While in an Airplane

While our plane was circling, waiting for clearance to land in Atlanta, the sun had sunk low enough to cast a shadow of the tailfin onto the wing on my side of the plane.

Upon seeing this shadow I instantly imagined I was that shadow, spread on the frictionless, handleless slope.

I felt vertigo and fear of death. I felt desperate.

After that tingle of panic I enjoyed being the shadow slipping off the wing of a plane at 20,000 feet. I watched it slide off, inevitably, as the plane turned, and yet the tip most shadow hung on, like a flipper, a moment longer, a moment that made the shadow even more me and then I let go, disappearing somewhere between 20,000 and 0.

Handwriting

If you click the title above, it will take you to the entry on Kosmo blog, a deaf blogger who suggests a new meme, posting your handwriting. Great idea, says I.

Well I have the image scanned, but blogger is having issues.
Temporary link

Jobs and Karan

Whoa, I was just surfing, and hit upon Seth Godin's slideshow about Ideavirus. The slide that hit me was number 58, "Fashion editors know the zeitgeist and guess the future."

What I wouldn't give to know the zeitgeist and guess the future.

In a Hurry

I'm in a great hury to sell my soul to the devil and leave an imprint on the world. However, I have nothing with which to leave an imprint.

I will write, but nothing short of The Fountainhead or War and Peace will do.

What skills do I have? None. What skills do I want to have? All of them.

Swishy Pants

Today I saw an old man wearing a patterned shirt and a pair of swishy black pants. Upon seeing the swishy pants, I thought of dancing, I thought of the pants that some of my dancing friends or acquaintances had, and the way they flapped with energy.

I was then down hearted. I saw an advert looking for a dance instructor, volunteer, to teach swing or salsa (to novices), and I asked my wife if we should do it. She did not say yes. In her usual manner, she gave no answer. I felt a small anger and in anger I felt she had no ambitions. I softened some, and thought about her life, looking after two small children. I wondered if she would ever be free of them if she isn't free now.

I live in hope, but occasionally I find hope lies dormant and faithlessness or fear as well as anger and yanking to get out of the box I find myself in. I feel sometimes trapped, but I also feel that I can only emerge slowly and organically from this/these fetter/s.

It's really the Matrix

Who cares if there's actually a human brain in the machine? It's basically the Matrix, I realized, as I rode in to work today taking notes. I was going to get into the brain chemical evolution, the slow integration of machine into human body, the descent into machinery and the removal of all aesthetic requirement.

I finished reading WE, and it really is an amazing book, especailly from the time and place in which it was written. I recommend it as a must read; it's one of the few times I'd actually link to a store. I couldn't do Amazon, but then again, if this blog still exists a year from now and someone stumbles upon it, will the link still work? I think it doesn't matter because all links are ultimately perishable. Ebay/Half.com is a compromise, since it still has a glimmer of the original intent, that is, an online yard sale of sorts which to me is one of the best uses of the internet I can think of. Not to say Amazon isn't also a great site, it's just almost all book, movie, and music links are to that site. I zig where I can.

As the novel I would write and now probably won't started to form in my mind, I saw the accidental discovery of time travel and the introduction of a possiblilty that records could be better completed by traveling back in time. A delegation goes back and obtains better records. They arrive just as the last humans are hunted down. These humans have a piece of history not previously known because in their despair, at their extinction, they destroyed them. These time travelers were able to gain a copy because they were much more interested than the 'people/machines' that lived at that time.

In order to tell the long and evolutionary tale of humanity's descent, however, I realized I would have to tell it in vignettes, much the way the Animatrix short films did. Then I realized I was creating a world much like the world of the machines, only humans were not batteries, and the robots had human brains. I wonder if eventually the human brains would have been phased out as well, as technology improved. I would be a human conceit to assume that would not happen.

Also, in my mind, I had to justify the move into this direction. Again I ran up against Animatrix, because essentially the only driver I could think of was cheap, efficient labor in a capitalist society. This spawns entire projects to create the most efficient and least needy worker- primarily mechanical. Less emphasis is placed on art.

But then people must have the irrational, the artistic, the spiritual. Think of the world of Akira. There was a techno futuristic mystic and people followed him. Would this eventually cross into machinery?

The justification question is never answered in WE, it is only assumed that mechanization of human being is the best way to live. It is assumed that the Table of Hours, regimented schedule, and single minded compliance to the Benefactor is the best way to live. It is dictated to D-503 and he whole heartedly believes it. There is no 'why.' What WE doesn't and perhaps cannot explore is the rulers above him, the government that sets the rules, the system that pushes him round and round in a revolving pocket of air.

In writing about the Matrix I'm slightly reassured by the fact that in my world, the machines don't liquidate humans nor use them as batteries. However, the bodies are discarded once the brain is formed enough.

Also, as one of my characters, a leading character I want to use the name of the Nazi scientist who was Jewish and yet created the gas that would kill millions of Jews. This was written about in The Omnivore's Dilemma

Also, as a final note, this book will not be The Rise of the Machines, or at least, not the rise of the evil machines. There's always the robot gone evil scenario, but I want this theoretical course of history to be the stifling of humanity, and slow and consistent until eventually the descent is complete and there are no humans, no mistakes, and a contingency plan for everything.

In essence this novel is about me. My descent from feral to sophisticated. My great fear in doing so. My great fear of the unknown only because it is unknown and more so because it is desirable. Why it is desirable I'll not go into here.

Brain only required

The human brain was the only thing they couldn't replace, or hadn't replaced yet.

The first line in my new story, or the story I haven't written yet but resides in my head. This story is about some mid-future (as opposed to far-future) timeframe in which humans have, through the process of time, replaced all body parts including head, with mechanics, all but the brain. Also evolved is the physical body in which the brain resides. I'm sure this idea has been done before. I may have even read about it somewhere and this 'idea' is only a regurgitation of the original, long dormant and out of context. If someone does know of a source where this idea was written about, do let me know. And I don't mean CS Lewis' version, where a disembodied head is kept alive by scientists.

I'm thinking of piggybacking off my wife's site and putting the full text there. Once it's written of course.

Commonplace Emotion, Novel Experience

For the first time in my life, and I'm not young, I realized I'm experiencing (rather, have experienced and will probably again) the feeling of being intimidated by someone else. It's shocking to me, this realization. At the same time, I feel a little closer to the human race at this moment.

Some little woman's hair

This post is another one about my little hair fetish.. This morning I got off the bus and walked to the metro station, and ahead of me, I think from the same bus, was a little head of hair, on a short woman, whom I assumed was Hispanic or Latina, whichever is correct, and it's a ripple of black hair going down her back and waving a little at the end, in rhythm with her steps.

I know the hair isn't rippling and waving at me; it doesn't intend to hold my attention, but all the way through the gates and up the escalator there is no other thought but to memorize the hair covering this woman's head and part of her shoulders and back.

Along the way I caught glimpses of a porcelain cheek and magnet dust eyelashes. Not Hispanic or Latina. Probably not even pretty.

The hair, from my point of view, hung, starting at the top of the head, parted from middle front to middle crown, and hanging in ripples, reaching for the curve of the back between buttocks and shoulder bow. The sides prevented from reaching, but hair along the spine slid further, and the overall effect was a (blurry) V shape.

I could have obsessed for hours. I already have.