Where will my blogs go once I stop updating them fifty years from now? And where will they go if the Interweb stops working, crashes, or is wiped out by virus or alien invasion? When elephants feel death approaching, researchers say they often remove themselves to secret areas littered with the bones of their pachyderm forebears, graveyards piled high with the massive skulls and valuable tusks of these smart, lumbering beasts. My blogs, I fear, are not much different: when their time is up and their duties have been served, they will either retreat quietly into the digital forest, randomized clusters of ones and zeros waiting to be re-born as a toddler's social media account, or they will sink forever into the shiny black carapace of some server tower humming away dutifully in the climate-controlled warrens of any one of countless South Asian server farms.
All the writing this author posted on those blogs will be gone if they themselves go: there are no hard copies of his body of work; no printed copies of the Grigovian fairy tales he composed; no tactile versions of the vituperative barbs he hurls at politicians and powerful persons alike; his legacy is 50% ethereal and 49% vacuous, and the few items that do exist for real resemble the ruined detritus of a foolish nonce who cowers in the dark shadows of the past while cursing the skies for making thunder and sending rain. No, his artistic effort will vanish when the systems crash, when the sky-brothers return for gold and human women, or upon the Singularity, whichever comes first, and he wouldn't have it any other way. Huzzah.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
Showing posts with label yard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yard. Show all posts
10 May 2013
07 December 2012
front yard manger
As soon as my neighbors had taken down their cheap, little Chinese-made flag sets showing pumpkins and corn, scarecrows and bounty, mangers began to appear. Some were outlines of figures cut from plywood and painted a uniform color, mostly white; others were elaborate scenes with electric lighting, hovering angels, quality clothes on life-like figures, and real hay strewn about. As I am no longer a Christian but was raised by a pair of them, one of whom was clergy, I know that there are at least four different tellings of Jesus' birth myth, each one wholly different from the next, each one with different players, places, and progressions. I also know that some of the stories don't mention a manger at all and that others don't speak of beasts of burden, that, in general, there is in fact little uniformity and therefore much room for interpretation most everywhere one might care to look in the Christians' bible.
What I struggle to understand is why people feel the need to haul a bunch of props out of storage and hammer them into their lawns, year after year, time and time again, and why they then read the same stories over and over, boredom and mischief spreading like wildfire amongst any assembled youth, the lack of personal progress or group ingenuity glaring and obvious to anyone who might care to see it. We Americans go to market and buy fresh fruits and vegetables to eat, not old and stale ones; we overhaul and streamline our business processes constantly, allowing exhausted methods and worn-out ideas to fade into obscurity so that better ones might take their place; and yet we cling to highly stylized and professionally-commercialized versions of a religion that – due to its inherent absurdity and tendency to promote mistrust for and violence against All Things Strange or Unusual – should have been jettisoned from the annals of history during our all-too-short Age Of Enlightenment. The lessons of that age, however, appear to have been fallen before the idea that we are to search for salvation in the mouths of our preachers rather than in the stillness that comes when the animal and the human spirits are unified within.
The people who erect elaborate mangers depicting mythical scenes from the brutal past (young Mary and her husband Joseph were, after all, fleeing systematic infanticide) probably think of themselves as good Christians. In reality, however they rely heavily on the magic of modern technology for much of their comfort and success, on telephones and motor-vehicles, on paved roads and postal services, on well-pumps and central heating, on electrical lighting and printed books, on Constitutions and charters, and on no one else reminding them of the hypocrisy of their living fat and happy lives in air- and rain-tight houses with a car for each inhabitant parked in the driveway while most people on Earth shiver and starve. At least some neighbors merely staple yard upon blinking yard of seizure-inducing lights to their homes' gables and window-frames without making any sort of religious statement, wasting the output of coal-fired electrical plants on garish light-shows, pouring out our precious fossil resources merely on secular, non-partisan attempts to celebrate this, the Season of Excess. I, for one, shall refrain from celebrating an unassisted birth held in a grimy sty, and stick to bitching about those persons who do. Oh, brother, how stupid can I be. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
What I struggle to understand is why people feel the need to haul a bunch of props out of storage and hammer them into their lawns, year after year, time and time again, and why they then read the same stories over and over, boredom and mischief spreading like wildfire amongst any assembled youth, the lack of personal progress or group ingenuity glaring and obvious to anyone who might care to see it. We Americans go to market and buy fresh fruits and vegetables to eat, not old and stale ones; we overhaul and streamline our business processes constantly, allowing exhausted methods and worn-out ideas to fade into obscurity so that better ones might take their place; and yet we cling to highly stylized and professionally-commercialized versions of a religion that – due to its inherent absurdity and tendency to promote mistrust for and violence against All Things Strange or Unusual – should have been jettisoned from the annals of history during our all-too-short Age Of Enlightenment. The lessons of that age, however, appear to have been fallen before the idea that we are to search for salvation in the mouths of our preachers rather than in the stillness that comes when the animal and the human spirits are unified within.
The people who erect elaborate mangers depicting mythical scenes from the brutal past (young Mary and her husband Joseph were, after all, fleeing systematic infanticide) probably think of themselves as good Christians. In reality, however they rely heavily on the magic of modern technology for much of their comfort and success, on telephones and motor-vehicles, on paved roads and postal services, on well-pumps and central heating, on electrical lighting and printed books, on Constitutions and charters, and on no one else reminding them of the hypocrisy of their living fat and happy lives in air- and rain-tight houses with a car for each inhabitant parked in the driveway while most people on Earth shiver and starve. At least some neighbors merely staple yard upon blinking yard of seizure-inducing lights to their homes' gables and window-frames without making any sort of religious statement, wasting the output of coal-fired electrical plants on garish light-shows, pouring out our precious fossil resources merely on secular, non-partisan attempts to celebrate this, the Season of Excess. I, for one, shall refrain from celebrating an unassisted birth held in a grimy sty, and stick to bitching about those persons who do. Oh, brother, how stupid can I be. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
13 August 2012
routine – its power
Following a daily routine for the first time in many years, this poor, worthless whorphan has noticed his life improving. At the baseline of my routine are yoga exercises at dawn, noon, and sunset, three sessions of ten minutes each that have changed my life by bridging the gaps in the mind-body-interface, a deficiency common to Westerners. Then, I am losing weight and getting into shape by bicycling and by performing roughly four hours of yard or garden duty daily, including the hand-watering of three separate gardens. Thirdly but by no means less importantly, I am, even now, abiding by what I call EBOS, which stands for Entire Battery Operating Session, which means that every day after breaking my fast I use this netbook to write, to process pictures, and to edit graphics until its battery drains to about 15% capacity, at which time I turn it off because it starts to complain about needing juice. Fourth, I maintain and monitor a 45-watt, three panel battery array that charges a 12-volt, deep-cycle marine battery, from which I can charge headlamp and netbook and cellphone batteries and watch DVD movies occasionally, thus avoiding high electricity bills. Fifth, I allot a certain period of time each day to reading, to learning languages (I am currently learning Netherlandish), and to perusing various periodical, spiritual, and educational texts, so as to store in my brains as much as I possibly can of the information they contain (in order to know how to do many different things during the upcoming complete societal collapse commonly referred to as the Zombie Apocalypse).
I have not always followed routines – in fact, I avoided them for most of my life, preferring to shoot from the hip and to frustrate my potential by not exploring it or employing it effectively. One of the main reasons that I have begun to follow them now is that I discovered that a daily yoga routine helps me control my attention-deficit-disorder and its associated lesser maladies such as depression, binge-eating, and sloth. Another reason that I now follow routines is that I read somewhere that doctors who follow routines and maintain checklists are less likely to make mistakes when treating patients and more likely to operate efficiently and with less undue stress. While I am not a doctor, I try to emulate those fine and intelligent people when possible, trusting them to puzzle out the most effective methods and poaching their most effective and simple methods for success.
Please understand that I am not trying to boast about all the things that I am getting done, merely that I am exploring how I came to act instead of thinking and what methods I have used to bring my life back under my control and to deal with my illness, which is also called minor brain dysfunction. In routine, dear friend, I have found some salvation from the jumbled stew that is my mind; in yoga, dear friend, I have found an effective means of getting back in touch with the deep and subtle feelings, with the foul and the blessed urges, and with the abiding glory that is my inner animal. Thanks for reading, and mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
I have not always followed routines – in fact, I avoided them for most of my life, preferring to shoot from the hip and to frustrate my potential by not exploring it or employing it effectively. One of the main reasons that I have begun to follow them now is that I discovered that a daily yoga routine helps me control my attention-deficit-disorder and its associated lesser maladies such as depression, binge-eating, and sloth. Another reason that I now follow routines is that I read somewhere that doctors who follow routines and maintain checklists are less likely to make mistakes when treating patients and more likely to operate efficiently and with less undue stress. While I am not a doctor, I try to emulate those fine and intelligent people when possible, trusting them to puzzle out the most effective methods and poaching their most effective and simple methods for success.
Please understand that I am not trying to boast about all the things that I am getting done, merely that I am exploring how I came to act instead of thinking and what methods I have used to bring my life back under my control and to deal with my illness, which is also called minor brain dysfunction. In routine, dear friend, I have found some salvation from the jumbled stew that is my mind; in yoga, dear friend, I have found an effective means of getting back in touch with the deep and subtle feelings, with the foul and the blessed urges, and with the abiding glory that is my inner animal. Thanks for reading, and mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
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