such an abnormal state for me. I've always had a close group of friends, back as far as elementary school. Even at home, I've always had my brother, a fellow renaissance egg-head like myself, and my loud parents who conditioned me to be of a similar nature. Although my appartment is inhabited by three other relatively-organic humanoid figures...they only occasionally exhibit more than one dimension of existence. There vocabulary consists usually of various synonyms for the male reproductive organ and its oppositely situated orifice on the rear-end. They spend there time mimicking the clocks in "The Persistance of Memory" all over our couch and playing the PS2. I do not mind them, per se, but I relate to them on a very thin and superficial level most of the time. Perhaps it is because they allow themselves such a thin level of expression. Perhaps it's because two are training to be engineers and the other is a sports economist. And I'm the resident, you know, wanna-be poet-philosopher. So, putting them all together, it's sort of equivalent to me living with one whole person with whom I can rarely relate.

My friends that have been so welcoming are, by far, the closest thing I have to a family in college. We've been through a lot of drama, which must be some sort of universal rule of human group interaction. But the more I write about this week, the more I feel like they deserve my thanks. Maybe in the form of an ice cream cake.

ALIVE

Being in a precarious financial position this semester, I have had to readjust my Monetary Sense Perception (MSP), in order to shake a feeling of overwhelming panic about my future. I watch the loan bills sit and accrue interest, and I watch the homeless vets on the side of the street look to me for a handout. All I can think is: at least they're not in debt. I guess they could be, though.
Yet, I have--to the best of my ability--managed to continue my dispiriting search for an actual job, while not allowing my fears eat me alive. I am, in fact, alive. And the more time I waste wondering how I will stay alive and afloat, the less time I actually will. A metaphorical chinese-finger trap.

So, with all the time in the world to kill, I've been trying to worry less and actively appreciate my place in the world more. I've noticed the good weather, the collegiate atmosphere that I so revel around the brick buildings on campus, and the park benches among shady trees. Trying the Zen thing, perhaps not explicitly, but subtley, in unplanned moments and calming breaths.

And I think this is working. We'll see. My theory: The less I focus on my problems, the more likely they will be solved.

Update: few days later

So, I was finally offered the library job I was so furiously courting. After two interviews, drug tests, spelling tests, a twelve-page essay on Proust, and a four-act, one-man play, I was offered the job: a part-time, minimum-wage, desk job answering the phones. Okay, so perhaps that was a bit overexaggerated (and certainly too many over-hypenated words), but the point is...it worked. Maybe that was a fluke. Or maybe a cosmic lesson learned. We'll see.

the virtue of slog

It's slow going these days. It's like, I can feel life piling on the "experience." I can feeling it growing on my back, trying to weigh me down with all sorts of mental and physical baggage. And I try to stand up straight, but not too much. Just trying to keep my knees slightly bent, and my head foreward.

This blog...gives me a headache. I don't want to specialize like I've been told to do. I don't want it to be just about me, or just about my thoughts. I am not sure I can yet distinguish between those two. I am a very subjective person, even in the most objective sense. So, let's just get on with it, I suppose. That's old ground which I'll retread later.

-------

There's this amazing formality in so many people's writing in the blogosphere. In so many respectable blogs, there's an editorial voice being used-- personal yet detatched. I am on a different wavelength when it comes to this new medium. It doesn't seem to provoke in me any sense of respect or formality. It is too easy, too casual, for me to find it credible. It might be why I'm falling behind the times, but according to Mark I'm not the only one. People form friendships, rivalries, cliques, and clubs all in this Web 2.0 universe. Maybe I find it requring more trust in these computer devices than I'm ready to hand over.

That's not to say I've never "e-logged" before. For years, I had one of those postable journals before this (I hate calling it OpenDiary for the pettiness of its girlie-sounding name). Yet, that was explicitly my opinion. I could have posted encyclopedia articles on there, but no one would even think of citing it. Now, universities have to explicity ban the use of Wikipedia as a reference source. But it's user-driven! Where did all of this trust in our fellow e-stranger come from? A true sociological question of the 21st century.

So, give me some time, and I'll open up...perhaps. I have to situate myself better in this e-vironment (oh, the bad jokes mean I am getting comfortable). The first hurdle is figuring out how the hell to say what is lodged in the neurons. The second is figuring out if those thoughts will be okay out here, in the open, for everyone (who may stumble by my blog) to see.

"Sometimes I panic--what if nobody who finds out who I am?"
--Billy Joel, Big Man On Mulberry Street

The Now

I have been periodically trying to achieve Zen enlightenment. The book I've been skimming through called "Buddhism is not what you think" says that an attempt at achieving something is precisely opposite to the notions presented by Zen Buddhism, namely, that there is nothing to "achieve" per se, but rather something that need only be seen (the italics meaning a different, more dimensional type of sight). Yet, we all do desire, so we should be okay with that and eventually we will reach enlightenment when we have finally forgotten that we really wanted to.

Now, this sounded all very familiar--rather a lot like pre-intellectual awareness from Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintainence...and this doesn't surprise me. I mean Pirsig certainly was not coming up with this idea on his own. So, I've been "trying" to see the world in the here and now, without any judgment, thought, or analysis. Just...intake, like sevants who can recreate masterpieces of art, not because they have an inner desire or interpretation of the work, but because they have perfect recall of the image. They see the "now" without distortion.

I started to see the now as I drove home from the library today. I became a bit meditative as I curved gently along with the road. Today the weather was gorgeous, and things seemed mroe harmonious than usual. I glanced off at the university-owned cow pasture on the side of the road when something started to happen. I was not really trying very intently to be in the now. I just kinda started to think about it, and then...then the pasture, for a split second seemed beautiful, more epic and pastoral than it has ever been. Like an Italic field I passed from Rome to Florence, it suddenly had a perfection about it, like I was seeing it for the first time.

Then, very quickly, it ended. I realized that, seeing in the now is something I am very interested in (however anti-Zen that may be). For me, I feel like it revives your sight, brings novelty to that which we have become jaded towards. It was a surprising experience.

Umoja Means Unity

This band is just blowing my mind. I am still in shock that they are local...March 3rd at the Atlantic? I might be there.

A Restless Alchemist

And immediately, I wish to fill the space with things wonderful and rich, passages to be explored and to get lost in. I have no idea if they will come...but I will put a sign on the door, a splash of lamb's blood on the lintel to stave off the last plague, a glass of wine for the prophet, and glass of of milk for Santa. For now, in the year 2007, we should've accrued so much meaning, so many avenues to be referenced, making a weave might not be so hard. The trick is to look beyond the computer-generated static and behind the drawing. If you just relax, they told me, then you will be able to see the dolphin amongst the disjointed palm tree and coconut print.

The hunt for depth continues, like a pyschotic chinese finger trap. And perhaps now, both can be bought wholesale on the internet. Let the bidding begin.

========

So, who am I really? Just a nineteen-year-old kid in a Midwestern college.

Or maybe an Ohio stay-at-home mom with a hard-working construction manager as a husband and a retired racing greyhound named Damien, and a hopeful Nascar superstar son named Jacob.

Or a Catholic private school teacher in West Palm, only ten years out of my undergrad, and wondering what I'm doing at Bishop Sullivan High when, during Mass, half of my class looks stoned as they file down the pews and the other half look petrified of the faculty, of God, and of their own flesh.

Actually I'm a closeted transvestite lawyer, working for my fiance's father's law firm in downtown Baltimore, while playing Lisa Monelli's part in "Cabaret" downtown at The Harbor.

Or maybe I'm just a goddamned twentysomething living in ManSHATtan renting a one bedroom apartment and two nice suits while working for PriceWaterhouseCoopers and avoiding my analysis on the across-the-board sector fallout on Russian hedge funds because Vladimir Putin decided to remind the US that Bin Laden and al-Malaki are not the only pieces on the board.

Or maybe I'm a traveller from an antique land, who once saw two vast and trunkless legs of stone, and near them a faded plaque which warned of the fallen kingdoms of the past.

Or maybe I'm an idea, a incorporeal network of a electronic pulses that, when implanted into some watery gray flesh and interpreted by the soul of a man, inspire acts of courage and illogical bravery, or perhaps reveal flashes of unseen connections or lead new and creative deeds. Or perhaps I lead to despair and self-torment, incurring ruminations and reveries inthose who can interpret, but cannot construct--who can see my chemical footprint in the sand, but can only forge castles in the sky.

Or maybe I'm all words, all sentences, all thoughts spoken and thought in any language. Perhaps I am all things that have the capacity to be communicated through writings or oratory, in tongues dead and alive.

Perhaps I am an alchemist. Perhaps I've just turned lead into gold.

Incipit

I am putting, perhaps, too much pressure on this little blog. I want it, right now, to be a salvation and a new beginning, like the Luke Skywalker of my literary galactic history. I woke up this morning not at all intending to start one, nor am I sure that it will last. But I have started this year with ambitious strides towards difference and change. Let's keep it going.

So...who am I? Well, let's make a list.

• My name is not important, but I do not like nicknames. I like my full name.
• I am a frustrated bibliophile.
• I have a huge ego about the insight of my ideas.
• I have an inferiority complex about communicating them.
• I aspire to infinities, big and small.
• I achieve things that are but finite.
• I am on an upswing in life...for now.
• I hoped, as a teenager, to leave this planet and see the rest of the universe.
• I realized, recently, that to leave this planet would be to miss billions of universes.
• I disliked change, as a child and was often fearful of it.
• I have understood change to be the most critical component of existence.
• I am a huge fan of jazz, especially Dave Brubeck.
• I love critical analysis of literature.
• I feel that Pink Floyd's The Wall is one of the defining epic stories of the 20th century.
• I sound, currently, much more serious than I truly am.

That was an incomplete list. There are some other streams of words that might help: black hole enthusiast, supporter of Barack Obama, drinker of Cabernet Sauvignon, fast lover, but slow learner, of romance languages, reader of Borges, Eco, Calvino, et al. Reluctant child of the american revolution, desperate parent to the modern renaissance, and crier and page to a small community that still exists in ancient Babylon, where they speak Indo-European, and where we can trace all western languages back.

I must go. The standards cannot hold themselves, and as do all ideals, my standards will fall. But they must be held, they must go to battle. We must fight for the pax deorum or the gods will not fight for us.