Tag: life

Personal Windows

Friends, prompted by curious, started grilling me about some of my past life the other night. Those were my super-secret military days.

Since their questioning, I’ve drifted along currents of wonder about living amidst change and how small our windows of knowledge truly seem. Change is fast and constant. The military commands I worked in thirty years ago no longer exist; the weapons systems introduced during my career are being retired. Bases have been shuttered. They’re trying to retire the nukes I once controlled (a good thing, in my mind). God knows what’s going on in space.

I ended up in a medical start-up after my military career, first in sales operations, running customer service and spewing out reports about sales trends. We were part of a nascent business, per-cutaneous transvascular coronary angioplasty, moving into stent delivering systems for coronary applications and radiation therapy to cope with re-stenosis. After that, I moved on to another company in search of ways to cope with chronic total occlusions.

Life found me in Internet and computer security in my next phase, and then onto analytics. Whatever. I drifted through choices, jumping through windows when the opportunities arose, and was fortunate to have someone on the other side of those windows to pull me in and show me around.

The windows in our lives are always so small. They open and close so quickly. Technology accelerates the speed with which the windows open and close. For examples, consider how we now conduct war versus how it was conducted in decades and centuries past. Consider how we make, experience and enjoy music, and how we entertain ourselves. Yet, each window and moment is treated as though this is a permanent solution. Consider the plight of the coal industry, for example. They think it can be legislated back but technology and market forces have moved past them.

We, as humans, can only see and understand so far, and we argue and debate about what we see, what it means and what we need to do about it. Yet, each person’s life is defined by their personal windows. These are shaped by their culture, heritage, education, genetics and personal experiences, yes, but they’re also shaped by much larger forces. We often barely glimpse the shadow of such forces.

Sometimes – no, hell, often – I think we’re going around understanding the world backward; we believe reality shapes us, and we investigate how we shape it.

Maybe we shape reality. Maybe there is no past or future, there is only the window into Now.

Jump through it and keep on going.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Well, hello. Here we are. At the end, the beginning, a break, a start, a finale.

This is New Year’s Eve day. Tonight we’ll count down to a new year.

I mean, most of the western world will count down. Others use different calendars and count down at another time of the year. And we’re only counting down to the end of the Julian calendar year, and not, say, the fiscal year, although some use the calendar year and the fiscal year as the same year. It’s not likely to be your natal year, though. So you won’t be celebrating that new year, nor a wedding anniversary, which is another new beginning that’s often celebrated.

But here we are, celebrating this day that doesn’t quite align with the seasons,businesses, or our lives, but here we are, the masters of our domain.

For this day, I selected a soft, questioning song. ‘The Freshman’ by the Verve Pipe from 1996. It encapsulates a lot of thinking about human nature IMO. Perhaps I’m generalizing by my circle of relationships but this is what I’ll testify that I saw. We began by thinking we knew so much. Then later, we question, what did we really know?

How did we miss the signs?

How could we end up so wrong?

We end up marveling about how we came to be the relationship that we are or were, conducting forensics on our behavior and running audit trails on what was said and who said it. We look for clarity in the murk about what was meant by tone and meaning in the context of gestures that happened before and after.

Some are content to never question. “It is what it is,” they answer with tautological finality. “Ours is not to question why; ours is but to do and die.”

“That’s just the way it goes.”

Perhaps they question but never admit that they question, or limit the circle of who knows about their questioning. Some consider that questioning is a sign of weakness.

They don’t want to be seen as weak.

I’ve always been the questioning sort. I guess that makes me weak. I’m envious of those who find a trajectory of ignorance and remain true to its path, never veering or questioning but riding that comet with the certainty that they have the golden truth, convinced that nothing else other than what they believe can be true or correct.

But I remain a freshman.

 

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The Boom: the Sequel

To recap part one of The Boom, my wife was making smoothies when the beverage somehow became animated, escaped all containers and spread its raspberry-pomegranate hues over appliances, hardwood floors and walls. Clean-up wasn’t difficult. We thought the incident was over.

But now…here is ‘the rest of the story’….

I left the master suite’s hallway late Christmas day and headed for the kitchen. The weak winter sun had already abandoned us. Lights were required. I went to the switch plate. Four lighting systems were controlled from that location. I clicked two and glanced up to assess, was this enough light?

The sight that I saw left me gawking. “Oh, my, God.”

Our kitchen has a vaulted ceiling. It rises from about seven feet up past fourteen. A pattern of dried smoothie resembling Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and other Pacific island chains was spread across the ivory ceiling at about the twelve foot altitude.

I regarded it for a number of minutes, considering what we’d initially seen, trying to reconcile the two scenes. The distances…the quantity….

Something like this needed company. I  hunted down my wife. She was in the snug. “Hey,” I said in Mister Casual’s voice. “We missed some of the smoothie spill.”

“Where?”

“You need to come see this.”

She went into the kitchen. I lagged behind her. She searched the floor and appliances. “I don’t see anything.”

“Look up.”

My wife did. She gasped. “Oh. My. God.”

“Yep. What the hell happened in here?”

Staring at the mess, my wife shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t explain.” Bewilderment glistened in her eyes. “We might need to paint that.”

“We’ll see. Let’s try cleaning it first.”

It would need to be me cleaning it, or painting it, should it be required. My wife would never be able to reach it. She’s too short. With cats warily inspecting my activities, I got out the ten foot step ladder to begin the cleaning process and set it up in the kitchen. Climbing up to the third rung from the top, I surveyed the mess.

It was worse than we thought. From here, I could see that another wall – ten feet away and fifteen feet up – displayed the Aleutians. Smoothie was on the walls above the cabinets and above the small artwork over the window. Smoothie speckled the dining room ceiling another eight feet away in the opposite direction.

Unbelievable. Studying it all, I wished again for Dexter to come in and analyze this mess. Turning on the Denver and KC football game for companionship, I began cleaning. Soap and water was tried.

The mess chortled at my puny efforts.

I doused a section with Windex and scrubbed.

The mess sniffed. “Is that the best you got?”

I conducted an Internet search. Magic Erasers were tried.

Magic Erasers failed.

I returned to the Internet. Another cleaner was recommended.

I tried it. “No,” the smoothie mess cried. “I’m disappearing…oh, what a world, what a world.”

By the third quarter, I had it all cleaned. A slice of pumpkin pie with whipped cream was consumed to celebrate.

If you ever need to clean a berry stain from paint, I highly recommend OxiClean.

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The Boom

My dressing was just completed. I was visiting with the tailless black panther, Boo Radley , in the master suite. He was enjoying the attention. Just as I presented him a catnip offering on his favorite toy, a loud boom interrupted from another part of the house.

“Oh, fuck,” I heard from my wife.

Not good omens.

I went out. “What’s the word out he — ”

No more was needed. She’d been blending the day’s smoothie. Something had gone awry. Raspberry-pomegranate smoothie decorated the kitchen’s hardware floor. Spatters continued up the walls and wooden cabinets. The stainless steel refrigerator had taken a large hit. More hits were found on its stainless steel brethren, the dishwasher and stove. A puddle had settled on the dark granite top.

I wondered, what would Dexter tell me about this spatter pattern?

My wife, looking forlorn, was in the middle of the mess. Smoothie rolled down her jean legs. “What’s the best way to clean this up?” she asked without looking at me.

Cleaning wasn’t hard with a methodical approach, cleaner, some paper towels and rags. It took but ten minutes. The worse of it: the day’s smoothie rations were gone. Enough remained for her breakfast smoothie but there was naught for our lunches.

The best part: a raspberry-pomegranate smoothie explosion leaves the house with a great fragrance.

 

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Big Data Spoke

A far future science-fiction exercise.

Collecting, collating and compiling data from Human databases and streams – government, social, medical, financial, historic, personal, personnel, death, birth and health records – revealed startling evidence.

Humans were dying less. Even those who could be resurrected, cloned, recovered, re-invigorated or re-born, were dying far less often. Fewer still were dying and remaining dead. Suicides were recorded with four zeroes after a decimal point. The population median age, already well over one hundred, was rising sharply, with less people deciding to even be reborn as a younger age with their adult memories intact. It seemed like that fad had fast faded.

Okay. But birth rates had also plummeted, falling like the temperatures on Castle Frozen when an Arctic front roared over the mountains and down across the plains. Less than two children were being born for every hundred people. Most of those children were not being permitted to age into maturity and adulthood but were kept as children for their parents’ entertainment.

The Council for Peace and Prosperity met on Castle Prime’s equatorial climate-controlled island to discuss general trends and concerns. The big data study on birth and death was a minor agenda item on the third day.

Most weren’t worried, arguing this was a burp, a blip. Yes, all were part of longer, greater trends, but the sharp drop-off was new. Those in the business of helping the dead return to life weren’t concerned; their business reviews were based on subscriptions and not a per use basis. Subscription rates were remaining steady. No losses were being recognized but the resurrection was a mature technology and had developed into a commodity. Profit margins were smaller. That was a concern.

Analysts also had deep dive data to present. Wars, warfare and violence remained at high levels but more people were avoiding killing one another. That unnerved attendees. It pointed to a training issue to many. Soldiers and officers needed encouragement to kill more quickly and readily. Perhaps studies were needed to understand what kept them from killing others when engaging them.

Such suggestions were quickly shot down. Studies like that were for the weak-willed or when appearances were needed that something was being done to mollify investors and voters until their attention wandered or other matters distracted them. No, studies weren’t needed in this situation; investors and voters didn’t know about these big data reveals. They would remain corporate secrets.

Second: population growth was required. Cloning was the natural solution. Adult clones were a ready market. Children had smaller and well-defined needs that were already being fulfilled. Adults were big children who eagerly embraced new toys and trends. Adults were willing to spend more on their toys, too, especially if said toys could be positioned as status symbols about wealth, power or influence. Most adults were sufficiently weak-willed and insecure or had such low self-esteem that they would be swayed by such bland and routine practices.

However…archaic laws remained in place against cloning a person to live more than one life at a time. Right now, cloning was permitted for only very small population segments and narrowly defined pre-existing conditions. Even that cloning was done well outside of the public eye.

Those laws needed to be changed. Immediate potential campaigns inspired the Council attendees. Contract pop and sports stars to headline campaigns. Say, they could be doing different activities on different planets, like skiing, surfing, fucking, dancing, performing, interviewing, whatever, marketing could work out those details. The point would be that doing these things simultaneously enriched the individual experiences and compounded their impact. The key behind the campaigns – there would naturally need to be several because to cover all the pop-culture segments – was to encourage envy about living a fuller life by living multiple simultaneous lives and fertilizing your life base. Having it done illegally by someone(s) popular and successful was the natural launching point. People loved lawbreakers.

Likewise, clone the best of the service members. Offer small bonuses for permitting the cloning. Simultaneously, initiate campaigns to overturn the cloning laws. Analysis would reveal which planets and societies could be open to such change and which would be the greatest influencers. New interpretations of founding documents and religious works could be published that seemed to encourage cloning as a religious right and even an expectation by whatever deities people worshiped these days.

Third, begin a whisper campaign. Stir up the rabble: birth rates were down because governments were encouraging certain races, ages, classes, corporations and planets to give birth less as part of a greater conspiracy to reduce those populations, thereby undermining their impact and participation. People always hated and distrusted governments and were easily inspired to rise up against them. Blame regulations, too. That always fired up the fringes, and then the flames would spread.

Beautiful. It was all coming together. Off the record, they agreed that more wars could be initiated. Step up the activity against pirates, rebels, independent planets, and smaller corporations and systems. That would increase the death rate and probably the birth rate.

Sure, this wasn’t a problem; it was an opportunity. Open the floodgates and rake in the wealth.

 

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The Wall

Ever do distance running?

The race begins and after a brief interlude of finding your pace, you enter your zone where your legs and arms are moving with orchestrated pace and you are where you want to be and where you expected to be. Interior dialogue begins to help focus. Time and distance pass and you feel good, even great as your body feels its power and responds.

And then, without warning, here is the wall.

The wall is many impressions at once. It feels like you’re running in sludge. Where your feet were lifting and dropping with relative ease and precision, you suddenly feel wobbly and your feet are heavy. Your legs feel heavy. An undertow has sucked all your energy out to sea. You just want to completely stop, sag and breath.

But you know that this will pass if you can keep your arms and legs moving. That’s why you’ve trained, to learn how to keep your arms and legs moving, how to properly breath, how to find the oxygen in your lungs and get it to your heart, into your blood and to your muscles. You’ve trained to know what to do when it happens and take the pieces of broken focus and put them back together so you can keep going.

Well, I’ve hit the writing wall this morning. My body is sagging despite my stretching and yawning, and my mind is screaming, “I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna.” It’s cold, gray and wet outside. My eyes are tired. My morning coffee is cold and it doesn’t taste good. It’s Sunday, come on, aren’t you supposed to take Sunday off to sit and chill? You deserve a day off from dealing with the Penta Majur.

And I know some of this wall comes from unique places within. Emotional demands have eaten into the writing reserves. I’ve learned that a friend and family member by marriage had open-heart surgery a few weeks ago without telling anyone. Only his wife knew. And you wonder, why wouldn’t they tell anyone this? He didn’t have insurance and her insurance is a miserable and greedy company which is barely covering any of the bill. She’s well employed and a hard worker, with an impressive job title and salary, but this has drained their finances.

I know some of this wall is holiday related as I pause to consider what was and what now isn’t. I understand my nostalgic nature even if I can’t control it.

And I know some of this wall comes from dealing with news and protests and murders and deaths and hatred and racism and bigotry and –

And there is the wall.

My dreams reflected this last night, too, putting me through the paces of trying to sell a car, a sports car which I owned for twenty years but traded in for a new SUV, a car that reflected some of the pleasure I felt with what I’d achieved, where I was and where I was going, a car that then became a reminder of where I’d been and what I’d achieved and that I was no longer going anywhere, car that reminded me that time had passed. And yet a car that I missed because I’d enjoyed considerable pleasure driving that car on trips, and it was associated with the validation found in work and promotions.

I saw all that in the dream as the dream masters chastised me for not following proper procedures while selling my car, ordering me back into line, and confusing me with demands that I need to write my requirements in white on black socks, which totally befuddled me because that makes no sense. And then, there is the waking reflections on what makes sense and does not, with gentle chiding amusement over the expectations that everything is to make sense. That’s the interesting thing about writing: that you must always make sense in a world that doesn’t make sense.

The writer within is demonstrating remarkable patience. He wants to write but he’s telling me, you’re just a little tired. It’s understandable, that’s okay. Take some time to sit in quiet, relax, drink some more coffee, read, surf the net, look out the window, watch the trees, the birds, the clouds and rain, and the passing pedestrians. Observe life. Let your energy build.

The wall is there but you’ll break through. Be patient and persevere.

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The Good Fight

Some mornings, you got no get up for the good fight.

You’ve been fighting the good fight so long, beginning when you were just little and didn’t understand what they meant by the good fight.

Now you’ve been fighting it across decades of living and you wonder if you ever understood what was meant by the good fight.

You look out toward the horizon and all you can see is a lifetime remaining of fighting the good fight.

The horizon don’t seem to get no closer.

You wonder what other people are fighting, and if you’re all fighting the good fight, who you fighting against?

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A Normal Special Day

Cold drizzle glistened on the asphalt, darkening the cement, and dismaying the cats. Quinn and Meep ran for the door when I opened it. Tucker and Boo were already back inside. Pepper curled as sentry by a potted plant on the porch’s corner. Safe from the moisture, her thick black and rust coat kept her warm.

Gathering in the morning as I shifted and shivered through the forty-four degree dampness, collected the paper and hunted the gray shroud for signs of blue, I thought, the weather forecast is off. We will not reach the mid seventies today. Returning to my office in the house, I checked the forecast for updates. They insisted that right now, it was partly cloudy, so my eyes were deceiving me, because I saw no blue sky. The Weather Underground site also held firm it would be in the sixties by ten AM, with a high in the mid seventies. I didn’t believe them.

The weather had otherwise little impact on my days’ plans, except I wouldn’t be able to paint more furniture in those conditions. Exercising, cleaning, dressing, I went to the coffee shop, had a QSM and wrote. Instead of shorts, I was in jeans, and wore a sweatshirt, along with my Tilly hat. The sunglasses seemed like an optimistic statement but I kept them on.

Afterward, sunshine had shyly approached through some flimsy openings. The air had gained a little heat, if I was fully exposed to the sun. Shadows introduced chills, and the wind had a wintry bite. While it was now sixty, I doubted seventy was possible, but I was beginning to believe.

Dressed for the chillier air, my wife and I went downtown. Holding hands, we strolled through Lithia Park where the shimmering maples displayed split coats of red and green leaves, and enjoyed coffee at a table huddling in partial sunshine. Window shopping books, shoes, clothing and real estate in Main Street stores’ displays followed, and then we attended the mid-afternoon showing of Snowden. Long, the movie held our attention, with the usual acting expected of Joseph Gordon Levitt and the remaining cast, and Oliver Stone’s production values.

More walking progressed afterward as we discussed what we recalled of Edward Snowden and the press coverage of his activities. By now, the clouds had fled. A rich sun ruled and the temperature was seventy-six. I felt warm and overdressed. We dined at an outdoor table at a Chinese restaurant we wanted to try, and I enjoyed a Worker Ale. A drop in to a store to pick up a small dessert was last, and then the short drive home.

A clear sunset was falling when we turned into the driveway. And we both said as we arrived home and the garage door closed behind us, “That was a very nice outing.” Yes, low key, well paced, relaxed, like walking through a comfortable book.

More days so normal should be so special.

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Knots, Life Particles & Tachyons and FT…what?

So in thinking about ‘Long Summer’, the sequel to the science fiction novel, ‘Returnee’, much reading about theories of relativity and unified theories, tachyons, chronons and parity symmetry is being indulged. Fascinating that tachyons would lose speed as they gain energy…hmmm, which was a worthwhile direction for thought.And they travel faster than light, with their slowest speed being the speed of light. Hmmm…yes….

Meanwhile, watching the final final final ‘Inspector Lewis’ (and I enjoyed the ending, with its gentle knotting of different directions and issues), knots became key to me. I’d been thinking about matters in terms of valance and atomic structure, but there’s no reason for that, is there? Not when knots also exist out there as part of the interaction of existence….

It’s all coming together, stirring up that exciting stew of writing creativity. Of course, on the negative side – because, in this physical universe, we mostly live in a parity symmetrical existence, especially when dealing with social relationships (and marriage) – the positives and negatives directly affect one another and a balance is sought – I’m listing too far into the writing side, growing quieter and quieter, more distant to others as the stories unfold in the universe of my mind(s?). Greater attention and energy is needed to untangle the knots so I understand them, and then tangle them back up to make an interesting story.

Over on the sequel side of the Lessons with Savanna mystery series, things are getting darker. That’s giving me pause; do I embrace that darkness and run with it? My instincts urge me to go for it, and I usually give into them. That will make ‘Personal Lessons with Savanna’ a much darker novel than ‘Life Lessons with Savanna’ and ‘Road Lessons with Savanna’. Yet, that’s where the roads are taking me, so here I go. As I conceptualize it, the fourth novel in that series acquires greater structure, too.

Other tasks remain on the todo list. ‘Everything in Black & White’ is awaiting its publishing process. Love to get it out before the year’s end, and a dozen other books require editing/revising while more clamor in my head to be written. I’ve not really touched ‘Fix Everything’ since I finished writing it, what, one, two years ago? Poor ‘Peerless’ and ‘Spider City’ have been out there longer, awaiting editing and revising. There’s the whole advertising thing for all that’s already published, too, but bleah, and people asking, what’s going on with Lessons? When is the next book coming out?

Socially, in the real world, my walking is curtailed by smoke drifting in from the Gap fire down by Happy Camp, in California. The smoke is keeping the air temperature cooler, and gifting us with glowing red sunsets. I wish all the people and animals safe passage.

Visitors are coming, and the end of summer picnic is coming up with bullet train speed. Cats are sick, with some sort of flu like problem passing among them, Meep being the latest victim. Each have endured it by not eating and sleeping long hours, but it’s so worrisome when they go off eating. This smoke is affecting Tucker, too, and he’s very snotty yesterday and today.

I must also clean this laptop screen. Apparently I sneezed while eating or something, from the evidence.

Minor problems, fortunately, knock on wood, which I do. Life is so very knotty.

 

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