Individuality II

HRB_1327, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

"No, I'm not going to change who I am because the people who love me, love me for that. And the people who hate me, hate me for that." Joe, from This American Life

Individuality

_HRB8975, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

It's always our decision who we are.

Apple Tree

Apple Tree, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

An accidental act of festive harvest by picking the lot this tree has made.

Went to Oktoberfest today and drank numerous spiced ales. It rained and it shone. The trees were shedding their leaves and the scent of cool arctic air began to invade the atmosphere.

Ushering in the season of fall always feels like enacting someone else's memory and playing a role in their dreams.  You feel so there, but you're detached, and not in control; it's a wonderful detachment.

Armchair Musings VI

Musset:

"How glorious it is, and also how painful, to be an exception."

Dogs!

from left-right:  Charles Terwilliger Pupdog-Brown, Snooper Weenie Junior, Tess the Panda.

Here are a few basic fundamental truths about them:

Charles loves to growl but never growls.  Snooper is addicted to the act of evacuating her urine when excited.  Tess forgets the entire world when a tennis ball is being hurled.

Dreams I

A few nights ago, I dreamt of this:

A quiet, sleepy afternoon, basking in the sun with my cousin Harryette.  My DSLR materializes in my hands and I take her picture.  A polaroid immediately pops up from the wind and my hand catches it.  The image isn't exactly her, but a hologram of a child whose eyes showed something that was vaguely eerie.

I awoke from the sleep after hearing Tess' paws pounding at my door, wanting to be let in.  I immediately thought "why is my amygdala doing this?"

Later that morning, I read of mass shootings in Washington D.C.

Fresh Air

Just read on the Huffington Post that happy, exuberant people spend a lot of time outdoors.  If happiness can be scaled, how well does 79 miles of being outdoors score on that scale?  #ifeelgood

Pale Fire

Another attempt at surmounting a Nabokovian work.  This passage struck me, though I don't know why.

During one winter every afternoon

I'd sink into that momentary swoon.

And then it ceased.  Its memory grew dim.

My health improved.  I even learned to swim.

With his pure tongue her abject thirst to quench,

I was corrupted, terrified, allured,

And though old doctor Colt pronounced me cured

Of what, he said, were mainly growing pains,

The wonder lingers and the shame remains

Self-Awareness VIII

I enjoy participating in races as a volunteer.  I love running but on these events, I have more fun spectating.

This was at the Dash Point Trail Run Half-Marathon and 10k.  I manned the split-turn between half and 10kers and snuck in my camera to take shots.  I wasn't the event photographer but that wasn't going to stop me.

Armchair Musings V

The enormity of the universe, and here we are.

Armchair Musings IV

Five senses and a consciousness to weave them together.  What are we doing?

Life's a Beach, Then You Dive (Sort Of)

Stream of Consciousness alert:

Tonight, I almost lost my marbles listening to a bunch of people in the lab go off about their upcoming vacations next month.

"Yeah, I'm so glad to finally be able to take a week off to see Crater Lake next month."
"No way, I've got a few days to camp out at Okanogan."
"Blah, blah, ad infinitum."

All their vacation fetishes sound so utterly futile.  My friends at work tend to forego the thought of a more valid idea that their vacations would end the way it began; work.  Here's the thing, you burnout and then you recharge.  Then you'll burn out again, only to find yourself recharging.  It's so depressing, see?  Why blabber on like it's the greatest thing that's happened ever?  They need to recognize PTO as a form of human right to which their entitlement should not be one of rarity.  I'm happy to see them delighted at the upcoming wisp of bright light from their penumbra of pragmatic discontents, but that shouldn't be their raison d'être - which I'm sure it isn't, but here it's sounding like it.

Re: All the things our teachers taught us are things that their teachers taught them.  We are designed to perpetuate a trajectory toward some vague notion of progress we lack the sophistication to understand yet are totally committed to, but secretly hate, and compensate for behind the pretense of vacations.  Higher dimensions of control tell us what we want and we dutifully obey.

For the record, I'm not anti-vacation/work.  What I am against is the way we've adopted the idea that vacations are a privilege.  That the need to seek new places and enrich lives require a ritualistic blood sacrifice of who we are and a total surrender of the things we truly value and love.