Last year I worked a job  for a couple months where they made me sit in a cube four days out of five. With other PEOPLE. Good Lord, what was I supposed to say?

I started by trying to talk about work, which was the ostensible reason we were there. But that was thin soup. I had to find something else. And when I am nervous, I talk too much. When I’m excited, I don’t shut up. This could be why I work best at home.

Suffice it to say, I talked a lot.

But I started to collect a small audience. I was interesting, it turned out. I really wanted to have a conversation about the books I was reading. But my talk partner didn’t always bite on that.

When that happened I talked about what I was doing. I figured this would start a sharing conversation. In this movie obsesses world, I understand not everyone is reading a book. But everyone has time to spend. What are they doing?

“You have a lot of hobbies.”

Hmm.

I guess some people hoard their time like gift cards they forgot about. Piled up in pockets and in drawers until they are forgotten or the shop closes for business. Cannot redeem that value.

Missed opportunities. Water spilled on sand.

I wish I could sleep in longer. On a good day, I wake up before my alarm–an hour before it goes off. On a bad day I wake up  3 or 4 hours before my alarm and then spent serious time trying to get back to sleep.

But these days I am always up before the sun rises. I have a habit now of taking a photo of the sunrise. No one but the cat is awake to share it with me so I snap a photo and share it with my internet friends.

But when is the right time to snap the shot? I often look at the horizon across the street and see no sign of the sun. Dark.  Lately I’m seeing a bright star—Sirius the Dog Star.  

I have to wait for the light to reach the horizon–the light before the sun.The color of blue will shift with the light leaching up into the sky.

What’s the right time?
 
Now?
When the light is barely changing the sky?

Or now?
When the light has spread up to change the rim to orange and the dark blue is fully on the run?

Or do I wait until the rim of the sun is visible, peeking its fiery head over the horizon?

A shaft of light might angle off in a beam captured by my overwhelmed camera.

And that doesn’t even take into account what happens when there are clouds. Time is everything in how the light will bounce off the clouds. Catch the right second and the water of the clouds will explode in saturated color.

It’s been a very rewarding experience, taking my unwilling awareness into a study of sunrises. When it is time to take the shot, I’ve often walked up and snapped. Take the shot already. No, not yet. Wait and do it again.

That’s the thing. If I don’t like how the world looks right now, wait a moment. Things will change. And if I like how it is now, wait a month. Things will change.

My camera does not capture how I see it with my eyes either. There is a lot to think about with the morning. I can’t take it too seriously. I can’t hang on too tightly. Another one is coming.

Sometimes people like to ask “What celebrity would you love to meet?” They seem to expect a name of a movie star or a rock star. I enjoy movies and music but I am not interested in meeting those people. 

I want to meet people because of their ideas. I have a very short list of amazing thinkers and writers I would love to meet. I’ve spent time with their thoughts and learned things that changed my life. I”m a new and better person because of what these people have brought into the world. Those are the ones I would love to meet: academic celebrity crushes. 

I actually did meet one of these crushes. He lived right in my town and was a professor at one of the universities here. When my friend defended her dissertation and Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was leading the committee for my friend’s defense. 

I came to hear her dissertation, and I sat in the same room with my hero. 

I felt flamingly guilty the whole time.I wanted to support her, and I tooik time off from work to go. This was a fairly new job, and while I had slipped out for a long lunch and had it blocked off on my calendar. I loved hearing my friend’s fascinating study, and I was thrilled to be breathing the same air as the man who did the work to write Flow. I even raised my hand and asked a question during the audience participation portion. 

After dissertations, there is usually a party with champagne and snacks.I celebrate my new doctor friend with a hug, and Dr. Csikzentmihalyi invited me to stay for a drink and conversation. 

I couldn’t do it. I was afraid, and I was shy. I told myself I would get it trouble if anyone noticed that I was gone at work.It was a new and important job, I told myself. 

But that wasn’t it. I was afraid of meeting my hero, and being seen by him. I ran away. 

This reaction is strange and predictable. I have been that acolyte, irresistibly drawn to the object of my adoration yet a coward at the last moment. Wasting my own time thirsting but not letting it touch my lips. 

There are always reasons not to. There is always a risk. 

Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi passed away last year. I had my small moment, and it will not come again. 

That job was terrible and didn’t last anyway. It was foolish to deny myself that conversation. What other tantalizing fruits have I forbidden myself from enjoying? 

I don’t always dare, but I want to 

Dare to eat that peach. 

He’s been in the kitchen sink to watch. The neighbor across the way has been moving. There are a lot of things to keep track of across the street.

My cat Simon has a good life, but it is highly contained within the walls of our house. This is his everything. Well, sometime he will make a foray onto the back patio. He’s found a way to pry an incompletely closed back door with his paw. He will go out there to taste the grass, and then return inside. I will go back inside to find the back door open (What!) and him sitting with all feet tucked under his body as if he’d never moved.

Except his ears and slanted back. The outdoors is painfully shocking.

But the biggest part of his small world?

The food dish.

The twice daily serving of food are the two poles his world revolves around. He does not let me forget what time it is.

I know his world is small. And I am the one who provides for him. I have to be responsible.

He and I are not that different. My world is not that bigger. My day includes a few more places than his. But not that many.

Kitty has been struggling. His food is not quite right. He’s not eating his food.

He has become convinced that somewhere out there—he doesn’t know how—there is a better choice.

As his person, with the bigger world, I have to help his with this mystery. What else does the world have in it?

I bring him offerings. Will turkey giblet pate serve?
Yes. For a few days.
But then again….
No.

We have gone through liver. Tuna and whitefish.

Sometimes he likes it to be there, untouched, while he eats his regular dry kibble. Just a little bit.

I even gave him canned tuna. Which was exciting for a day.

He was under distress. This process was not comfortable for him. He was licking himself bald and worse.

The vet got involved.

But we have come to equilibrium. We wandered all the way through the wilderness, and discovered that he liked his original food after all.

There were some paths he needed to walk down. Rough, unfamiliar territory that he had to experience.

We had some communications that had to be refined. More brushings.

There were things I needed to know that he had to find a way to tell me.

It was a portfolio of things. And it was a set of experiences he had to have to arrive at this understanding.

His world is small.

My kitty is telling me that homeostasis is not good enough. That he and I can have more. He didn’t settle and I don’t’ have to either. Things can change for the better. The view out the window changes and I can too.

https://rumble.com/vvfcj2-book-review-gravitys-rainbow-by-thomas-pyncho

y Thomas Pynchon 1973

Anti-hero
Dystopian and hopeless
Post modernist

Feels to me like the direct descendant of Ulysses by James Joyce, but with much bigger scope

Very Matrix-like, we are cogs in the machine

Paranoia, identity, physicality and intellectual

I could not find a character in the book was was acting on his or her own impulses…I coined a word
A-VOLITION

Before any of the characters were able to make choices, all possibilities were preselected by institutional non personal systems. Even the most primal choices of reflexive sexual desire was manipulated by impersonal and uncaring institutional forces. The intention of those institutions was not for the benefit of the individual. The individual was irrelevant for anything but experimental observation and potential use…like a cog in a machine.

Desires, aspirations and love for the characters are an unnecessary side effect of their purpose as unnecessary and embarrassing as a fart.

But let’s talk about the Plot and the characters briefly.

Slothrup, an American LT working in the UK for allied intelligence, and he is under observation by the firm he works for because of a connection between his erections and the V-2 rockets explosions.
Slothrup has already been noticing this trend, that everytime he has sex with a woman a bomb invariably lands at that spot.

—I’ll be honest I thought this was some kind of masculine fascination that the story would get past…I kept reading in the hope that this stupidity would pass. Really? A sci-fi fantasy that when this mane ejaculated a real bomb went off? Aggrandizement much?…But then I realized it was not a distraction…It was the whole story.

So what’s the story? Lt. Tyrone Slothrup (whose name is kind of an anagram for Entropy, the tendency to devolve into chaos) is trying to figure out what is happening…beginning of the story is him noticing a pattern, wondering if he is paranoid. How could he not be paranoid? But he discovers that his workplace…the allied intelligence…has him under observation for this connection he hold between the bombs and his erections

It appears he is not paranoid enough

A lot of this book is comedy—for the right sense of humor laugh out loud funny. It’s absurd and ridiculous. I think it’s a masculine kind of humor, I did not laugh. I did see that it was there, but sadly it didn’t make me laugh. Possibly because none of the characters were likeable, only pitiable.

In the heriod tradition, He does eventually go on a foggy quest to find out more about this weird connection between his sexual impulses and bombs going off. His travels/adventures reminded me of James Joyce Ulysses, although the scope was much broader, geographically, across time and with difference characters. Ulysses was rooted in physical reality. I could recreate the walk though the very real city of Dublin.

Pynchon’s gravity’s rainbow has a fictional geographay, like Catch 22. The action takes place in the psyche

He is pushed and pulled through this landscape, meeting people and exploring more of his questions. He and the plot focus in on the very first V2 rocket…with it’ specific serial number. This special rocket is held in reserve.

Through these travels. Slothrup knows his identity even though others mistake it because of the uniforms he has to wear (English, german, rocket man, rusian officer, pig)
His pig costume is worn by someone else, who gets attacked and castrated by actors who are intent on castrating HIM, but they are fooled by identifying as his costume instead of himself
Were they castrating slothrup to stop the bombs from falling?
Very backwards, and even so they got it wrong.

The sexual scenes in this book are perverse. Graphic and nearly constant. The book did win the National book award in 1974, and the Pulizter committee REALLY wanted to give it their award so bad, but drew back because of the description of sexual Fecal play. This institution played exactly along with the themes of the book by not awarding any litererary prize that year, annihilating itself in appreciation of this black hole of a book.

This book has layers upon layers of very important themes that can be explored. I don’t have the energy to go very deep.

For being the most masculine book I’ve ever read, this book does not have any male characters or characteristics I admire. No desire, no aspiration. All the characters are acted upon, not actors. Even the actions they do take are mostly facilitating the institutions’ broader manipulation and control of themselves and others.

Because of this, it’s very very relevant. The world has become more de-personal than ever. Pynchon was prescient in his description. Like the matrix the individual is reduced to a consumable material. I see in many places a war not just on individual thought, but on individuals themselves.


The idea of our sexual impulses being controlled and tracked by non-personal institutions is as relevant to today as the watch on my wrist.

I hate waiting. Don’t like it if I have to wait for someone else. Don’t like it if I have to wait for something. It’s tough if I have to wait for the right time. 
 
I like to go. Let’s do this! 

Still there are times when I must wait. I have to wait. 

The decision has been made and the decision action hangs in the eternal present. It is unfurling, but it hasn’t happened. 

The action might require another person or group of people to agree. So I must maintain my intentions and be persuasive. 

This looks like making a statement to an audience and staying silent. 

Wait for it.  

Wait. 

Wait. 

Let that person hear it, understand it and acknowledge what I said. 

That’s so uncomfortable. 

I have leapt into that breach, thrown myself into it with desperate offers or suggestions. I’ll handle it, I take care of it, just don’t make me have to sit in the agony of uncertainty. 

Even if it’s the opposite of what I want, It is better to have a direction and keep going. FINE! I’ll do everything, just let’s get started. I’m dying 

But the growth is in the pain. What I learn and who I become during the waiting is of greater value than what I thought I was trying to achieve. 

The synthesis formed in the two people working together and growing towards one another is the product of that growth. This is the transformation. 

But only if I stay true to myself. If I can get clear on what I what, what I need to ask for. 

Say it. Ask it. 

And let it shimmer like a ripe fruit on a tree. Let the other person pluck it.  

We can learn together when I have the courage to leave space.  

Why can’t you be in a good mood? How hard is it to decide to be in a good mood and be in a good mood once in a while?

-Lloyd Dobler “Say Anything”

It was a tough day at work and the boss had sent me an unexpected one-on-one meeting invite. I knew what that meant: nothing good.

The exact form the bad news would take took over my mind. What had someone else said about me? I knew I hadn’t done wrong, but I did not know what kind of mean-spirited rumors were being spread.

I’d been living in this attitude of dread for months. This meeting was a spark to a very ready panic.

I knew it. I’d been trying to find my way out of this pit of despair for some time. I’d found a new friend who was helping me. I’d shared my story.

“I’m not making this up! I have proof, evidence that there are things happening behind my back!” I wailed.

She nodded. “I believe you,” she said.

What  a relief! I barely believed myself. Surely I had some something to deserve this ill-treatment. How could people be this cruel when I’d done nothing wrong?

“But what if you didn’t have to feel trapped? What if you could see this as good news?”

This was a troubleshooting question. I was used to working with tricky equipment and wires. I’d often found incorrect routing and connections to be the problem.

What if I could try to see if I could believe this was possible?

My past experience would lead me to think it was not. But it was possible, even if it was a small chance.

I could hang on to that small chance. I decided that I would not let the dread over take me. I dropped a flag in the ground and declared that it would be good.

It didn’t take away the fear or what could happen. But I set my mind to look for what could be good. 

It let some air in, and I was able to breath and be more free.

It’s not impossible. Good things do happen. Even when I make them myself.

My orange tree is still full of very ripe delicious oranges. And the Mandarins, right next to it, are ripening too. It’s always surprising to me how generous nature is…so much fruit! So much possibility.

Everywhere I look, human beings have popped up around rivers. The rivers have water to feed the flora and fauna which feeds us. But they also move, and carry our stuff. Just put the food and the other things gently on a ship and they can go to wherever we need them to go

Of course, people would take advantage of this easy route. It would take so much work to carry that load over land, we might never have done it. Of if we had, we would have charged a lot more for those things.

Use the energy that is being given. That’s what my Sensei teaches me in martial arts. If someone is charging at me, it a great idea to step a bit to the side with a shove and give them a free path right down into the ground.

I’m all for hard work, but those early human on the edge of the rivers were showing that there might be an easy way. Imagine, a woman gathering food from up the river and trying to carry it back. She stops to wipe the sweat off her forehead and sees the leaves floating on the river. Couldn’t her burden float too? A little floaty barge with some rope would make everything easier.

I don’t have to do it the way it’s always been done.

I don’t have to keep doing it the first way I tried.

I can mix it up. Look at it a different way. Who or what might be able to help? Like I said, Nature is surprisingly generous. There is so much there ready to be utilized, it’s practically going to waste. Some inquiry, curiosity and gentle pushes could have huge effect.

We are here to help each other.