empty mind

I've decided that I do not really like Microsoft's Live Spaces as a blog site.  The blog pages are just too ugly - I've tried several templates, and don't like any of them.  Also, all of the different modules, or whatever they're called are too cumbersome.  Bottom line, I'll stick with WordPress.com.

Some of the other feature of the Microsoft Live web site are not bad, and I might continue to use them.  For example, the Windows Live SkyDrive seems pretty good - better than Google's "Google Docs".  I will continue to use the Windows Live Writer blog editing tool, since it seems to do a pretty good job, working well with WordPress.  I am still playing around with Windows Live Photo Gallery; it remains to be seen if it's any better than Google's Picasa, or Adobe's Photoshop Album.

Talking on the phone with my mother yesterday, she commented that "getting old is hard".  By today's standards, at 75 she's not yet old, but "gracefully aging".  Anyway, her comment reminded me of a poem that I'd read ages ago.  It's taken some time to find it, and here it is:

Ode  Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

by William Wordsworth

I

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

     The earth, and every common sight,

                      To me did seem

     Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;-

               Turn whereso'er I may,

                       By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

II

               The rainbow comes and goes,

               And lovely is the rose,

               The Moon doth with delight

     Look round her when the heavens are bare;

               Waters on a starry night

              Are beautiful and fair;

     The sunshine is a glorious birth;

     But yet I know, where'er I go,

That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

III

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,

     And while the young lambs bound

               As to the tabor's sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief:

A timely utterance gave that thought relief,

              And I again am strong:

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;

No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;

I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,

The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,

                  And all the earth is gay;

                            Land and sea

               Give themselves up to jollity,

                   And with the heart of May

               Doth every beast keep holiday;-

                        Thou Child of Joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy!

IV

Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call

        Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;

        My heart is at your festival,

        My head hath its coronal,

The fullness of your bliss, I feel - I feel it all.

                  O evil day! if I were sullen

                  While Earth herself is adorning,

                             This sweet May-morning,

                  And the Children are culling

                             On every side,

                  In a thousand valleys far and wide,

                  Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,

And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm:-

                  I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!

                  - But there's a Tree, of many, one,

A single field which I have looked upon,

Both of them speak of something that is gone:

                     The pansy at my feet

                     Doth the same tale repeat:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

V

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

                  Hath had elsewhere its setting,

                     And cometh from afar:

                  Not in entire forgetfulness,

                  And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

                  From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

                  Upon the growing Boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,

                  He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east

           Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,

              And by the vision splendid

              Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

VI

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;

     Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind;

And, even with something of a mother's mind,

                  And no unworthy aim,

             The homely nurse doth all she can

To make her Foster-child, her inmate Man,

             Forget the glories he hath known,

And that imperial palace whence he came.

VII

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,

A six years' darling of pigmy size!

See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,

Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,

With light upon him from his father's eyes!

See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,

Some fragment from his dream of human life,

Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;

             A wedding or a festival,

             A mourning or a funeral;

                    And this hath now his heart,

             And unto this he frames his song:

                    Then will he fit his tongue

To dialogues of business, love, or strife;

                     But it will not be long

                     Ere this be thrown aside,

                     And with new joy and pride

The little actor cons another part;

Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'

With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,

That Life brings with her in her equipage;

                    As if his whole vocation

                    Were endless imitation.

VIII

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie

                     Thy Soul's immensity;

Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep

Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,

That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,

Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,-

                     Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!

                     On whom those truths do rest,

Which we are toiling all our lives to find,

In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;

Thou, over whom thy Immortality

Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave,

A presence which is not to be put by;

To whom the grave

Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight

Of day or the warm light,

A place of thought where we in waiting lie;

Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might

Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,

Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke

The years to bring the inevitable yoke,

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?

Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,

And custom lie upon thee with a weight,

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

IX

                        O joy! that in our embers

                        Is something that doth live,

                        That nature yet remembers

                        What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed

Perpetual benediction: not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest -

Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:-

                         Not for these I raise

                         The song of thanks and praise;

                   But for those obstinate questionings

                   Of sense and outward things,

                   Fallings from us, vanishings;

                   Blank misgivings of a Creature

Moving about in worlds not realised,

High instincts before which our mortal Nature

Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:

                          But for those first affections,

                          Those shadowy recollections,

                          Which, be they what they may,

Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,

Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make

Our noisy years seem moments in the being

Of the eternal Silence; truths that wake,

                                     To perish never:

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,

                                     Nor Man nor Boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy!

          Hence in a season of calm weather

                     Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

                      Which brought us hither,

          Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

X

Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!

                     And let the young lambs bound

                     As to the tabor's sound!

We in thought will join your throng,

                Ye that pipe and ye that play,

                Ye that through your hearts to-day,

                Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

          Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

               We will grieve not, rather find

                Strength in what remains behind;

                In the primal sympathy

               Which having been must ever be;

                In the soothing thoughts that spring

                Out of human suffering;

                In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

XI

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquished one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the brooks which down their channels fret,

Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;

The innocent brightness of a new-born Day

                                  Is lovely yet;

The clouds that gather round the setting sun

Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

The writer Howard Norman has said: “We remember the particulars and impressions of life with different emotions from those with which we originally experienced them."

My wife Linda was talking this morning about needing to buy a new broom for her classroom; two actually, a grown-up one, and a child-size one.  I guess they don’t have a grown-up sized one at the moment, and the kid’s one is missing at least half of it’s bristles, so it’s difficult to sweep the floor after lunch.  Now, the child-size broom is not a toy broom, but is rather a real broom, just made to a child’s dimensions.

Her talking about sweeping reminded me about my having to sweep the driveway every weekend when I was in my pre- and early teens, living in St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.  I think the driveway was probably about 50 meters long, all told, and about 3-plus meters in width.  I’m not really certain about the exact measurements any more; that was a long time ago, after all.

The driveway was reinforced concrete that ran south off of the road, up a fairly steep grade, and circled the crest of our hill.  From there, we had a view - partially obstructed by the wild undergrowth of Hibiscus and other bushes, vines, and Palm, Papaya, and other trees - south-west into Magens Bay, and north-east up-island, with Hans Lollik Island close on the left, Jost Van Dyke and the BVI to the north-east, and the western part of St. John a little farther to the right.

Sweeping was my most-hated chore of all.  I used a heavy-duty, industrial-strength push broom; the head of the broom about 16 inches wide and 6 or 8 inches across, with 6-inch bristles that I swear were made entirely of branches of ironwood; the bristles were so stiff and hard that I’m sure I must have ground away the concrete of the driveway by several inches over the years.  If we’d stayed any longer, probably I’d have begun seeing the rebar reinforcement buried in the concrete start poking through.  It took a month or two to begin to wear down the bristles enough that pushing the broom down the driveway wasn’t like trying to push a 100-pound rock uphill with a stick.

The worst was during the autumn and winter (if winter in the Caribbean can really be called “winter”), when there was a several-inch-thick layer of leaves covering most of the driveway by the time the weekend came around.  Spring and Summers were easy by comparison, when I only had to deal with the dirt and pebbles that invariably migrated onto the concrete.  Oh yes; about 20 meters or so up the driveway, there was a groove cut across the width of it, where all of the water running down the driveway was captured and fed off into our gray-water cistern.  Rain water fed into this cistern was used for doing laundry, showering, flushing the toilet, etc., not for drinking; our drinking water was rain water collected off of the roof of our fourteen by fourteen foot one-room shack into two or three 50-gallon drums.  No well, no city-supplied water, just this cistern and barrels, as is true for most people in the islands where there’s no ground water to speak of.  Anyway, I’d have to dig all of the rotting leaves, sticks, and dirt out of this little channel, so that the water would actually make it into the cistern.  The top part of the channel was several inches wider than the bottom, shelved so that short lengths of 2×4 could be placed across the gap, so that cars could drive over it with a “clack, clack” noise, but without any kind of bump.

Once all of my chores were done - using a grass-whip to cut back all of the vines, grasses and brush that continuously tried to take over our living area; helping mom wash, rinse, and hang the laundry; and other assorted chores, I could take off down the hill to either the little semi-private beach on the south side of the peninsula, or to the rocks on the north side to do some swimming and snorkeling, accompanied by Sam and Bruno, my dogs.

Sunday was “sailing day”, when we took our 19-foot day-sailor out to go snorkeling on the west or south sides of St. John, have lunch, maybe sail a little further, snorkel some more, then sail home.  We always went upwind in the morning, so we could “coast down-hill” with the wind going home - always easier sailing than it is slogging into the wind and waves.  Now, being a young teenager, I often didn’t want to go - what teenage boy wants to spend an entire day with their PARENTS, on a WEEK-END!  Fortunately - from a perspective of looking back 30 plus years - my mom often made me go along if I didn’t already have solid, made-in-advance plans to hang out with my best friend Efrain or one of my other occasional, and rather rare, friends.  I always seemed to enjoy myself, but of course I did my best not to let my parents know that.  Of the times that I really did want to go, it was usually when my older step-brother Steve was home with us; he was studying to be a Marine Biologist which I thought at the time was what I wanted to be too; he taught me things and we collected specimens to put in little bottles and jars of formaldehyde when we got home.  That nasty formaldehyde smell still evokes fond memories for me.

The “sailing day” routine began with a good breakfast (poached eggs, toast, bacon or sausage is what I remember most), putting on swim suits, packing up our snorkeling gear, packing lunch, and grabbing all of the miscellaneous stuff you should always have when sailing out of the harbor (a few basic tools, a good knife, that kind of stuff), a bucket with a big sponge or two, a couple of putty scrapers and green Teflon scrubbing pads for cleaning the weeks’ growth of barnacles, slime and seaweed off the hull, and a cut-down gallon milk jug to use for bailing water out of the boat.  We’d pile all of our stuff, and ourselves, into the pick-up truck, and head all the way over to the Lagoon, near Red Hook, at the far east end of the island (we lived a the far north-west end).  I used to - gasp! - love to ride in the back of the truck, sitting up on top of the tool boxes that ran along the sides of the truck bed, hanging on to the heavy rack that ran across the bed just behind the cab; no seat, no seat belt.  We couldn’t get away with that today here in the middle of the US where I live now without being stopped and surrounded by every SWAT team, local town’s police, county deputy sheriffs, state police, and anti-fun activist groups in the tri-state area.

At the Lagoon where the boat was docked, we’d grab the sail bags, a paddle, the whisker-pole, and occasionally there’d be an outboard motor, out of the “Tree House”.  The Tree-House was a two-story shack owned by some friends that also let us keep the boats that we owned tied to their dock.  After we took the awning off the boats’ cockpit, sponged it out, stored our gear, mounted the rudder, checked the rigging, bent on the sails & got them raised, we headed over to the mangroves where we got in the shallow water to scrape barnacles and scrub algae off the bottom of the hull.  If this wasn’t done weekly, the bottom would get too foul, and all of that growth would slow the boat way down.  That done, we’d climb back aboard, put the sails back up, and get under way.

On the way out in the morning, and again sailing home, I’d always watch for dolphins which we saw occasionally outside of Nazareth Bay, near where in the late 1950’s Dr. John C. Lilly built his Communication Research Institute, where he studied human-dolphin communications.  We always wondered if some of the dolphins were ones that Dr. Lilly had worked with, coming back looking for old friends.

For me, the most fun to be had was when the wind was up to 10 knots or so and we’d have an exciting slog into the wind, the spray in our faces soaking us and cooling us off.  The sail home, being down-wind, was more sedate; sometimes downright boring to a tired young boy.

Remember that paddle I mentioned before?  Well, we’d always have to go through a narrow, coral filled channel between the very tip of St. Thomas and Great St. James Island, where the tidal current would run to several knots one way or the other with the tide.  When there was little wind, and with my being a strapping young man I was always the one elected to be the “engine”, paddling furiously against the current to get us through the cut without hitting a coral head.  I even had to do this occasionally when we had an outboard motor on board; that must have been days when I’d pissed of my parents.  I seem to remember that it was usually on the way home that I had to do this, on days that the tide was against us and the wind died down in the afternoons and I was already tired.  I hated it.  Too much damned work.

We usually got back to the dock at the Lagoon very late in the afternoon, often right around sunset.  It was a tired, usually satisfied, family that got everything secured and put away, drove home, rinsed the salt off, ate dinner and went to bed.

A magical decade indeed.

I've always been very interested in marine biology, oceanography, etc. Just about anything having to do with the ocean realm has fascinated me since I was a lad. This short video from a March, 2000 talk at the annual TED Conference, shows some amazing footage.

David Gallo shows jaw-dropping footage of amazing sea creatures, including a shape-shifting cuttlefish, a pair of fighting squid, and a mesmerizing gallery of bioluminescent fish that light up the blackest depths of the ocean. He focuses on the work of two scientists: Edith Widder at the Ocean Research & Conservation Association, and Roger Hanlon at the Marine Biological Lab.

I am disappointed. I had been wanting to purchase the Jawbone headset ever since it was first released as a wired version, but it was not compatible with the cell phone that I was using. I was ecstatic when they released a blue tooth version, and waited a bit for any bugs to be worked out, and for my old Bluetooth headset to "die", which it did a couple of weeks ago.

To make a long story short, I am deeply disappointed by the Jawbone head set. The first one that I received did not function as advertised; I wasn't certain if it was defective or if the geometry of my face was just "wrong" somehow, but I returned it for a replacement. I also contacted Aliph's tech support (Aliph is the manufacturer of the Jawbone), but after close to a week have still not received any kind of response from them.  The replacement does not work correctly either. I tried every fitting that I could: the standard and long ear loops on both ears, and all four of the ear pieces in every combination, with no discernible difference. I've returned it to Amazon for a refund, and will be ordering a different headset (maybe two for the same price?) when the refund goes through.

The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.
  - Oscar Wilde

If, in your course, you don't meet
your equal, your better,
then continue your course,
firmly, alone.
There's no fellowship with fools.
  - Buddha

I went in to the Barnes & Noble bookstore this afternoon, while on my way home following an appointment.  I went in looking for a hot chocolate from their Starbucks franchise, and then to look at magazines and bargain books.  After I was in the store, standing at the Starbucks counter, I changed my mind about the hot chocolate and ordered one of their frozen strawberries & crème concoctions, even though there is snow on the ground outside.  I did end up buying a copy of The Complete Shakespeare, as well as a copy of the "Inaugural Issue, National Rerelease" of Memoir (and).  That's right, it's called "Memoir (and)", and the journal's tag line reads "Prose, Poetry, Essay, Graphics, Lies and More..."  It looks like today is it's national release.

So what is "Memoir (and)?  And what's up with the "(and)" in the title?  It looks kind of strange.  Maybe even a bit pretentious.  Here's how their web site answers those questions:

Memoir—What Is It?
Candida Lawrence,
    Founding Editor

When we first considered publishing a journal focused on memoir, we were confident that we knew one when we read one, heard one, wrote one. After industrious spelunking into the fog of literary critical theory, book ads and blurbs, we have concluded that memoir will have to be defined by the submissions that come to us and our reactions to them. This position is a cowardly one, but we truly have looked so far afield that we cannot confidently erect a fence and say this belongs inside, this is definitely outside. We have even asked each other if a poem (Ginsberg’s Howl or his Supermarket in California) or Kate Wolff’s song Great Divide, or most of Hopper’s paintings, or even Peanuts cartoons that Schultz claimed were childhood memories, are these memoirs? If not, why not? If so, why so?

What we call memoir usually is first person, but need it be? My three published books (Reeling and Writhing, Change of Circumstance, …Fear Itself,) my publisher calls ‘memoirs’ and he names me ‘memoirist.’ Yet they are not always in the first person. Sometimes I want the distance of third person, the music of a poem, the pretense of speaking from another’s mind. Could a series of photographs be a memoir? Is a child’s drawing of a jail with barred windows and bombs dropping down from on high, a memoir?

And here comes St. Augustine, of all people, placed in front of me at the kitchen table by Joan, our managing editor:

And when indeed I wish to speak of Carthage, I seek within myself what to speak, and I find within myself a notion or image of Carthage; but I have received this through my body, that is, through the perception of the body, and I saw it and perceived it, and retained it in my memory, that I might find within myself a word concerning it, whenever I might wish to speak of it. For the word is the image itself of it in the memory, not that sound of the two syllables when Carthage is named, or even when that name itself is thought of silently from time to time, but that which I discern in my mind, when I utter that disyllable with my voice, or even before I utter.

Clear?

And Thoreau:

…we hear and apprehend only what we already half know. If there is something which does not concern me, which is out of my line, which by experience or by genius my attention is not drawn to, however novel and remarkable it may be, if it is spoken, we hear it not, if it is written, we read it not, or if we read it, it does not detain us. Every man thus tracks himself through life, in all his hearing and reading and observation and traveling. His observations make a chain.

That chain is, I believe, memoir, in whatever form it assumes. If you think otherwise, argue with us please.

And:

What’s with the “(and)” in “Memoir (and)”?
Joan E. Chapman,
      Managing Editor

These days, as you know, memoir is very popular, in many senses of that word. The Somebody, the Nobody, the Everybody—it seems that almost anybody can get a memoir published if it meets certain criteria. What criteria? We’re not sure. But we suspect the change in what’s getting published has something to do with the post-Marxist commoditization of our lives. Just a wild guess… Well, we searched our hearts, and that’s not why we started this journal.

When prospecting for a name, we noticed the word “memoir” can bring to mind a sepia-toned, how-grandpa-got-his-war-injury kind of publication. And though we find value in family stories, we had some concern people might get the wrong idea. Just so you know, we are not at all fond of sentimental. But we are looking for personal accounts, many of which are memoir, and we wanted a name that shouted that out. So what to do?

So we added the “(and).” Everything else seemed limiting; only the “(and)” seemed to open up the possibilities. And here we are.

Forming a new world religion is difficult and not particularly desirable. However, in that love is essential to all religions, one could speak of the universal religion of love.
-His Holiness the Dalai Lama