Ruth detected that I "sound better" even via pager this morning. :-) You know - I got that paper done and submitted, just got plane tickets to DC for both upcoming trips - NAMI/Breakout and Conference of Interpreter Trainers.
My roomies have arrived, are settling in, and all is "go" for us to hang tonight and start sorting out details. My room's still a bit of a disaster, but it is taking shape. I need to get the small dresser and bedside table from VT, then I should be set.
Now I'm getting excited! This SQUID technology proves energy can flow in two directions (to/fro) at the same time! Talk about FLOW! :-)
This exchange between Bodavor, Jonathan, and Dan is not contexted, but - besides its reference to Schroedinger's SQUID - it is fascinating in its speculation about leaps of intelligence (I'd say "in subjectivity") being induced (?) by language, and its implications for human evolution.
Everyone keeps referencing a Scientific American article but it keeps coming up "page missing." :-( Here's something from Complexity Digest (which I'd like to add to my rss feed). These folk are also onto Self-Organization.
When I really want to get serious, here's a dissertation, The Nine Lives of Schroedinger's Cat, that "surveys nine different interpretations of non-relativistic quantum mechanics." One of the nine is "the idea that the mind causes collapse", which I was just writing about recently. :-)
Well. I actually finished the paper to submit to the proceedings for Critical Link 4, held in Stockholm last spring, a whole day EARLY! Gee! Somehow, the universe smiled on me with the blessing of time. Time-wise, I'd spent 3-4 half days on it earlier this summer, and three 5-6 hour days on it as the deadline neared. Scheduling the time to write, amidst and among everything else, has to be the single toughest thing for an aspiring academic/researcher to figure out.
The grand thing is, though, that the work I'd done earlier percolated long enough that I actually generated a few brand new connections (!), and these are what will now drive my proposal to present at RID's conference next summer. Deadline upcoming.
Maybe I picked up the vibrations of the recent ST convention, because it's been on my mind - sharing all those videotapes with Catalin and Raz en route to Shemaya. ;-)
The NY Times had a story today, Fans Hope Suns Can Rise Again on Star Trek.
Full text of the article is in the extended entry. Why do I love Star Trek? Besides the fact that the crew from the original series were my best friends while I was growing up (!), the vision now embodied in I.D.I.C. - "infinite diveristy in infinite combinations" and the way they deliberately try to forecast current events into the future has always inspired me.
Kayla became the first of Hannah's friends to reach double digits! Last night Hannah hosted a special private birthday sleepover for Kayla, complete with an elaborate dinner (custard for dessert) and many gifts.
After dinner we lay on the deck watching stars. I punched Kayla in the cheek and tried to poke out her eye. Then we played Elvis monopoly and Kayla had the least money but the most property. Do you think she won?
Hannah was the consummate host. She even protected Kayla from me by trying to roll me off the back deck. :-(
John and I pulled a 10 hour day yesterday to finish the wall. It looks great. Changes the character of the house....will take some getting used to. My friends have been great. Several people visited while I was here: Ingrid, Sarbjeet, Denise, Leda and her husband John. Most reminded me (gently) that my efforts wouldn't change anything. I know. I tried to strike a balance between everyone's priorities for the house. I've acted on my values - I want a peaceful, beautiful home full of a demonstrative loving family. The "peaceful" part is where my mind has been. I realize it wasn't....and...that we produced that together: co-construction. I'm changing, and welcoming it, painful as it has been and no doubt will continue to be. If nothing else, how I've spent the last ten days here matters to me.
I'm particularly proud of the stairs, but there are several other features that emerged spontaneously: the future water pool, a heart stone, a triangular niche for (possibly) a worship icon, a quartz portion that gleams in the sun. :-)
John is a rock. He's just steady and keeps on going and doesn't get stressed (or at least doesn't show it) when I fiddle with this or that way of putting the dang thing together. We cranked on the wall today, not withstanding Sarbjeet's "lostness" and Denise's general disparagement. :-) She didn't miss a moment to tell me what a pathological, delusional mess I am, and Sarbjeet was (apparently) less motivated cuz Lynn wasn't here to impress - last year you should have seen how hard he worked! :-) I, of course, have no such excuse. I'm simply leaving my mark.
On top (!) of it all there was Frankie and Bardsley. Oh my. A horny boy and a timid girl. Yikes! Both these pups need to get fixed!
Well.
Denise especially gave me a raft of shit for thinking that doing stuff around the house might make a difference. I still go back and forth. Part of me thinks, maybe, it's still possible that pathology can be recognized for what it is (especially, has been), and changed. Part of me accepts that all my efforts are simply that, MY efforts, and essentially meaningless to the family I chose.
I'm also aware of feeling particularly vulnerable online these days. Although I haven't "told all", I've certainly told a lot more than most would. I'm feeling exposed. I'm a low-context, pseudo middle-class girl (as in really working class?) I don't even know. I do know that emotions have had a heck of a lot to do with how I've chosen to live my life. Not very rational - although I can do rationalization out the wazoo. Subjectively, how I *feel* has driven much, if not most, of what I've done. I think one skill I'm learning these days is to put the emotions themselves into a larger context.
One of the delusions I'm actively entertaining this week while I'm at the house in VT is that Frankie and Mei Mei can become friends. Jamie told me that dogs enter their most trainable years at 2 -2 1/2, so that'd be Frankie. Mei Mei? Who knows. Such a chicken! But I did have 'em both looking at each other for a long time last night (me in the middle, on the stairs). Tonite it was shorter. Mei Mei got a treat first and Frankie barked. End of activity.
I've been at the house here in VT for three nights so far. B&H are vacationing in Cape Breton. Things have generally been ok; I've been productive and had good spirits (most of the time). Some confluences have caught my attention. Or maybe they are synchronies? I think of a confluence as plural, and a syncrony as dualistic only (between two rather than among many).
Being here alone (no other people) feels good. I do the animals and connect better with the setting, the environment (birds, pond, turtles, frogs, grasses, flowers, trees, sky). Last night an owl was close to the house, and a bat was in the house! Flapped over me a couple of times in the sunroom. Mei Mei hasn't ventured near me at night; Frankie is too vigilant and jealous. The birds alternate between chatter and relative quiet. Overall, things have progressed smoothly (except for me avoiding cleaning/organizing tasks by being online!)
Briefly, as it's weed-whacking day and I have to get out before we get hit with Hurricane rains.
A nudge about empathy last week probably helped me make the connection to the other party's point-of-view in a visceral (felt) way as opposed to just an intellectual way.
For me, it's all about attention. Doesn't have to be constant, periodic is fine as long as there is some regularity (I can trust it will happen) and there is significant room for spontaneity (not always planned).
I went swimming with a polar bear yesterday in the artic waters of the West River. I *tried* to convince this bear that it was exciting and fun for me to just stand halfway in and watch, but the bear wouldn't have it. At one point, the bear told me to swim some laps to warm up, which I did - and it worked, temporarily. My goosebumps never went away, and after an hour, even the bear's lips were blue. We did find a golf ball and an old sock, so I guess that made it all worthwhile. :-)
Someone spent some time googling on the computer with me yesterday and we found The Scoop on Poop and Facts on Farts.
According to these copyrighted sites (!), the average person farts 14 times a day, expelling a half-liter of intestinal gas. You can also learn whether one can make a living off of flatulence, if there are gender and/or ethnic differences in farting and pooping practice and effects, and about the causes of various colorations of poop.
Well, Li decided he needed to get on the action. :-) My intended quick half-hour visit to hold the baby (!) evolved into six hours as I became the beneficiary of his informal counseling. We spent some time on the whole introversion/extroversion question and my joy at being a member of groups....how much easier I feel in groups (such as a class) where the role is clear (being a learner, what fun!) than in a social setting where other norms are at play. I had to confess that I want to be more of an extrovert, and in certain circumstances accomplish this (although still too rarely to satisfy my desire). ;-)
I lobbied hard to become the case study of Li's current paper on desire, tragedy, and satisfaction of desire. (To no avail, sigh!) :-) This came up as Li engaged me around my attention-seeking behaviors...
Swati and Ingrid took turns tonight telling me about myself. ;-) First, Swati commented on the fact that I tend to say something self-deprecating when I talk about what I do. She said, "education people do that", and I wondered, if it's transparent, what good does it do me? ;-)
Then Ingrid got started. (I'm supposed to be nice but you should hear her after a few glasses of wine!) ;-) She's been on the trip of telling me how stubborn I am. Denise is on the same theme. Ingrid says, "how many times are you going to hit your head against the same wall?" Denise says, "you tend to put yourself in the line of fire a bit too often."
I tried to debate the difference between stubbornness (I doubt Ingrid would agree with the disagnosis of Character Deficiency Syndrome but the piece is too hilarious to ignore) and conviction (which is most commonly used in reference to criminals, not beliefs!) with her tonight, but she wasn't buying into it. Kept going off on tangents about my attention-seeking behaviors. At least until she realized I really wasn't being loud to attract others' attention, I was just being clueless! :-)
"...what the [current spate of Olympic] mascots have in common: the aggressive, predatory and rapacious traits of the creatures they represent have been eliminated."
Said traits have been transferred to capitalism - the game of the age.
"Ancient Games had their origins as somber celebrations of death....Part of the reason the ancient Games were so uncompromising and often violent has to do with what was at stake. The Greeks, for the most part, had no heaven; with some notable exceptions, good and bad all went to the same gray, characterless, drizzly underworld after death, and that was that. In the absence of a post-mortem reward for moral goodness, the one thing you could strive for was immortal fame -- doing something so glorious that men would talk of you in years, centuries, millenniums to come. "
"And so, whereas today's Olympic committee prefers to ''celebrate humanity'' (an official slogan of contemporary Olympiads), the Greek athlete wanted only to be celebrated himself; it was his one ticket to immortality."
This reminds me of my conversation with Ingrid last night when I got so passionate about
Preview of Art Speigelman's upcoming comic (!) book about 9/11 and it's aftermath:
"I saw heroism in being able to live in the present and a lightness of touch." I gotta be working on that "lightness of touch" part. But maybe our muses know each other: "I wish I could do comics about "My Year in Provence," or something. But so far it has been the painful realities that I can barely grasp that force me to the drawing table. I'm kind of hoping my next work will be a humorous bedroom farce about the amusing foibles of the upper middle class, intercut with succulent dessert recipes. Unfortunately, I seem to have a rather grotesque muse."
An excerpt: The New Normal
Are you alive? How do you know? Can you distinguish body from thought? Iím talking about sensing your muscles, your joints, the way your knee cocks, whether your shoulders are raised or not, lungs expanding ribsÖ
Or, are you mainly alive through body: mind jumping this urge that discomfort another merely imagined, stimuli crowding thought?
Tom Atlee's recent work on polarization is applicable to interpersonal relationships too. The following are excerpts from POLARIZATION AND INTELLIGENCE by Tom Atlee - August 2004.
Intelligence involves understanding what is real -- matching our mental models with what is really out there. That is what learning from experience is all about: Something happens that we didn't expect, so we change our expectations to include it, becoming more aligned with reality in the process. This is what science is all about: Making hypotheses (mental models) about reality and then testing them to find their validity, including their limitations.
The more fully we apply intelligence to any circumstance, the more we become able to align our efforts with the actual realities of the situation and thereby succeed.
In their efforts to understand reality, intelligent people seek to understand similarities and differences. Of course, those similarities and differences should be real and relevant. Getting hung up on imaginary, irrelevant differences and similarities -- thinking a handsome candidate is better than a conscientious one, for example, or that everyone who looks like an Arab is a potential enemy -- can lead to make stupid mistakes.
Sometimes someone -- perhaps an advertiser raving about an expensive product -- will insist that we pay attention to fine distinctions, when similarities may be far more obvious and important. Other times people will insist that certain things -- such as "all politicians" -- are similar despite glaring differences. At such times, we need to dig deeper into what's going on. Intelligence involves questioning anything that interferes with our ability to seriously consider actual, relevant similarities and differences.
In most cases, polarization undermines intelligence by misleading us in exactly this way. It reduces vast human diversity into categories like Left and Right that are often ambiguous, distracting and even downright irrelevant (see
...
All [criticisms] said, we must acknowledge the powerfully positive role that polarization -- and its close cousins, violence and nonviolent confrontation -- often play in breaking through denial and life-degrading social arrangements. Although polarization cannot resolve issues well, it contains energy that can force those issues onto the table when most people refuse to attend to them or when people or institutions with undue social power prevent vital issues from being considered.
People whose views and interests are suppressed or oppressed often experience, though that oppression, a sense that they are different from and opposed to the people or systems that are holding them down or threatening what they value. Asserting this difference and opposition is often a necessary part of breaking out of victimhood.
I wrote this yesterday afternoon while I was waiting at Mt. Tom for SOMEBODY to show up. :-) We walked the wheelchair accessible path, then hiked about a half-hour up one lovely trail. Definitely a place to return too!
Iíve been proactive in (trying to!) organize groups of folks to do things together. All the events that have occurred have been successful (near as I can tell, anyway) for those who participated. I think Iíve probably always preferred group things to 1:1 socializing (unless itís a date, smile) but not really thought about it much ñ perhaps assuming everyone does, its just that itís hard to organize around everyoneís busy schedules, personalities and whatever other barriers are perceived to get in the way. Being part of groups this summer has inoculated me some from the loss of my family, but I think in general I prefer groups because ñ despite being an external processor ñ I am more of an introvert than an extrovert. If more people are present than the energy expenditure is dispersed. Selfishly, I can enjoy people without having to be constantly ìon.î (Not that Iím ever ìoffî ñ grin.)
It strikes me there are some contradictions lurking around/in/through these thoughtsÖsomething about the balance between performance/self-representation and reflection/enactment of subjectivity.
In the last couple of days, a few different people have asked me about the blog - why do it? What's my goal? How can I share so much? With strangers? Or, perhaps most importantly, with those I know?
I have all kinds of reasons - it's an archive for me of my own academic thoughts-in-progress, a central place for random thoughts on areas of professional interest (interpreting, social change, social justice), and a place to represent myself wholistically, as I see/understand my own experience in the moment. A way to buck the intense culture of insularity in our department (and perhaps all of academia) which I think functions to bifurcate our professional and personal selves and foster the illusion that they're not related.
As synchronicity would have it (!), last night I finished reading the May/June Utne Reader which had a section on fear. They included some excerpts from You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear by Frances Moore Lappe (of the Small Planet Institute and Jeffrey Perkins.
The issue closes with a feature on Celia Perez, who authors a zine, I Dreamed I Was Assertive. She describes how they function as "...my preferred method of therapy, my inconsistent journals, and an amazing way to connect with people across the world".
punkhermit found a basis for more commonalities than me. :-) Her blog, Kicking Against the Pricks: A Music Journal of Sorts is one for the rss.
Had a good talk with my brother yesterday afternoon. He's doing well and making me proud. Had a request for me, which I will do.
Dad seems better too. He navigated a door while we were talking without any audible grunts and groans. :-)
