An Interesting Event that Took Place on my Hand

There I was, sitting in the bright sunlight, reading my biography of Darwin at Cutter's Point. I happened to look down and noticed my hand that was exposed to the sun. On my hand were innumerable bright points of light that were going on and off. I looked closer at what appeared to be a miniature Christmas light display. Apparently in the heat of the sun, miniscule drops of perspiration were oozing out of my sweat glands and then evaporating as soon as they emerged. I wiped my hand, feeling no wetness and noticing none. The scintillating points disappeared only to gradually reappear as the perspiration emerged from the pores.
For some reason I was impressed by this. Hey, I never said I wasn't weird! :)

February 17...another year

A pretty day today, after a week with no time off. I might get next Thursday off, but none scheduled for the week after next. Another birthday today, and I wonder how long the old bod will hold out.
I saw Jes yesterday and gave her my digital Mavica CD for her to take to the coast this weekend with Craig. It is a great little camera, recording on mini-cds which are very cheap, and it takes great photos. I haven't used it that much since getting my Nikons last Spring, one for the Panama trip and another SLR soon after.

I Should Be More Tolerant

Yes, I really should...but sometimes it is so hard! Sitting here in Cutter's Point, I have been subjected to this unrelenting account by a woman who went into excruciating detail about: her family and how they are buying a new dog which is by far the best breed there is; her daughter's dealings with the Girl Scouts and the problems that the mother had with the behavior of the other girls and how their parents refused to discipline them; the buying of her new house with detailed descriptions of the walls, the floors, the kitchen and her criticisms of her neighbor's taste in houses; her accounts of meeting her old high school friends with criticisms of their life style and their clothes, and...well, you get the idea. All this wouldn't be so bad if she didn't talk in this whiney voice that you could hear all over the shop. She wasn't talking loudly, but lord god almighty it was penetrating! I tried to shut her out and tend to my business, but it was hard with her sitting right beside me. I should have moved you say? Possibly, but I was settled and wanted to finish editing some photographs and saving them to disc, and I was right in the middle of it.

Maybe I just like to complain. Come to think about it, complaining is one of my few pleasures in life. It gives me exquisite satisfaction to...oh my god, the man's cell phone is ringing with this really, really loud ring! I gotta go!

Awareness of the Now

Do you ever have times when you become intensely aware of your existence? When your senses seem to awaken, and you become aware of the breaths that you draw, the feel of the clothes on your body, the small subtle sensations, the tiny messages that your body sends you, telling you where all the parts are, your feet here, your arms there? Sounds become sharper, smells and then you think that there will come a time when all this will cease--no more breaths, no more sensations, when we all will return to...to what? Time then becomes precious. I want to squeeze each golden moment, and I regret so much time squandered through the years. But...the moment passes and life continues, this incredible existence rushes along like a locomotive through dark shifting mist, full of rushing sound and wind, hanging out the window, eyes streaming, squinting, searching the track ahead in the dim light.

It's very difficult to live life in the now; we are always thinking back to he past or forward to the future. Now takes care of itself, unappreciated and ignored. Hopefully I can learn to live more in the present.

Synchronicity and Mark Twain

I'm reading a couple of interesting books (actually I have about 11 that I am currently reading): one about Synchronicity (Synchronicity: Science, Myth, and the Trickster by Allan Combs and Mark Holland) and one is a biography of Mark Twain. This is in itself a case of synchronicity since Mark Twain wrote about incredible coincidences in his own life. The idea of synchronicity is not simply the idea of unlikely coincidences according to Jung, but it should be logically meaningful to the person experiencing it and should express some underlying pattern that is not apparent.

"Synchronicity explains "meaningful coincidences," such as a beetle flying into his room while a patient was describing a dream about a scarab. The scarab is an Egyptian symbol of rebirth, he noted [Jung]. Therefore, the propitious moment of the flying beetle indicated that the transcendental meaning of both the scarab in the dream and the insect in the room was that the patient needed to be liberated from her excessive rationalism. His notion of synchronicity is that there is an acausal principle that links events having a similar meaning by their coincidence in time rather than sequentially. He claimed that there is a synchrony between the mind and the phenomenal world of perception. "

"Let us recall that according to Jung, synchronicity is a coincidence charged with a sense (meaning) between the interior psychic state of a person and an event of the objective exterior universe." (Moisset)

Of course the occurrence of unlikely coincidences is usually attributed to the laws of probability, and since it is not testable then it certainly is not scientific. Personally I have experienced such events, and although I have had training in various sciences, I still find it hard to attribute all of these happenings to mere chance. For now however, these phemenona don't appear to be readily amenable to the scientific method although the quantum physicists Bohm and Pauli provided a theoretical framework upon which one might base these occurrences. This is a huge area of interest which I intend to pursue further.

Mark Twain has been one of my favorite authors since I was the age of six when my mother read Tom Sawyer to me. I was to set the pattern for the rest of my life with books that I l ike by reading and rereading this book until I could quote passages from it by the age of ten. In addition to his having had various synchronistic events in his life, he also once had a vivid dream about his brother's death which came true in all its particulars. His mother always said he was psychic from an early age. I used to be totally skeptical about such things until I and some members of my family experienced a few of these unusual happenings. The trouble with this field is that there have been so many credulous and superstituous people making some preposterous claims. There should be more scientific inquiry into the matter.

Fog and Moonlight

I am looking at a small leafless Japanese Maple in a large planter outside the window where I am sitting and drinking coffee. It appears to be covered in tiny sparkling jewels, shimmering drops of water from the heavy fog that shrouds everything. As I walked to my car last night, sheets of mist fell slowly, reminding me of a time long ago when I delivered papers early in the morning. Then a light mist was falling and each time a tiny droplet hit my eye, the street lights, the entire universe suddenly and briefly went out of focus. It was a momentary blurring before my vision cleared...and then the next droplet and another blurring.
The other night was a full moon and fog. The moonlight lit the fog up and made everything appear to be floating in a bright, numinous void. Black silhouettes of trees, the glowing shifting fog...and off in the distance the mournful lowing of a fog horn.
I like to take photographs in mist...like the above: "Looking Towards Manzanita."