Subtleties on a high

You have awoken in the middle of a deafening silence, dark space around you. Dust particles illuminated by the white bright light of stars float slowly everywhere you care to look. And you care to look nowhere. For you have just discovered, as the realization dawns upon you, that your life has no meaning. No one's life does. And what's more, you try to hold back your laughter, is that this very fact has no meaning. It doesn't matter. It's all good. Or it's all bad. Depends on how you define things. Who cares how you define them anyway? We're just bouncing energy field particles. While we still form a sentient system out of those particles, let us use that sentience fully.

Then we will disassemble and join the universe in another dance once more.

Waiting for the wind to come

You stand there, in a wide open field, darkness is your ally, small patches of moon light filtering through the clouds illuminating the tall grass a shade of yellow. The wind howls, you can hear it in the distance. But it is not yet here. You can see the stalks bend under its force, forming paths, inviting you in, into a labyrinth that leads nowhere. But the wind is not yet here. You stare at the void in front, motionless, thoughts blank. It's the way it's ought to be. Just you and existence, stripped bare down to the minimums. And then you feel the cold blow on your cheek, enveloping your forehead, with a whoosh increasing in pitch, it stretches your clothing like the sails of a boat. The wind has arrived.

At morning twilight

Sometimes it seems that nothing ever happens. Life just goes its merry way and the end of one day is [isomorphically] identical to another's.

And it is precisely at this time, that the wheels of the universe are spinning faster than ever in the background, bringing about the greatest change in the fabric of existence

Random musings, notes from travels II

My acclimation time was about a day and a half, it turned out.You know when it happens - the place you're visiting becomes familiar enough for you to feel comfortable - navigating, understanding the behaviour of the locals, the nuances of the culture, and yes, you even begin to think a bit like one. Anyway, the threshold has been passed.

Now, still feeling good from the Haagen Dasz (thaaaanks Augusta and Y), I set out today to become more cultured. The first stop was the Soho neighborhood, a pretty hip and trendy place, reminiscent of the Village but with a pronounced european twist (architecturally and socially). It was a pleasant walk and went off almost without an incident.

Then, I did the classical sightseeing walk including westminster bridge, big ben,
trafalgar square, and the national gallery [booooring]. (With the "Great Britain 2005" guide book in my hand, that scream "I'm a tourist" from 2000 miles away). And then for the main course, the British Museum was graced with my presence. Of all the artifacts and facts on display there I found only two interesting:

1. You are allowed to touch 5500 year old stones and vases and statues. With your grubby, dirty hands. Amazing.

2. The abundance of stuff older than the mabul date. Everytime I think I've buried the question in my mind, it resurfaces. Oh well [not that I don't have answers, just not entirely satisfactory ones].

And then I checked out the Jewish community @ golders green. Ok, fine, in truth I just went there to get my hott meal. From whence, cultured and full, I report to you. Peace out.

Random musings, notes from travels I

So, I figured since I'm traveling, I might as well be writing down notes about some experiences...and what better place to do it than this depository-of-thoughts-to-be-collecting-dust aka facebook.

I don't know why, but I'm always a bit fascinated by the history of places I go to, and for some reason particularly the history of the British isles. Perhaps it has to do with seeking out roots and beginnings - understanding the source is the _way_ to understanding the present. Or maybe it's the mystery of the Celts..or an even earlier culture that erected stones 5,000 years ago (which is the time of Mabul, according to some at least), for no reason at all known to us.

Anyway, today I went to the tower of London and saw a much younger artifact - a wall from the Roman times, about 2000 years old. Not a wall, actually, but a tiny piece of it just north of the tower of london underground station. It used to surround the original city of London, or Londinium as the Romans called it. Which was probably about half a mile long and a mile wide. I walked up and touched it, and all around me people were rushing about their daily business [it happens to be in the modern business district], ignoring the wall's presence. I thought this synthesis of the ancient and the modern was kind of cool actually - the continuum of a city through 2000 years, uninterrupted and not unnaturally segregated. Some deep thought occurred to me at that point, but right now I'm sitting here chillin' in an internet cafe and I forgot what it was. Oh well :)

A mosaic piece

Today I was passing underground, at 34th street. There was a band playing, as there usually is at that place. As I am accustomed to, I pass by. Too concentrated on my own business, focused on getting home, on catching the train. Who has time for such distractions?

And then I thought that this runs counter to my new found philosophy. Life is not about getting through your daily business as efficiently as possible. Life consists of a mozaic of little pieces, little experiences here and there. If you miss them, or choose to ignore them, you don't _live_. It's that simple.

I took 10 minutes out and stood there listening to music. It was one of the better performances I've heard in awhile. Two electric guitars, resonating with an echo enhanced sound, playing ambient harmonics...almost trance like. I dropped a dollar*, and went on my way. I will remember this. I won't remember the hour preceding.

(* Yes, I'm cheap.)

Entries from facebook

Yes, I've been on a hiatus. But I don't do anything unless I come to it myself. The time must be right, and perhaps it is now.

I'll post some notes I wrote on facebook here, from some time ago.

The French chase

Ok, this isn't gonna be a quality post, but it's something I wrote on h.com and since I'm too lazy to write anything for the blog just yet, I figured why not post it in here to fill my quota [otherwise they torture me, you see].

---

Visiting Paris a few months ago, we were coming out of the shul (the big one near the st paul station) after shacharis on Shabbos, and had absolutely nothing to do for the rest of the day. [We were staying in a hotel nearby and didn't know anyone]. The exploratory mood mode was on and blinking. I turned the corner and spotted a Chabad-looking guy walking fast along Rue Saint Antoine in the direction of the Bastille. 'Follow that rabbit down the tunnel!' I screamed, and picked up my pace. My friend, infected with my enthusiasm was starting to get excited at this resemblance of an adventure. Now, mind you, I'm a really fast walker - I usually overtake 99% to 100% of the crowd during my daily walking commute to work. But this guy was FAST! He wasn't running...just intently strolling along in a forward direction. Yet we were quickly losing him. Despite complete lack of knowledge of Paris geography and lack of strength due to not having eaten yet, losing him was simply not an option. His final destination became the most crucial, the most important, an all encompassing enigma that was the only thing on our minds at that time. He quickly ran across the Bastille roundabout and disappeared into the crowd on Rue du Faubourg. The light changed, but we dashed across, ignoring all the cars. Safety was an unimportant detail now - the chase was on. My friend crossed to the other side of the street and yelled "Got visual on the target!". We starting running and he was now about 100 ft ahead. Passing all the fancy stores and immodest signs, we reached another intersection and were now maintaining a stable distance. However in about 60 seconds the situation changed dramatically and he was somehow again ahead of us by a length of a block and a half. To this day I do not understand how he was able to reach such velocity. For the next few minutes we struggled to keep him in sight and were reasonably sure he was near his destination - we were walking for 50 minutes already. A commotion in the crowd distracted our attention for a split second, and when we looked back, he was gone. I ran forward, peering into all the side streets, in all directions, searching for his prominent black hat and tallis draped form. But to no avail. After awhile, we gave up, and starting returning to our hotel, dejected. [This took another 3 hours because we got lost, but that's another story]. Who was this mysterious man? How did he walk so fast? Was it 'kfitzas haderech' perhaps? Where did he go, where did he dissappear to? All questions that remain unanswered...questions that plague me in my darkest, deepest dreams at night, from which I wake up with a cold sweat.

Migrated my blog

I migrated my blog from livejournal to here (hence, no comments). Hopefully I'll be posting some new entries here soon.

Cosmic lullaby

The lunar module failed to lift off - all of the fuel has leaked out. He knew he was doomed - the orbiting shuttle will have no choice but to leave back for Earth, and no rescue mission would get to him in time. He had about 15 minutes of oxygen left. He looked up and saw the beautiful moonscape before him... craters stretching out as far as the eye can see, basking in a calm yellow hue. Moon dust untouched for millions of years, set against a backdrop of a myriad of bright stars suspended in the dark of space. He marvelled at this serene and truly other-worldly beauty for a few seconds, and then started walking towards the horizon. He reached a large rock and lied down on the ground, using the boulder as a pillow for his helmet.

He saw stars stretching forever unto infinity, and a blue planet that he left behind not far in the distance. He thought about death...this particular death that will meet him in 10 minutes. Why should he be scared or disappointed? If he had stayed on Earth, he would have 20, maybe 25 more years to live. Oh sure, he'd get a nice burial and have a headstone erected for him. He'd even be put in the history books of NASA. And of course he'd be remembered fondly by his many loved ones he would have left behind. But for a finite length of time. Five hundred or a thousand years from then, who would remember his name? Who would remember details about his life, or what he looked like or what he represented? Perhaps someone would. But what about 10,000 years...what about 100,000 years into the future? Surely, no trace of him would be preserved. But here I am, he thought, the first to die on the moon. I am separated from all the worldly troubles. And who knows, maybe hundreds of millions of years from now when the Earth will no longer exist, I will still be lying here, perched against this rock. My body perfectly preserved, just as it looks now. I might be the last and only reminder of the human race...no, biological life! in the universe. It is I who will represent humanity in the presence of the universe's future. Perhaps millions of years from now some non-organic intelligent life form in a remote corner of space will find a piece of lunar debris floating near their place of habitation. And on it they will find me, in a spacesuit, still staring into space...

The oxygen gauge intersected zero and he took one last breath.

What do we know about people?

Well, it has been awhile since my last update, but I've been swept up by the winds of life.

So during Leil Shavuos I was learning with someone and we starting talking, eventually digressing into the land of philosophy. Among the topics that came up was this:

Each person is created with a certain predisposition. Some are nice and kind by nature - it's in their genes. For them it's easy to do chesed and to be well liked by people. Others have a different genetic makeup, one that makes it a great challenge to go out of their way for someone else. Call it introvert/extrovert, call it happy/depressed, call it demanding/giving, it doesn't matter - this is all part of one's personality and most probably it is not a learned behavior but one that's dictated by chemicals in the brain. If so, why do we bestow honor on people we see as being righteous? And why do we shame and distance ourselves from those who are usually not acting in the best fashion? For it could easily be that the big baal chesed in the community spends virtually no effort doing all his good deeds - it comes to him naturally. And that suspicious looking guy in shul who always keeps to himself and is unapproachable... maybe for him to do a single act of kindness takes more effort (on some global objective scale) than all the efforts of the aforementioned baal chesed combined, during his entire life! The point is that if the true value of one's actions is to be measured only in terms of how much effort is put into them, then we are utterly clueless about the structure of the merit hierarchy.

Movie plot

Last week while vacationing in the Carribbean, I sat outside my hotel room balcony one night and looked at the stars. (There are many more visible there than in NY, of course, though not as much as I saw in the French alps). The light of the brightest star was white and strong - a window into a world millions of light years away. Looking at it I wondered what it would be like to go there? Suspended animation is all good in the movies, but it's highly questionable whether it will ever be realized in practice.

There is no other choice: humans would have to board a spaceship and live there for thousands of generations before they reach the star. The first generation will have still seen Earth..their children will only hear about it from their parents.. and relate it in turn to their own children in bedtime stories. After a 100 generations, what would life be like on this spaceship? One's entire world would be the ship - he would not know anything else. Trees and grass, forests and mountains, lakes and oceans, cities and sunset - all would be concepts only in his imagination, merely a mental picture formed from ancient tales. The common goal and purpose in life would be preached to him from birth: stay alive, give rise to the next generation, so that they may do the same, repeating until that final moment in the distant future. The sacred 'end game', the stuff of legends. The arrival.

The moment comes and they land on a planet near the destination star. They colonize the land, build cities, multiply and establish a civilization. The memory of Earth is by this point but a far away memory, as bleak to these people as the light of the Earth's Sun. In time, no one will know where they came from. Except for a select few, perhaps, who will form an elite society of possessors of 'the knowledge'. The secret would be strictly guarded and passed down the line. Of course, the day will come when survival will no long be a constant question on the minds of the new civilization. They will probe deep into their history and discover the truth. The next step is only natural - "We must return to our origin. We will finally complete the circle and see the source with our own eyes." [If we discovered that we are an ancient colony of a distant planet, wouldn't we strive to do the same?] And so, a spaceship takes off once again. Another few hundred thousand years pass, and the distant descendants of the people who sent them arrive back on Earth.

What will they see? Will anyone be welcoming them back...or even remember of their existence? Or perhaps what they will see will be a barren landscape - not a life form in sight? They will dig far below the numerous layers of dust accumulated over the millenia and find a pillar with this message etched in stone: "Welcome back. We waited for you all along. As you can tell, we are all dead. Please recolonize. Thank you, management."

Once in a while, usually during my free time or on vacation, I get ideas about possible movie scripts. I wonder if there are 2 hours of plot here...

First entry

First entry.

Not sure who's gonna be reading this, or how many people, or when. Time will tell, as it does for all things.