On children

Khalil Gibran was a wise man. An excerpt from ‘The prophet’.

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, “Speak to us of Children.”

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

When New York slept.

Translated by Thumbelina from the original (see video at the end)

When it was time for New York to sleep, loneliness abounded and the fog grew

and the wind got off the ship and walked on the shores.

Within these 4 glass walls, my candle and I

what loneliness, what torture.

With words like lullabies, you aren’t here to lull me to sleep

nor to wake me in the morning with coffee and a kiss

nor to remove the mote of dust from my eye

nor to soothe the confusion in my mind

Me here, you there, in this loneliness the minutes become years, I wonder why

And why have we become an explanation for the saying ” the sky’s here, the blue’s there”

In my calendar, my pen writes your name a hundred times

and is your name honey that ants surround it as soon as I do

even though the earth is cold, this moment my winter becomes hot summer

but the moment you come where I am, the heat wave becomes ice

We, the living.

Leo Igwe over at Culture Kitchen has an interesting post about the human condition and why we are the way we are, in an African context. An excerpt:

The Nigerian author, Ben Okri in his book, A Way of Being Free, said, “There are many ways to die, and not all of them have to do with extinction. A lot of them have to do with living. Living many lies . Living without asking questions. Living in the cave of your own prejudices. Living the life imposed on you, the dreams and codes of your ancestors”

Life boils down to choices. Whether informed or uninformed, with foresight or hindsight, the choices you make determine what kind of life you lead. It is important however that you make the choices and not let the choices make you! This is slightly paradoxical but what I am getting at is a desire for lifelong agility of mind. The ability to absorb new ideas, new perspectives and change when I encounter something “better”. This is the only way to be free, truly free. Like the axolotl which remains in its larval stage forever, I want my brain to be 18 till I die!

This is probably an adult, or maybe not

Enlightenment and shyte

im’ma go away to a deserted island
and read and think and write and shyte
and then there’ll be a thunderbolt
and enlightenment will be mine

meh, thats not how it works,
enlightenment is shyte, overrated and all,
its a dark world, nobody gives a shyte about you!
so what if you want to be the ubermensch?

shyte, shyte, shyte, shyte, shyte!
how shall i make my choices!
tranquilo, tranquilo, silencio, silencio
no hay banda, no hay orquestra, it is all an illusion,

what people will come, what places will come,
will they bring ideas? will they bring peace?
or is it just a kaleidoscope that moves us all in turn?
this restless wanderer will soon find out.

Paragraph for the day

From Ben Casnocha’s blog, an excerpt from a David Foster Wallace story:

a large percentage of bright young men and women locate the impetus behind their career choice in the belief that they are fundamentally different from the common run of man, unique and in certain crucial ways superior, more as it were central, meaningful — what else could explain the fact that they themselves have been at the exact center of all they’ve experienced for the whole 20 years of their conscious lives? And that there was also a good possibility that, when all was said and done, I was nothing but just another fast-track yuppie who couldn’t love, and that I found the banality of this unendurable, largely because I was evidently so hollow and insecure that I had a pathological need to see myself as somehow exceptional or outstanding at all times.

The ’story’ of my life

I watched this interesting and thought provoking talk by Tyler Cowen recently and came to some conclusions about myself.

1. I am highly influenced by stories – I bought an iMac – but it is ok to be so

2. I think I am agnostic about a lot of issues and comfortable with it.

3. I don’t think I am dogmatic about too many things (tell me if I am!)

4. I promise to be a little more messy!

Rebel with a cause

A major life decision has been made. Plans are afoot to break free of cubicle nation and go where the heart desires (the list is long!). As a friend aptly put it, “There is a premium on your youth, don’t piss it away”. Of course, some might say aimless wandering is precisely pissing it away, but I think not.

And what do I purport to gain from said rebellion? Perspective – that much bandied about (by me) term but I value it. Hark, I have spoken about this in the past!

It is time to put dreams and thoughts into action. What experiences shall I partake of, what beauty shall I seek? It feels like the world is a smorgasbord and I am the lone diner. Should I sample various fares, or should I satiate myself with really digging into a small number of dishes. I think I’ll pick the latter for now. Pick two or three experiences that I think will help me grow, and dive right in.

I have applied to be a volunteer in Tanzania or Ghana. Post that I intend to live on a farm in New Zealand. Next I’d like to learn Spanish, so probably some time in a Spanish speaking country – again the choices are many – Argentina is top of the charts right now! So much to do, so little time.

Thankfully, this is one smorgasbord where the food outlasts you!

Tokyo Vice

If there is one thing that makes commuting bearable (and I daresay fun) it is NPR.

On my way home tonight, I stumbled upon an interview with Jake Adelstein – author of ‘Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan’

Jake has led an extraordinary life by any standard. Here is an excerpt from an interview with him on Amazon:

“Question: What drew you to Japan in the first place, and how did you wind up going to university there?

Jake Adelstein: In high school I had many problems with anger and self-control. I had been studying Zen Buddhism and karate, and I thought Japan would be the perfect place to reinvent myself. It could be that my pointy right ear draws me toward neo-Vulcan pursuits–I don’t know. When I got to Japan, I managed to find lodgings in a Soto Zen Buddhist temple where I lived for three years, attending zazen meditation at least once a week. I didn’t become enlightened, but I did get a better hold on myself.

Question: How did you become a journalist for the most popular Japanese-language newspaper?

Jake Adelstein: The Yomiuri Shinbun runs a standardized test, open to all college students. Many Japanese firms hire young grads this way. My friends thought that the idea of a white guy trying to pass a Japanese journalist’s exam was so impossibly quixotic that I wanted to prove them wrong. I spent an entire year eating instant ramen and studying. I managed to find the time to do it by quitting my job as an English teacher and working as a Swedish-massage therapist for three overworked Japanese women two days a week. It turned out to be a slightly sleazy gig, but it paid the bills.

There was a point when I was ready to give up studying and the application process. Then, when I was in Kabukicho on June 22, 1992, I asked a tarot fortune-telling machine for advice on my career path, and it said that with my overpowering morbid curiosity I was destined to become a journalist, a job at which I would flourish, and that fate would be on my side. I took that as a good sign. I still have the printout.

I did well enough on the initial exam to get to the interviews, and managed to stumble my way through that process and get hired. I think I was an experimental case that turned out reasonably well.”

Some interesting nuggets from the interview on NPR.

• The sex trade is big business in Japan, and is largely legal. According to one Joan Sinclair (via Wikipedia), “the sex industry in Japan ironically offer[s] absolutely everything imaginable but sex.” This is because other than the actual act of intercourse, nothing else falls under the legal definition of ‘prostitution’.
• In case someone is apprehended, neither the prostitute nor the customer are liable for punishment, only the ‘pimp’ or the brothel owner is!
• The Japanese have strange fetishes.

Bottomline? I am putting Tokyo Vice on my wish list. And I intend to contribute to NPR’s next fundraising effort!

We ‘want’ them broken

Hat tip to Aristotle the Geek for this one.

”You honest men are such a problem and such a headache. But we know you’d slip sooner or later—and this is just what we wanted.”
”You seem to be pleased about it.”
”Don’t I have good reason to be?”
”But, after all, I did break one of your laws.”
”Well, what do you think they’re for?”
Dr. Ferris did not notice the sudden look on Rearden’s face, the look of a man hit by the first vision of that which he had sought to see. Dr. Ferris was past the stage of seeing; he was intent upon delivering the last blows to an animal caught in a trap.
”Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against—then you’ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted—and you create a nation of law-breakers—and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Events

I read Funes the memorious, and thought* – what is an ‘event’? Some Wiki-diving reveals that philosophers are still divided over how to define an event.

What is an event? [To my lay brain, an 'event' is the temporal equivalent of a point in space**. You can see it (in your minds eye), assign co-ordinates (properties) to it, but "it" is infinitesimal.]

What is the extent of my memory? [I distinctly remember Scotland - 1989, I remember some vague stuff about Mini KG and nursery - 1987]

What is the granularity of my memory? [Definitely not points but some larger intervals of time - incidents, places, smells, sounds]

What is the capacity of human memory? [Landauer did a study that estimates it at a few hundred megabytes! A summary is here]

*Says Borges, “To think is to forget a difference, to generalize, to abstract. In the overly replete world of Funes, there was nothing but details, contiguous details.”

**I have not studied relativity and don’t understand spacetime. My thought process is firmly Euclidean.