1:14 AM

Is it just me, or is it a lot easier to be creative in the dead of night?

If it's just me, does that make me crazy?

The Right Lighting

On several rainy days over the last few years, an acquaintance of mine has asserted an unusual perspective about the world. He vastly prefers the way world is lit when the sun is hidden by the clouds.

Explaining himself, he goes on to say that it’s because the shadows are evened out. Everything is lit in balance. This way, he says, the world appears as it actually is. It seems more real. More honest.

My friend’s opinion leads me to think about light. Granted, it doesn’t take much to get me to think about things like light, or metaphysically about anything at all. But specifically, I think about what it means that the vast majority of humans rely so much on light.

Light is a wave/particle complex generated by objects which possess immense amounts of energy. We see because these particles bounce off the objects of the world. Some of these reach our eyes, and our brains interpret the stimuli in a complex series of impressions I find it impossible to describe.

What I mean to say is that when we see the world around us, we are only seeing what the light tells us is there. We trust a tiny particle to tell us about that chair two feet away, and we do it implicitly. If we don’t trust light to tell us how things are, we could darn well lose our minds.

The sunlight that reaches through our atmosphere has quite a golden hue. The sun gives off pure white light, but somewhere along the line, during the heat of the day, the light goes amber and so does our world.

When it rains, and the clouds undo that golden hue, it pales the light. Despite this, it’s not white light just because it’s no longer golden. I’m not even sure what I’m getting at anymore. I guess I just...

Wonder. About living in response to stimuli, and being, and how weird and complicated everything is. It’s tempting to think maybe we’re not being honest with ourselves about what we experience on some level deeper than we can know. Because apparently all our sights and smells and sounds are interpreted data.

What if it’s not data? What if it’s not noise?

I guess, for me at least, all that makes sense is music—poetry—art. Without it, it’s all just senseless data, and that doesn’t resonate.

Putter Putter

What do you do when you're sick and still have duties to perform?

Art?

Do you prefer waking or sleep?

Reality or dream?

Truth or fiction?

Simple or complex?

Productive or creative?

Contentment or joy?

Exploring or building?

Sunlight or lightbulbs?

Albums or concerts?

Raw or well done?

Everything is Connected

I think I'll start speaking in statements here, at least for now.

The other day I saw a bumper sticker that said: "Everything is Connected." It immediately reminded me of the discussion I had with a science major friend from college about the makeup of the world on the smallest level.

You see, according to the current understanding of particle physics, individual particles never touch. Even when two electrons "collide" it doesn't involve actual contact between the two electrons. Instead, they come within a certain proximity before the repelling forces intrinsic to their very existence force them apart. So when you lay your hand on a table, and you feel the grain of the wood, you aren't touching the table. On the subatomic level, it just doesn't happen. Instead, the pressure from the repelling particles acts on your skin and your nerves recognize this and send messages to your brain about the sensation.

The statement "everything is connected," then, is apparently very, very false. It would be more accurate to state "everything is out of reach."

But then it's not even that everything is drawn together (though Einstein's theories about gravity and relativity suggest that they are), because the stuff of space itself is expanding, pushing everything away as fast as it can.

So really, a good description of our universe is "everything is being separated."

Ouch.

Changing tack, I recognize "Everything is Connected" for the philosophical statement that it is. It's a bit of a New Age way of saying that your actions have consequences and your nonaction has consequences and six degrees of separation and the fact that there's more eyes on Earth than a paranoid schizophrenic wants to know about. From the philosphical perspective, I don't necessarily disagree with the statement that everything is connected.

And yet, even on a metaphysical level I still feel the resonance of the science telling me "everything is being separated." Because this universe we're in is broken.

That's an interesting statement, too. Very opinionated. I wanted to try to avoid that on this blog, but after two posts full of leading questions I think I've realized that I can't really talk about the things I think about during the day without a bit of the Declarative.

To say that the universe is broken is a value statement. It's saying that there's a way the World should be, and that the World is not that way. That's what I believe. I'd say I feel it in my bones, and some would say that's just superstition or wishful thinking. Or something.

Not everyone feels pangs of melancholy thinking about how the universe is pulling itself apart at the seams. I mean, it's not like it's going to affect the human race in this generation. Or the next. Maybe when we're a different species it'll look a bit different.

Or. Or maybe everything has been dying for a long time, and all that is brilliant and beautiful in the universe is fading away. Eventually, light will spin out its last wink of energy, the last atom will be pulled apart by the bulging of space stuff, and all that will be left will be a great emptiness. Expanding forever. And people can feel it. They can see it. And they can try to come to terms with it.

If you aren't interested in what is beautiful or what is true, then I'm not sure we have anything to say to each other. Or maybe you should read my blog and I'll try to show you the way I look at the world.

I sing when the sun sets. But that's a topic for another day.

Energy

How often do you think about electricity? Magnets? Light?

Energy itself?

What has scientific inquiry told us about energy?

Does that explain what it is?

Do you think we can know what something is by looking at it? By knowing what it does?

Is there an essence of a thing that runs deeper than the senses can reach?

Or is that just crazy Platonist talk?

What does the scientific paradigm offer to human experience?

Detachment in unfamiliar situations? Methods for developing responses and intuiting answers?

What does it remove from human experience?

Fear? Proximity?

Does it matter what the pros and cons are? Isn't this the world we live in now? Should we just go with the "civilized" way of looking at the world without weighing our options?

Is there more than one way to look at the world while maintaining honesty? Is that relativism, or something else?

Is there an advantage to looking at the world in different ways?

Is it dangerous?

What's energy?

A wave? A particle? A movement? Power? Life? God's breath?

Why is energy found everywhere?

Does that change anything?

Free Love

Do you believe a man can love a woman without a kiss, without sex, without a touch or even a long look?

Do you believe that consummating a relationship could mean nothing more than a smile?

What do you imagine in a relationship with "no strings attached?"

Do you believe in free love?

If so, what does that mean? Unbound? And if no boundaries, then where could it go? Anywhere? And do anything?

Does that make love an agent of chaos?

Or does love, even free love, have rules?

Would those "rules" be walls or speed-bumps?

Is there room for free love in a sensible world?

Do you believe the world is sensible?

Do you believe in sense?

Backing away from parasailing piranhas for the moment, do you believe love is a human construct? Or is it a shared human experience? Or is God love?

Does that stop you from wanting it? Do you want anything more?

Why, or why not?

Way back—with the freedom to love fully any and everyone you see, but unable to spend more than five minutes with that person, what do you do?

How would living that way change you?

Would you try it?