Postal?

I found myself creeping through photos of friends again. Particularly the ones I remember finding attractive.
Good grief, there's a lot of them. And it's almost like nothing's changed.
Except, of course, that many things - if not everything - have in fact changed.

As my friend so succinctly put it, "I don't want to date, but there's all this fucking loneliness."

I'd congratulate myself on having all these deep thoughts - except what's the guarantee that I'm the first one to have had them, and what's the point when everything needs to be rediscovered each generation?

There are times I feel like I wasn't meant to be a human being.

Degradation

I used to do three-dimensional vector calculus in college.
In cartesian, cylindrical, and polar coordinate systems. (Granted, I struggled a bit with the latter two, but I could do it.)
And although I had a hard time with differential equations, I'd eventually get the right answer.

So ... why the hell am I struggling with this basic trigonometry?

Neuteronomy

I can't think today. These thoughts are neither in the order I thought of them, nor in the order I would like them to be.
And they sure as hell aren't complete.

--------------------------------------

So, this can happen.
Is it a bad thing that this appeals to me in so many ways as a punishment mechanism? For, well, anything undesirable?

It's almost funny - I need not fear punishment because I know I would never do anything to endanger said bits. In terms of physical danger, I generally try to avoid risks to my life. In terms of punishment for crimes - I'm too afraid to approach women, let alone violate them in any way ... and I don't have the presence of mind (or muscular strength) to even attempt most crimes. By all means, you're welcome to punish me, though. You'll just have to wait 'til I've done something wrong. Does that somehow make me better than you, or invalidate justice? I certainly wouldn't say so.

It's quite a safe generalization to categorize a rapist as a bully. After all, rape culture is more or less about power (and sex). And we know bullies are all about power.
All we have to do, then, is take away the power, yes? Seems simple enough. Sex is kind of important, though. (Though let's not talk about how much of it I'm having ...)

I am not going to belabor ideas about how every teensy word one says, or the smallest actions one takes through the course of day, can have an impact on the environment. It's an equivalent idea to the 'moth-causing-a-hurricane' and, regardless of its validity, it's an exercise in futility unless you are possessed of powers far beyond that of ordinary humans. (... in which case, why the fuck are you reading my blog? Why are you even on this planet when there's a whole Universe out there more deserving of your presence?)

Context is everything. In context, we are moving, talking masses of atoms. Out of context, we are (supposedly) rational beings. There is no absolute path in any issue, as clear-cut as I wish it were. (I know, right? The irony of absolutely stating that nothing is absolute ...) I make such a big deal out of how criminals must be caught and dealt with, and yet I deliberately never engage with the question of why they are criminals.

Forget about the patriarchy for just a hot second. Drop a canister of industrial-grade pepper spray into the hands of every female in the country (nay, in the world), and tell them how (and when) to use it.
Let's ignore the fact that a small percentage of people will be affected by the spray even without deserving it - we can equate that to collateral damage for now.
When we give an effective means of punishment to the ones who are most deeply affected by a given crime - how does a bully otherwise remain a bully? Because society enables it, yes - and also because the victim either cannot or does not fight back effectively.

How can one be accused of sitting on the fence when they're still wandering around trying to figure out where the fence is? Of course, there is no fence, but humans are broken that way - we need fences. Here, or there. 'Somewhere' is, evidently, not an acceptable answer, because 'right there' is unequivocally and abso-posi-lu-tively (sic) the right place for it.

You kill the bullies by teaching would-be victims to beat them down, teaching their peers not to stand idly by or encourage it, and only then will bullies learn. Nobody likes being told what or what not to do, so no one is going to listen to authority even if the authorities were miraculously in full support of the underdog. Give the underdog brass knuckles, and to hell with the consequences. A world of limitations is not a world worth living in.

The Sequence?

Ahh, the joys of thinking linearly. A leads to B leads to C. Isn't that right? ... Right?!
Step 1: sharing mutual friend's condition
Step 2: discussing level of concern
Step 3: application of comparison
Step 4: ?????
Step 5: anger / disillusionment / frustration / apathy / something-like-that

The core of worry: Does this mean that it wouldn't be so if I hadn't shared his condition?

At what point did it become a crime to be more concerned for a close friend than for a brother with a rocky history?
At what time did it become an insult to be concerned about a friend based on 1) their apparent disposition, as well as 2) many of the same issues that I have seen played out around the world?

Maybe it wasn't something I did or said. I mean, it couldn't have been me, could it? Was I not completely level-headed? I'd have noticed if I flew off the handle, right? Just like how I noticed - uh .... dammit, where are those keys? I could've sworn they were in my pocket .... um, what were we talking about?

How can one avoid retracing the same, apparently dead, path if one doesn't know where they took the wrong turn? Is the path actually dead, or just disagreeable? Did you know there is a difference between those two qualifiers?

Might this all have been avoided if I hadn't awkwardly gatecrashed the celebration all those years ago? Or if I hadn't been so stupidly oblivious with my childhood friend, when we were, y'know - children? ... but then, what would I have gained? How much might I have lost?

At what moment do the maybes and what-ifs reach a conclusion, so that I might slip into sweet, sweet oblivion? And how long do I have to wait to find out? And why am I talking almost entirely in questions?

Maybe parallel processing wouldn't be such a good idea. I'd go insane much sooner.

Honk If You Love Me

So.
There's this thing. (If you don't want to read it, the title is "Mumbai residents want the honking to stop.") Simple enough.

I'm such a horrible person, and you could very well condemn me for my opinion. I'm not even in Mumbai - but the problem is endemic to the ENTIRE. GODDAMN. COUNTRY. Holy hell.

Seriously, the only thing that will improve anything here is a godforsaken cataclysm. I've observed human nature long enough to know this for a fact. So, omnipotent aliens, wherever you are, take note: cut off all vehicle horns in the entire country. I don't care who, what, where. Millions, it is virtually guaranteed, may die - even (or especially) myself - in this transition, but one thing is for certain: the citizens who currently drive so carefree will learn to drive well, because otherwise they will
1) be guilty of killing countless pedestrians, and/or
2) die.

At least we'll have some peace and quiet for once.

Thought for the day.
-- Yours truly radical.

Sasquatch

Welp it's been a while, my loyal followers, hasn't it? It seems like just yesterday when it was ... yesterday.
Okay, maybe I'm not making so much sense, but I don't see why I have to when nothing else does. Seriously. Nothing actually makes sense. There's no sense in anything. Like, literally. One of those head-scratching things that you "can't unsee once seen".

My favourite friend, the venerable Princess Sierra Watson, was kind enough to keep me company some time back. And I, like the fool I was, utterly forgot to get a picture to immortalize that memory. It seems like something I would do, but I can't be certain, because I didn't take a picture of myself forgetting so that I'd remember that I forgot to do that.
I also have been for a few weddings. Like, good heavens, weddings are freaking everywhere. What is with people getting married these days - and, more importantly, what is up with me? I mean, you'd think, there's a goddamn open bar and I'm most definitely not driving - why the hell wouldn't a sane person get shitfaced? And yet it comes to a point where I forgo all of the free booze, in favor of an expensive one-time drink with a close friend, at a club where my brother, of all people, is performing. Yes, the music was good. NO, it wasn't great ... but compared to most of the musicians around these parts? It's a difficult comparison, and not for the reason that you think. What I wouldn't give to be back jamming with my old outfit in the USA, we could have been professional if not for that weird thing called life.

Ever tried looking for a Sasquatch? I sure haven't. But if I did, I'd presume it would feel like what I've been trying to figure out for the past few years. Namely, what's going on? ... and more importantly, why?
Ever throw a brick through a glass window? I sure haven't ... but if I did, I don't think it would resemble my slow decline into ambiguity. Subtle, yes?

If you've read this far without giving up, you are to be commended. I'd give you a hug, but you're probably not within arm's reach. Trust me, it's worth it.

I Dream Of The Ether

Did I tell you about that time? Perhaps you recall (who am I kidding, no you don't, because I haven't told more than, like, one person) how the happiest, most blissfully joyous moment of my adult life was as I woke from a beautiful dream.

Honestly, damn, that was a happy moment.

And, of course, immediately following that was the moment of my life that was almost as sad as the previous moment wasn't, when I realized that it was a dream.
I mean it, damn, that was a sad moment.

Seriously, talk about bittersweet.

I've seen people, few though they are, who experience blissful happiness. I envy them.

I got a taste of it. And short of spending the rest of my life learning lucid dreaming, I am likely to never experience that again. That's all that matters, isn't it? Because hypnotism wouldn't work on me, I think too much. It's true - I got on stage for two hypnotism shows and I was weeded out, nothing to do with stage fright.

What floats my boat, one might wonder - and that's a good question, one that I'm evidently still in the process of figuring out. I'm certainly never going to match Chris Thile, for example - but hey, I can try and do something new ... can't I?

Can't I?

Swing The Statistics

Numbers.

Numbers, numbers, numbers.

Spotting a pattern here. Anyone else see it?

Of course not, stupid question. No one else is looking, they have their own Universes to deal with. Awkward questions aside, I should probably get a grip, yes?

It's been a long time since I visited that minuscule segment of the Sierra in Colorado. Suffice it to say that shooting rifles is cool, but loud as crap. Serious musicians don't like it loud - or at least, not right in their ears. Depends on the music, too, though.

Where does my wavefunction guide me next, I wonder?

#physicsjokethatnobodywillunderstand

I mean, I've already been to Disney World, oh-how-many-years ago, and for all I know I fell in love with a Princess there. What's next? Skydiving? Sign me up - if I've got time. I'm a lucky sonofagun, though, so let's see.

Well, assuming I don't get run over any time soon, I should hopefully be back with some further inspiration. In the meantime, enjoy my search for the right note.

Look Around The Corner

Hey fellas, what's up? Looks like I'm still alive.

-----------------------------------------------

Look around the corner; is she there? Can she sense me?
Don't tell her anything.

Hold on, let me get my big-boy hat.
How do I look? Is my voice clear? Good.

Come on, lets go look at flashy lights for a few hours.

Relatively Real

Well, it's been a few months since my last post. In that time, I ... haven't done all that much, really. Got a job, met a few people. Not exactly the eventful time I had in the USA, where I was, conversely, not getting a job and meeting a lot of new people. Weird, isn't it.

Even after living most of my life outside India, the Indian culture's predisposition towards female inequality is not altogether shocking, deplorable though it may be. Although the issue is far from vanquished in the so-called "first world" ... it's just a tad subtler there. It's had me thinking a lot about ignorance and the perception of morality, and given my abstract familiarity with some concepts of physics I'm not entirely sure why the following musings didn't occur to me sooner. Somehow it seems fairly self-evident - but then, who thinks about these things, anyway?

The very basic postulate behind the general theory of relativity is evident from its name: everything is relative. With the possible exception of the speed of light, there is no point or motion in space or in time that we can single out as being an absolute reference point for everything around it. There is nowhere and nothing that we can point to and imagine, "That is the center of everything. All observations made with respect to this reference are flawless, and any and all other observations are fundamentally incomplete."
As it develops, the theory goes on to describe the general interaction of mass with space and time: like weights on a sheet of rubber, each piece of matter in the Universe deforms space and time around it, with more massive objects causing the trajectory of smaller ones to gravitate towards them as a result, and causing a localized slowing of the passage of time. This trajectory change is what we perceive as the 'pulling' effect of gravity, while the slowing of time is nigh imperceptible (unless, of course, you choose to rely on GPS - if one didn't account for the time slowing, your marked position on the globe would be off by up to 10 km every day!).

In the same way that physical objects deform the continuum of space and time, so too do big decisions deform the continuum of one's social group. Does this make sense? Probably not, but it does account for a fair bit of my experience, I think. That's about all I could come up with for now; figure this one out for yourselves.

Depressing Depravity; Salvation Solution?

Well, some of you may have heard about that unfortunate woman in Delhi whose life was destroyed. I certainly did. It's another case lost in the numbers, the bureaucracy, and corruption ... I can't begin to describe it. And, given the sexually repressed nature of Indian culture, far too orthodox. (It's funny, isn't it, how the most 'repressed' cultures seem to be the most populous?) More and more evidence, as if we need it, that keeping natural things taboo leads to such breakdowns in morality.

It gets me thinking about my dear friend, and how much she means to me, and how such a thing could happen on virtually any street in this - or, indeed, any - country. I'm sure her parents would imagine the same thing if she so much as takes a single step out the front door. Regardless of her feelings towards me, I can't imagine how I would deal with something like that happening to her. I couldn't even begin to fathom what kind of hell it would be for her parents, and for friends closer than I.

The clarion call for the death penalty (which is still legal, albeit rarely exercised, in India) is echoing from all sides of the country, and yet, I ask myself, what would it solve? Granting the perpetrators a quick reprieve from the mobs that would otherwise lynch them? I for one wouldn't stop the public even if I could. Would you?

They need to feel the pain they inflicted upon their victim(s). They need to be made an example of, and that example needs to be long-lasting, because humans have rather notoriously short memories. And, in order that such tendencies should be less likely to arise in the future, they need to be removed from the gene pool. Without being put to death, because if they are, then they're dead and gone, and their object lesson will be lost within a few short years.

Because humans are bloody stubborn pack rats, and for all the good that positive reinforcement and conditioning will do you, it will always - ALWAYS! - be easier to be a dick. Nothing gets people to jump in line like a good dose of fear does - hence the object lesson in making an example of such reprehensible criminals. Our ancestors in centuries and millennia past had the right idea in their practice of cutting off the appendage(s) involved in committing crimes. Would you ever truly steal at the cost of a hand? 
Science has established time and again that there are both environmental triggers and genetic markers that predispose toward amoral behavior. Why not take a page from the book of nature, and cut out those branches that, insignificant as they are, desecrate the beauty and diminish the potential of the tree as a whole? Note how this avoids the need to take lives. Found a family with a known history of violence, lying, cheating, stealing or any other sort of underhanded behaviour? Sterilize the offending older members, and allow youngsters to be raised in an environment that depresses any existing undesirable traits. Exactly as one would trim and prune a tree to perfection; no branch is exempt.


Yes, my idea is torture, public humiliation, and eugenics against the worst offenders of our species. We would harness both psychology and the root of evolution to better the species as a whole, both immediately, through fear and accountability, and over the long run, with better breeding practices. Any number of readers will immediately cry "Nazi!" in their ignorance, because they will fail to realize the key point: that I am not excluding myself, or anyone, at all, from this new paradigm. The process would - and should - apply to the human race as a whole. People from the most 'civilized' areas in fact have the worst form of rehabilitation in imprisonment - it's like spray-painting a blackened branch and hoping the true colours don't show through over time; it's a gamble, and everyone knows gambling is poor form.

-------------------------

Damn, I can rant. This post is controversial on SO many levels, but who gives a shit ... chances are, the people who will disagree the most will be the least well-traveled. I could be wrong, but the odds are on my side.

Awkword

What is it with me and (seemingly) unhealthy attachments?

It seems mildly unusual that I should have the same person stuck in my head for the past 6 years without any effort on either of our parts ... but, then again, it's not like it's been a negative experience.

More accurately, it's been nothing but a positive feeling - except when I would allow myself to dwell on the distance that separated us.

Thanks to my familiarity with quantum mechanics, I'm not one to set much store by fate; however, probabilities can only tell us so much. Where do I go, and what can I do to resolve this? How can I know that our paths will cross again in the future? How do I deal with the possibility that this emotion might be one-way?

Soul Searching Song

I've always been very aware of my musical limitations. As a child I was ignorant of the technicalities, but with the past few years discovering my musicianship has taught me some hard truths about myself.

It's another language - and I was never very good at second languages.

I've observed multilingual speakers speaking their native tongue(s), and conversed with them (in English, of course), and one thing that is fairly obvious is that they never truly have to translate between the languages that they speak. Their brains are equally proficient in thinking in whichever languages they are fluent. There is little tendency to "switch gears" because there is only a 'switch'. (Granted, there is a change in rhythm, syntax, etc. but I'm talking about fluent speakers here.)

Even with the five years I spent learning French in school; it never truly "caught on", in that whenever I would speak, write, or listen in French, I would have to translate, into English, back-and-forth in real time in my head in order to understand. That's one hell of a processing bottleneck, I'll tell you - and this computer ain't got no upgrades available. If I were to spend the rest of my life in France or Quebec or Senegal, perhaps that would change, but what are the odds of that?
I even learned to read and write Arabic; but I could have read someone's death sentence in Arabic, and never known what it meant in English.

This applies equally well in the realm of music. Musicians are artists of a special caliber; speaking with fingers, hands, mouths, and feet (depending on the instrument), in a language more abstract than it has any right to be. The virtuosos in the field speak this language as clearly as though it were the only one in existence, and there's no gears to switch per se. Their mind and the music are as one; a unity I fear I may never attain.

The idea applies to almost everything: an engineer, formulating a building plan from a proposal; a computer scientist troubleshooting code; a lawyer, finding loopholes in rules and regulations; etc. But these are all examples of experience, and I have none to speak of except in music, and even so, not nearly enough.

When someone does something that they enjoy, in many ways the idea of a "thought process" becomes irrelevant, because the 'process' vanishes, only to be replaced by a free flow of ideas directly to output. This is most clearly visible in the worlds of visual and auditory art - at least, that's the way I've seen it. This unity between mind and world is so compelling, so beautiful - and to think, the only way to achieve it is to release control of yourself ... to your self.
I don't know how to release control; I don't truly know what I want, what I need, or what I love. I fear my inner self, because I don't know if he has an anchor to keep him stable in the maelstrom of the mind.

Life's Bloody Lemons

You know what sucks?

I know some of the most beautiful women in the world.

And I've traveled the world, so it's rather safe to say that I know what I'm talking about.

Ignorance is bliss, or it would be if it were an option.

Learning To Fly

The last time I had somewhat serious feelings for someone (or believed I did, anyway), it took me well over a year to overcome my attachment. And she was nowhere near as free-spirited as the Breathing Stone ... and, until recently, I had never been subject to the mystery of human contact in a truly meaningful way.

That last time, too, I could only in desperation push myself to reveal my feelings - shortly before I departed for a new life. That was close to five years ago.

And here I am, doing it to myself again.

In a way, it's her own fault that my emotions have developed in such a fashion ... and yet, I don't think I'd have it any other way. I've learned - or so I would hope - to count my blessings.

She could possibly find new friends; I'm not that important. I'm going to have to find a new life, and not having her as a direct part of it is going to be one hell of a thorn on the rose that my future might be.