Friday, March 24, 2006

What does it feel like?

This is inspired by an auspicious anniversary that just happened:
 
Origami is the art of paper folding.   Origami starts with a sheet of paper, generally a square one.  The artist takes this, the ultimate blank canvas, and manipulates it into wherever their mind leads.  As a process it is almost hypnotic to watch, the creation of structure where before there was only uniformity.  While many conventions do not allow cutting of the paper, some do.  But even when cutting is allowed, its use is judicious and purposeful.
 
In the end, in the hands of someone skilled, you get art.
 
If you look at the paper and the end product, they are structurally very different.   You may hold in your hand a fine, fragile unicorn that was once a past due notice for your power bill.  At the most basic molecular level, they are identical but functionally they are very different.  Nothing has changed at all, but the meaning has totally transformed.
 
Hold your hand out, fingers stretched.  Now touch the back of your forefinger with a pencil.  Remember what that feels like.  Now clench your hand into a fist and touch that same spot.  What was once the back of your finger is now considered the underside of your fist.  The nerves never changed but the apparent function of the hand is totally different.  The nerve was never severed and so you sense the touch in exactly the same spot.
 
It has now been several years since my own personal surgical origami.  And do you know what?
 
It still feels like me.

Monday, March 20, 2006

The Brink

If you are ever in a ship South of Austrailia, you can see the band of weather that surrounds Antarctica, the storms that essentially tell you 'God does not want you there.'  It is a place where I saw seas that were so high that the furrows between swells could easily engulf the largest ships.  Where if you turned the wrong direction, you would capsize and probably be dead within minutes.
 
I have been on an aircraft in the China Sea, dodging typhoons, and in that sunny calm space between, the waterspouts are too numerous to count but are beautiful nevertheless.
 
St. Elmos' Fire other than being that movie in the 80's, is a mesmerizing dance of electricity on the skin of an aircraft.
 
The water in the middle of the ocean is such a deep blue that it is really hard to believe.
 
If you are lucky enough to see a rainbow while flying, if the circumstances are right you will see that it is not an arch at all.  Instead, it is a ring.
 
Before a tornado, the sky can turn an eerie green.
 
In the Southern Hemisphere, if you can get away from city lights, the sky is so full of stars that it can leave you silent.
 
Those are snapshots that I will have with me always.  That is what life is, I think. It is a juxtaposition of beauty and risk, of spectacular experiences teetering on the brink of destruction.  It is balancing on that edge as best as you can.
 
Isn't it worth it?

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

A Normal Quiet Life

"I just want to live a normal, quiet life."
 
What is normal, anyway?  What is quiet?
 
'Normal', as in typical?  Fine.  'Normal' as in mundane?  Thanks, but no.
 
'Quiet'??  As in 'no noise', 'no interaction'?  Absolute quiet scares me more than the spotlight.
 
People are meant to deal with one another.  They live, speak, yell, whisper, interact.  If you are going to live your life devoid of human contact (or avoiding it adroitly) then you may as well live inside a glass jar with tubes sticking out of it.
 
Life is for living.  If you don't mix peoples lives around once in a while, they just get stagnant.
 
Life is STRESS.  And you know what?  That isn't always a bad thing.  Stress is what gets us to strive for something, to move, to GO AND DO SOMETHING.  Even on the small scale, the stress of hunger drives us to seek out food.
 
I think it is stress that keeps us alive.
 
Take a couple that has worked all their lives, always stretching for that day of retirement.  They had lists of things to do when that magical day arrived.  The anticipation fueled them onward.
 
One day that couple retires and they DO the things they have been dreaming of.  But eventually their list of things to do runs kind of thin.  But what else is there to strive for?  I've seen it happen many times and it saddens me - the day when a vibrant retired person gives up their goals and suddenly gives up and becomes old.
 
Live your life.  Stretch, strive, and fight for your goals.
 
But always have somewhere else to go when you get there.

Friday, March 10, 2006

The Hunt

I am not a serial-dater.  My romantic life seems to come and go in waves.  I get involved with wonderful men, we go out and have a nice time.  But then both of our schedules get so swamped that we just don't see each other for weeks and the whole thing just fades away.  No drama, no big break up, just the lack of continuation.
 
I think it's me.
 
I go out with friends and we go do the 'singles' thing.
 
It annoys me.  They want to go to bars and clubs where I have to yell to be heard (my voice does BAD things when I yell).  I am not good at small talk and I really REALLY can't dance.   Yet every time we go out, my single friends are on the 'husband hunt'.
 
I am going to start doing what I want to do.  My basic theory is this:
 
"Do what you enjoy doing.  See who else is there.  Chances are that they enjoy the same things."
 
It's a rough theory but I think it will pan out.
 
I don't have a biological clock.  I jumped out of the gene pool.  I do want to share my life with someone but at the same time I have so much I want to get done with my life OTHER than just hooking up.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Get out your decoder ring

Perfect security IS possible.  That is to say, there is a foolproof way to keep a secret.
 
Say, for instance, that Jane and Debby know one another and are in a room together.  Jane has a secret.  The path to perfect security of that secret is for Debby and Jane not to speak and to have Debby kill Jane before she divulges it.  There is now no longer any risk of the secret being divulged.
 
Kinda harsh, eh?  Well, a less harsh way to do it is that Jane just never tells anyone about it (sure, if you want to get all non-homocidal about things).  For even more security, she forgets the secret herself.
 
Perfect openness is actually harder.  If Jane wanted Debby to know she could just speak the words, tell her.  That assumes that Debby can hear and that they speak the same language.  A billboard?  Methinks you are assuming both sight AND literacy here.
 
Time for that decoder ring now (set it to G9).
 
Now put Jane and Debby in separate rooms and assume that Jane WANTS to tell Debby the secret but that she doesn't want anyone else to know. 
 
From lowest security and up:
 
Jane YELLS the secret to Debby.  Anyone within earshot hears it.
 
Jane SPEAKS the secret to Debby.  The range of people within earshot is lower, however Debby may not hear it.
 
Jane WHISPERS the secret to Debby.  Chances are that Debby will not hear.  There is a risk that someone nearby did, however.
 
Now, if Jane were to write the secret down and get it to Debby, that may limit the spread of information.  Let's say she wrote it down and handed it to someone to hand to Debby.  There is a chance that the person did not read it, so security is better that way.  But unless Debby destroys the note, the secret can still be read.
 
If Jane and Debby had a language only they knew, then there is more of a chance for security.  But languages can be translated, if you use them enough then context and simple repitition can ferret out the meaning.
 
Decoder ring.  Now this is probably before the era of many of you.  A toy that used to be given away in breakfast cereal or if you sent in boxtops or whatever was the SECRET DECODER RING.  The concept was simple.  Each letter in the English language was assigned a corresponding number or letter.  The standard alphabet was displayed on one side of a ring and on an adjacent one, there was the decode.
 
The simplest ones had A,B,C,D....on the inside and 1,2,3,4 on the outside.  If alligned to A1 then CAT would be 3,1,20.  Setting the ring meant you set a certain letter against a certain number (hence my G9 comment earlier).
 
If Jane and Debby had decoder rings and knew what the other person set theirs to, they could have a secret message.
 
But there are ways to crack this too.  In the English language there are patterns on letters, certain ones show up more frequently.  Certain patterns repeat - a lot.  A persistent person could crack it pretty fast.
 
So, what to do?  Change the code for each letter.  Use that code for each communication.  But...if your code falls into the wrong hands then it is useless.
 
So change the code for each communication.  Destroy it and the note each time.
 
Basically it is all just a pain in the rear.
 
Keeping a secret is hard, even when everyone wants to.
 
There is no such thing as a perfect secret once it has been shared.  Does that mean it isn't worth trying?
 
This has been your bizarre post of the month.

Friday, March 03, 2006

A Villains Progress

In a few days I will be hitting an annivarsary of sorts.  It will be the 3 year anniversary of my giving a 'loan' (I hand over money with a promise to pay me back) that I knew I wouldn't be paid back for.
 
At the same time, I was being labelled a villain (by the borrower) and was in the process of being nastily outed to essentially everyone I grew up with.
 
Yet I put up with it?
 
Why?  Guilt, I suppose.  A little self-loathing and the end of a long relationship.
 
Actually, I let myself be cast as the villain.  I was one because I accepted that role. 

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

The Sinister

A close friend of mine recently came out to his family.  During the build up to this event I tried to be helpful by coming up with another strange analogy.  It turns out it wasn't needed (and it was too late) but here is the hypothetical conversation:
 
Skeptical Parent: "Fine, you have gay feelings but you don't have to ACT on them."
 
Reply: "You're right.  I don't have to act on them.  But that isn't what I am talking about, I am talking about who I am."
 
SP: "You are defined by your actions.  Just don't act on your attraction to men."
 
Reply: "Can you try something for me?  Can you (my left-handed parent) fill out this post card but write it with your right hand?"
 
Parent fills out a post card, it is awkward and looks really bad.
 
Reply: "Also can you stop using your left hand when you eat?  Do you know how much easier life is for right-handed people?  Everything is designed for the right handed.  Did you know that left-handed people were once considered evil?  If fact they called it 'sinister handed'."
 
SP:  "It's not the same thing."
 
Reply: "Not exactly, no.  But this is the point, you can force yourself to use your right hand but eventually you will get frustrated and switch back to the hand that you naturally feel like using.  I can pretend to be straight like I have been doing for all of my life but it is not who I am.  That will come through.  This is not a question of actions but instead it is about something that is innate."
 
/end hypothetical conversation.
 
No conversation in the world would ever go like this but I thought it was a decent point.