waiting_one

Smoke and reason

2007-03-13T04:02:38Z

A child's rhyme stuck in my head
saying that life is but a dream
I've spent so many years in question
to find I've known this all along. . .

complete lyrics here. . .

About a hundred years ago, a guy by the unlikely name of Niels Bohr put forth the as-above-so-below-ish proposition that the structure of the atom mirrored the structure of our solar system, with electrons orbiting like happy little planets at specified distances from the nucleus. This model provides an excellent explanation for a whole bunch of the sort of stuff one tends to learn in introductory chemistry. Unfortunately, a guy with the even more unlikely name of Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger came along and proposed the idea of the dead-alive cat, wrote an equation entitled, oddly enough, the "Schrödinger wave equation", and proceeded to surmise and, apparently, mathematically demonstrate, that electrons were doing something a hell of a lot stranger than simply "orbiting". The upshot of all this was that the old, orbiting model of the atom proposed by Mr. Bohr was shown to be a complete and utter load of rampantly false crap.

Interestingly, 99.999% (estimate, eh?) of what's actually known about the universe ends up making perfect sense regardless of which of the above theories one chooses to base one's perception of subatomic reality on. The heap-of-proven-horseshit version works almost as well as the quite-possibly-true-but-also-possibly-involving-dead-alive-cats one.

Don't believe everything you read.

All theories, models, et al, are based on patterns, on generalities that, one way or another, have been observed, leading someone (possibly with five names) to conclude something about how everything is put together. Generally (this being, well, another pattern, another model for viewing reality) speaking, every single pattern has exceptions, every model has holes that render it false. The dead-alive-cat thing in all likelihood will, just like the orbiting-electron thing, have its day to be disproven.

I sometimes find it quite tempting to conclude from the above that generalizations and theories are useless illusions, that understanding is ultimately a pointless dream, and that the universe is at the best of times a sea of festering chaos. All the explanations are, or will be, provably flawed, after all. Except. . .

My car still starts. The engine was almost certainly designed by someone who didn't know shit about dead-alive cats, someone who believed a lot of false things about what he was doing and how it worked, and pulled it off anyway because the models he had seemed to adequately explain the phenomena he was observing and working with. Despite being wrought of false logic, it works anyway. Of course, if it works anyway, why bother trying to improve one's understanding?

On a different branch of the same tree, one doesn't get to the slightly-better model of the universe without playing with and thinking about the slightly-less-good one enough to
realize what about it is wrong, and some of the older models wouldn't have allowed my car to start.

Don't believe everything you read, but don't stop trying to read the universe either.

I think what I'm talking about here is learning/developing a new model of the universe (warning: geometry metaphor ahead!) as being a helix rather than a circle; ideally, one doesn't start with an understanding of things, develop a great new theory that replaces and invalidates the old, and end up with the exact same understanding; rather, one starts with an understand of things, develops a great new theory that replaces and invalidates the old, and ends up with the same old understanding plus some new piece of information that wasn't possible the way you were looking at things before.

Water

2007-02-21T22:05:12Z

DISCLAIMER: This might come across as just blatantly negative; it isn’t, and whining/complaining isn’t the point. I’m simply thinking about some stuff that I have the distinct feeling I’m going to let elude my mind again before too long, and wanted to record it, albeit it probably imprecisely and possibly nonsensically, before I let it go.

To start, well, somewhere, I seem to have done a rather incredible job of gathering a large quantity of music that I find at least vaguely disturbing onto one CD. I wonder now how good a decision this was, but it seems to have gotten me thinking. One song in particular (Tool/Flood—lyrics here) has been triggering Hanged Man (XII) associations in me big-time. This has never been a comfortable card for me; despite being intellectually aware of positive things present in the symbol, all I see when I look at it is the ultimate endpoint of fear, the moment when one is confronted by the absolute and final futility of everything one has known and believed. I don’t (at least, not in situations where I’m really, truly feeling not in control of anything) like the sensation of being trapped. It’s not the suggestion of death in the card that bothers me; it’s the idea that all paths (or lack of path, it doesn’t even seem to matter) lead to stagnation, to immobility, to stalemate with the universe. I think that I fear the inability to evolve, to change far more than I fear death (although I can’t help but observe that the aforementioned song is in what I’ll call 13/8 time, referencing both Death and my own personal card, Adjustment), loss, or failure of any kind, and that I see the Hanged Man as the bitter end of these fears and of my inability (thus far) to reconcile them with everything in myself that I love. Three months ago, I was hit quite blatantly over the head with the knowledge that I was indeed wrong about a great many things. I want that awareness alone to have changed everything. I want to have evolved and to be evolving from what I’m experiencing, and I feel like I’m not, like I’m content to fall back into my ways and my arrogance and assume, contrary to evidence, that the universe is exactly as I’ve always wanted to believe it to be. I won’t face my damn fears, and I won’t let them pass through me, and so I end up, time and time again, letting myself forget the things that would spur me forward, that would enable me not to make the same damn mistakes over and over. Above all, I want to get to the point of thinking about the things that really, really disturb me on my own, as opposed to being pushed into such trains of thought by, for example, the arrival of law enforcement on my doorstep at 7:30 on a Thursday morning.

Hence the last sentence of the disclaimer; there are categories of stuff that I really don’t like to think about, and that I’ve become really good at not thinking about, and fear is pretty much at the center of it. I’m guessing that this is probably a universal human thing, but I lack the perspective to say that for certain.

Of course, balance (Adjustment again) is ultimately my thing, and central to my nature. Thus, when I hear (back to the song lyrics) about the sun coming to deliver me vs. the truth coming to punish me, I don’t see it as contradiction; both are simply true. Sure, my fears are there, and quite palpable while I’m thinking about them, and, yes, I’m worried about burying things again the moment I stop thinking about them, but at the same time I remain ever optimistic about Life, the Universe, and Everything. Onward, then, to thinking about mental health encounters tomorrow and religious services tonight. Wonder what that’ll be like. . .

Herod is unimpressed

2007-02-19T19:21:37Z

Although I generally find that simple, repetitive, boring physical tasks can be quite meditative, I have to say that removing approximately 17,576 small, nearly identical cubes of glass from the back seat of one's vehicle doesn't exactly qualify as such.

On the bright side, anything else I do today pretty much has to be more fun.

Kallisti?

2007-02-15T05:50:47Z

Hmmmm. . . two women, exactly one bouquet of flowers. . .

(Random?) (positive) thoughts

2007-02-14T04:41:00Z

Life's good, I think. Most of all, very much looking forward to upcoming reversal of a temporary alteration in living arrangements. If I was the sort to grin online, I'd probably do so now.

Did official "work" today for the first time in, well, several months. Zounds. Granted, this "work" consisted of driving around Madison, listening to music I'm fond of (i.e., Tool, and yes, I am turning down "Prison Sex" before knocking on anybody's door), and being smiled at by utter strangers who are, for no reason that has been made clear to me, receiving flowers and/or cheese. All this makes a holiday I avoid celebrating kind of fun and profitable all at once. . .

I have the distinct feeling sometimes that if I simply kept driving, I might never sleep. I probably shouldn't ever, ever test this particular theory.

Good night.

The joy of violent movement

2007-02-11T09:12:05Z

Just got back from dancing for three hours. Somewhere fairly close to the surface of my brain, I'm worried that my mental health issues seem no closer to resolution. Somewhere, the return of my legal issues to the forefront of the landscape is making me feel, again, the presence of the undertoad.

Somewhere, in this case, is going to just have to be tomorrow, as dancing is one of those things that, at least for a time, leaves me quite content with being a silly talking monkey.

Off now to sleep.

Hello world?

2007-02-03T19:45:06Z

(BEGIN DISCLAIMER)

I think I have, in my mind, a very long and highly inaccurate list of things that I will absolutely, under no circumstances, ever, ever do. Using LiveJournal definitely lurks somewhere on that list, so I shouldn't really be at all surprised to find myself now embracing it. I will say that I have certain reservations about the whole thing; the idea of an entity that contains various chunks of the lives and thoughts of over eight million people is positively overwhelming to me; also, on a more immediate level, I tend to be quite inconsistent in how I use any means of communication; specifically, my experiences with posting on things like message boards in the past have generally involved me being quite excited about it for two weeks and then flatly giving up. I'm not in any way really sure what I'm intending to use this for; I might post about events in my life; I might write down variegated thoughts; I might simply use it to annoy the public by making unnecessary mention of things like the forthcoming ATLAS SHRUGGED MOVIE. Anyway, don't expect any degree of regularity as to either how often or how I use this. The preceding sentences are directed as much at myself and, well, LiveJournal itself as it as at any human readers of this post; the next sentence will be solely for the benefit of y'all. If you're looking for interesting and lengthy reading material that might mention tennis and/or drugs and/or madness, this might be a good place to look, but you might be better served by reading Infinite Jest. I've been thinking about picking it up again. . .

(END DISCLAIMER)

Anyway, among other things I've pretty much sworn never to do and then metaphorically eaten my metaphorical words on is involvement with the psychiatric profession. I had my second visit with a real shrink yesterday, and was (shockingly) told that I'm experiencing "subconscious self-deception". Really? I could quite easily have pointed this out myself, and I probably would have had to get in line in order to do so. . .

That being said, I'm actually finding myself considerably less cynical than I expected to be about the whole dealing with the mental health profession thing. If nothing else (and there's not nothing else), it's provided me with a sequence of vaguely interesting complete strangers to babble, possibly even coherently, at, and it seems that whatever is really up with me, I've at least caught their interest (the doctor I saw yesterday claimed to have been thinking about my case while showering, which left me quite amused. . .)

My first post. . . finished, I think. I probably ought to have a very stiff drink, and I think that the particular stiff drink for my present situation shall be pure, black coffee.