When I Was Younger -by Gryphon

from Admin – This is an inspiring story about surviving the pitts of life:

When I was younger (not young) I was in love with studying politics as an art and watching current world events. Bosnian War crap and ethnic cleansing was going on in the Balkans and the Clinton administration was having a grand old time. This was before we knew anything about Monica and Slick Willie hadn’t Wagged The Dog in Somalia just yet.

It had been several years since the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union had collapsed and news du jour always pushes the previous day’s fare off the map. Regardless of how monumental positive world events are they always get relegated to the dead letter file–unless you are a dead Princess named Diana and that seemed to NEVER go away.

What were YOU doing when the Wall came tumbling down?

I was watching it happen on CNN, but I was also quite likely stone drunk which I usually was in those days. Who do you know who can talk intelligently about the end of the Cold War and the ramifications today? I’m a junkie for that kind of stuff and I know no one. Well, years later, fast forwarding to 1995, I was younger by nearly 15 years than now (of course). I had gone back to college in my mid 30s and was in my junior year at the illustrious University of Christopher Newport. My son was still alive in 1995 but not for the whole year.

I was studying for my PoliSci degree and living as nearly the oldest man ever in the university dorms. I’m sure I couldn’t have been the oldest man to ever do it as I was still a Spring Chicken in my 30s but I was pushing the envelope and no news reporter was doing a story on me. What a shame, anyway…….

I had a great sense of humor–still do–but it went away for a while. And when it went away, it didn’t announce it was going and then stick around to say its fond farewells. Oh no. You see it was my sense of humor in all its weird and wonderful permutations that kept me sane. My humor went away in March of 1995. That was when my son died. He was my only biological child. I had two adopted daughters and if anyone tries to tell you that the love you feel for an adopted child is any less than the love you feel for a biological child is different you can tell them that I say they are a damn liar.

But he was my only son, and that is a special relationship that can’t be explained in a short space here. Add to this the sense of guilt I was carrying for the disastrous physical health with which he was born. He was born with multiple handicaps that the doctors told us would cause his early demise–they said maximum age 13. They missed it by only two years. He was eleven when he died.

The Bosnian War in what was formerly Yugoslavia had been raging since 1992. I was following it closely in the news. Ethnic cleansing, rape and murder of women, and wholesale massacres were going on. It was absolutely horrendous. It made me ill to read about it in the press and to see it on television but I was hooked into it. You see my major field of politics was theory. I was ALL up into the past masters; Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Rawls, Hegel, Marx, Mills, et. al. and etc. I was trying to apply some grand political evolutionary plan based on theorhetical poltics and doing my whole Karl Marx/GWF Hegel thing on thesis and antithesis equals synthesis.

By the way, that doesn’t work for the most part but it’s fun trying.

And then my boy died.

And suddenly I could find NOTHING humorous about ANYTHING anymore–not even stuff that was SUPPOSED to be funny. My intake of alcohol very nearly tripled and it was already nearly off the scale as it was. I didn’t know it at the time but I think I was subconsciously trying to kill myself. uh huh. Instead of watching the news and laughing it off as “that’s the way the world is” and playing my fiddle while Rome incinerated–instead of throwing down with the philosophers and historians and trying to find a synthesis in the whole fetid, septic mess . . . INSTEAD . . . I was left only with the absolute paralyzing HORROR of the whole damn show.

Humanity was going to hell and I had a front row seat! Suddenly I wanted to get up and run out of the theater. But, I wasn’t here as a regular member of the audience. I had a job as a Reviewer. And objective criticism flew out the window the moment the voice on the telephone told me that he was gone. Everything became totally subjective from the rain on the window to ethnic cleansing in Herzegovina.

I began to rave and rage and rant. I did it best when deep in my cups but could raise a little mania even in times of relative sobriety.

Now I just looked at the bottom of this post text entry box and notice that I have got to 0ver 900 words and am not sure if I am getting anywhere I wanted to be when I started in regards to making an actual damn point.

I’m going to light a cigarette and think about this a moment. Don’t go anywhere.

O.K. Still here? I got it now. Sometimes it pays to look at the title.
When I Was Younger

I am fifteen years older now. Nearly a generation older. Had my son lived he would have turned 25 this year. But he didn’t. So he’s not. I hope that doesn’t sound cold. I still think about him and get very deeply sentimental and retrospective about him at certain times of the year, like around his birthday and Christmas, you understand?

I eventually got sober after a long hard struggle. I had already lost the care that a lot of people had for me over the destructive way I was treating myself and them as a byproduct. And for the most part and for most of those people the care will not be restored. But time passed. Bad events became things of the past and things of memory. I regained my humor. Thank God. I changed. Thank God.

I met more people. I did more things. And the present became something in which to actively work for things that suddenly seemed to be worthwhile. The present stopped being merely a space in which to rehash the past and criticize everyone around me. The present became a place in which to live.

And writing those last words I just had a freaking epiphany but that’s for another time, maybe. But it tells me that it’s time to wrap this up and try to impart a moral or some such shit, so here goes . . .

Time Passes

Too simplistic? I happen to think it very profound especially if coupled with

Nothing Lasts Forever

Too Cliche?

Look People! Just try to be good to yourselves. The people I know in this world amounts to NOTHING compared to the actual number of people in this world, but I love every last loony one of you! SO BE GOOD TO YOURSELVES! And if you think that LAST commandment is tough, try this one: BE GOOD TO ONE ANOTHER! ‘kay?

All you or I or your pet gerbil have is today. Stop burying yourselves in regrets and griefs of the past. Stop worrying about what is going to happen and how you’re going to live and eat then. Isn’t today bad enough for you that you have to take time off from getting things right RIGHT now to worry about things that for the most part you have no real control over. Take care of today and tomorrow will take care of itself. and love love love love. One more time, love.

I love you guys. Now go love each other.

Merry Christmas.

Gryphonscry

Dirty Book Promotion

Want to promote your book even with a dirty trick? Here’s how:

‘Freud must be shuddering in his grave, but that doesn’t bother Susan Shapiro, the author of Speed Shrinking and the cheerful organizer of speed-dating-style therapy sessions for New Yorkers. On a recent evening, 200 talk-therapy-seekers stood in line at a lecture hall for their turn to spill their problems and get some quickie advice from each of eight therapists, at just 3 minutes a pop. “It’s amazing what you can achieve in a short space of time,” said one. It “makes something which can be intimidating fun,” said Shapiro.

‘How well did it work? Jobless “patients” without health insurance were grateful for the free help, but the quality of the advice varied, noted a reporter from the Independent. Of course confidentiality vanishes in a room packed with elbow-to-elbow attention-seekers. “One lady sat down and announced at the top of her voice that she’d never had an orgasm,” said one therapist. Another noted: “That’s probably going to take more than three minutes to fix.”‘ -Independent

The Dreams of Old Men -by writerdood

What do old men dream about? I used to wonder that when I was younger, because when I was young, I’d dream about the future. I’d dream about how I’d like to start my own company, or how I’d like to write novels, or paint great works of art, or compose beautiful music. I’d dream about being a biochemist or genetic engineer. They were different dreams every night, but they were always exciting. And I’d dream about how I was going to do it too. What road I would take to get there. Where I could go to college, or how I was going to dedicate my time to writing or painting or playing music more. I’d think about the operations of cells, or I’d imagine the chemical evolution of the body, or I’d try and think of ways to hijack nature and bend it to fit my will.

It was all in the hope of helping others, of course, that was the goal. But in order to do that you have to gather power. That’s how I saw it. The powerless cannot help others. The powerless require help themselves – for the most part. Oh, sure, when you’re poor and barely getting by you can still offer someone else something, but you can’t help a lot of people, and that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to help a lot of people make their lives better – but I wanted to be the one who determined what it was that was going to make them better. That’s what power is for, right? You get to decide what is best, and how to distribute your philanthropy. That’s why someone wanting to change the world needs power. That’s why someone wanting to change the world craves power. Some people are born with power. Some people have it forced upon them. I would have neither, and I knew that. I would have to earn power. And so that was the dream.

Now, as I grow older, I find my dreams have changed. Maybe I’m an old man now. I saw myself on video yesterday, and I was looking balding and not so young – certainly somebody I would have considered an old man at some point in my life. So, maybe now it is within my power to answer the question of what old men dream about? If so, then I must say that lately I’ve been dreaming that I’ll wake up and discover that everything that’s happened to me in the last twenty years is actually the result of a prolonged hallucination.

If so, then I must wake up soon. There are paintings to be painted, and stories to be written, and great things to be learned. I cannot go on like this sleeping my life away. -Undisturbing Domain

Measured Time and Experienced Time -by Jamesesz

Philosophy has traditionally two views concerning time, namely, the ‘static view of time’ and the ‘dynamic view of time’. The static view of time as embraced by philosophers like Parmenides and Zeno of Elea held that the appearance of temporal change is a mere illusion.
This means that events deemed ‘past’ in one frame of reference must be deemed as the ‘future’ in other frames; thus hinting that the difference between the past and the future might be just one that is subjective to experience rather than a real ontological divide. The dynamic view of time chosen by philosophers like Heraclitus and Aristotle, maintained that the future lacks the certainty of the past and the present therefore reality is continually being added to as time passes. This implies a ‘movement of time from the past into the future’ as ‘future events become present before finally receding into the past’.

Both views of time are true to a certain degree. In fact, both views seem to complement each other and produce a more complete picture of our understanding of time. More importantly, both views show us a fundamental principle in philosophy, that is; some things change and some things do not change. Coming to this point, the task of the philosopher is to determine to a certain degree of accuracy the things that change with time and the things do not.
We all know that some laws of nature and physics do not change relative to time. For example, as long as certain conditions are met, water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. If this law of physics do not hold true, no corporation would dare manufacture electrical stoves and kettles! Besides physics, other concepts and principles especially those found in mathematics are constant regardless of the flow of time. We can always with utmost certainty answer that 5 + 7 = 12 since we cannot conceive a world where the answer to such a question would be any different than the one we already know.

These unchanging laws in reality lead us to examine two kinds of propositional knowledge which philosophers call a priori and a posteriori.

Knowledge is said to be a priori when it is a necessary truth, independent of the sense-experience. The most cited example of this kind of knowledge is again mathematics because the authority and validity of mathematical knowledge do not depend upon evidence obtained through experience.
On the other hand, knowledge is said to be a posteriori when it refers to a contingent truth that is authenticated and justified only through the sense-experience. But what can we say about the concept of time? Is it a priori or a posteriori knowledge? -see full article at Eternity in an Hour

Plato’s Cave and Virtual Reality: An Allegory

Professor Babette Babich, Ph.D., relates Plato’s Cave to modern Technology and how does that affect humanity. I find this marvelous in that this piece was written by a woman who is probably not a techie.

First off, here’s Babich’s interpretation of Plato’s Cave in which I agree:
‘In the parable, human prisoners have lived their lives chained in a cave, facing only a blank wall. The shadows projected on the wall by real things passing behind them are the only reality they know.’

Then she connects the Internet to the ‘real thing’ that gives us images (shadows) which we take for reality. There is the danger of our ability to project our full consciousness into a virtual world until the real environment fades away.

The question of technology and self-representation in a civilization is not new to Babich, according to Janet Sassi. The ancient Roman historian Pliny claimed that ancient Greek cities, such as Athens, Rhodes or Olympia, were filled with literally thousands of life-sized bronze statues, most likely created with the day’s latest technologies. Babich was curious about why so many statues were there, and what it was like to live in such a world…
…It is important for philosophers to think about new technologies and their consequences for “being” human, Babich said. -Fordham.edu

This might be the best testimony of how our use of computers affects our minds. It’s an excerpt from Melanie D.G. Kaplan’s ‘Have computer habits changed my brain?’:

‘…Sometimes, it’s clear that a technology is making my brain work differently. When I use my GPS, for example, I’m conscious of relying on it too much and not paying enough attention to my surroundings, so I make an effort to use it only as a last resort for directions. But these two little incidents were sneaky. They crept into my daily routine, seeping out from one habit or pattern and infiltrating another…’

Here are other excellent questions by Eric Adler:
Whatever happened to good old happenstance?

In a coffee shop, philosophy student Eric Wilcox, 20, turned down his iPod. He put aside reading Plato to contemplate a question: Is our culture killing serendipity?

Serendipity: In its essence it’s that “aha” moment of glad and unexpected discovery. It’s an unplanned happenstance that leads to a piece of good luck, or news or insight.

It’s serendipitous when you walk into a store to buy a Christmas gift and meet a clerk who becomes your future spouse. Or if you look for that book by Steinbeck in the library stacks and stumble upon a book by Sendak that opens your eyes…

…“We are busier today in the sense of spending more time managing more activities,” Darrah said. “If you think of the Colonial household, their problem might have been the tedium of doing two or three tasks in a day from sunrise to sunset. Your work is the tedium of multiple e-mails, multiple phone calls, multiple appointments, work, home, kids, school.”

Each of which takes up a chunk of mental energy, Darrah said, leaving little time for contemplation, creativity or the feeling that you are open to a moment of serendipitous discovery or insight. He also believes technology has only contributed to the dizzying pace… -Kansas City Star

Did you see how Melanie’s testimony connects with Darrah’s?

“What I Wish I Knew About Getting Published Before it Happened To Me.”

Here is must-know for those who expect to get published (you know who you are):

“What I Wish I Knew About Getting Published Before it Happened To Me.” by Chelsea Cain
Author of the New York Times bestselling thrillers Heartsick, Sweetheart and Evil at Heart. -StoryFix

What a Real Writer Is

Here are some wits and witticisms about what a “real” writer is by Maeve Maddox:

(A writer is determined and bull-headed:)

It is impossible to discourage the real writers – they don’t give a damn what you say, they’re going to write. ~Sinclair Lewis

I can write with a crying child on my lap. I have. Often. ~ David Baldacci

(I can do that; except when in a bad mood)

We write because something inside says we must and we can no longer ignore that voice. ~ Sheila Bender

(It’s better to write than talk to fools)

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~Hart Crane

(In other words, follow suggestion below)

The more you read, the more you will write. The better the stuff you read, the better the stuff you will write. ~ Annie Dillard

(That is guaranteed)

The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax. ~Alfred Kazin

(Sometimes, when you get published, it’s not as satisfying as you expected.)

If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad. ~Lord Byron

(Our mind is like a sponge; it won’t take anymore when it’s full. It’s also like a computer; it needs defragmentation)

Anonymity is like virginity. Once lost it’s gone for good -Sarah Sands

(A warning to those who will not use pen names)
(comments from pochp)

Nov 23 09: Staving Off Sleep

I was planning to embed this post to my post Mysterious Bio-Rhythm because it’s an uncanny coincidence, but I don’t want to erase my post’s title so I just reposted Pam’s piece separately:

by Pamela Villars

Staving Off Sleep comes from the Poetic Asides prompt that ask us to write a poem about noise. I’m an introvert and a HSP (who has learned to cope quite well), so noise is a big issue for me. I need isolation frequently to recharge and can be overstimulated by activities that most people find boring.

But some kinds of noise I can’t avoid.

Staving Off Sleep

I stave off sleep like an Amazon warrior woman -
The battle rages until I’m forced into submission:
melatonin and dull TV frequently black my eyes.
My ritual battle brings me nomadic sleep,
for I can’t trust the enemy.
When I’m awakened at 3 or 4am by (what? – I have no idea),
there’s chattering in my room. The soft words hum
and waver, female murmurs.
I toss and turn to still them, I throw my spear at who dares
disturb this queen (somehow in the dark, I have joined the enemy),
but still it buzzes. What does she want,
I wonder, and can’t she shut up? And as I
settle back into the pillow warmth, I hear an answer.
Now my head cocks, my breath quickens (are they talking about me?),
I can’t make it out. I’m waking more and more and
a third voice joins the conversation and a fourth.
Now it’s me who wants to shout –
Hey! What about me?
It’s my damn head you’re in, let me in on it.

from → Humor, Poetry

Noise pollution is my nemesis too Pam -poch

Mysterious Bio-Rhythm

This is a weird experience. Last night, or rather this morning, I slept at 5am trying to finish writing drafts and network tasks. After about an hour, the puppies downstairs started a riot of noise and took away my sleep. I finally got about 2 hours of sleep again. Right, I arose wanting a fight. What’s weird is that I only feel a little sleepy but not tired. And I only had more than two hours of sleep! I even did some laundry. This was the first time I experienced this -I’m more than 40 years old!
I was reminded of bio-rhythm surges and dives. But this high still mystifies me. Anyone got an opinion?

Reality is Relative -by Writerdood

In my youth, I observed that many people believed many things about the world, about other people, and about the reality they lived in. Moreover, they did not agree with each other. No one I encountered seemed to believe exactly the same thing about everything. It seemed very odd to me. Every single person was different, and unless they were all wrong about a wide variety of things upon which they held their opinions, then the only logical conclusion was that they were all correct about what they themselves believed. Ignoring the fact that this was impossible, which is something I frequently do, I had to ask myself what explanation might exist to account for this flexibility in the fabric of realty. At which point I realized that reality was quite relative, and that we all live in our own little bubble of it. Yes, reality is relative, and if you don’t like it, that’s okay, because reality doesn’t care.

Don’t freak out (yet), I’m not talking about space-time. If we all had our own little bubble of that, well, it would be cool, but there would likely be adverse effect. Gravitation distortion, that sort of thing. No, what I’m talking about is a bubble of perception that bends the lens of our observations and conclusions so that they fit within the associative complex forming the shell of our own minds. Without this capability, the universe would seem very confusing on more levels than it already is (particularly for those lacking the ability to cognitively grasp what most of us consider obvious). For example, to a Christian and a biblical literalist, the world of an atheist might seem foolish and ridiculous (and vice-versa). Yet they both exist in the same space-time. They are clearly visible to each other, and can interact, yet one believes the universe was created ten thousand years ago by an all-powerful entity who looks like a human, and the other believes the universe was created fourteen billion years ago by a statistical fluke, and that people are a result of further statistical anomalies and chemical interactions following a set of rules governed by physical laws resulting from the first fluke. In between these two glowing philosophical extremes, there is a whole slew of middle ground that take a bit here and there and everywhere, and mixes things together in a creative stew of conceptual abstractions that explains it all in an understandable way to that particular individual.

What if they are all correct? What if the Christian will go to heaven, and the atheist will simply cease to exist? What if the deist will meet a universal God, and the Hindu will be reincarnated, and the Buddist will wake up to realize they are part of God. (Note, I’m playing fast and lose with religion here, and I’m aware there are lots of different flavors of these religions).

Of course, they can’t all be right. Right? Surely if the Christian is correct, then everyone else will go to Hell. Surely if the Hindu is right, everyone else will be coming back as something quite nasty. Surely if the deist is right, no one will remember any of this. Maybe if someone else is correct, and this is all just part of a dream being dreamt by a God who will someday awaken, we’ll all just remember our part in this drama and smile. Or maybe you are correct, and the rest of us are simply figments of your imagination.

Would it be alright if we were ALL right? Or is that impossible? Because if it’s impossible, then maybe it’s impossible because you simply can’t see how it can be so. And if it’s impossible for you, that’s okay, because it’s not going to be impossible to everyone. Believe what you want to, the rest will take care of itself.