12/21/00

I have learned...
I am immortal, but not invulnerable
You can lead a horse to water, but cannot make him drink
The ones closest to you are the ones that can hurt you the most
Family is vitally important to me
Conflict and pain make for growth, but its ok to be happy sometimes too
The true Tao is the one that cannot be spoken
Enlightenment is the gift that cannot be given back
That I exist, is the only thing I can be certain of
God lives through us - live well
If there must be a reason, let it be beauty
Your soul is yours to change as you desire
You only have the right to change your own soul
Life is the most precious thing that exists
Chaos is fun
All roads lead to Amber
I am always at the end of the road I have walked
I am ever at the beginning of my journey
All things move in cycles
As above, so below / as below, so above
I cannot always explain myself correctly, and its sometimes better I don't
There is much to appreciate in youth and innocence
There is no blame
All things in moderation, including moderation
Righteousness is the enemy of enlightenment
Laws are transitory
The only constant is change
Be here now
Self awareness is harder than it looks, and goes deeper than you can imagine
Too much of anything can be detrimental
Its a big world out there
Love
Many of the most important things we worry about are not important at all
Gender, when not breeding, is purely a matter of aesthetics
Everybody has something to offer
There are some things I see that I cannot explain
If it still sounds like a good idea when you're sober, it probably is
inevitably, its all good

We are all very lucky
We are all very blessed

12/22/00

Religious notes: one month in the year should be kept clean, no drugs taken at all for this month. A fast, of sorts. Necessary to reset and clean the system. Maybe November? There's still the feast of thanksgiving, but that can be worked around, I think. Even worked in. Try to get high on good and healthy food from the feast. Mmmm... Triptophan.... That's important enough for a holiday.

12/23/00

Sound. Language. Music. Communication via the sound is very advanced, capiable of transmitting complex ideas through abstract media. Music can overlay words and phrases with eachother, include sounds that remind of certain places or things, and music that triggers emotional response. The density of aural communication is so great as to even describe a place, an environment itself that one can picture oneself within.

How limited then our visual communication is in comparason. The written word, simple, linear, straightforward. One idea at a time, taken in sequence. Where is the asymetrical poetry of music? Written poetry must still be inputed sequentially, then decoded into the abstract idea.

Art approaches this as a media, being able to use symbolic imagery on canvas in any configuration. Let the eye hunt around, find the images and decode them in any order, presenting a more complete abstract idea in a single visual image. But still, mostly limited to one image. For visual communication to resemble aural, one must be immersed in it. It must fill the entire field of vision.

Writing has great difficulty approaching this. However, as an application of communication, writing has the most to offer in implementation of advanced communication. Encode the discrete ideas within abstract high bandwidth format. Phonic letters simply will not do it. Only pictoral languages such as Egyptian, Mayan or Oriental use this idea well. In Chinese, each "letter" is a complete complex idea with many layers and interpretations. Strung together they communicate discretely. But used individually, hung about on their own, they offer the possibility of immersive communication. Poetry with each word, not each line, stanza, or poem as a whole.

It is no wonder Chinese is so difficult to learn. It is a high level form of communication. But worse, I believe the images used in the characters are less intuitive than they could be. It is difficult to learn to distinguish the elements, though one can of course learn to recognize any pattern with time.

Such a language could be reengineered with a better knowledge of intuitive visual pattern matching. Some images and patterns are easier for humnans to recognize, such as the elements of a face, basic geometric designs, and certain animal forms. One could draw upon this base of intuitive symbology to form a symbolic pictoral language that could be layered into pictograms much like the form of Chinese. Elements would be designed so that any could stack with eachother and be visually distinguished. Perhaps even use color to add an additional dimention. Color afterall, being the visual analog to music. Written language would carry emotion, much as song. It would be sung rather than spoken. Music, Art and Language would merge into one form of communication that speaks fully of expierence.

A picture is worth a thousand words. When words are pictures, they carry a thousand ideas. Leave 1s and 0s for the computers. Let us indulge in the beauty of shared abstract thought.

12/23/00

Energy falls from the sky, from the distant furnace of the sun. Fields of solar panels collect light in its many waveforms. Chemical reactions whithin generate electricity. Wells tapped by wires, the power flows away to be collected and distributed elsewhere.

In the shade of the panels, blades of grass grab what light they can. Photosynthesis converts light to energy. Energy transmutes one chemical to another, building cells and roots. The blade grows as it reaches, combining energy above with materials below to build life.

The cow munches lazily in the field. Grass is chewed and broken down to its basic elements. Sunlight trapped within the cells is released, and once again materials are combined to build protiens as energy is trapped again in a new form. Muscle, tissue and bone that move the beast laboriously to another field, to graze some more.

The herd is disturbed, a hunter's spear disrupts the delicate system that converts grass into the creature that grazes. The body is broken down, meat taken and cooked, distrubuted to the members of the tribe. All share in the feast, that muscle is broken down to protien to make muscle again, that the tribe may build shelter and pottery to hold grains and more meat.

Wires draw power collected from the solar cells, carried away to a distant network of conduits. The roots of the city carry sunlight into the shelters, where 2 slits in the wall await attention. A plug snaps into place, the circuit is complete, and nutrients flow again into the game console. The meat is entertained by the dancing lights, twitching fingers fueled by a double cheesburger.