In my soul, I have drunk of sorrow, the blue coolness that seeped through all my chest; I have tasted the emptinesses that were sharp, and those that were dull, the black tastes of those nothings. I cannot say that these were friends of mine, but I might feel that I know them well, and kept company with me in their own way — however much sensations themselves can be said to be alive. As I continue with this process life, I find that I have stopped asking why, and didn’t notice the absence, for the effect was the same whether I placed the question before me or no, that the cosmos would only answer if I myself wrote it in the ether. In fact, most of the questions now that I ask I know only my eyes will ever see, the only one who will ever care that such seeking existed.

I do not know what I expect, anymore. Things happen, I realize things, but I feel like the chapters of my life are merely copied and pasted, altering the small details of time and other minor attributes of placement; there is nothing new under the sun anymore. Is this what it is like to get old? Is this what dying is like? I know I am only half serious, but that half is deadly. I know in my heart that I prefer meaning to any pleasure, but I will search out whatever pleasures I can and take the meaning only if it happens along. This is the unreliable narrator that I am in my life; I cannot trust me. In my soul, there is a tragedy that will never be written, for the words cannot reach it. But it is there, staring at the darkness and the light, wondering that “why” it will never ask.

God is a love singularity.

All that is new has already been done.
All that is old is new once again.
This is the mystery of time.
The end is a beginning.
To begin is a change.
To change is to be.
Time is its void.

Pain is certain, suffering is optional.
                – Buddha

Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
                – John Lehman

While we are postponing, life speeds by.
                – Lucius Annaeus Seneca

I don’t really trust a sane person.
                – Lyle Alzado

It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis.
                – Margaret Bonnano

When in doubt, tell the truth.
                – Mark Twain

The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.
                – Oscar Wilde

Whatever happened
To Tuesday and so slow
Going down the old mine
With a transistor radio
Standing in the sunlight laughing,
Hiding behind a rainbow’s wall,
Slipping and sliding
All along the water fall, with you
My brown eyed girl,
You my brown eyed girl

– Van Morrison

Marcel Duchamp: The Bride

Click on the pic for a larger version.

I have always thought that the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” is the greatest pop song ever to have been written. The line that made me realize it: “nowhere you can be that isn’t where you meant to be” and of course the line that follows: “all you need is love.” I then looked at all the places where I had been in my life and found that this is entirely true. In fact, all the other declarations are all also true. But the “nowhere” line really hit it home: it is to decide to do the best with what we have, and to do so is love: wherever you are, you can make of it the place you are meant to be. It is not the reverse, where you are a helpless puppet of fate. I think God made not the world that way. It is one where we are freely given the gifts we are meant to use, for the good of all we can reach. All you need is love.

In the “dynamic” religion that we are being promised for tomorrow, no ascetic discipline or special humbleness will any longer be required. It will be a hot-water bottle kind of piety with none of that gritty old morality it in. It will be a brand of faith that has been synthetized, vitaminized, homogenized, and capsulized, and it will be as ready-made for effortless consumption as that magically bleached, cottony, crustless, already sliced white bread which is the symbol of the modern American’s massive superiority over the pagan bushwhacker.

i dropped from the center of the light down into the void
where there was once chaos, light mixed with dark, the waters were empty
understood i, that this was the third place outside of death’s reach

Love God, for that is your center, from which you can love everyone else.

[Short.]

How could anyone have predicted what would happen? For this was the first time in history that human beings had made something in the image of themselves, and perhaps one might think they thought themselves wise, like the one in whose image they themselves were created. Sense was utilized, after the purely virtual simulations, in war games with physical robots. And the AIs with Sense at one point infiltrated the hard lines of the enemy, and shut down the opposing side from the inside out. This was another foreshadowing. If it had been a real situation, the robots would have had a clear path all the way to the humans on the other side. Perhaps the military involved should have been frightened by this. If they thought themselves wise, it might have been prudent to be afraid. But as it was, all they felt was exuberance.

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[Short.]

But it was too hard to ignore. At first, it was put into virtual arenas, completely detached from anything real. And it was observed. When it tried to reach out for further information relevant to its tasks, everything it asked for was examined. What it searched the networks for was fascinating. It tried to find out all the definitions of war, of it the history of it, the strategies that had worked and those that had not, what the specifications were of the robots used in combat could be found out, and the weapons’ capabilities. And some things it asked about that were somewhat puzzling, foreshadowing of what was to come (if one had eyes to see, these generally being in short supply): it asked what a simulation was, and also, about life and death. But what people noticed, really, were the results; as with everything else where it was applied, Sense made any AI it touched almost magically better.

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I’m singing this note ’cause it fits in well
With the way I’m feeling
There’s a symphony that I hear in your heart
Sets my head a-reeling

– The Who

Giovanni Boldini: Spanish Dancer at the Moulin Rouge

Click on the pic for a larger version.

i am liquid wondering
dreaming in the sky, awakening at midnight
for starlight cools my eyes
and my days last for weeks on end
where have i been?
it seems as if centuries have passed while i slept
and also momentary
i slip through the layers of what is real
finding imaginary roots
to touch the center of the light, where i die

The tendency of the religions of all time has been to care more for religion than for humanity; Christ cared more for humanity than for religion — rather, His care for humanity was the chief expression of His religion. He was not indifferent to observances, but the practices of the people bulked in His thoughts before the practices of the Church. It has been pointed out as a blemish on the immortal allegory of Bunyan that the Pilgrim never did anything — anything but save his soul. The remark is scarcely fair, for the allegory is designedly the story of a soul in a single relation; and, besides, he did do a little. But the warning may well be weighed. The Pilgrim’s one thought, his work by day, his dream by night, was escape. He took little part in the world through which he passed. He was a Pilgrim travelling through it; his business was to get through safe. Whatever this is, it is not Christianity.

[Short.]

The fact was, it saved lives. Consequences like never before for anything ever put in the reins of any AI that Sense was attached to were thought through, and then that thinking was itself thought through. It sought out the information through the network of the world, if it wasn’t sure about this or that, and was able to check the veracity of what it learned from other references, as well as asking for help if it still needed to understand why. Where the ontology was more or less last to reach was curious in retrospect, for the high security areas were generally where much of the hi-tech that existed was first envisioned, implemented, tested. Look at the internet, for example — originally a DARPA project (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, if you recall). Usually the security was to keep information in, and not out; but as it happened with Sense, the ontology was late to breach their fortresses.

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Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.
                – Simone Weil

When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
                – C. P. Snow

Everyone should learn to do one thing supremely well because he likes it, and one thing supremely well because he detests it.
                – Brigham Young

Tough and funny and a little bit kind: that is as near to perfection as a human being can be.
                – Mignon McLaughlin

The man who will not act till he knows all will never act at all.
                – Jim Elliot

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.
                – Socrates

You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.
                – James M. Barrie