The Navigator

I'm currently reading a book on sailing navigation. That may sound boring, but, in a certain sense, it is really a history of mankind. Though we may now use GPS and Satnav to guide us and many large sailing vessels now have laptops as part of their standard equipment, navigation was once romantic. The telescope and the sextant were developed by people seeking to solve navigation problems. The history of navigation is a history of geometry, cartography, and engineering. The good sailor is also an astronomer and a meteorologist. Before cars and airplanes sailors were the explorers of the world, the boldest of adventurers.
The image of the captain standing over charts and plotting a course is familiar to all of use from childrens' books of the sea life. Pirates and merchant marines, explorers and military clashes. These are fires for the imagination. I have a sudden urge to find a book from the Horatio Hornblower series so I can sit back and dream of a less cynical world.

Perception

You know, I meet a lot of new people every day. I talk, I listen, and continually, I wonder. What attracts us to each other? What makes one person say, hey, I would like to get closer to that person, even open myself up to them? It can't just be looks, since, to be honest, most of us do not look like models or superstars. I certainly don't. Yet, I consider myself perfect. I know this sounds horribly arrogant, but listen for a moment. In the seed of the universe, the unification and dance of all matter, two people came together and created me. A single sperm and a single egg came together and created a sculpture of living flesh and organs and bones and skin and eyes and hair and it became 'I'. Why should I not consider myself perfect? Why should we -all- not consider ourselves perfect? Not only that, but I have been endowed with the ability to look, not only at the world around me, but also inward, to see what philosophy I make and contemplate, to form the fabric of my existence. What could be more perfect than that? In the expression of life as we know it, even my mistakes are holy. And I'm not talking about God or religion. I'm talking about the shrine that I make of humanity and myself. The wonder that is being human. So why should anyone not be attracted to me? I am a lightning rod of social energy. I cannot contemplate being anything less. nor should you. Existence is a field without borders and without limits. We must seek out and discover all that is knowable. If you are not attracted to me, and if I am not attracted to you, then we are not looking closely enough. We are not making the effort required to see through all space and all time to who we really are. God is not out there. God is in here. We are God. We are the most beautiful expression of existence. How can this possibly be arrogance when I can look down and see the blood coursing through my arm and my fingers move? Smile, and remember, you are better than anything has ever been.

Adam

I need an intervention.

Every once and a while I'm going to feel an urge to post my bad poetry up here. Since there is no one around to stop me, unfortunately, that's just what I'm going to do. Here's a couple of the latest.

The Divide

The world has become they and we
us and them
I stare at old men who stare at me
and we both say inside ourselves
fools, they don’t know
they don’t even know
my grandfather spoke of world war II
of things seen and worse things done
and I can only say the war has come home
and it is in our heads and in our hearts
all my comrades take pills to smile
and pills to forget
we are walking around shellshocked
where are the shells? Where are the damn shells?
All our guns and we have no bullets
No weapon against this enemy.
All I can see are my friends falling around me
And all I can say is you don’t know
Grandfather you don’t know.

A Devil in the Dark

The devil isn't a cloven-hoofed, horned fallen angel, it is a needle, some white powder, a lighter, a spoon. We feed the devil to ourselves and we are never sated, we become our hunger, it is made endless. The devil is a bottle, the devil is a pipe. And though there is forgiveness, there is never forgetting, and the hunger is never gone.

So here I am, hungry. Curled up on the remains of a couch much older than I, and if possible even worse for wear. I stole a coat from some guy waiting for a bus. I can't do much these days, but I haven't forgotten how to run. I do that real well. So now I got a good coat, wool and lined and long. My only other clothes are a pair of army pants that have been repaired and patched until they're unrecognizable. They scratch my skin pretty badly, after I found them I left them in a bucket of water and bleach and some cleaners I found in a janitors' closet. It cleans any bugs or filth right out of there, but leaves the fabric stiff and hard for a while. I'll work them back soft, soon enough.

Sometimes I wonder just how much I know. It sounds cliché but sometimes there are moments of realization that are the exact opposite of clarity. As if you thought you were standing on a mountain top and you could see the horizon in all directions, but suddenly you realize you're in the dark with the last match burning your fingertips. The horizon is in your imagination and you can't really see anything. You can't really know anything about what is really out there.

The Ninth Sense?

I had another thought after I finished my last post. I am wondering how to define the soul. Now, it should be noted that I am a nontheist. I use that term because I consider 'atheism' to be an agressive approach, an anti-religious stance. I am not specifically anti-religion. I just feel that most religions if not all religions are ill-considered and archaic, and as such, have become no longer relevant. Considering that every religion has a fundamentalist sect favoring a very strict interpretation of their respective religious texts, maybe whoever put these texts together should have put a little bit more effort into the wording. Also, I know there are people who will think,"But what about Buddhism, they're alright." Well, no you're wrong. Westerners have some fairly romantic ideas about Buddhists, seeing as they have their own problems. There are monks and preachers that have been just as bad as the worst of catholic priests. There are rigid fundamentalists that adhere to the Pali canon, just as there have been rigid rulemakers similar to the Judiac Sadducees and Pharisees. Just visit Sri Lanka. (Though I wouldn't recommend it) The Dalai Lama and all his jolly Hollywood handshaking does not constitute Buddhist life. Interestingly enough, this misconception extends in just the opposite direction with Islam as we cannot but shudder when an Arab walks through an airport. Just as Pat Robertson is a minority opinion (though he doesn't appear to know it) so is bin Laden. If anything, the problems in the Middle East are more about aggressive and clumsy foreign policy than religion.

Wow, I really managed to derail myself there. I've now completely lost my original thought about souls. Anyway, I recently bought the Coast Guard's bible. Which, I dare you, will be much clearer than, say, Revelations. It's an absolutely fascinating book. Perhaps soon I will be able to have an entire conversation using only flags. Diver down!

Change and the Eight Senses

Yes, I could use a nap. An epic Rip Van Winkle sort of nap. I'm having a fantasy about combing a long white beard. There could be a new president. There could be nuclear holocaust and all that would be left are roaches and fruitcake.
I found an old notebook of mine today (Yes, there was housecleaning involved). It appears that while I was supposed to be taking notes, instead I was writing little stories. A LOT of little stories. Some of them were even good, though not that many. It's interesting to look back on some of the ideas I had, most of which I didn't even remember. I sometimes eschew past writings as a product of a different self, but right now I'm conflicted on that. How much do we really change over the course of our lives? Can we even know? I mean, despite various philosophical beliefs, our minds live very much in the moment. Mahayana buddhism defines eight senses, as opposed to our usual five sense concept. These include the five original senses, as well as a sixth sense that connects the five together so they can work together. For example connecting the sight of an object in our hand with the feel of that object. It's a networking sense, so to speak. The seventh sense compiles all this sensory data together and holds it, sort of like a hard drive and RAM. The eighth sense is essentially the self, it organizes and acts on this data. I think at some point around the seventh and eighth senses you could start to merge the Freudian concepts of id, ego and super-ego into the structure, but that is strictly my theory and should be considered with reservations. I believe the subconscious structures just how the eighth sense reacts to the seventh sense's organization of sensory input. I should note that this is wholly independent of reflection and premeditated action. Though where the boundary is, could easily be a matter of unresolvable debate.
So we have this structure in place and while who I am and who I want to be is often different, the person that I am may remain the same, while the person I want to be is constantly changing. I am starting to agree with Sartre in this, when considering the statement 'I think, therefore I am', he stated that the 'I' that thinks is not the 'I' that is. I'm paraphrasing of course, but you get the idea. Well, I'm so tired I'm not even going to spellcheck this. So, be.. uh... postwarned.

Inaugural Address

I feel like being pompous today, hence the title. This is going to be a fairly standard blog where I rant and vent and sometimes just tell stories. Today I was getting some groceries and heard an interesting bit of gossip. You see, there's a grocery store called Sendik's that I live right behind. It's on Downer Street in Eastside Milwaukee. The buildings are kind of close together and parking is at a premium. Sendik's owns a little strip of parking on the south sid eof their building. Well, on the other side is a little restaurant called Bartolotta's. They have a deal going where Bartolotta buys all his produce from Sendik, and in return he can use the parking lot at night for his customers. Sendik's is closed then anyway. So, I heard that Bartolotta didn't like the quality of the produce he was getting and told Sendik. So Sendik started chaining up the parking lot at night. Except that there's still alley access that Sendik can't block. So Bartolotta's valets just use the lot anyway. Both Sendik and Bartolotta are blustery men with egos (surprise, surprise) and I would love to see the finale to this story. Meanwhile, across the street is another restaurant called Gil's. His employees are having a great time talking about this. Gil himself doesn't seem to believe this story though, and he knows both guys (I don't). Meanwhile, the parking lot gate is still chained up, so something has to be going on. I love East Milwaukee. It can be incredibly entertaining.