Friday, July 29, 2016

Fists, Fists Full of Fire

Fists, Fists Full of Fire

“The first great book was a little girl’s handprint on the wall of a cave.”

What does it mean to live with fire? To be greeted every morning with a big bag of wet sand on your chest?  To have to put all your strength into pushing that bag of sand off and then to have to walk across live coals to find your pants?  Pulling up your pants is exhausting – cold sweat runs down your spine. Sitting in a pool of fear and throwing fists full of scalding caffeine down your throat until you can focus, focus just enough to remember that you wear glasses?  Wrestling demons of self-doubt, sometimes even self-hatred – demons with screaming eyes of self-hatred – before you can find those glasses?

Every mistake and fuck-up you have ever committed running on a never ceasing loop through your brain?  Especially the fuck-ups.  The really bad stuff, the behaviors, each one of which basically ruined your life until you beat it back with a fury born of some kind of faith?   Each one gaining in volume with each loop?  Knowing that none of those actions were intentional, but more a Tourette’s response and you were still held totally responsible for. All of them stacked one conjoined to the next and responsible, in bulk, for the failure that is your life 

Shoving some calories that you don’t even taste into your face, because you know, with absolute certainty that you must – or you will pay for it later in the day if you don’t.  Without that push of glucose, your hands will start to tremble, your heart will begin racing and a daylight nightmare of anxiety will engulf your very soul.  Eat or find yourself locked in a closet filled with snakes.

And yet, despite all of that, you shed that skin of destructive bullshit and begin to make something worthwhile of the coming day. 

Then … then … the knowledge that you must exercise.  It hurts.  It begins with pain, the pain crescendos into somethingwait!  A change begins to slide into the day, somehow the pain becomes a challenge.  Now challenge is something you are expert at.  Life itself has been a constant challenge.  We got that one down.  We, the shitty self and the angel, do not know the easy path.  The challenge becomes a song.  Starting low and distant, the song builds and the exercise becomes – breaks like a tsunami – into a chorus, into a huge choir of hope.

HOPE!

ANGELS WINGS OF HOPE soar into the scene.  For now it has become a brand new scene.  The tragedy that was the fitful attempt at sleep and became a drama, the opening scene of a cheap soap opera that was the act of getting out of bed, into clothes and the breaking of a gut gnawing fast.  Now it is a new scene which has the potential of becoming the saga of a hero.  Into a poem that could run down the ages and become legend. 

Not that it really could, or will, truly become legend.  It is all merely hope.

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”  The Gods repel this hate.  False!  This is Satan and false!  Hope is the nectar of the real Gods.  Hope is oxygen.  Life begins with hope.  Death must be greeted with hope that is stronger yet.  Hope is what gives value to breathing.

With a new day’s focus on a horizon of possibilities built with logs saturated to dripping with the most flammable, highly combustible, blood of dragons is a pyre.  A pyre waiting for a spark.  The tiniest spark of hope.  A fistful full of fire, mixed with a fistful of hope plus faith, thrown with split-the-arrow accuracy directly at the center-base.  A bonfire instantly explodes.


WAIT!  “What’s going on here?  Man!  That’s a lot of heavy stuff, there ……  Well, I know it is.  It certainly is.  Singular?  Unique?  The author is nuts.  Well yup, that’s true.  However, you can’t be extraordinary if you’re ordinary.  And, I don’t think it’s possible to be truly extraordinary by mere intention.  That’s called being weird.  The difference between exceptional and being weird, is that those who are actually extraordinary, don’t know it. 

It’s like the difference between passion and desire.  Desire is something that is felt, something that is sought after.  Passion is something that exists.  There is a person and there is a passionate person.  But, in fact, with the passionate person, the person disappears and all that truly is, is passion.  Or, with passion, there is no person, there is only the passion. 

Passion throws fists filled with fire, by the fistful, at the passion’s target.  The thrower, the pitcher, simply must throw that fire.  Fire burns, fire gives bright light, but it hurts – fire is painful and must be expelled.  However for the extraordinary, most often also called the insane (or, read: mentally disabled), every time the arm is brought back to the side of the body, the hands fill with fire again – and then again, and again, and again. 

It MUST be expelled  
thrown at something
when it hits
life explodes – a meteor strike
and the wonder flairs (flares)
solar flairs
sometimes beautiful
sometimes devastating
always real
flying, flying, soaring
ripping space and time
Why? Must I come back down?  Must I return to the dirt and toil of another day?  Sun flairs or the tar pits.  From one directly into the other.  Over and over and over.  Sisyphus.  Immortal, but exposed for eternity.  And all I meant was to give love.  I only wanted to bring light to the darkness. 

And, the waves come and take wiping away my castles. 
And, then there is nothing.


(Author’s Note:  I realize this is a heavy piece and I have debated for a long time, whether to post it or not.  After forty years there is one person, a single person, whom I trust in all things; that is my wife.  I read this to her and asked that question.  Without hesitation or even explanation, she said, “Yes”.)



dalepeterson.us

Just published  Twelve Roses for Kathy – A journey on a motorcycle out of the darkness of bipolar disorder”





Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Cloud Blooms and Algorithms

Cloud Blooms and Algorithms

“Accept nothing as factual unless it makes sense, logically.”

First of all we very frequently, most of us anyway, have a knee-jerk reaction of fear of the mere word “algorithm”.  And yet, and yet, an algorithm is honestly a very simple concept.  All it means is that using a system of symbols, symbols we can literally just make up, to explain a function.  The function can be honestly, anything!  Anything!  Just an idea that gets a bit complex to put together in prose. 
An algorithm is like the rendering, the formula (whatever you might call it) of a molecule, or even better a compound.  The scientific representations of elements are all based on Latin – making the whole scientific study universally understood (no need to get into all of that).  Most of the international scientific community is essentially based on various Latin, and some Greek, nomenclature.  There is really no justification in doing this; it is just the way it all was first written down and it stuck.
Even the Chinese, who were first on the scene with most of this stuff, use the Latin and Greek – now?  Why because they have to.  The Chinese were far advanced of any European scientific community with hundreds of innovations.  They just kept everything in-country; wouldn’t let anybody in, wouldn’t let anything out.  By the time they opened up to the rest of the world, a lot of stuff was pretty much carved in stone.  They were stuck.  If you want to be part of the rest of the world, ya gotta do it however the majority are already doing it.  Being a very pragmatic culture, they got in line.
So some years ago I got interested in calculus.  Through my interest and study I find that rarely do the words calculus and algorithms intersect and almost never coincide; at least in most written definitions of the words.  For instance a quick Wiki study doesn’t include both words in either text on each. 

My conjecture is that calculus (and I realize most of us also run like rabbits from the word calculus) is merely the use of algorithms in the same manner as object oriented computer programming. 

Hey! I’m already bored!  Get to it!  WTfuck?”

Please, dear reader, stick with me just a little longer.
We, my little family and I, live in an area immediately adjacent to the largest inland body of water on the plant; being the Chesapeake Bay.  This not a boast, but a geographical topographical – accepted as such, mostly – fact.  Topographically in terms of elevation changes, which can be calculated using algorithms, there is not a whole lot.  Compared to almost any mountainous region, it’s pretty flat.  However, due to the presence of so much water in relation to such a variegated landscape, we get a lot of weird weather. 

Or, seemingly minor changes in the temperature over the land, due to the prevailing winds to those slower temperature changes of various rivers, bays, inlets, marshes, vast wetlands and even some access to open ocean, the weather can go just crazy.  Being a motorcycle rider, about 50% to 70% of my travel time, I notice this; out of necessity, I notice weather changes.  A cloud bloom is pretty much just what the words combine to indicate.  As dandelions and mushrooms seem to generate overnight, in almost anyplace where conditions are even close to permitting, cloud blooms can also occur.  A clear blue sky to a crackling thunderstorm in minutes.

The presence of and the corresponding prevalence of these cloud blooms could be, fairly easily, calculated using predetermined algorithms.  Or, once it is determined that X is the result of factors Y, calculated through established patterns as objects, we get Z.  A cloud bloom.  Note: Really, don’t make me get into the details.  Think about it for a minute.  No, this isn’t algebra, since each element represents essentially massive amounts of data.  Once that data is accumulated, do we really need to repeat it?  End Note. 

The agile human mind, can observe quickly and amass objects of apparent physical conditions, compare and contrast those objects of data with other objects of data as algorithmic conclusions and perform basic calculus formulations. 
High feathery clouds spread from horizon to horizon with a steady wind – “Is it gonna rain?”  “Nah.”
Quickly blooming low level clouds with rising swirly wind – “Is it gonna rain?”  “Yup.”

Looking out the window of this coffee shop right on the Bay, I just witnessed a small cloud bloom far off to the east.  As I watched, it flattened across the bottom and turned dark.  Across a clear blue sky roughly transcribing a diagonal to the land to the northwest, a massive lightening strike.  Where I sit, not a drop of rain, the sun is shining and there is no wind whatever. 

Somehow, after all these years, I find there is an interesting analogy a person could draw from a simple knowledge of math, plus what I just witnessed nature accomplish and life itself – life as we know it, that is.  That’s just a thought though.

dalepeterson.us

Just published  “Twelve Roses for Kathy – A journey on a motorcycle out of the darkness of bipolar disorder”



Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Merck and Craige: Old Dogs II

Merck and Craige: Old Dogs II

So… on the first part of this bit on old dogs, I covered the groundwork for this breed; i.e. Border Collies.  Career working dogs.  Our first retiree is named Merck and he was 13 years old when he took up residence here.  This is old for most dogs.  We have had other dogs and none of them made it to thirteen.  Closest was old Max who passed at twelve.  At thirteen though Merck is still pretty spry.  He never barks and we suspect he is pretty hard of hearing.

He was a breeder, so he is what they call an in-tact male.   But at his age he doesn’t have any aggression.  Merck is the most laid back dude.  He’s maybe thirty pounds and long haired black with bright white color blazes around his neck and on his feet.  He’s a handsome devil.  And he has huge feet.  Way out of proportion for his body.  Somehow though, like the cool dude that he is, he makes it work.

Because our youngest daughter has some developmental delays and is the gentlest and most sensitive person you will ever meet, any animal guests in our house MUST be gentle and totally trustworthy.  Must not bark (a lot), bite or scratch.   Our dogs are going to get hugged and fawned over.  They have to be on board with that.  Merck-man is fine with the huggy attention, he doesn’t require it … he doesn’t seem to be emotionally dependent.  A cool guy who just wants to hang out, get fed and wander about in the woods around our rural homestead.

We grew to like Merck so much that we told the breeder lady, who also runs a business using Borders to scoot geese off of airplane runways and golf courses.  This is really the most humane and natural method of helping the birds to find safer places to nest.  Because they are bred to constantly attempt to bring wide spread groups of other animals into small dense groups, the Collies take after the birds and try to herd them together, which naturally just causes birds, who can fly, to take off.
After enough of this harassment, the birds just look for a quieter neighborhood.

This keeps them from crashing airplanes by getting sucked up into jet engines or crashing through the airplane windshield and killing the pilot.  No good.  On golf courses, yes they crap all over everything in big tubular greasy dumps.  This makes greens, fairways and cart paths very unpleasant.  Golfers don’t pay large amounts of money to wade through goose crap.  It just takes the fun out of the game, somehow.
But also golf courses tend to dump a lot of herbicides on their grass(es) to avoid nasty weed plants from ruining the postcard look of the place.  When exposed to, and often ingesting, these herbicides, the gosling chicks either don’t hatch, or they have two heads and maybe one wing.

Is affection a thing?  Is just being furry and lovable and devoted a thing?  I think it is.  I think it’s a pretty important thing to have a companion who just accepts you.  That’s it – this furry lovable animal just wants to be near you.  It likes you to stroke its fur and talk to it with returned affection.  So because the ole Merck-man was so affectionate and cool to have around, despite his weird arthritic walk and being mostly blind and mostly deaf, we wound up with taking in his work buddy, also know as Craige.  Merck and Craige had worked together for several years and had become rather inter-dependant.

However Craige is a couple of years younger than Merck and we suspect somewhere along the way, in his resumé, he had a trainer (dog worker) who wasn’t all that kind to him.  He will not allow himself to hugged around the neck.  This makes him jerk back and sulk in a corner for an hour or so.  Doesn’t bark or snarl, just quite obviously finds that gesture very uncomfortable.  However, he also seems very insecure, so he is always nudging people for petting and other forms of affection.  He insists on being in the same room as my wife, who is kind of his pack alpha – for some reason.  Not me, the male who has to carry all the luggage and move the refrigerator for Saturday cleaning. 

And, both have decided that they won’t obey me if my wife is anywhere present.  These dogs are bred and programmed to establish an alpha and that person is the one who has to give them commands.  Which is good if they are working and there are a lot of people around and especially if those other people also have dogs with them.  Our guys almost never take their eyes off my wife, she gives a command and bam! Off they go to do that command.  The only time when they will listen to me is when I take them out by myself.  Then for, at least that short time, they will do what I tell them.

Merck widdly-waddles along the dog path in his odd sort of carb-walk.  Big strangely huge feet – kind of like a dog-Hobbit –plopping twisted outward.  Even at his age with all his infirmities,  he puts off this perkiness vibe.  Kind of a perky-confidence.  As I say kind of “dude-like”.  Doesn’t really give a shit what anybody else thinks.  Craige never gets much farther away from his handler (owner-trainer-alpha) than maybe fifty feet, unless he is given the command to chase.  Then he is off like a bullet.  As soon as he has made some other animal, like a bird or squirrel or snake, take off, he looks back at the handler to find out if there is anything else for him to do.  At the command Craige come!  He trots right back.  Because often these dogs work in pairs, the handler has to use their names before each command.

All of this hardwired instinct combined with good work training, makes these old dogs a real pleasure to take out for walks.  They are too old to get in much trouble, they are bred and trained to obey commands, they respond delightfully to respect and affection.  All in all, although we may only have them for not too many more years before they pass on, they are getting a dignified retirement and they still can perform a very useful purpose; extending love and companionship for a small family that loves dogs, but just need low maintenance family members.

I don’t think there is much of a stretch to maybe extend this kind of thinking to our human culture. 

dalepeterson.us

Just published  Twelve Roses for Kathy – A journey on a motorcycle out of the darkness of bipolar disorder”