Apostrophes

'

     The apostrophe, like all punctuation, has a purpose in writing, but disrupts computer programming. and as such can't be used in an e-mail address.  But someone who didn't know that O'Ryan wasn't a geekspeak name, put an apostrophe in the name of one of my student's e-mail adresses, blocked the web pages I needed, to know the names and data about my students who were registered already 2 days into the quarter for my GED class. It was fixed a day later, but spun in motion another catastrophistic prophesy.

     Now an apostrophe may seem like a small matter, until you ask if a misplaced apostrophe could bring down the global network?  Creating network dysfunction is the mission of a whole new younger generation  of rebels with anarchistic tendencies, as in any era of dysfunctional societies.

     That network relies on Vigintillion (and yes that means:

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000  yes/no bytes, or ten to the 120th power, as defined in Europe, anyway.  These infinite numbers of yes/no bytes now rule the globe these days, to run our banks, our tax system, our finance system, our military, our electric grid, our communications grid, etc. etc.  Did I mention Nuclear bombs.

     Cataclysmic things can happen when someone can't or won't program.  And the solar system could also have a sun with nuclear energy having a flare or two at two or three times higher than usual, which for most knowledgeable people is not an if but when  event of a gigantic solar flare with intense magnetic fields crashed against our electrical/communication infrastructure the apostrophe wouldn't matter anymore, but in the meanwhile, any small error in programming has potentially huge consequences...especially when a hacker works hard to make it happen.

All of which is to say, from my perspective, that we've become more vulnerable to global collapse than at any time in our history, short of nuclear war.

It is really incredible to think of this global network  which is operating with a collective knowledge globally but which depends on nearly microscopic chips to contain more data than that unimaginable number of "yes-no" decisions...it's hard to believe this way of life can ultimately continue...yet we do nothing to plan for an alternative...is that sanity?

Hibernation Therapy

Cold feet,

The symbol of hesitation.

The Time for Sitting.

Feet against the heat,

Careful not to burn myself.

Coming is more darkness.

Coming is more cold.

Coming is an inner spiral,

Spinning out the new

Web of my paradigms.

Hibernation isn't necessarily,

Sleeping.

Sleeping isn't a coma.

Off comes all the camouflage,

The inner genuine me rules.

Thinning

     Thinning the lettuce, radishes, beets, and the other excesses of growth in the garden is a very challenging job.  Deciding which plants are healthyest, which ones need more room to grow, and which ones are the likely Darwin losers takes a lot of thought.  In this realm of my own Garden of Eden, I become the overlord that decides who will live and who will die.  Perhaps there should be an overlord for our planet as well.  Certainly, there will be no lettuce on the table if the remaining plants don't have all they need.  It's a little eerie to make these life and death decisions.

Poking Through

Poking through the debris of the past, leathery veins of a former year, dried cells once transforming sunshine to vitality of matter.

Easter has passed, I've only associated it with spring, flowers, egg hunts and a sense of renewal, while many see it primarily as the resurrection of God's offspring.  

Clutter in my house, clutter in my mind, past realities clinging like cobwebs and leaf skeletons make it harder to sort the electrons from the clutter in the closet.  Hard drives full of jpegs, files full of tax forms, closets full of clothes no longer apropo for the current lifestyle.  

But, inspired by spiky red shoots ripping through the  blanket of duff, ready to test the air and the season for another turn at the horizon.

About Scale and Size, about water and air, and motion.

Looking closely, I see 1/2 bubbles, domes of air and water floating on water...and though this is as temporary as ten minutes or less, time itself has scale as human lives are less than centuries, while butterflies have but a day.  So I see the "reality' before me through my eyes and my mind's interpretation, and I know these are air bubbles surrounded by thin layers of water due to the cohesive quality of water seen in surface tension...I'm sure a physicist could tell me why, but the witness in me questions what is happening at the next scale up....what bubble are we all riding on the surface in some galaxy....are they, too, just domes of matter floating on space? 

The Blues

                        

The Blues

Eying the blues pulls at my soul,

Those shades of waters and precious stones

Intriguing my eyes to want to penetrate the barrier. 

The boundaries of desperation and hope.

Of light and dark.

Of man and nature

Of creation and destruction

The curse of believing we know what's coming,

Is that we're not prepared for what is coming.

There is more light in my darkness at this age,

Than I was expecting.

I used to say that as long as the darkness was warm

I would't mind the passage over,

And now I see there will also be some light....glory be.

The Black Hole

     The black hole, the concept of the black hole, the mystery of some barrier of time space, some boundary of reality as we can know it...something almost dark and, dare I say it, evil?


This actual scan of a sand dollar shell, in the sea urchin and starfish family with it's pentagonal tentacles all emanating from a central opening between the hard and the soft, the exoskeleton and the layer of 'skin' and the protected viscera inside.


This scan shows nearly infinite 'tentacles' or 'branchiating' etchings in a calcified 'shell', and when one looks at this 'non-living' specimen we can see how the entrance, the gateway, so to speak between our internal organs and our external needs of food and energy create a 'skeleton' of how living things interact with the planet...


Could the black hole of the universe be merely a sand dollar skeleton, could the calcified remains of a universe without an undulating black hole even have the potential for infinite existence?

So run my thoughts as I ponder this imprint of the tao, of the morphic resonance of life.