Mirror Mirror

How would it be
if you could see
through my eyes
as if you were me
and I could see
through your eyes too
to see as you see
as if I were you?

Cabin Fever

January cold
endless, like a frozen sea.
I long to leave here.

Opinions

Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one and most of them stink!

Thought for the Day

I don’t think that, in the entire history of mankind, telling a very upset person to “calm down” has ever had that desired effect. Just a thought.

The Night Commuters

The shades of dusk descend
with all the colors of the desert;
sand, blue sky, blood red.
Then they appear, the children
like ghosts, swathed in white
from the empty quarter. They come
fleeing the hell the left behind them;
the Lords Resistance Army.
They haunt the towns
each night, gathering
to themselves for refuge
against the dark rain.
The night commuters,
bus stations, churches,
grave yards and hospitals,
their only homes.
With the dawn they are gone
like morning mist
and bad dreams
to hide wherever shadows go
during the day.

This poem is about children in Africa, Nigeria, I think, who leave their remote homes each day before sunset to hide in the cities in towns. They are the specific victims and targets of the Lords Resistance Army, who rape the young girls and force the boys to be soilders. Very young children are killed, sometimes literally trampled to death underfoot. The picture of these kids coming into town out of the desert at night is one that I cannot get out of my head.

Title-less poem in the Haiku style

Ice on a still pond
frozen, like sleep, belies
a watery world of dreams beneath.

Tiger Tiger Burning Bright

On December 25th three people were mauled and one was killed by a tiger at the San Fransico Zoo. Afterwards, I heard several in the media ask, why would the tiger do that? WTF kinda stupid question is that? What part of TIGER did they fail to comprehend?

Life, the Universe and Everything

In the beginning there was the One. There was nothing else but the One. The One was all matter and all energy. The One was conscious and alive, pure thought, but it was also curious, as we are curious. Where did we come from? Why are we here? Perhaps the One was a mote on an electron circling an atom in another dimension. Perhaps what the One was defies our brains and our language to describe. The One is god. The One is the universe. The one is the Tao. The One is the creator of the 10,000 things, the Prime Mover. The One is this and more.

Driven by a need to create and to understand, the One became the universe we know today. This might have been the Big Bang. Time and Space were created. Galaxies, stars, and planets were created. Some were destroyed and then created again. The One then became life, amoeba, algae, lichen, plants, animals, insects, mammals and the higher vertebrates. The One became man. The One will continue to evolve into more complex things. The One will also continue to be the most basic and simple of elements. The One is Dark Matter. These things precipitated out of the One as solid material may precipitate out of a liquid suspension.

We are the One and the One is everything around us. When we are born we are nothing more than a new copy of the One, like a wave on the ocean. It is a separate thing, but also part of the whole. When we die, we return to the ocean. What made us is still there, like the water the wave was made out of is still there, we are just… transformed, just like matter can neither be created nor destroyed, neither can we. Some people, referring to fetuses, ask when does life begin? It began billions of years ago.

The One is pure consciousness and pure intelligence. Why do I think this? For several reasons. The first is Phi. The Golden Ratio. The golden ratio is approximately 1.6180339887. Phi is a proportion that seems to be encoded into the very fabric of the universe. When we look at rations and comparisons, Phi shows up literally everywhere. Two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio between the sum of those quantities and the larger one is the same as the ratio between the larger one and the smaller.

There is beauty and symmetry in the world. For all actions there is an equal and opposite reaction. What is the likely hood that, during one of mankind’s most formative times, when we were first exploring this globe, that there would be a first magnitude guiding star almost smack dab at due north; when there are no other first magnitude stars even close by? I hate the use the term ‘Intelligent Design”, but there it is. Not in the way people use it today, because my version of god is very different from their homo-centric view.

Why are we here? Observation of the world around us gives us the answers to all these questions. We are here to procreate and to create. This is what the simplest organisms do, from viruses to Blue Whales, all living things want to make copies of itself. We are different in that not only can we produce offspring we can produce things bigger than ourselves, art, literature, buildings, etc.

The questions we ask are simple. The answers are simple too. They are revealed to us everywhere we look, if we just look. Talk less, look more.

Fake Celebrity Wives in Rehab

OK, TV programming has hit its lowest level ever. Recently, I saw these two shows, Celebrity Rehab and Real Wives of Orange County. All I can say is WTF?! In case you haven’t seen this drivel, Real Wives of Orange County is about shallow, fake, yet rich women who go out to lunch everyday, have their nails done and drive expensive cars. What Celebrity Rehab is about should be self explanatory. In regard to Celebrity Rehab, I think it makes a mockery of a serious issue and belittles the “stars” of the show who are little more than emotional prostitutes, hawking their fame and their sad stories for money.

Watching Real Wives of Orange County makes me think that society, at least in this country, has come to an end. These women care only about appearances. How they look, where they live, what their house looks like, what they wear and what sort of car they drive. They have no consideration for the deeper meaning of life, spirituality, or self reflection. They have no care for intellect or intelligence. It’s all about looking good. You can be the most empty headed idiot but if you have white teeth and big boobs you have all you need. Everything is about bling and “sparkle”. They spend their days getting tanned, going to the juice bar, buying jewelry and the like. At night, they go out to the “clubs” drinking and dancing and driving up and down the street looking for, or making, drama.

What is the purpose of this show? Are we supposed to feel sorry for them because they are so vacuous? Are we supposed to look up to them as role models? Or are we supposed to feel jealous because our lives are not like theirs? Or, is it simply, that the average TV viewer is as shallow and fake as these “Real Wives” are? I have to say that it is the most appalling and disgusting spectacle I have ever seen. What’s even sadder is that there is probably some very talented writer out there who would love an opportunity to have their material made into a TV show but it will never see the light of day while crap like Real Wives of Orange County is everywhere today. Bah!

The Top 10 Greatest Guitarists Ever!?

I belong to a discussion group where, from time to time, people attempt to rank order guitarists in terms of “who is the best”. While I realize that this is a ridiculous thing to attempt because it is so subjective and there are so many different ways to categorize “quality”, at the same time an exercise which can kinda be fun, especially if it gets me to spend sometime studying other guitarists techniques. So I spent some time on Youtube looking at videos. I purposefully tried to stay away from tried and true choices like Jimi Hendrix, though I did not immediately discard them as possible choices for me. What was important to me was 1) that the artist was someone I have seen either in person or in video 2) the person had made a significant contribution to guitar music history 3) The person could play many different styles and seemed to possess a masterful knowledge of music and as well as the guitar. So without any further adieu, here is my list. Feel free to add you own opinions. I am especially interested in great guitarists that are not “famous”.

( In no particular order )

1 Stevie Vaughn – Simply a phenomenon

2 Trey Anastasio – Trey can play anything

3 Andy Mckee/Micheal Hedges – These guys have a very similar style and reinvented how to play guitar

4 Joe Satriani/Steve Vai – Tie, they are equally as good, though Satriani is the father of “Shred” and teacher to a whole raft of contemporary rock guitarists

5 Andre Sergovia – The classical master

6 Richie Blackmore – Father of Heavy Metal

7 Tuck Andross – The guitar becomes a complete band in this guy’s hands.

8 Jerry Garcia – What kind of deadhead would I be if I did not include Jerry?

9 Jorma Kaukonen – Jerry Garcia said that Jorma was the best guitarist he has ever seen and after seeing him in person myself, I have to agree!

10 Steve Howe – Just unreal. A blend of classical mastery and rock sensibility.

11 Brian Setzer. I don’t know that I’d put him in the top 10, but at the same time could not leave him off my list.

I Am a Particle. I Am a Wave

One day I will return
to my quantum state;
neither here, nor there.
A complex wave.
Contours of constant probability,
defying prediction
of such conjugate variables.
Am I matter?
Am I spirit?
When my body is at rest
where is my energy?
It will have been
translated into this closed system
and become what I have done,
having changed this plane
even if only in the most
subtle of ways.
It goes on and on
even after my cause
has long been forgotten.

When my spirit
is thus quantifiable,
having irradiated away
and given off
its valance,
then you will know
all that I am
all that I was
and all I will ever be
and I will be gone
having crashed upon the beach
and returned to the sea.

Die Sucker, Die!

Every day in the news we hear about suicide bombers. Despite this type of terrorist tactic being used for decades, from my perspective it doesn’t seem to be all that effective. Yes, the outcome is horrific and we mourn for those killed or injured, but it doesn’t change anything in the geopolitical landscape; it doesn’t even seem to change many attitudes towards our chosen course of action in the Middle East. You would think that, with celestial virgins, religious belief and patriotism not withstanding, that any future potential human bomb might rethink their chosen career, and go Hhhhmmm, “I’m not sure this is really a good idea. Perhaps, I will send a strongly worded letter instead”. What would be a better idea would be if all the folks with this predilection would blow themselves up at the same time and have it be down with, or better yet, they can all gather and stand in one place and we will kill them for them. Easy!

No one ever won a war by dying for his country. The idea is to make the other poor son of a bitch die for his country!

White Water Rafting Principles and Their Application to Management

As a management instructor and consultant, I have periodically heard managers bemoan their lack of “control” in various settings. My typical response to that remark is that control is an illusion; there is really no such thing. At best, all we can hope to achieve is influence. I came to this conclusion, an epiphany really, several years ago during a white water rafting trip.

My buddies and I got stuck in a fairly aggressive section of river. There were rocks and white water waves everywhere. Fearing our immediate capsizing, we paddled like mad to keep our line in the river. The boat was heaving like a bucking bronco and many of my compatriots were holding on for dear life. Despite our frantic exertions, our efforts seemed to have little effect. After awhile we were unable to maintain our furious paddling pace and one by one my friends quite paddling at all. With each person who quit I noticed that our heaving was subsiding, though the river was no less riled. We were still rocking around quite a bit, but the ride was much smoother and significantly so.

As an experiment, I asked my friends to again put their back into their oars and paddle vigorously. They complied ( reluctantly, I think ) and again we were soon being shaken about. When we ceased paddling, again, our lot was much better in terms of our comfort. In fact, we found that we did not have to hold on as tightly as we had been.

I learned a lot from that experience. While I thought I was controlling the situation, my efforts were actually making matters worse. There was no way I was going to control the river, its size and strength were far beyond mine. But I did not have to control it. Like playing a musical instrument, it is important to know when and how to apply force, too much and you confuse the situation, too little and you lose any influence you truly do have. Rather than paddling crazily, it’s better to apply small actions at the right time. Managing organizations and people is no different.

Increasing the Cost for Hot Air

It seems that there are many people in the state of Connecticut, many more people than there used to be, who cannot pay their electricity bills. The state conducted a study and found out that the reason for this is because the cost is too high and people do not make enough money to pay the ever rising costs ( did this really require a study? I wonder what the study cost. ). I can relate. Each month my electricity bill seems to get bigger and bigger. Anyway, since we can’t allow people to not have heat or lights, the state formulated a grand plan. They would create a fund and people who qualify would be able to get monetary assistance to help them pay. What a noble scheme. So far, I’m OK with this. It’s the rest of the plan that has me bothered. Where is this slush fund going to come from, you may ask? Silly question! The people at the capitol have this all thought out! To pay for this fund, they are going to add a tax on to the cost of electricity! So in other words, and get this, because people can’t afford something, they are going to make that something MORE EXPENSIVE! Just one more of those things that make you go uuhhhmmmm, what were these people thinking?. This is a prime example of what I meant in “Spock is Wrong” about taking logic to its illogical conclusion!

Looking Back

Highlights and Lowlights of 2007

Ø Geocaching
Ø Sprained Ankle
Ø Hartford Pet Expo
Ø Grout Pond
Ø Re-meeting Mr. Wolf
Ø Cruise!
Ø Tending garden
Ø Building my pool
Ø Tearing down my deck
Ø Being second in command
Ø Mikes 40th
Ø Molly going lame
Ø Playing guitar
Ø Increased weight
Ø Fireworks
Ø Blog/writing
Ø Kiwi
Ø Big Binoculars
Ø The Cape in June.
Ø Hot Tuna
Ø James Taylor at Tanglwood
Ø Summer of Love Tour
Ø Bluegrass festival and MRC

Happy New Year !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot and days of auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne,
we'll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot and days of auld lang syne?
And here's a hand, my trusty friend And gie's a hand o' thine
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet For auld lang syne.

May 2008 smile upon you and bring you all the best life has to offer!