Glimpses

The way it seems to me, frequently, and for the most part of my life, is that I'm surrounded by a bubble containing the things that make me feel. Such a rich environment, but so small. So contained. So cut off from a lot of things that I have a strong suspicion should matter to me.

And these possible things that matter, they are all the more important, because they're never known or realized fully. I only catch glimpses of strange, important attractions that are happening all around me, full of the meaning of things, but I can only ever discern vague synonyms of the truth.

This is the root of what's wrong with me, I think. I believe that I've just said it fairly clearly. When I read what I just wrote back to myself, I'm surprised that all I need to correct is just a little grammar.

I wonder about myself a lot, mostly because I'm the only sure thing that I can be unsure about. Because I'm inside of me, and I can see my reflection from the outside in. I can't see anyone else like that. I don't think anyone else can, either, except for a living saint, maybe.

So what am I yammering about anyway? I ask myself that. I guess it's just the Question. The always unsolved thing that moves the mitochondria in our cells so that we can continue to try to figure stuff out, because not doing that means death.

If I were to try to say something deep about things, as a product of all of that stuff I just went on about, it would be that figuring out stuff hurts, which is natural, and that we must discern the answers to things through a pain filter.

It seems like an oversimplified, kindergarten answer to a PhD question. And so what? Maybe the meaning of life really is 42. Maybe there is such a thing as infinite mind, which makes our mental meanderings seem like the consciousness of cockroaches.

A feeling of a memory

I just remembered something.

The thing is though, I don't know if I'm actually remembering a piece of awake time or a dream. It's just a snippet.

It's a description of a person who, for some forgotten reason, has to experience every type of pain that is possible to feel.

I remember a couple of specific ones... the torture of not being able to breathe, turned up to maximum strength. That's one. Crushed bones and burning alive are some others.

Mental anguish is included, too. Fear, depression, shame, and heartache are there, cranked up to eleven.

It feels like a memory of something I read, or a dream I had. It feels like a dream, but I don't remember remembering it.

Isn't that weird?

If you read this, you'll magically increase the amount of information stored in your gray matter.

Ever wonder what the heck a volt is, anyway? Why you can have 50,000 volts in a nonlethal taser that any schmuck can acquire online, but the electric chair only needs the comparatively lesser amount of 2000 volts to make you dead, dead, dead?

If you're actually interested, like I am, then you can click here:

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/watcir.html

That links to an illustrated, interactive explanation, which uses the comparative analogy of water flowing through a pipe to explain electricity flowing through a wire.

Or you can just read the text that I robbed from a website that explains it all.

You should do both, you know. You really should. Because it exercises your left brain AND your right brain.

Here's the text that I robbed:

When describing voltage, current, and resistance, a common analogy is a water tank. In this analogy, charge is represented by the water amount, voltage is represented by the water pressure, and current is represented by the water flow. So for this analogy, remember:

Water = Charge
Pressure = Voltage
Flow = Current

Consider a water tank at a certain height above the ground. At the bottom of this tank there is a hose.

Voltage is like the pressure created by the water.

The pressure at the end of the hose can represent voltage. The water in the tank represents charge. The more water in the tank, the higher the charge, the more pressure is measured at the end of the hose.

We can think of this tank as a battery, a place where we store a certain amount of energy and then release it. If we drain our tank a certain amount, the pressure created at the end of the hose goes down. We can think of this as decreasing voltage, like when a flashlight gets dimmer as the batteries run down. There is also a decrease in the amount of water that will flow through the hose. Less pressure means less water is flowing, which brings us to current.

Current

We can think of the amount of water flowing through the hose from the tank as current. The higher the pressure, the higher the flow, and vice-versa. With water, we would measure the volume of the water flowing through the hose over a certain period of time. With electricity, we measure the amount of charge flowing through the circuit over a period of time. Current is measured in Amperes (usually just referred to as “Amps”). An ampere is defined as 6.241*1018 electrons (1 Coulomb) per second passing through a point in a circuit. Amps are represented in equations by the letter “I”.

Let’s say now that we have two tanks, each with a hose coming from the bottom. Each tank has the exact same amount of water, but the hose on one tank is narrower than the hose on the other.

These two tanks create different pressures.

We measure the same amount of pressure at the end of either hose, but when the water begins to flow, the flow rate of the water in the tank with the narrower hose will be less than the flow rate of the water in the tank with the wider hose. In electrical terms, the current through the narrower hose is less than the current through the wider hose. If we want the flow to be the same through both hoses, we have to increase the amount of water (charge) in the tank with the narrower hose.

These two tanks create the same pressure.

This increases the pressure (voltage) at the end of the narrower hose, pushing more water through the tank. This is analogous to an increase in voltage that causes an increase in current.

Now we’re starting to see the relationship between voltage and current. But there is a third factor to be considered here: the width of the hose. In this analogy, the width of the hose is the resistance. This means we need to add another term to our model:

Water = Charge (measured in Coulombs)
Pressure = Voltage (measured in Volts)
Flow = Current (measured in Amperes, or “Amps” for short)
Hose Width = Resistance
Resistance

Consider again our two water tanks, one with a narrow pipe and one with a wide pipe.

The tank with the narrow pipe creates a higher resistance.

It stands to reason that we can’t fit as much volume through a narrow pipe than a wider one at the same pressure. This is resistance. The narrow pipe “resists” the flow of water through it even though the water is at the same pressure as the tank with the wider pipe.

The narrow pipe resists the flow.

In electrical terms, this is represented by two circuits with equal voltages and different resistances. The circuit with the higher resistance will allow less charge to flow, meaning the circuit with higher resistance has less current flowing through it.

Blue Laws

I just thought of something really, really stupid, that I only just realized, after 30 some odd years. What happened as blue laws, back when I was a kid, in Texas, have now distilled down to just liquor stores. Taught to be the only commercial purveyor to resent the 'closed on Sunday' law, which now only applies to them.

It's political religion, being forced down the throat of only one, just one, particular type of sinner. In Texas. Every other sin of this type is ok, though. But only at certain times. But not really, though... the ok part, that is.

The blue laws were more honest.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_law

It's just an observation. I really don't have any reason to be upset... unless other people agree with me. Otherwise it ain't nothing.

Also. I've come to a conclusion about Drug Emporium, on University, next to Kroger. The reason why they can keep prices low is because they never ever turn on the air conditioning. Ever.

A dream - ancient treasure

I was at an outdoor flea market, and there were hundreds of square tin boxes for sale, with lids that would come off like those metal containers for Charles Chips. The boxes were arranged in categories, according to specific time periods in history. These were the categories:

Medieval
Romantic
World War I
World War II
Modern

Each of the tin boxes contained war relics according to its time period. I was perusing them and trying to decide which one that I would buy. I opened one from medieval Pakistan which contained a ridiculous military sweater. It was green and yellow, with a Muslim crescent, and the sleeves were too long and the midriff was too short. I purchased the British medieval tin box.

After that, I was with my dad, and we were driving to an apartment where a friend of his lived, which was located at the end of a long alley. I'd been there before, but when we arrived, the entire alley had been repainted in vivid colors. Dad went inside, but I just wanted to stay in the car, so I did. I wound up inside anyway, because the car became a bed in the apartment.

So there I was, in bed, in the living room of someone I didn't know, feeling very uncomfortable while my dad visited. I was naked under the covers, and I drew them up around me protectively. Then Dad said:

"I have to borrow that sheet, son."

So he took the sheet and left, and all I had was a pillow to cover myself with.

Later I was pissed off and in a pool hall. Somebody miscued and sent the cue ball flying off of the table and straight at me, and I snatched it out of the air, just inches from my face. I flung it away with a quick snap and and underhand backspin. I meant to land it on the pool table and have it spin to a quick stop, but it hit the opposite wall and shattered.

I was amazed that I had thrown it so hard. I quickly ran over to where the largest piece had landed and I picked it up. The cue ball was still whole, mostly; but about one fifth of it had been knocked away like a flint nodule, forming a wide, shallow and jagged crater-like declivity, at the bottom of which a handful of tiny diamonds lay nestled, sparkling.

When I moved the cue ball, there was a short delay before the cluster of diamonds followed suit. It was as if they were suspended in a thick liquid. Then they swirled and stirred, and tiny microscopic facets refracted the light in exquisite detail. It was almost as if a cloud of diamond dust, suspended in a slow-motion matrix, had settled there. I started at it, enthralled and motionless.

Then the cue ball began to crack, and as the cracks widened, brilliant light issued forth like the light of many lasers, illuminating the room and tracing intricate and shifting multicolored patterns onto every surface. Then the whole thing split wide open and fell to the floor, exposing a geode of concentric circles consisting of diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and every other type of gem of every possible color. There were two halves to it, and both were illuminated from within and were almost too bright to look at directly.

My sister, Cheyenne, was there with me. The brilliant beauty of what we saw was deafening, and I had to cover my eyes and shout to be heard over it:

"Look at what it became, Chey! Look, it split open into a geode! Look! Look, look! Look at it, it's a treasure, a treasure, a treasure..."

An encounter with ruffians

Last night at about 2:00 AM, as I was walking to Kroger, I had my awareness focused on two guys who had been walking behind me for the past few minutes. When they had almost caught up to me, I did an abrupt about face. They kept walking for a couple of steps, then they both turned around and kept following me. Then they separated and tried to come abreast, one on either side of me. Those two no-good rascals were trying to corner me!

I turned around and walked backwards and extended both arms straight out with palms forward, one for each of them. The unmistakeable and common gesture for Stop. Cease. Desist. Now. I was walking backwards like that, with my arms extended outward like I was propping up two columns. They didn't stop, so I said, loudly -

'No!'

'Gimme a cigarette,' said one. 'You got any spare change?' said the other. 'Whatchoo got?' said the first one. 'We ain't gonna hurtcha,' said the other one. And they both kept coming.

I stopped then and fumbled around quickly for my sheath and extracted my flashlight blade (I call it my flashblade) with one hand, and my laser pointer with the other. I opened the blade, hit the light, and pointed the laser, the blade, and the light at the ground between the two of them.

'I got these,' I said. 'Gawn now. Go.'

That finally got 'em to stop, and the three of us just stood there quietly for about ten seconds, regarding each other. Then I turned to the left and quickly walked away, keeping my eyes on them as I did. They didn't follow, but they sure did holler after me. Really nice, friendly stuff.

'M-f'er! Bitch! You little bitch! Mother-f'er, you better run, you little bitch-ass (vulgar word that used to commonly mean cat)! Run away, mother-f'er! Little bitch ass! Run, you little f'er!'

I didn't run. I just kept walking until I couldn't see or hear them anymore.

So, anyway. That just happened. And that's why I carry a flashlight knife and a laser pointer.

The world through a dirty glass.

I wish I could really communicate the dream feeling. I'll try to describe the view of it from my minds' eye. The view accompanies the feeling; that's the only way I can even begin to approach the actual sending of the feeling from my cloud of thoughts to yours.

Ok. This is naturally somewhat abstract, but there are recognizable elements familiar to everyone - the elements are like words that form the grammar of the sentence which describes it. The dream feeling. The derealization phenomenon. Here goes:

Firstly, imagine that everything I'm about to describe is taking place behind a window, or a screen. A glass screen... like a TV screen. It's the language of it, I suppose. The phonetics are in color; a palette that tends toward yellow-beige-gray, with reddish-purple hints where there are shadows, or things of a darker shade. The glass screen is smeared and dirty, and everything visible beyond that glass has a smeared and dirty accent. A profoundly decrepit and unconcerned ignorance.

It's like looking outside through the large front window of a small town laundromat, or a gas station. I mean a real gas station, not a convenience store. Think thirty or forty years ago, if you have memories that go back that far.

So, if you're able to get a picture of that in your mind, and you can speak a description of it to yourself using that visual grammar, then all you have to do is stain it with a couple of coats of apathy, coat it with a layer of old dust, put it inside of a dry, still late summer afternoon, and then name it 'Eternal Evening, 7:30 PM, and Old'.

Ok, that's the predicate. Now let's form the subject - and here's where I'm pretty sure the communication falters, because what you see through that window has to be very personal.

Everything I've described so far is the womb, but it's the movement inside that makes it a thing impossible to express, but which I can't ignore. Because it's MY feeling, a singular feeling that comes from a deepness inside of me that nurtures a painful but comforting kind of discord, surrounded by a melody consisting solely of minor diminishments that are just slightly out of tune, and only barely audible.

I'll give you mine.

When I look through that window, there's no motion. Not even a slight breeze to stir up the dust and dirt; and there is a dirtiness everywhere, and on everything. There's life out there, but it's a still life. People are out there. Sitting still, mostly.

Sometimes that window provides a view out onto a porch; hot and splintered and dead. Sometimes it's the laundromat window, looking out onto a few yards of cracked concrete desolation, with weeds stuck in the cracks.

Looking outside, through the backseat window, I can feel sticky bare thighs on a hot vinyl surface.

There's a horizontal view of the world through that dirty glass, tipped vertically and with an earful of dirt, and a darkness underneath a flat and protesting deadness of wood that's nailed to itself and sharing its splinters, punctuated by cinder blocks and clods of dry earth which sprouts gray weeds; all dead.

Underneath and permeating it all, there's a living satisfaction, imbedded inside of and agreeing with the view of the world, and the dry, dessicated smell of it. The essence of it is captured like a still frame that was left out and overdeveloped, in mid-rot.

The sum total is extremely unsettling, but it's what the experience of living inside of the world feels like to me, sometimes.

The Prestigious Starfleet Academy

I figured I should pass along some sage advice about what I learned so far, and how I got it learned, because it's bad karma to hog it all for myself. Here goes.

The prestigious Starfleet Academy is a real school that I actually think I went to. It offers all kinds of things. They have classes for lots of stuff, which is their main draw.

Here are some of the valuable classes I signed up for:

Counting Recycled Calories 101
Fucking with Feng Shui 101
Algebra for Assholes 101
Killing and Cooking and Killing 101
(this was an elective for Klingons only, but I never showed up for class and nobody ever even knew that I'm not a Klingon)
Quantum Theory for Preschool Retards 101
Drawing on the Right Side of Somebody Else's Brain 101
Thirteen Dimensional Alternative American History 101

And one other elective:

Bickering with Barriers - Sound, Light, Time, and Concrete 101

They give you a dot matrix printout of your degree when you're done, which is a nice perk. I'd recommend Starfleet Academy to anybody who just don't give a crap about nothin'.

Off dead center

I'm a point, a location in space-time, with about a 90 degree lateral view in one direction, which I'll call forward, and a  perpendicular view of about 30 degrees.

The point of me is frequently in motion, relative to a much larger thing called planet, and you can keep on scaling up until you reach the boundary of what is possible to perceive over the vastiest distances of space and time. Beyond that... I give it a big fat raspberry, because it'll never hear it anyway.

The me point, at its absolute highest resolution, is zero-dimensional. You'd  think that would mean nothing, at first. I mean... zero, right? Zero dimensional. No bigness, or wideness, or heaviness, or stinkiness, or anything. No information at all, except for location, what? And hey, give that zero dimensional point a few seconds within which to exist, and then fart forward a couple of meters, and BANG! Your zero dimensional point becomes a one dimensional line, expressed through the fourth dimension of time.

That's what I am. A zero dimensional point with this cone of perception extending forward and away from the point of me and into three dimensions, preceding me along a line through the fourth dimension of duration; and in the process, leaving behind just a complete mess of a one dimensional timeline.

I dunno how that thing is ever gonna get untangled and straightened out. I think, maybe...

Maybe, if somebody way back when would have had litten the far beginning of it, and if it would have had burned and sizzled and zipped forward like a fuse and all up that tangled timeline in a forward manner, that then maybe I will have had seen it coming some day. I'll'd have seen that sizzling spark, in reverse, blasting forward and into the future at tachyon speed, and maybe I'd have been able to be seeing it coming after me, barreling through time, somehow.

I'd have to have had remembered it to see it, but maybe I would... uh, keep remembering something. Remembering it brighter and sizzlier every time, just before I remembered it, until I am and was sure, that it was and would have been only a minute ago that the world will explode around me.

I'm sure I remembered it that way...

Just a second ago.

Rich enough

Wouldn't it be awesome to be rich enough to have an apartment in every single apartment complex in Denton? So if you're out walking, and suddenly you need to take a dump, or you need a band-aid, or you're hungry and need a sandwich, or your phone needs a charge, or you're just fed up and want to lock yourself inside four walls, a ceiling and a floor, and a door... there, you'd have it. All of those things. Just a hop, skip, and a jump away from almost any phenomenon.

Wouldn't that be cool? And you could have houses where there ain't any apartments, so you're covered.

Cool, right? All you need is money. Bunches. Money in bunches, that is. Not so difficult.

Ok, that's what I'm gonna do.

Transistor

Ok, there's this song by 311 called Transistor, and the awesomest part goes like this (lyricwise):

You're a transistor
A lightning resistor
Conductor to the mother star
That's what you are

So I was listening to that, because Transistor kicks a certain amount of boo-hiney - which, as it just so happens to be - is exactly the maximum amount of boo-hiney that can be kicked before shitzkies start flying into the fan.

So, that was happening, and for one of those rare, elusivial moments, time stopped and I was genuinely happy and at peace.

THEN A SHOOTING STAR SHOT RIGHT PAST WHERE I WAS LOOKING, EXACTLY AT 'CONDUCTOR TO THE MOUTHER STAR, THAT'S WHAT YOU ARE'!

Man. It was awesome.

And to top it off, another just went whizzing by. An even awesomer one, just 47 seconds ago.

It was pretty cool, man.

Blue and orange

Blue and orange. If you let the sky roll over, and you hang around for it, that's what happens, slowly. Blue and orange.  They're complimentary colors, by the way.

It's best if you're not careful at all, so that you can be taken by surprise, because...  which is better, anticipating a beautiful thing, or having it knock you over the head while you're daydreaming?

This is what baffles me. It just rips away my ego. It tears a hole in my necessaries and shreds my gives a craps.  And it's just a couple of colors thrown onto the world, is all it is. It scares the shit out of me that one day I'll die, and that I'll miss so much beauty.

Surprise!

You know, things can be really terrible for Joe Schmoe. A regular person can suffer quietly for years, and nobody'd ever notice.

However...

What's still great about everything is the element of surprise.

4:48 am

It's 4:48 AM (I wish it was earlier; more time for this) and there is a lightening storm on the eastern horizon. It's blazing away like a crazy thing... an experience which, by its mere description and wonderable purpose, provides a beyondness separate from the fromthing of your before... you know. The thatnesses. The THATNESS of an object or phenomenon which demands your constant attention. THAT essential item required for the maintenance of your own sanity. THAT thing... the thing that you must do, so that THAT person doesn't have to suffer an undue amount of his own THATNESS, because you let your THATS became THOSE, escaped from your self control. By kind of selfishly removing yourself from them, you know.

THAT, the one I mentioned earlier, happens once you become separated and cast away from the things that you value as having worth (funny how hatred and misery become a tradable commodity) such as rent and bills and money and all of the built in common denominators of life that I am forced to use to calculate the color of the final reduction. God help you if your fractions aren't ready, for the world of decimals and long division awaits. As if...

Why does injury invariably require insult? It's as if Ms.Pate was just waiting... as if it were her sole purpose, after terrorizing two generations of families, to infiltrate every funeral of every family she contaminated and injured, as if she had the right - the gall to assume that living in the same small town and teaching horror, not long division, to the kids of her previous experiments, made her ok. And that it gave her any kind of right to insinuate her shitstink into the memory of my grandpa's funeral.

Do I seem bitter about this? I just realized, that maybe I do...

Nah.

So, has anyone pissed on Ms. Pates' grave yet?  20 years ago, when the old witch finally croaked, I swore to. I haven't yet. That witch terrorized two generations of Davis's. Now that so much time has passed, I dunno if I will... I don't think it would be right. But that... Creature... was a cruel sadistic monster who garnered enjoyment, mostly through inflicting terrorizing humiliation upon the fourth grade children entrusted to her charge. I was one, my sister was one, my brother was one, heck, even my dad was one. We all suffered under that evil bitch.

I got sucked into a digression of my own device for a minute or two hours there. I was originally talking about a lightening storm. What happened? I know, but I'm not telling. But, I have it all recorded for posterity to combustabulate about.

Anyway. I'm at the Baptist Church on Bryan and Crescent, and I'm gonna look for someplace higher to watch the lightening storm. That's really all I wanted to say. And that was two hours ago.

Ice cream.

CRITICAL UPDATE - THIS INFORMATION MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE

Consider for a moment, if you will... the common banana. It's the fruit - a berry, actually - of a large, herbaceous flowering plant. One of the millions of species of living things with which we share this beautiful blue orb, floating serenely through the cosmos. Small. Yellow. Unobtrusive. Conveniently packaged. Tasty. Friendly. On your side. In your corner, and rooting for you. Benign. Harmless... Oh. And it wants to kill you.

Consider for another moment... potassium-40. A radioactive isotope of potassium, with a half life of ONE BILLION, TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY ONE MILLION YEARS. It's the only known isotope that undergoes all three types of beta decay, emitting electrons, neutrinos, anti-neutrinos, positrons, and gamma rays. You know... little tiny teensy weensy things that will kill you dead, dead, DEAD.

So. You know all that potassium that bananas are jam-packed with, that you've always been told is 'good for you'? Well, surprise! That potassium just happens to be potassium-40!

If you eat 10,000,000 bananas all at once, you will CERTAINLY DIE from RADIATION POISONING!

And...

If you eat 274 bananas a day for seven years, you will experience CHRONIC SYMPTOMS of RADIATION SICKNESS!

And...

If you blend 10,000,000 bananas together for one 12 oz smoothie, the potassium-40 will reach CRITICAL MASS and undergo FUSION, initiating a chain reaction and unleashing 100 megatons of NUCLEAR HELL!

Bananas. Who knew?