Archive for February, 2007

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Missing Days


2007
02.22

Posted in Life | No Comments »

I don’t remember what I did on January 17th. I assume that I went to work and taught students, but I don’t know what I said or anything that happened that day. I have no recollection. It’s like it didn’t even happen. I know it did. Where did it go?

It’s not just January 17th either. It’s December 13th, 14th and 15th. The rest of December is pretty much a blur too. I remember moments where I went some place and did something, but if I had to piece it all together it would probably only account for 1-2% of my time. I don’t think I’m crazy or forgetful, it’s just that days blend into each other.

I heard that everything we do is stored in our subconscious and that we can recall it under hypnosis. But if it’s stored anyway, why don’t we just have access to it, to remember all the things we did if we choose to.

Now I can understand why people keep diaries. Writing everything down would make the past easier to recall. Once you had a few events, you’d be able to fill in the pieces. What troubles me is that people who write memoirs always appear to have such clarity about events, places and conversations. I’m sure they just make it up. After all, who else is going to remember what happened. I can’t really believe that they have always kept a diary of daily events.

The problem also with writing everything down is that it takes so much time. Writing down all the things that happened in a day would mean living the day over again, writing out the words, explaining all the things that happened. I’m sure it would take the better part of an hour. So that’s an hour out of every day which you lose just recording events, most of which are probably boring and dull.

But the bright side is, you’d be able to tell people what you were doing at any given point of history. Is that ability really worth it. I suppose at the end, when you’re almost done with life and you read back over it, you can experience your life again. I can imagine myself as a grandfather, reading an excerpt to my grandkids….

May 12th. Went to the supermarket to buy socks. Oh I remember those socks I bought. They were stripy and felt so comfortable. But they got dirty and soon I wore a hole out in the toe. Maybe I made a note of it… ah yes, June 23rd. Wore out my stripy socks today. Was very disappointed that they didn’t last longer… Timmy, Timmy, listen to your grandfather! What’s that Wendy? Well I’m sorry my life wasn’t more exciting for you. Comfort is part of a happy life and socks play a large role in that comfort. What? Fine, go and play outside.

I think it might be better to let mystery surround a life instead of laboring over stuff which wasn’t important.

What would be cool is finding some way to predict what you’ll be doing days, weeks, months or years from now. It’s possible on a small scale, but I find that it gets complicated quickly. You need constraints on your life. You may be able to predict with relative certainty that you’ll be in a certain place doing a certain activity at such and such a time. However at best this sketch will be general. At worst, it will be broken in the first minute.

The solution? Make your actions follow your predictions. In other words, plan your future.

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The Skies Above (Part One)


2007
02.20

Posted in Writing | 2 Comments »

Professor Lionel Woodgrove needed a full five minutes before he clicked the ‘Send’ button. The glow of the computer monitor being the only source of light in the small university office, his eyes bathed in the message, probing, wondering what might come of this, the end result of 15 years of research. As shocking as his findings had been, there was something more, something beyond the surface that he felt hadn’t been uncovered. Unanswered questions, their relentless tug at his conscience had always prodded him further, to find their answers. His life had been almost entirely consumed with their resolve, that restlessness never abating until they were found. His wife had said something of that sort a thousand times before she left, he recalled.However, what was done was done, including this email. Slowly, as the tired ache of his eyes crept into his consciousness, he realized that there was another feeling creeping over him. His chest was getting tighter, his arm numbed from the shoulder down. And then he was on the floor, unable to move. As his consciousness departed, he felt one final thought race from the depths of his mind, into three words which formed at his lips, the last he would ever speak. Though no-one around him would hear them, he knew that someday, maybe soon, someone else would discover what it had taken him fifteen years and a cardiac arrest to find. Yes, it all fit, the one unifying factor.

As he closed his eyes and his heart beat for the last time he said, “they were here” and died.

~~

Outside the Oval Office, Hampton Rockwell, the 53rd President of the United States was looking at the night sky. Behind him he heard the footsteps he knew to be his Chief of Staff, Jefferson Peters. Rockwell took another drag of his cigarette and blew it into the air in front of him.
“Now why do I still smoke these things?” he asked without turning around.
Peters shrugged. “They’re more addictive than herion, that’s why.”
“True, but you’d think that with all the damage it does to me, I’d find enough motivation to never pick another one up again.”
“Sir, I hardly think that one cigarette a day is going to kill you.”
“Even so, when the right course of action is known and yet you take the wrong one, that must be the very essence of irrationality. Why do you suppose we do that?”
“I don’t think I know, sir.”
Rockwell looked up at the night sky, as though seeking an answer.
“Did they sign?” he said, peering out.
Peters smiled, feeling more comfortable with politics than philosophy.
“All of them. Sir, you really left them no choice.”
“I know.”
“But may I ask, Mr. President, how did you know they wouldn’t take the other option?”
It had been a negotiation with the trade unions over increased legal control of employee contracts. The Presidents’ record with union negotiations was icy at best, a record he was not the least bit embarrassed by.
“I’ve found that people just like to feel that they are in control, even though all evidence says otherwise. It’s amazing, the influence of pride in what passes for rational thought.”
“It was the finest piece of negotiating I have seen in a long while, Mr. President.”
“Thank you Peters. But I know you didn’t come out here just to kiss my ass.”
“No sir,” here Peters faltered for a moment. “Sir, we received an email a few days ago which appears to be from a Professor Lionel Woodgrove. He mentioned that he was your godfather.”
Rockwell turned.
“Yes, he is. What did it say?”
“It was a scientific report, a little left-field. He requested a meeting.”
“Of course. I haven’t seen Uncle Woodgrove since I was in college. Call his office and arrange a meeting for next week. And have a copy of that report on my desk tomorrow morning.”
“That won’t be possible sir, the meeting I mean. After receiving the email, we called his office to confirm. From what we can make out, your godfather passed away shortly after sending the email. It appears he suffered a major heart attack.”
Rockwell was silent for a long time. When he spoke, it was softer, fragile.
“He was a brilliant man. Quiet, solid. Lived for his work. Didn’t have a friend, or wife at the end. Yet, he was perhaps the most interesting person I have ever met.”
His eyes focused again on the man before him.
“Have the report on my desk in an hour.”
The sound of Peters’ steps grew distant again and then disappeared inside. Rockwell knew that whatever his godfather had been, he was an intensely rational man. Whatever that report held, whatever reason the professor had for sending it to him, he was sure it was vital he find out. He took in his last drag from the cigarette and crushed it underfoot.

Humanity was inherently flawed, he thought, but as long as he admitted his own irrationality, he would be in control of it. As soon as he began imagining he was any different, that he was an agent independent of his desires, he would lose all hope of achieving such independence. The cigarettes may indeed bring him closer to death, but how was that different to life anyway? Every breath, every step of every day brought him closer to the end, a fact his godfather had bared witness to. As he walked inside, he could not help but feel that it was all a terrible waste.

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Internal Dialog


2007
02.19

Posted in Opinion | 1 Comment »

Internal dialog, which I referred to in the previous post, is when you talk to yourself inside your head. Not like, “What do you think my imaginary friend?” “I think you should steal the money” “No I can’t do that” “Do it, you wimp!” “No, no, make them stop! Make them stop!” No, I mean the movie voice. The VO voice which describes the things you’re thinking. Once I became aware of its presence, I started to realize that it was putting things into words exactly as I would have said them. This struck me as a huge waste of time. Thoughts don’t need to be restricted to words, do they? So I tried to get rid of the words and just think in thoughts. It worked, and much faster. It was like my thoughts were free to leap and bound across ideas.

The trouble was, without words to be tied down to, it was sometimes difficult to explain your thoughts without a lot of backtracking. When they came out, they didn’t always make sense. It was like a dream, where it makes so much sense when you’re in it, but absolutely none when you wake up and tell someone about it. But was it the thoughts which didn’t make sense, or our language which was tied down in such a way as to blind us from possibility? George Orwell noted in the Appendix to 1984 that it was possible to change language so as to forbid certain thoughts. Yet, were we without language, we would be severely limited in our ability to order our thoughts. It’s a bit of a pickle.

I suppose the solution is a combination of both types of thinking. If you write a story in your head, but don’t write it down, you may lose important details. Same with thinking without words. You will leap ahead and let your mind run free, but don’t forget to make the thoughts concrete once in a while by putting them into words.

There may well be a huge reserve of potential inside all of us. The night before last, I was dreaming about walking next to a river. I heard a complex piece of piano music in the dream, complete with melody and harmony, which then I identified as a piece by Rachmaninoff. It was beautiful, and yet when I awoke I wondered how I had remembered such a piece of music so completely. I couldn’t remember how it went, nor what all the chords were. I couldn’t hum it or decide the key it was in, but in sleep it had been complete, as though someone were playing it on a piano next to me. What really got me wondering was whether it was actually a piece by Rachmaninoff at all or something I had thought of myself.

It’s true that when skills become so practiced, they will fuse with your mind, allowing you to use them at will to paint the pictures in your mind. That skill could be language, a musical instrument or a paintbrush. However, while they bring those thoughts to life, they are bound by the level of skill you have with which to convey them and the medium in which they are conveyed.

Something to ponder.

Popularity: 2% [?]

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A Matter of Pride


2007
02.19

Posted in Korea, Opinion, Teaching | No Comments »

I have to give credit to those Chinese. They have this other dating system. I don’t understand it, probably never will, but what I do know is that it’s different from our year and they’re still sticking to it. You just have to love their tenacity for ancient stuff. I especially love it because I get today off work.

Koreans cling to the same heritage too you see, with surprisingly more tenacity. Take chopsticks for example. Now, if they were just a preference, I could easily understand it. However their shunning of the fork is suspiciously total. Once might expect some acknowledgment of it’s practical superiority when eating, say, steak. However the Koreans would sooner bring in scissors and tongs to cut up the meat than to admit defeat by letting the knife and fork take a place on the table.

I guess it’s just a matter of pride.

Pride affects us all. It starts to come into play during the late teenage years and more and more asserts itself as a factor to be considered. It’s simply the basis of a lot of dumb decisions. It’s consciousness’ side-effect, for while consciousness gives us a self-awareness, pride turns this awareness against us, forcing us to recognize the internal instead of focus on the external.

It’s effects are damaging. How can you be a student if you are too proud to admit someone knows more than you? How can you take criticism? How can you fix a problem if you are too proud to admit that there’s anything wrong?

I find it happening to me. I was browsing a writing seminar online. It required you to submit your work online for the instructor and other students to critique. I found myself dreading this. I heard a voice and it said “who are they to critique you?” No, I didn’t believe that. They were experienced, they knew a great deal about good writing. “You are going to look like a stupid idiot, who doesn’t know anything,” the voice continued. “You will appear lower than them.”

As a teacher, I notice it in class. The best students are the ones who put their own feelings aside and concentrate on learning as much as they can from me. The students who are too proud to try, never learn anything. It’s especially noticeable when teaching a language because if you don’t speak it regularly, it will never come. Those who are shy or proud (in the end, they’re about the same in their damage) can’t speak, whereas those who shut down that negative internal dialog improve in leaps and bounds.

Pride is not all bad though. If you do something great and people start clapping at you, pride is going to give you a bucket load of endorphins as a present. Pride will also make you look strong to others, initially. Just before they become infuriated with your inability to compromise or see reason, they will see you as someone of strength and character. Those who have pride, seek dominion over something. Not everyone can be the top dog, but all the lower dogs can be the top dog of the dogs lower than they. Pride serves to make you feel better about yourself, while at the same time demanding of others that your way is the right one.

All of this may not make complete sense. If pride’s goal is to make you look strong to others, but always succeeds in making you more stupid and too stubborn to change with the times, then it obviously doesn’t work. But then, nobody said that pride was an exact idiocy, after all.

Popularity: 5% [?]

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A Hero Story


2007
02.01

Posted in Writing | 1 Comment »

I have written a short story entitled Not The Hero You Were. I finished it the same day I started it, to avoid my repeated habit of never finishing things I start. Enjoy.

Popularity: 4% [?]