21 June 2002 (Friday)
mum's the word
I am browsing through old emails, cutting thin stinging lines in my skin with the razor of typewritten words. Ow. Ow. But maybe there's a lesson here somewhere. Maybe this is surgery. No anesthesia for this kind of medicine, though: you just have to shut your eyes and keep your breathing steady.
Tomorrow, hopefully, answers come.
My humble thanks to every painful moment in my past. There is no greater teacher. As much as anything else, you've made me who I am.
Feliz fin de semana.
posted by enjelani @ 07:40 PM PST [ link ]
titles are an arbitrary obligation imposed by the system!
Anarchists unite! Woo! Woo!
posted by enjelani @ 03:22 PM PST [ link ]
20 June 2002 (Thursday)
cosmology
This is an excellent website, even if it makes my brain hurt. My father was a physics major, and it pains him that I don't share his passion for it, I think. I imagine I could be passionate about it if I could do the math, but given my limited intelligence in that regard, I am better off debugging software.
Project: construct a three-dimensional model of my day-to-day life in the form of a solar system. Job #2 is a large planet with several moons: Call So-And-So, Submit Application To X, Research Y, Follow-Up On Z. Job #1 is similar, consisting mostly of vapor though, and with duller colors. There is Exercise, way out in the periphery along with Nutrition and Hydration, constantly threatening to break free of my gravity's tentative grip. The bills are tiny, atmosphereless planets with thirty-day orbits. And the asteroid fields: repair zipper on coat. Fix printer. Cancel subscription. Back up computer files. Invite Robert and wife to dinner. Buy soy sauce and mustard. These comprise the tangible reality of my life, but it's their movement through space and time, and the light that reflects off them, that make up my reason for living.
I described all this to Soren, who said "Then let me be the aether. The cosmological constant, the mystery Einstein never solved." And I melted, because I'm a sucker that way. We are such nerds.
Also: o, ye invisible gods of weblog karma allocation, how you mystify me.
posted by enjelani @ 12:46 PM PST [ link ]
19 June 2002 (Wednesday)
the unprecedented generation
It's all a grand experiment. We've never had this asked of us before.
How does a couple raise children now, in this fierce culture of personal aspirations? Who has time? How much time is enough time, and spent in what fashion? Who will cook the dinner, iron the shirts, tend the garden, now that women as well as men are CEOs and professors and engineers and fighter pilots, but it isn't manly to take a week off for chicken pox or to attend the elementary school PTA meeting?
What is the definition of community, in a world of TVs and game consoles, chat rooms and livejournals, suburban developments with electronically operated gates? Where do the kids play when the speed limit is 45 MPH? Who are the kids they play with? Palestinian, Peruvian, Chinese, Malaysian-British-Congolese, WASPy all the way back to the Mayflower? What games will they play? Who will point fingers at whom; who will come to whose defense? What holidays will they celebrate at school? Will they still write one another when they're 17, 26, 35? Will they still have something to say?
How will we be fellow citizens if we don't speak one language? How will we understand each other, and the bright burning world outside our national borders, if we only speak one language? Who before us has been called upon to understand not only our own problems, but the problems in every time zone, in every incomprehensibly foreign and yet undeniably human culture? Is this kind of 360-degree vigilance possible? How will we learn it all, keep learning it all, keep remembering?
What is unshakable in human nature? Will we always be tribal? Globally selfish, locally compassionate? Reveling in our brilliantly designed vise-grip on the natural world, hungry for control instead of harmony? So afraid of death, that bittersweet and crucial counterbalance to life, that we will do anything to outrun it? What does it mean, to say that human life is sacred? Is it?
These are the doubts. But I hold out hope; there may be a way. We may figure it out. I think we have it in us.
posted by enjelani @ 11:17 AM PST [ link ]
18 June 2002 (Tuesday)
request for comments
Always intrigued me that documentation for networking protocols were called RFCs: Requests For Comments. Technology evolves constantly.
Q: How important is being a parent to you, personally? What is (or what do you envision to be) your role in a child's world, if any? Why?
The crackerjack box prize goes to Lenny for getting me thinking about this.
posted by enjelani @ 02:09 PM PST [ link ]
17 June 2002 (Monday)
perched on the well's edge
I am in a delicate state just now. Life has been insanely good to me of late, and in return I mostly fuck things up.
The solution is to drink water, eat well and stick to a rigorous schedule as much as possible today. Humility, but not guilt. The humble know how to laugh at themselves. Just put one foot in front of the other and relax.
My landlord continues to rock my world. When I locked myself out of my apartment yesterday he drove twenty minutes up to the city to let me in, never mind that it was Father's Day and he had a dinner party in his honor to attend. I have no idea how to thank him. Maybe I'll bring in a batch of homebaked oatmeal cookies when I go to pay next month's rent.
posted by enjelani @ 10:22 AM PST [ link ]