T: "I wish it was pillow day. Where there are pillows everywhere."
Dad: "Pillows everywhere?"
T: "Yeah, and all the pillows are filled with candy."
On not having arms
"Without arms you couldn't throw out the compost."
"Without arms, you couldn't pick flowers for your Mom on her birthday."
See, those are the important things.
]]>
And that's all.
1 Without a stool.
2 Referring to wood sorrel, an edible plant common in Illinois. Also referred to by the under-5 crowd around here as "heart plant", for the shape of its leaves. Actually, Teresa does her own share of eating it whenever she has a chance, so this list is apparently not exclusive to grown-ups.
3 I made her some this morning because her throat was crackly.
]]>Teresa: Dad, Maya said that difficult is hard. And I said that difficult is easy.
Can you please tell the best way?
Me: Mm-hmm. Is difficult easy for you?
Teresa: Yes.
]]>discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/in-no-time
My favorite part of the article:
"It's quite mysterious why we have such an obvious arrow of time," says Seth Lloyd, a quantum mechanical engineer at MIT. (When I ask him what time it is, he answers, "Beats me. Are we done?") "The usual explanation of this is that in order to specify what happens to a system, you not only have to specify the physical laws, but you have to specify some initial or final condition."
The mother of all initial conditions, Lloyd says, was the Big Bang. Physicists believe that the universe started as a very simple, extremely compact ball of energy. Although the laws of physics themselves don't provide for an arrow of time, the ongoing expansion of the universe does. As the universe expands, it becomes ever more complex and disorderly. The growing disorder—physicists call it an increase in entropy—is driven by the expansion of the universe, which may be the origin of what we think of as the ceaseless forward march of time.
Although the article seems to raise more questions (and good ones) than it provides answers, here's another part that I think is very elucidatory:
"Time may be an approximate concept that emerges at large scales—a bit like the concept of 'surface of the water,' which makes sense macroscopically but which loses a precise sense at the level of the atoms."
I am interested in Time especially because it enables consequences, results of actions, and learning, which is, according to Baha'u'llah, central to physical existence:
Out of the wastes of nothingness, with the clay of My command I made thee to appear, and have ordained for thy training every atom in existence and the essence of all created things.
— Baha'u'llah, Hidden Words
I also find this kind of reductionist thinking and experimentation appealing artistically because it breaks things down to such a fundamental level that I feel, when I'm reading it, like "this universe is actually pretty simple and mechanical", which can also be a pretty depressing thought.
But then I contrast that with the whorling beauty that surrounds and permeates us, and wafts from every direction, and in the contrast between that and the reductionist explanations, the beauty itself takes on new meaning.
It's like listening to music before and after studying music theory—the structures you subconsciously appreciated before are now open to you for deeper exploration.
]]>I am 36 and have managed to avoid needing glasses so far, but I wonder how much longer I can go. I think my Mom made it to about 40, and I've heard that your lenses harden gradually, with 40 marking about the limit at which you can focus both close-up and far away under your own power. The question I have is this: can you postpone reading glasses by exercising your lenses? Does flexing them deliberately have any effect on their pliability? I have been habitually de-focusing (blurring) my eyes every few minutes or seconds, for years, perhaps with that hope in the back of my mind. Does anybody else do that?
Here's a test: what are the limits of my focusing? I can see far away clearly, but how close can I go? I remember it was as little as two or three inches once upon a time, but I'm sure it's much less now.
Seven inches. Same in both my right and left eyes. Maybe 6 3/4 on the right. Any closer and I lose sharpness. I'm surprised—I didn't think I could still focus that close.
I should keep track of it—it might make a cool graph.
I heard that one of my male ancestors (maybe my Dad's Dad's Dad?) kept holding books farther and farther from his face when he read, until he got to arm's length and couldn't hold them any farther. At which point he relented and got reading glasses.
Do other people do that de-focusing thing? I asked Georgia and Maya; Georgia (age 8) didn't know what I meant—the only thing she thought of was squinting. But Maya (age 5) did, and demonstrated by getting a vacant look on her face for a moment. I encouraged her to keep up the skill (de-focusing; not looking vacant).
]]>I'm reluctant to write such a list; historically, I think I have a rather pessimistic self-view. But maybe that's out of laziness -- going on the assumption that if I emphasize my bad qualities, I'm less likely to get in trouble when I mess up. That's classic procrastination behavior, I've learned. That is, if you emphasize your bad qualities, you lower other people's expectations of you, thus making your life easier. Often confused with humility?
So if I say something I like about myself, I run the risk of messing it up later when people expect it of me. I'll have to stick with the intrinsics, then, which I can really count on, rather than the ten things I want to be true that I could then like about myself.
Anyway, I don't think I'll come up with ten right off the bat, but I can at least think of one right now, and I'll keep working on them.
1. I tend to remember the good parts of past events and forget the bad.
I, erm, have a tendency to see the past through rose-colored glasses. That's not necessarily always pleasing to the people around me, but that wasn't the criterion for this list, hmm? It's something that I like, though, because it helps me not dwell on the past, and even feel good about it.
On the other hand, it's not something I do universally. I've got a few good argh, why did I have to say that to so-and-so; now they'll think I'm an idiot/have their feelings hurt/be scarred forever! moments in my closet. But lately, when I remember one of these that is long past amends, I have tried to say a few Removers of Difficulties and entrust the rest to life's capacity for renewal and healing.
What made me realize I have this tendency to remember the good parts of past events was remembering Bahiyyih's and my wedding. The two of us were talking about it a year or two ago, and I realized that Bahiyyih was feeling miserable about it and I was relatively happy. She would mention something unpleasant about it, and it would take some time for me to remember that bit, but when I thought about it, I would generally remember something that I had liked. "The sound system that Michael Moutrie set up really worked out, didn't it?" We didn't disagree on any of the particulars, but almost all of the bad parts I had dismissed as not really important, and instead I'd held onto the good parts.
Now it may also just be that Bahiyyih and I have different taste in events; for example, I think she liked the reception that we had three months later a lot more than the wedding. And come to think of it I didn't much enjoy that reception. Too much dancing and extended periods of being demonstrably happy. It was pretty tiring! Then again, I don't remember the reception that often; I prefer to think about the wedding :)
Now, admittedly, this tendency to remember the good parts and forget the bad parts sometimes means I require a few trips to the classroom before I learn my lessons, but somehow I still like it.
]]>Georgia: Yeah; Laura and Mary didn't.
That's right, in Little House on the Prairie, they didn't have computers.
]]>
Billy, Bahiyyih, Teresa, Maya, and Georgia
It turns out that Macs and Linux, which represent my two computers at work, let you have your desktop background rotate automatically every once in a while (say, every hour). I put up some of my favorite family photos (thanks, Picasa, a great photo-organizing program for Windows -- comically, now I've got the three major computer operating systems represented here, which may be appropriate given the Book that this post refers to), to switch randomly every half-hour or hour. And into them, I've been slowly adding photos with quotes superimposed over them. (Created with The Gimp, a free image editing program.)
So there you have it, my personal motivational posters :). I don't put them up exclusively -- they're mixed in with about 150 uncaptioned family photos, so I only see them once in a while.
They were fun to do, although decidedly amateur; let me know if you notice any mistakes, and I'll correct them. The Writings of Baha'u'llah are absolutely overflowing with excerpts that I would love to have on my desktop.
You know what would be cool? A program that automatically picks a quiet spot on a photo and puts an appropriate quote there. Or even one that combines a feed of photos and a feed of quotes.
]]>Oh, the fish swim in the ocean
The sharks swim in the sea
Won't some kindly mer[maid/man]
Come and marry me?The eel will be the witness,
The squid will bring the ink,
The crab will find some rings, and
We'll all be in the drink!
We've all been away from the beach for too long.
]]>
Sustainability. Ownership. Using local materials.
Georgia: Can I have some soft white rice?
Me: Sure. [Georgia was sick today, with a stomach bug, so rice is probably a good idea]
Umm, wait. I don't think we have any.
The girls were all snacking on seaweed squares (it was time for a vegetable).
Me: How about rice crispies softened with water?
[Lightbulb appears over my head.]
Do you want to make sushi with rice crispies?
Georgia: Sure!
I should mention that Bahiyyih had left us alone for the evening.
The first batch was too soggy, and didn't have enough rice crispies.
Georgia: [tastes one end of a soggy roll of seaweed and rice crispies]
Eww, I don't like it.
Me: That's okay.
Maya: I want to make my own.
Me: That's a good idea; I don't want you to get sick from Georgia's. But I don't think you'll like it. First, I want you to smell this one.
Maya: [Shakes head vigorously and squinches her face.]
Me: Come on; if you don't like it, we shouldn't make another one.
Maya: [Smells it.] I don't like it.
Me: [throws the soggy roll away, convinced that it was a failed experiment]
Georgia: [emerging from the hallway] Actually, I kind of liked it.
The second batch was better. More rice crispies, less water. We actually sliced it into little sushi cylinders.
Maya: Is this for me?
Me: Yeah. Here, you take two. I'll save these two for Teresa.
Georgia: Can I have some?
Me: [eating one] Yeah. Here, I'm going to make another batch.
The third batch was eaten up too. Teresa decided that what she really wanted was the rice crispies, so she just unrolled the little sliced pieces and cleaned them out. Mmm—damp, seaweed-flavored rice crispies.
The fourth and fifth batches included long-sliced hot dogs and received rave reviews.
Maya: I want some with squishy beans. [that's refried beans to the uninitiated]
Me: Okay. Hot dogs and beans. That's a good combination.
By the sixth (and final) batch, I think the spice of hunger had worn off. Maya tried them, but didn't particularly like them. So she and Teresa picked out the hot dog pieces and ate them, and I finished off the rest.
Bahiyyih: [After she got home and saw the pictures] That's an abomination.]]>
Thursday morning I saw a Caddy-style car bump into the back of an SUV at walking speed, maybe 3 MPH. The SUV was fine, but the front grill of the car shattered like glass (and sounded like glass breaking). It was really chrome-shiny, but broken on the ground, it was a mix of white and chrome. I think it must have been some kind of metal-glazed plastic that got really brittle in the cold.
Last night, Georgia and Maya and I were discussing how cold it is. We agreed that it was really cold. Probably around 10F or 20F. They asked whether I had ever experienced anything colder. I said that I had, when I was little, and we lived in northern Illinois. I think remember it getting down to -20F, but I think I'd better check with my Dad. He was responsible for cancelling school when the weather was too harsh, so he probably remembers.
Our garage foundation, too, is waiting for warmer weather. Specifically, the cement can't be poured until the ground thaws. It might be a while.
]]>Parenting has been a struggle for me, for sure. Sometimes the struggle is to be patient, and sometimes it is to let love dominate when I could be angry. But this weekend it was to not struggle quite so much.
I know, in principal, that growth springs from the organism itself, and that eventually our children will be on their own, responsible to their own consciences and reliant on their own will. However, for the seven years that I have had children ex-utero, I've had the idea that I must kneed and form them into a civilized shape -- I must be the mold that they push up against.
In short, I struggle with them.
Somehow, that habit, or conviction, or practice, or whatever it is, has been gradually eroded. Until this weekend I put two and two together, under circumstances that I don't remember, that:
Once you can really see that in your own kids, and you can see it in yourself, I think it removes a big struggle. We're both working toward the same destination. The thing is, though, that children don't always have the same route in mind as I do for their journey. But that's okay; we've got some time, and if they can see that I am working together with them, they'll be happy to go along.
It's worked pretty well so far, helping to diffuse fights, for example, between Maya's and Georgia's warring routes toward virtue (as I like to describe them), and to help Georgia rise above Maya's needling during a van ride. It's important to recognize when they're just too tired to do it on their own, though. I need to figure out how much help to give -- how many shoes to help put on when I think that someone could actually do it by herself.
I also realize that many parents never even struggle with this, because it is part of their basic assumptions, because somewhere their ancestors already figured it out and incorporated it into the family culture. I think there's still a chance that Maya and Georgia can be in that category. Or maybe they already are, thanks to Bahiyyih.
]]>vernaclear [v&(r)-'na-klE-&r]: (adj) the way a word that is commonly mispronounced or misspelled should be pronounced or spelled, especially if the mistaken form has muscled its way into becoming an accepted form.
And if we use this new word enough, it will find its way into the lexicon as well. But would that be paradoxical, or self-fulfilling?
]]>I did it (stopped surfing news sites) for a day a few times, and it made for a very different day each time. In some cases I actually got a lot done. And I've tried limiting the time I spend on the sites to, say, an hour or less, using a little kitchen timer to mark out half-hour blocks, but once I get started, it's hard to stop. Basically, I'm having trouble finding a point of moderation, where I read a little and work a lot.
So a whole month, to try to clean out my system and be able to start over, with the goal of moderation. So far I'm on my second day. When I have the urge to do something other than my top priorities at work (which can be pretty tedious stuff), I either find something less tedious that may not be as urgent, or say, blog a little.
I remember an American pilgrim's account of 'Abdu'l-Baha's daily life, in particular that He was constantly busy taking care of everyone's needs, from ministering to the poor in Akka, to handling correspondence from Baha'is all over the world, and that He would find relief simply in variety, because he never seemed to rest or have any idle time.
]]>