I think I'm back....

Been a rough couple of weeks. Out with the old; in with the new.

Had to learn a lot about myself and the things that have been important to me. I've been depressed and recuperating. And in forcing myself to put one foot in front of the other and not wallow in my wretched misery, I've... found, again, that life is worth living. And that wonderful things can happen at exactly the time you are least expecting.

I'm back, and I'll get back to blogging shortly. To all my friends, sorry I've been incommunicado: I've been licking my wounds. But I'm ready to be happy again.

These poor gifts

I hate it when I’m right.
This is actually true.
The ironic thing for me, as I am trying to learn to let go of my obsessive need to know, to understand; as I’m trying to learn to trust rather than dictate; is that in the little things, and the big things, but always the important things, regardless of size, I always seem to be vindicated. Ok, so there are a few things I’m flat out wrong about: the necessity, or even wisdom, of trying to understand everything, to name an obvious one. But still, there are a lot of little annoying truths out there, things I get, and when my gut tells me something is right, it usually is.
Do you see how this can be a problem? After all, I am coming to understand that it is the very act of imposing my own order onto the universe, it is hubris, not to put too fine a point on it, that is my biggest crime. Actually, in retrospect, that seems funny to me. I’ve been quite… unconcerned about my arrogance for years. I never dreamt there was a sin of pride that I would unknowingly commit.
So, it’s annoying, when I find that my hunches are almost always right, that I have to learn how to ignore my gut, or rather, how not to try to force my intuitions onto the world. How not to demand that the world turn out, as I, in my incredible wisdom, believe it should. I was thinking about this in the shower: my problem has always been that I figured that God had to be at least as smart as me, so he had to see things my way, because that’s how I treated everyone else.
It never occurred to me that I might not be remotely as smart as God.
It was an ironic anti-realization of Kiekegaard’s famous line: “It was intelligence and nothing else that had to be opposed. Presumably that is why I, who had the job, was armed with an immense intelligence.”
I had a vision, earlier. It’s hard to describe, verbally; after all, it was, well, visual. Nonetheless, it captured, I think, a very important, deep truth. I want to try to describe it….
But first. A few months ago, I was speaking with A (my ex). I was asking her if it was wrong to be a misanthrope. She replied (in her charming way) that one had to wonder if Hitler was happy. The point of this was… me trying to address my anger. My deep… dislike of, well, people in general. I’ve been an outsider for so long, and for the beginning unwilling, and somewhere in there it became by choice, that I have long practiced reverse-discrimination and calculated condescension. It dawned on me, back then, that I couldn’t ever really contribute to the world, couldn’t ever truly give of the fruits of my labor and try to “make the world a better place,” if I couldn’t stand its tenants.
I believe that God wants us to give. I believe what we give invariably returns to us, and more importantly, in the act of giving we develop ourselves, spiritually, to become more of what we are supposed to be. The act of giving, if you will, helps transmute us.
The woman I love told me (and not so long ago: I’ve only known her two months) that I was definitely more than just my work. I believe her, of course. But that was a different context. And I definitely think that in some situations, who we are is defined, in an important way, by what our work is, how we do it.
I saw a tesseract. Or perhaps it was a tessellation: at the very least, it was a repeated pattern of geometric shapes stretched over the surface of… something. It wasn’t a face, I think it was a machine: but the underlying structure was trying to move like a face: I think it was trying to make a face. Like an anthropomorphic machine attempting to make a grimace or smile.
As it did so, it assumed a strange shape; and in that strange shape, the geometric patterns on its surface started lining up in specific ways. The effect was to configure the underlying structure into a new shape, one that, perhaps, was always inherent in it, but one that lay obscured until both 1) it tried to transform itself by performing a specific action (i.e. making a face) and in so doing 2) aligned parts of itself that would not, otherwise, have come into contact, in such a way as to facilitate a new function.
As a poor student (more or less) I have always wondered what it was that I could give. I would be willing to give, just tell me WHAT to give, how much. Always for me I have wanted certainty, the easy instructions, the straightforward directions. Finding my own way – well, it’s hard to find your own way when, at bottom, you don’t really think that much of yourself.
Maybe part of stretching into the right shape means finding out the answers for yourself.
More importantly was the fact that I had nothing to give. Until last night, in the shower, I realized that I have never done anything, of “socially redeeming value” with my intellect.
Because I hate the ones who whom I would give.
And hatred prevents you from bending in the right shape.
My ex was right: you can’t hold a grudge and be happy. You can’t try to serve a humanity you cannot stand. And if God has given me a great intellect, then it is just the obvious way to give, to give back to the world, give back to God, the fruits of that intellect’s labor.
I wanted to figure out my purpose in life.
Perhaps it was obvious all along. Even education, however indirect, is service.
I’ve been looking to hard for magic bullet; quick, direct fixes; a one-stop shop for all your spiritual needs! I was never happy that the word effort might mean effort beyond what I was naturally good at. Generosity is very hard for a person who has felt betrayed all his life.
The obvious. The certain. Those are my guides, and where they are absent they are my quests. But what I need to do is give. Give of my talents. I don’t know how but that is almost irrelevant. The important part is that I do give, that I do forgive and stop the hatred and the condescension, and let the giving transform me.
I won’t grow until I give. I won’t give until I learn to love, and let go of hate. I won’t learn to love until I am willing to be wrong, to learn to trust, and let the future be, without me having to control it.
I must learn, and find, a way to freely give of what God has given me.

No longer here

The lonely little boy who used to live here has checked out.

He is not expected to return.

A new tenant is expected, but he is not currently ready; and it is not known when he will arrive.

Walt Whitman, existentialist

O ME! O life!… of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

Sounds so familiar.

Once more unto the breach:

If having a laptop computer has accomplished nothing else, it has at the very least facilitated a habit of writing. Even if I don’t write as much on that which should be written upon, I am storing my thoughts in an encoded, physical (however virtual) form. Furthermore, it has encouraged (through the use of the over-hyped and misunderstood medium of the blog) the publication of said thoughts in a more-or-less public forum. (Doesn’t to publish analytically imply a public forum?)

That said, the thing that annoys me most about this newfound tendency is how blitheringly inane most of my posting are. How truly, witheringly vapid the inevitable (not-so-nice term for some disgusting bodily function) which dribbles from my fingers. I mean, here I am, with a brain the size of a planet, a philosopher’s unending quest for truth, a psychologist’s obsessive need for deconstruction, and I am keeping the same monochromatically-indistinguishable-from-the-rest-of-the-blogosphere’s wimpish, narcissistic posturing. Only with bigger words and harder-to-comprehend turns of phrase.

Maybe I’m not as smart as I think I am. Maybe all I really am is a frustrated poet.1

I suppose to be fair I do have my fair share of overlong and genuinely existential posts here. And I have a few more over at my LJ. But I think that’s part of my point: nothing here accomplishes anything, except satisfying my narcissistic need for emotional exhibitionism. And a forum for my expressive virtuosity.

I’ve never been one to define my activities in terms of others expectations of me, whatever the psychological reality about my personal sense of value may be. However, I do want to do something here, or if not here, then in this medium. And because of the Sword of Dam-dissertation hanging over my head, I can’t justify devoting intense thought to such projects (however much time I spend writing here that I could be spending on the effing book report.) However, I am wondering, what does the audience want?

If you’re reading this, then you very probably know me; and if you know me, you’re very probably at least capable of scoring pretty darn well on a Mensa entrance exam, if not downright becoming a member. I’m willing to open this blog, or another, to a group effort, for a more discussion-oriented, interactive experience. Iron sharpens iron and all that jazz.

My topics of interests are, obviously, philosophical, psychological, and political (the three p’s?) and I know alternative opinions to mine are always beneficial to my own thinking. At least two of my (occasional) readers have Blogger accounts, and opening one, even if just to participate in the Jonathan intellectual blog. In the absence of a physical coffeeshop for bullshitting with possible value, a virtual coffeeshop.

Any takers?

1 Note to poets: I am not denigrating the intelligence necessary for writing poetry, nor its potential as a vehicle for social change. I am stating that poetry is defined by the way its vehicle, namely language, is crafted: poetry is first and foremost art, whatever its other functions or capacities may be. My self-criticism is that I seem to be more concerned with art and expression than with those things that are purportedly important to me, e.g. analysis and education.

Three, two, one....

We have contact.

Moods... stabilized. Madness temporarily held at bay.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blogcast.

Confusion and Faith: an open letter to the Deity and other interested parties

I am not a Christian.

If you know me – and if you’re reading this blog, odds are that you do – then you are either completely unsurprised by this statement, or perhaps confused. I certainly don’t feel that I have disavowed Christianity, but my relationship to the faith of my childhood, and my family, is somewhat… complex.

There are, I believe, two people who do have a label to attach to the set of “religious” beliefs I have chosen to espouse. Of those two, one of them is responsible for introducing me to that path, and so understands what that choice is intended to entail. The other expressed some curiosity, due to my personal interest, but never followed up on that query. As I recall, there was never an honest attempt to ascertain whether the type of interpretation I ascribed to it was validated, and that was a source of frustration to me.

As some of my… beliefs, for lack of a better word, are consonant with what I understand of, say, Buddhism, or Islam, or much of philosophical materialist naturalism, while not abandoning some of the fundamental tenets of Christianity (as I have come to interpret them), one could say that I am a syncretic Christian. Certainly there have, in the past, been adherents to the path I am trying to pursue, who have been more than “merely nominal” Christians (a number of saints, I do believe, are reckoned to be travelers on the way); personally, I prefer to describe my beliefs as “heterodox.” I do remember one conversation I had with a very intelligent and literate Christian, of a somewhat fundamentalist creed, where I attempted to convey the notion that I could not adequately capture in words the precise nature of my “beliefs.” Her response was to argue that I could not be a Christian (as she saw it) because to her, her faith was a matter of an express, verbal allegiance to an explicit set of articulable propositions: Yes or no, do you believe X, Y, and Z?

I cannot so describe what I believe. My conception of God perhaps is more in line with Islam, or perhaps Spinozan pan-theism; I am as convinced of the necessity for psychological self-understanding as any Buddhist; I believe that the redemption of individual people, and the whole of humankind, is the true work of God, as does the Christian; I believe that there is an unseen reality, both imperceptible and pervasively influencing, like the Pagan. I am none of these; I am all at once.

What I do not know, what I do not recall, what is not in my purview at the moment, is how I should approach faith. There are some very straightforward approaches to faith in Christianity: Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good report…. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. Elsewhere: For by grace are you saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, lest any man should boast. As I understand it, the orthodox position of Christianity (the explicit propositions which describe theological reality) is more or less that faith is a vehicle that is necessary for the individual to be able approach God, a requirement that makes possible the saving grace of God’s benevolence. Whether this requirement is a brute metaphysical fact or a psychological contingency is something I find ambiguous. I couldn’t tell you what Muslims, or Buddhists, or Pagans, think of the nature and importance of faith. Presumably, Muslims, at least, have at least this much of a similar view: they certainly believe that their sets of beliefs are absolutely correct and any significant deviation from them merits the denial of paradise.

So why, apropos of nothing, am I discussing such esoterica? How do they relate to anything in my own confused, confusing, angry, exhausted, despairing, manic, irrational life?

I’m not certain, to be honest. I’m tired of living as I do. I’m tired of the struggle, the endless, needless complications caused by bad choices that are a result both of my own laziness and poor judgment, and of propensities, predilections, and tendencies imposed on me by factors beyond my control. I’m tired of being lonely, insecure, panickingly terrified of being alone. I’m tired of having a hyperactive brain that can lurch from violent over-clocking to inspired self-confidence to tragically painful self-doubt. Tired of criticizing myself, blaming God, being angry with friends, being isolated from family, being desperate for lovers. I can honestly say that, throughout my entire life, I have never once seriously entertained the notion of suicide. This, interestingly enough, distinguishes me from just about anyone I have ever seriously loved and cared for. Even now I entertain no serious thoughts in that vein. Yet, for the first time in my life, I don’t discount the fact that, relative to the storms taking place inside my skull, the siren call of oblivion would not be totally unwelcome.

All of this, this eruption of questions, this burning uncertainty, this psychological tumult has had one specific and unique trigger. Sure, the conditions underlying this have had a lifetime to build up, and events as distantly disjunct as my relationship with my Father during my formative years; the brain chemistry and wiring that are a legacy from my maternal grandfather; my socially disastrous triple-promotion at the age of 10; and a chain of romantic relationships which have all ended uniformly badly. But my current hell is the function of having recently had the misfortune of falling in love.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind being in love. And Meghan… is without question the most beautiful, wonderful, compassionate, understanding person I have ever met. She’s “only” eighteen, but anyone who has ever met her recognizes in her a piercing intellect and wisdom far beyond her years, experiences and pain that many people much older have never had to bear. She’s more closely in touch with her true self than anyone else I have ever met, she is a source of inspiration and hope – not to mention heartbreaking beauty – for me.

It is a source of ironic amusement to me that for all our similarities, perhaps the strongest is an abiding conviction of our own essentially flawed characters. A more direct way of saying the same thing: we are both painfully aware of how incredibly fucked up we are as individuals. She’s the only person I have ever known who… looks inside herself as much as I do myself. And the only person I know who has made transforming herself the explicit immediate goal of her life.

I’ll be perfectly honest: I want her to need me. I want her to think of me as the one person best able to understand, to relate to her; I want to be the one person she feels she can turn to, who can accept and bear anything. I want her to read this, to see in me a kindred spirit as I see in her. I want her to know that I will gladly accept and bear anything to be with her, that I see the radiant beauty within her like no one else can; that no matter what she thinks of herself, I will always see in her nothing but the best, and will always want to stand beside her, no matter what.

Here is the problem, or rather two: I am not ready to love. Not her, not anyone. I acknowledge this claim with the resigned acceptance and angry denial of a caged tiger: however much I want to rage against the bars which imprison me, there is nothing, nothing which I can do to change the reality which defines it. I am an empty, twisted soul, all too eager to jump headfirst into abandoning myself out of the misguided beliefs that I, by myself, am essentially worthless, and that by devoting myself to another, I can somehow give myself a cause to live for. I don’t have the energy, assurance, or certainty, within myself, to assert myself into the world, to claim that I have value sufficient to withstand the spiritual crisis of existentialist doubt. I am too much like Hamlet, eagerly convinced that the sound and fury signify nothing. And it is bitterly ironic to me that she has said the same thing, as an explanation why she cannot choose to have a relationship with me.

This problem however stems from my second, and in fact more pressing one: I have no faith. It is bizarre for me to admit this, yet it is a fact that I have become more and more convinced of over the past few hours. I realized, just as I was cursing my own self, my own brain, my own weaknesses and the confluence of history and circumstances that have brought me here, and standing ready to shake a fist at God for bringing me to this, that I’ve never given really given God a chance. Not really. And that admission is rather difficult for me to make.

I spent most of my childhood and a good part of my early adulthood convinced of the absolute correctness of my faith, my religion. As a child – as young as 5 or 6 – I was concerned about the state of my eternal soul sufficiently to have my mother bring me to the pastor of our church for counseling – because the thought of eternity literally turned my stomach. I couldn’t comprehend infinity, the ever after, timelessness – and knew that somehow, that was different from the here and now – and that I had to make arrangements to be safe, even then. As a teenager I was both more and less of a fucked-up mess than average, but I earnestly sought out God and His instruction, and I knew that the key to a life of happiness, fulfillment, meaning lay in living according to His will. Toward the end of my undergraduate career, in the absence of having a definite course of my own which I felt was important enough to pursue, I seriously considered joining a monastery and devoting myself to God and contemplation. And that, curiously enough, is something which I do have in common with... two of the people I have loved most in my life.

What I have just realized, in a stunning inversion of perception, is that all along, I was seeking my own validation. It was never, really, about God: it was never about accepting His (or Her) terms. It was never about faith. Rather, it was simple optimism conjoined with a conviction that I was essentially right about reality, and a presumptive demand that my convictions be validated.

I have a cheerful, almost blithe optimism that passes for faith in a number of circumstances. I accept that the world just will turn out in a certain way. The US Invasion of Iraq, for example: I know that democracy will win in the end. Global warming? Fossil fuels? Third-world poverty? I am convinced that human ingenuity will eventually demonstrate the foolishness of excessively worrying over such hobgoblins; we’re too smart to blindly jump over a cliff. Market forces and all that. The march of freedom. History moving in the Star Trek direction of paradise, not the dystopian nightmares of Malthus.

As a faith, this is as humanistic as the ideology of the most secular-progressive liberals who wring their hands in anguish over just those very problems. Ironic, that, no doubt: I am the sworn enemy of unthinking left-elites and their anti-American, anti-religious, anti-individualism dogmas. Yet I believe the core tenets of their purported faith. I am a true disciple of Gene Rodenberry.

The problem, I have discovered, is that my faith is essentially humanistic; or perhaps, to put it another way, I have a history of placing my faith in humans. In particular people. And I have always, always had that faith disappointed. I was disappointed when the woman who promised to spend the rest of her life with me, who wore my ring and told me “yes” turned her back on me – literally – and let me walk out of her life. I was disappointed when the woman who promised me nothing but who nonetheless chose to enter my life, and in whom I invested the best of who I was. And I am in danger, now, having fallen in love for only the third time, of placing my faith, yet again, in a person, and asking her to play Goddess to my prostrated supplicant.

And once again I stand to be disappointed by my own failure to distinguish fancy from reality.

And that, I suppose, is the difference between faith and… something else. I don’t know what that something else even is. But what I experienced, as a child, as a teenager, after college, was never about faith. It was… not knowledge, because knowledge implies truth, but it was a state of unwarranted certainty, of unquestioning acceptance that is perhaps more closely related to prejudice. I didn’t trust and accept, I didn’t affirm: “I’m not sure where this is going, but I will endorse wherever it leads; I will accept whatever you have for me.” Rather, I had an arrogant confidence that my prejudices stood for reality, and that I was entitled to force God to accede to my desires. It’s not that those desires were selfish or corrupt, it’s just that they were wrong, and I was unwilling to countenance that possibility.

I suppose, in good conscience, I can’t absolutely blame myself for my lack of faith: after all, I had very poor teachers, and while I earnestly asked questions and sought guidance, I wasn’t anywhere where there was a true guide. And just as I cannot blame myself for either my psychological hang-ups or my deeply ingrained conditioned responses, there has been a point up to which I could not choose to do otherwise. I instinctively grasped, for answers, for affirmation, for conviction, for direction, never questioning that I knew how to know, that I had learned how to learn.

Faith must be capable of transforming: yet I have always stood too confident, inflexible, and dogmatically certain of my own rightness to consider that I should change. I have never been convinced of the viciousness of my arrogance; I have just discovered that humility was a virtue all along. I have lived, not according to faith but stubbornness. I’ve been unwilling to change who I am, convinced, as I have been, that I saw things correctly. It’s funny, now that I think of it, if not just a little tragic: however insecure I may be socially, however pointless I may think my existence, I’ve never questioned my judgment; it has always been something in which I’ve been supremely confident. For all my styling myself as a philosopher, I have yet to learn the lesson that started it all: that the one thing I know is that I know nothing. I speak, I think, I write without doubting myself, my ideas, because when I speak, when I assert, I can’t imagine that I am wrong.

I suppose this is a confession. Maybe a supplication, after all. Mom and Dad were right when they said that, for all that I was trying to pursue after God, I wasn’t making an allowance in my life to listen; Meghan told me more or less the same thing. I want her to read this – it is an open letter, after all, and hopefully an apology. I know that I have hurt her through my insecurities and my desperate need of her, and I hope it is not too late to rescue the friendship that was so promising. Perhaps this will be an act of faith, believing that whoever is meant to read it, will; placing no conditions on how this publication will turn out. As much as I do hope that this will be the right thing to say, the right profession to make, I think I’ve had enough of needing to constitute my world, of needing to be right and forcing reality to conform to my wishes.

I suppose this is as good a place to stop as any.

Current mood: insufferably arrogant

Those of you who know me - and if you're reading this blog the odds are good that you do - are probably thinking to yourselves: this is something new?

I'm at Cambridge Coffee. A few minutes ago a guy was playing the piano. Schmaltzy, lyrical stuff. I don't have a problem with that. There's a part of me that did, but between the ex, and the current love of my life, my capacity for tolerance of people with divergent views has (necessarily) increased.

Then a girl in a group of college girls studying for a class asked if he could play the Canon in D.

So far, my insufferable arrogance meter is still below the (new) activation threshhold. Forget the fact that it's such an overblown, overpopular piece with the most recognizable ostinato in history (d, a, b, f#, g, d, g, a, repeat ad infinitum) and a melody that is TECHNICALLY SUPPOSED TO OVERLAP (it's a CANON FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!) and that people who play it NEVER get it right, I could handle that.

And then the girl said "It's awesome."

THAT set off the stupidity meter, and, incidentally, the smugness response.

The biggest problem, when I take over the planet, will be finding a reasonable way to delimit the coming purges. If your idea of an awesome piece of classical music is Canon in D, if the name Pachelbel is instantly associated with that dreamy, great piece of music, I'm sorry, but you'ld better be a F%@king NEUROSURGEON if you want to survive in the New Order (R). As I once made mention to my brother, there's no way that Country music is the Devil's music: he would have better taste.

Yes, I'm a snob. Yes, I'm PROUD of being a snob. There are few areas where I feel I can claim some sort of instant "expert" status where I feel completely justified in making binding pronouncements about the nature of reality, and feeling that if said pronouncements are not taken as the word of law, then the offending critter has thereby ceased demonstrating a sufficient grasp of reality to be worth dealing with. Philosophers without a scientific background discussing physics? Check. Classical music as discussed by anyone who doesn't have at least a minor in music? Ditto. Tolkien exegesis by people who've only seen the movies? Yeah, buddy.

I'm just saying, please, don't elevate my blood pressure, ok? It's not nice. If you're going to be a complete moron, keep it to yourself. Really, we don't NEED no stinkin' morons.

More OSC

I just added two more links to that list over there ----->

Included is John Ringo's website. Not terribly much there, but hey, he's my favorite author.

Orson Scott Card's website, however, Hatrack River, has a bit more content. Card, a lifelong conservative Democrat, is also a keen political analyst, particularly of the problems plaguing his own Democratic Party. He's also a frequent reviewer of popular culture: I don't think I watch a tenth of the movies he reviews but the reviews are always pretty interesting.

Obligatory post of the day over.

Dinner with the Reese's

There was no chocolate or peanut butter involved.

It was invitingly comfortable at their apartment. David made the comment that it was as if we had picked up in the middle of the same conversation we were having 8 years ago. He was absolutely right.

There’s something absolutely companionable to being with such a good, old friend. At this point in my life, the farthest I go back with anyone who isn’t a family member is ten years; I take that back: I’ve actually known Allen for 14 years. Still, even that length of time is not even half my life, and I’m still young enough that the simple fact that I have no friends I keep in contact with from my highschool days means that even old friends are relatively new ones.

Still, the quality of the friendship is worth commenting on, being a significant factor. There was this joke about me and David and James: I was the exact same person as David, and I was also the exact same person as James, which was ironic since David and James were nothing alike. (Chad might have commented something like: That’s because I, like (was it Walt Whitman?) contain multitudes.) It was… exactly like old times. Just hanging out with a good friend and an intellectual peer.

Also, it was wonderful meeting Leigh again. I know that she and I met before they were married, sometime roundish of 8 years ago, but I met her at most a handful of times, whereas I had known David for at least 3 or 4 years. Still, I got along wonderfully with her, as well, as if she and I were old friends, too. And (and apparently this seems to be a theme with friends of David’s who meet her) we were able to bond over cooking! And of course, I’m looking forward to introducing her to both Alton Brown and Penzeys Spices!

I gave David my pitch and explained to him in greater depth my philosophical theses on Differential Ontology. He’s not convinced I’m right, but he’s not convinced I’m wrong, either: he did concede that my demonstrating its applicability to other, philosophically abstruse areas (which, unfortunately, he isn’t in a position to fully appreciate, given that he’s not a professional philosopher) did make it’s the prospects of its applicability in political thought more sanguine. And he had some excellent suggestions for practical, viable political action, thinking in terms of operations, that I would be hopelessly out of touch to put together. There’s a potential for a good, complimentary team here, and just how much of an abstract, impractical theoretician I am at heart was rather forcefully drilled into my head by our conversation and our completely different tacks to approaching DO as an intellectual project with actual application potential. So, maybe I’ll actually pull of my dreams after all, neh?

Anyway, it was a very pleasant evening, after which I went and heard another old friend of mine play in a band doing reggae in a dive in Southside. Eventful evening, and I’ve even done some disserting. But it is not 6 AM and I must call it a night and retire.

Update: David's take on the evening can be found here.

I am a creature of chemicals

"You've lost weight."
"One kind of stress puts it on, another takes it off. I am a creature of chemicals.”
- Col. Hyrum Graff, Ender's Game

Only in my case, the chemicals are all home-grown, in my very own chemical factory deep inside my pineal gland.

I have every intention of beating this. I hate being the hostage to what neurological balance happens to be cooking up there. I long for a steadily productive life.

I also plan to lose 40 pounds.