a wheel inside a wheel

I’m walking over to the high-school athletic fields nearby when I run into my neighbor Ron. I say hello how are you and stuff, and he says “fine ..the same old thing as yesterday and the day before. ” I detect a hint of discontent. My first reaction is to try and counter this by suggesting it’s something we all have in common. “Well then, I’m catching you at a moment when I, too, am doing the same old thing as yesterday and the day before.” He shakes his head in agreement (?) ..which looks more like weariness. I figure there must be something else going on and tell myself not to counter whatever that might be. Neither of us really have time to talk right now, so I just go “You know Ron, it’s alright ..the world is a cycle.” He looks at me while taking a hit off his cigarette. I don’t know why, but I’ve got this urge to continue. “I’m following a cycle of going to the track, which means running in circles, which are made up of tiny cycles of intense respiration” I laugh and go “if my senses didn’t re-cycle themselves periodically ..I’d experience white-out.” Now he’s walking away, looking at me out of the corner of his eye and going “yeah, right ..” like he’s heard that one before. Now I’m wondering if I didn’t just repeat a cycle of bullshit that I mistake for reassurance ..but is really the start of another cycle of avoidance. Oh well oh well, I go, thinking ..at least I don’t have a nicotine cycle to worry about, which triggers a whole new cycle of rationalizations.

Cameron Diaz

“The role Cameron Diaz plays as a pot-smoking slacker in the movie Bad Teacher ..is not a sign of progress for women but a mark of devolution of the broader culture.” LATimes [link]

For me, it’s comments like this that confirm just how subjective entertainment really is. Although I can go on for hours talking about entertainers I like and those I don’t particularly care much for ..I really can’t analyze it. What makes a movie character funny is the way they resonate with audience members in the moment, and certainly not what university professors think based on standards set by the feminist movement of the 1960’s. What lent this review any degree of fairness, and saved it from becoming a heavy-handed and biased treatment of the merits of Cameron Diaz’s choice of roles ..were the comments made by Lisa Lampanelli “Within 20 years it’ll be ..that’s just a comic, not a guy or a girl, or a gay guy or a black guy, just a funny person.” I, too, look forward to the day when I can laugh at a comic without concern for someone else’s gender-defined, role-appropriate sensibilities.

Uummannaq

Sun Tzu

“If the Taliban was trying to play on unease among Afghans and Western governments about the ability of the police and army to safeguard the country, they chose the right target and time.”

If the Taliban want to prolong a ground war with allied forces, they’re doing exactly the right thing! What better way to jeopardize troop reductions than by conducting assaults on high-profile targets and boasting about their strength over the Internet. If they really want to win control of the region, I think they’d be better off laying-low and keeping us misinformed. I mean, why not have us believe their supreme leader is dead. It would bolster the illusion that Afghan forces are ready to safeguard the country and keep troop withdrawals on-schedule. In due time they’d be left with a weaker adversary who they stand a better chance of defeating. Maybe then they can put down their guns and pick up some kind of responsible position in government. However, the way they’re acting now leads me to believe they really don’t want this war to end.

Decline of western civilization

There is a relationship between higher education ~> the location of high-tech industry ~> income levels ~> economic progress ~> tax revenue ~> state debt ~> S&P rating ~> consumer interest ~> upward mobility and standard of living . However, if Sacramento is trying to fight immigration by compromising it’s colleges and universities, which reduces the standard of living and creates greater competition for low-wage jobs .. they’re succeeding!

agents of expression

Most children learn to speak and understand what’s said effortlessly. It’s a spontaneous process that doesn’t require classroom training. The brain is innately tuned to extract the rules of spoken language. Observations show that parents rarely correct for rules of grammar during early childhood. However, they frequently correct for the rules of semantics ..making sure their children convey the proper idea [link]. That’s why it’s interesting for me to see that, while children may discover the correct rules of grammar on their own ..by adolescence they’re playing pretty loose with the rules of semantics they’d been taught. In other words, they frequently use well-formed sentences to fabricate and misrepresent what’s going down.

false memories

I have a confession to make. I’m just as guilty of self-delusion as the next (link). The other day someone asked me if I had been ‘surprised’ by the dot com crash of 2001. I was working in the computer industry back then and believed it was the ‘wave of the future’. So yeah, I was surprised. However, that’s not what I told him. I told him no, I wasn’t surprised ..and went on to explain how I had seen it coming. “Companies weren’t ready to abandon their way of doing business for the promise of e-commerce” I said “..even our own clients were backing away from some of the ambitious shit we were proposing.” Funny thing is, I wasn’t lying ..not intentionally anyway. That’s actually how I remember it. On closer inspection it’s clear to me what’s happening. I had replaced memories of what I was thinking before the crash with my accounts of it afterwards ..creating the illusion that I had seen it coming. What’s more, now that I think about it ..another fucked-up consequence of underestimating the surprise I felt was how it had kept me from recognizing warning signs of the next ‘big thing’ ..which was real estate before the market crash of 2007.

coastal zone

Julie tells me about a concert series playing Thursdays at Chase Palm Park. I feel confident I know where that is ..but she tells me I’m wrong. Now I’m standing where I thought it was ..and I know I’m wrong. This is Rainbow Park. A lifeguard explains that Chase Palm Park follows the shore and ends at the wharf. Somewhere in-between, it juts inland where there’s a small amphitheater. “You outta’ go see a show ..” he says “..they’re pretty cool.” “You gonna’ go..?” I ask. “Oh yeah!” Down by the water, I’m tracking a low flying pelican until I see it veer off just in time to avoid beaning a kid sitting in the surf. From that close, it looks like a small VW. The kid doesn’t seem to notice but his mother looks pretty shaken. Now I’m close enough to where I can tell her not to worry “..they’ve got sonar” I say. She goes “Whut ..?”  I tell her they got powers of  rapid navigation.  She goes “Oh ..” but doesn't sound too convinced.

memory chain

Listening to The Stones singing Lady Jane ..one word after another ..bringing up memories one after another ..until I’m following them like stepping-stones. I’m back in college where I found sanctuary after the recklessness of high school. Taking refuge in a library ..finding solace in the words of William James and Alan Watts ..informing me I wasn’t as crazy as I thought. Days spend discussing the latest books by John Fowles and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. ..finding out who got into grad school and how. Nobody I knew wanted this to end. Playing ‘go’ in the courtyard until classes looked like a grid of black and white stones. Crowding around professors like reporters chasing clues. Spending Sunday discussing philosophy with a faculty adviser until late at night. Continuing at Hamburger Henrys’ until Monday morning and the beginning of a new cycle. I felt like an explorer with helmet and miner’s lamp ..nerd that I am.

Note: A wonderful way to follow the memory chain and find writing material (or just shed light on things) can be found in ‘Felt Sense’ by Sondra Perl ~>[link]

Coastal zone

Tribal leaders and government official say there’s fewer salmon swimming off the coast of Northern California these days. I love salmon. So, of course, I immediately suspect polluted waters ..brought about by wetland destruction ..big know-it-all that I am. I follow coastal developments like this but not nearly close enough to trust my own conclusions. I ask professor Scott at UCSB and get a completely different answer. “It’s more complicated” he says “ ..ocean currents and water temperatures change and relocate the food supply. The salmon, however ..aren’t raised in the ocean ..they’re spawned in hatcheries. As a result, they stay genetically unchanged and continue to look for food in the same location instead of extending their boundaries. Each generation gets smaller instead of adapting.” I tell him thanks ..I did not know that ..and say it definitely reassures me I’m still evolving. My ignorance knows no boundaries.

Peter Gabriel show

I’m sitting here sharing a buzz with another ‘greybeard’ named Jerry at the high school football stadium. I’m done with my workout (kinda’) and we’re sitting in the stands listening to Peter Gabriel (and his orchestra) playing at the bowl. Since it’s situated in the neighborhood of the high school; we can hear them loud and clear. There’s a panoramic sunset .. music fills the air ..and some of Humboldt’s finest fills my lungs. The bowl sits in a natural amphitheater surrounded by a community that sits on the slopes of the Riviera. It’s kind of like a bowl inside a bowl. Although my friend Pat lives above the bowl ..and his deck offers the best listening (and BBQ) around ..the high school stadium isn’t bad. Other greybeards are arriving ..as well as a young couple asking who’s playing. A light goes on when they hear the song ‘in your eyes’ however.

The loop

The Internet is not an open system. It is warped by the focus of its participants. Anyone can skip from blog to facebook to youtube to talk radio and back without encountering a single thought to challenge their own. This turns the Internet into a closed feedback loop. A closed feedback loop reinforces beliefs that may have started out as a figment of someone’s imagination. The Internet makes it possible for such insubstantial phenomena to gain widespread popularity. Without the benefit of open dialogue, insubstantial phenomena can become ‘counter-factual narrative’ bordering on delusion and paranoia. Take for instance the notion that Osama Bin Laden death was a ‘hoax’ ..or that President Obama’s birthplace was a ‘deception’. Look at where Bush’s axis-of-evil designation has led. Back in the 1960’s, historian Richard Hofstadter examined “the paranoia in American politics” and describes it as a self-perpetuating cycle. “Since the enemy is thought of as evil ..it must be totally eliminated” he says. But when the enemy is a figment of the imagination ..the bubble bursts. Instead of finding peace with that ..a new focus of attack must be found to appease the wrathful deities of discrimination ..and the cycle goes on through perpetuity. Reminds me of a Buddhist parable I once heard [link]. Anyway, I do believe the Internet has sped-up the process.

Beauty of uncertainty

In 1975, Baruch Fischoff identified a major obstacle to forming new memories ..ourselves. He found that people frequently underestimate how surprised they are when events don’t turn out the way they expect. He polled a group of students before and after the Watergate hearings. Respondents who felt Nixon would be exonerated (with say 80% confidence) .. overwhelmingly came back and said they weren’t surprised by the verdict (and remember being just over 50% confident). When people learn the outcome of events, they unconsciously go back and adjust the estimate for what they thought would happen. This has the net-effect of revising memory so that it feels as if they “..knew it all along”, which diminishes the surprise-value of information [link]. More recently, neuroscientist Moshe Bar says that surprise is what gives ordinary events the informative-value necessary for transfer to long-term memory [link]. What we retain are mostly the novel bits of information we pick up along the way. They go on to form a ‘pool of scenarios’, which we use to prepare for future events. So if we go around dismissing the surprise-value of information, we sabotage memory, lower our ability to deal with the unexpected ..and don’t learn as much from experience. My friend Audrey likes to say that we can prevent future memory loss by making a conscious effort to do something out of the ordinary everyday ..increase our exposure to what’s new ..or at least give ordinary events greater value than “..it's just the same old story.”

Psych unit

“Locked inside your head do you realize the things you say never make sense? We can sit here awhile but we don't know the half of it in your defense.” KT Tuntall

Group therapy: Rose is a recent arrival. She says she’s here because she lost her cat, which she repeatedly refers to as a ‘jaguar’. “It kept me safe” she says “..nobody fucks with you when you gotta’ jaguar.” I look at Dr Russell. He says counselors had to coax her out of room 20 at the Eagle Inn because she had rendered it toxic ..a rotten mix of soiled blankets, month-old McDonalds wrappers and fuming litter boxes. Another new admit is Jeffrey. He was sent here after leaving a handwritten note at the police station, which read: “Listen, I got 20 CIA agents protecting me where I live” and demanded a ‘monogamous pretty’ woman be delivered immediately.

A stroke of insight

Or there and back again: Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few neuroscientists would wish for: she had a stroke and witnessed the boundaries, set by the left cerebral cortex ..disappear. She experienced the ‘enormous and expansive universe’ where we live coming through the parallel portals of the right cerebral cortex, which was unaffected by the stroke. She returns to tell an astonishing tale.

Psych unit

“A horse at my window ..a voice singing in my head. Reality beckons but I will stay here instead. In delirium people are free to see what they want to see. And I am not alone. In the darkness I have a thousand friends. And the music plays and it never ends. And the midnight owl comes to fly with me. And I feel and hear what I cannot see.” ~ Emilie Autumn

Group therapy: Florence pulls at a mop of tangled red hair. Says she thought the spirits that possessed her had disappeared. But they showed up again last night, clawing at her soul. Someone told me she suffers chronic heartache (!?) Robbie needs more medz to think clearly in class. Reasonable request. Stacy, clearly the worst off, hunkers in the corner weeping ..saying her husband (who is deceased) gave her another round of beatings last night. Her head is bandaged and her face is black and blue. Startled, I look at Dr Russell. He says this cycle of recrimination has been going on for years. Some patients appear to have already left the world. The techs brought them in ..they look inanimate. “They’ve escaped their tyranny” the doctor likes to say. I tell him I feel out of my depth. He’s says that’s a good first step. I stare at a chart of the brain on the wall. “Don’t get fooled into thinking that’s any use” he says. Robbie tells me that talking about her problems has helped as much as any anti-depressant a doctor prescribed. “When I speak out, say what’s inside ..they appear to understand and give me direction on what to do.” Makes me think how much better girls are at expressing what’s inside. “So, the people here are pretty helpful ..?” I ask. “No, I mean the Angels ..!!” she shouts incredulously. Dr Russell says you gotta’ treat them for what they believe ails them. “Doesn’t that just reinforce their beliefs ..?” I ask, thinking back to a class in abnormal psych. “Some of these patients were incoherent when I got here” he says. Like they’re making sense now, I think. But who am I to say.

Reading behavior

“Our universities deliver education in English ..[so] we should teach reading in the language that will be most useful.” Letter to the LATimes re. dual-language immersion ~ [link]

As reasonable as this may sound ..it is not consistent with the way nature prepares children to read. Nor is it supported by the state-of-the-art in neuroscience and language development. The language children are going to need in college isn’t as important for reading education as their native language. Learning to read in one’s native language is the most effective route to fluency. That’s because learning to read starts out as a process of linking the sound of words on paper to their meaning in memory [link]. This puts children from non-English backgrounds at a disadvantage when trying to read English first. They have no ‘phonic memory’ for it. That’s what accounts for the high percentage of high school students in the U.S. who cannot read or write well. Furthermore, it is widely known that reading fluency in one language is easily transferable to another [link]. It only makes sense to teach children to read in a way that assures early success in one language and boosts their chances of future achievement in other languages.

Deconstructing Romney

Mitt Romney has a problem. Apparently Obama’s health care act looks a lot like the plan he implemented in the state of Massachusetts. In fact, Obama admits to ‘modeling’ Romney’s program. This makes Romney look like he’ll be less effective helping Republicans repeal Obama’s health care act. I think this is a real problem. He can either stand by his past actions or back away and appear shifty. Recently however, I’ve heard several republican loyalists defend Romney by accusing Obama of ‘stealing’ the idea. Now I don’t believe this is a deliberate attempt to obscure the issue. I think what I’m hearing is a native function of human memory. We retain our own interpretation of events better than actual events. Psychologists say that memory is more of a ‘heuristic’ than ‘algorithmic’ process. It tends to follow the rules of predicate logic, which are looser than those of Cartesian logic. So I looked at how the Romney defense plays out in terms of predicate logic:

Notice where the terms ‘principle’ and ‘democrat’ appear on the network path. For sake of efficiency, I believe memory often drops what’s at the periphery and focuses on the primary action (i.e. model). From there it’s a short step to re-interpret the action ‘modeling’ as ‘stealing’ and forget it’s a democrat ideology to begin with. As crazy as this may sound, it makes Romney’s actions appear much more consistent with republican loyalties. I’m not playing partisan politics here. I believe members of both major parties rationalize events this way.

Soundcheck

I went to the dentist yesterday. This morning my soundscape seems different. More amplified. The people next-door sound like they’re shouting at each other over coffee on the patio outside. The volume of their chatter makes it seem like my boundaries are contracting, which in turn makes my music sound louder and more obnoxious. I turn it down to half it’s usual volume but it still sounds too loud, making me wonder why they haven’t complained before (or perhaps they have and I couldn t hear them). The telephone ringing sounds like a train roaring through the room. This afternoon, the bell inside the meditation hall goes off like gunfire scaring the daylights out of me. Now I’ve had enough. I call the dentist to see if got a soundcheck with my teeth cleaning. He acts as though I’m asking a strange question. Does that sound like a strange question ..?

Anti anxiety practice

Continued from previous post [link]

During conscious breathing I can often hear the internal narrative that my thoughts create. I find myself trying to tell if it’s quarrelsome, critical or confined by past events. Am I busy judging those events as right or wrong – agreeable or offensive ..? Now I’m caught-up judging whether that action is the right or wrong way to practice. I quickly return to my breath ..feeling it rise and fall without effort. When I return to my head, like I so often do, I see a procession of discriminating thoughts rising and falling. So I remind myself not to resist or control them (from an old zen instruction). Trying simply to pay attention to their passing nature. Like the breath arrives and dissolves the toxins of the body .. can I allow each mental instance to arrive and dissolve of it’s own accord. I see periods of neutral thought followed by periods of critical thought. Perhaps I catch a glimpse of clarity once in a while. Like the bubbles of air I’m breathing ..can I let go and allow mental formations to flow, unencumbered, until they vanish. Sometimes, while I’m following my breath ..I imagine myself mimicking the action of the nervous system ..the way it transmits messages and recovers without congestion. There’s no time for bickering there. Then I let that image flow until it vanishes and return to my breath. And so it goes.

Anti anxiety drug

The basis of most stress-relief practice is the simple act of conscious breathing. Like any sport, it helps to return to the fundamentals once in a while. So it is with conscious breathing. Breathing is the closest handle we have on the cleansing and replenishment cycles of the body. Breathing is the way we rid ourselves of carbon dioxide and replenish ourselves with oxygen. It is a process that works on many levels. At an obvious level, our sustenance requires a regular cycle of cleansing and replenishment. On a not-so-obvious level, the senses follow rapid cycles of cleansing and replenishment in order to keep the buffers clear and make way for each successive round of sense-data. Otherwise, we’d experience ‘white-out’ in an instant. At the neural level, synapses perform a continuous act of cleansing and replenishment allowing transmission to proceed without congestion. At the cellular level, cycles of cleansing and replenishment are necessary to prevent toxicity. And finally in the mind, the place where stress-relief occurs ..the conscious mind is a continuous process of forming and dissolving thoughts and images. I find that the easiest way to approach the native processes of mind and body for stress-relief is through what is most accessible ..the simple act of breathing.

Austin city limits

I take a taxi to the bus station and an express to the airport. When I arrive in Austin, Karla is there to greet me with a bright smile and no trace of shyness. I’m delighted. We share a $10.00 hamburger at Trudy’s and head home. The next day Laura and I visit her school where I learn about the Texas Assessment of Knowledge Test (TAKS) ..a measure of student competence for advancement and graduation. They don’t fool around in Texas. In the afternoon we go for a hike along Bull Creek. The water is emerald green and the banks are made of boulders worn smooth, and cut deep in places by the water. I’m reminded of something my zen teacher once said: what’s softest in the world overcomes what’s hardest. We go to the pool for a swim in the evening. The next day we arrive early for the KT concert and watch the show while pressed against the rail in front of the stage. Sweet spot. I don’t remember being this close before. I’m in shock and awe. Stellar performance. KT performs ‘Universe and u’ on piano the way she originally wrote it. Karla enjoyed the show because KT’s songs have a great backbeat. In Dallas the next day, some lucky folks got to see the performance below taped outside the Granada before the show.

KT Tunstall

KT Tunstall - Tulip Heart by tunes2

Comfortably numb

I do things just to get them behind me and move on to other things ..so I can get those behind me too ..I don’t often see what’s in front of me .. I’m looking too far forward or backward. This morning I’m doing the dishes, while watching images of events gone by. I see Anne stopping by to say hi (from yesterday). Next, an image of my friend’s mother appears who suffers arthritis from washing dishes. That’s when I missed grabbing the knife by its handle and saw the blood in the sink. Pain arrived a split second later followed by a scream because my hands were numb from the water. Now my eyes are wide open and I’m thrashing around the bathroom cabinets looking for antiseptic and bandages ..swearing at myself for being so clumsy ..as well as the knife for being so stupid (!?). I drop by Prof Neal’s office for a chat and he interrupts me to ask why my hand is bandaged. I give him a brief explanation and shrug it off, but I see he’s not going to let it go that easy.

“Tell me what happened.”
“That’s all there is to it ..”
“Why don’t you take me back there.”
“Why ..?”
“Indulge me.”

Ok, so I give him a more detailed account ..leaving out the part where I called the knife stupid. Afterward, he tells me I’m interfering with the ‘binding principle’ when I do that. “Do what ..?” I ask “Drift away .. not enough light gets through for you to put together what’s in front of you.” He goes on to tell me that I probably grabbed the knife the same way I grabbed the last utensil because, while I’m drifting away ..my brain is computing the likelihood of the next event (knife) based on a set of light waves it received from a prior event (spoon). He goes on to say “While you’re out there creating one narrative ..your brain is constructing a counter-factual model of what’s at hand. Your observation didn’t come back to the dishes until the separation became too great for you to be in both places at once.” He lost me but I try to cover it up. “I suppose you’re going to tell me if I hadn’t cut myself ..I may have followed a narrative leading somewhere else instead of here.” He nods and goes "That’s right! You see, that’s what makes every moment worth paying attention to ..even when you’re washing dishes. You don't know where they’re going to lead.” I look around the office and go “OK, I’m buying this ..but can anyone else hear what we’re talking about ..?”

Priscilla Ahn