So much to talk of, so difficult a choice

I felt refreshed yesterday. My brain activity has rested for awhile, inasmuch as I'm not in a hypomanic cycle. I look forward with excitement and anticipation to getting back at my record album collection with a different view as I relax with it. I've been tentatively exploring areas with the computer that my timid soul has dared not go before. I haven't had the TV or radio on for over two days, so I have no idea what's happening 'out there'. Things are good.

But I still lay awake last night for the longest time going through my to-do list for today. It turns out that even though I might have shelved writing about my 'is' project here in the way I had intended, that has now turned into a major task to figure out how to write about it differently. I listened to Jay Ingram's podcast this week where he discusses the relationship between faith and science in finding and/or exploring the seat of consciousness, and I have some thoughts on that I wanted to blog.

I have a story about an oak tree I wanted to tell. I want to explain why I included the bouncing tennis ball game in yesterday's blog, and how it relates to the old game of Pong. When I started digging out my records from the bowels of my crawl space, I came across my first computer, an Apple II+, that I purchased in 1987. I wanted to fire it up and see if Loderunner still works on it, and if I can still remember how to code in Basic when you're limited to two-letter-long variable names. I remember being fascinated that it had a sound card that could make beeps or sounds, and the graphics weren't just ASCII drawings made from forward slashes and semi-colons.

After hearing Jay's discussion, and reading some of the referred links from his page on various theories concerning the brain, I wanted to talk about the summers I spent during high school working with Roberta Bondar (Canada's female astronaut) in a insect research laboratory. I wanted to talk about my Dad and my oldest brother both being research scientists, and I wanted to wonder a bit about the purpose of scientific research.

I wanted to chat about how, especially when I'm hypomanic, I intentionally build a cloned version of my brain as a mental simulation of itself. I go and sit in one half of my brain to keep 'normal' functioning going, but I simultaneously watch my thinking that's going on in the cloned version, (my mirror) of my brain to figure out how I think the way I do. That's when I end up creating and writing about 'is' the most. I'm the artist sitting on a deck chair on the beach, watching the waves crash on the rocks and I'm getting soaked, rather than sitting in my studio painting it from memory, or a photograph or the like. It's so much more real to be there.

I wanted to talk about voicemail, and pushing endless menu choices when I was trying to get access to someone at Symantec who could help me with a problem I've been having with my Norton software program, and just ended up going in helpless circles. I wanted to compare that to an interaction I recently had with Telus phones but it was done with word/voice recognition, rather than tone...and how the hell do they do that anway, if you have a heavy accent? I wanted to say that I hung up the first time in anger, because they 'tricked' me into thinking I was actually talking to someone when I wasn't. And she spoke in full sentences.

I wanted to talk about the evolution from the rudimentary sound capability on my Apple II+, and today's capability where I can hear Jay have a chat somewhere in Ontario, and listen to it at my leisure, as if there was a conversation going on in my living room. I wanted to draw a parallel between that evolution, and the evolution of push-button phones enabling the recognition of distinct tones for the various menu options, and voice recognition technology.

I wanted to share the fact that I've been spending some time coming out of my computer-ignorance-fear-shell, and trying to figure out how to join up to some webrings, and arrange stacks, and imbed java code and HTML code, and stuff I've never tried before. I wanted to share another insight about how the whole structure of the Webring organization 'fits' the model that's inside 'is'.

And so much more.

So, I spent the morning playing music, cleaning up my office a bit, and basically just chilling. All those thoughts, ideas, and questions can wait for another day.

After lunch, I decided to figure out this .NET Passport thing that has been hanging around the fringes of my to-do list for awhile, and ended up getting signed on to MSN with the option of a hotmail account, and had a new desktop appear in front of me. Wouldn't you guess? It had a horoscope included, that read as follows: "You may find that there is a quality of dreaminess to your emotions today which may be keeping you from maintaining focus on the task at hand. It may seem as if your mind is going in two different directions and you are not sure which way to proceed. Work at trying to incorporate more of your dreams into your working reality."

Who writes these things? And how do they know?!!


So my mind will continue to quietly ask itself these questions as I go about my normal day. Some of them, I'll write down as reminder notes, or ideas to explore further. Someday soon, the mental stack will get too full again and it'll have to pop once more. I don't know how to forget intentionally, but I forget a lot anyway. I spend a lot of time desperately trying to remember what it was I forgot, in case it might have been important. And the cycle tends to resume about that point.

But today, I've made my to-do list here. I may never get around to some of them, perhaps none of them. Because today, I feel like listening to music. And continuing to seek PEACE, internally.

My PEACE link for today is to an interview with Bob DeSena, actually done in 2002, titled "From Gangbanger to Teacher of Peace". That was another thing I wanted to talk about. One of my goals in life has always been to work with youth at risk. I suppose now, that will be a goal unfulfilled. His interview ends with the lines "It's time for people to provide their spiritual gifts. Or get used to the violence we're witnessing". Maybe turning off the television for a couple days isn't the answer. I don't know.

Posted by Evydense on Thursday, February 23, 2006 at 4:12 p.m. | Permalink