Majestic

And soon I came to realize

That the days have grown short

And there is little food to eat

The wind swept by

And left snow at my feet

An old man is limping along

Struggling through arthritis pain

Looking and searching in a big trash can

We are the wanderers of the north

The catchers of seal, narrators of legend

The Greenland Inuit

Living in the majestic kingdom of Denmark

(Read Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg. Apparently, there is also a movie about it but I haven't watched it.)

hehe ~_~ (a past future)

Read the past and write the past. Isn't it nice that the past has passed? or maybe had passed. Nothing thoughtful is in the past just impressions of thought. Not that thought of thought of past is nothing, but in reality thought exists now. We can believe in past thoughts, although that doesn't change the fact that they have evaporated into the atmosphere. Part of the universe's increasing entropy.

Why talk about thought when it isn't the issue? haha. Yeah, worrying thoughts can be funny at times. For example, we might tell ourselves, "how could I have been so upset over this? and jeez, I was stupid?" Don't worry, though, thoughts evaporate and you soon won't have them anymore. Oh, I just realized that I was worrying about being originally worried. The vicious cyclone pulled me in at the end, so past is also present.

Maybe if I will use only future tense, I could avoid the present and will skip to the future. I will use will before my verbs. That'll be the solution!

Laugh at me all you want, I will laugh at myself until the future arrives and believe me it will be here sooner than later.

Late Night - as we know it

Running computers, songs in the background, noisy machines, and the constant tiring hunger. That is a late night that you remember. Not the kind that you forget. The kind you go into with that intention. No, not that kind.

You ask yourself whether you are still mentally aware of your existence, or just a thinking entity whose purpose is to complete the current task.

Okay, time to stop using ambiguous language, although it is quite fun to pursue. What this refers to is a night of measurements needed for a conference paper deadline which is coming up on monday (~30 hours from now). The machines used for experiments and measurements are running and generating noise and heat (maybe even some heat noise, i.e. thermal noise). Additionally, there are the data processing script running. Graphs keep popping up to surprise and amaze, or maybe disappoint. These are experimental measurements after all. The bane of the existence of anyone pursuing practical systems.

I can say more, but the story has already been built in your mind. I can add the obvious ending (this is one of those stories about the journey being more enticing then the ending). A paper is written and either gets accepted or rejected. Nothing really changes either way.

Ground Control

Ground Control to Major Tom

Ground Control to Major Tom

Commencing countdown, engines on.

What is this feeling of expectation, floating contentious to please another for no personally justified reason. A pull to do what seems natural and possibly good versus a strange form of loyalty through fear of disappointing another. A push-pull oscillations with unexpected harmonics.

It is my fault that this situation is as it is. Yet, I can't but imagine a situation where time is on our hands. Lives get longer but time pressure gets higher. So many need to be the first, to leave everyone else in the dust and distinguish themselves. What happened to apprenticeships? Favoring the long term education and success to the short term potential for hitting it big. University research has proven its self to be the same as corporate R&D. Only difference is that results are slower coming and more incomplete since the monetary and labor resources are lower.

5 second emails

I'm floating in a tin can, high above the world.
Plant Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do.

"There's nothing I can do" started out as "There's nothing I can't do."

This world thinks like an adult while the options which are developing allow children to rule. Innocence, playfulness, and what is decidedly fleeting in the minds of the "motivators," little concept of time. For tomorrow is very much like today in a child's static world. You didn't get to finish your game today? Well, you can just finish it tomorrow or even start a new one. In the world of achievers, this is heresy. This is the thoughts of a loser (definition: someone who doesn't do what they do as early as they do).

How will it matter if one was to finish a book at the age of 25 or 45? "An award or recognition." That sounds like the answer a motivator will give. "You can be an innovator and a leader in your field. Wealthy from business deals and respected by colleagues." "Really," that's what I will say. Being respected by wealthy innovators and motivators, is that really an ideal (a life goal)?

Just as energy must have a reference level, I need one as well. Yet, I can't come to commit myself to the reference given by the motivators, even though I am presently following them.

Maybe Major Tom found a reference floating into space.

Never Good

A riff raff of 'nough. The sight of futility as we rise.

I need to start writing a master's thesis. A major piece of writing and a stepping stone to the Ph.D dissertation. Anxiety is the only emotion I can perceive. It has never been an anxiety from being unable to produce some kind of result or even generating a result which will satisfy myself. It is anxiety for fulfilling another's expectations. When money is involved, the feeling of encroaching failure in the eyes of the one who expects only one end result, success in its fullest and most complete form, weighs as a mammoth on a psyche.

Only one realization has helped me continue working as the anxiety heightens: "I am stupid and a failure, but I can get a Ph.D."

My abilities are worse than most everyone else, yet I can encounter a thousand shameful failures for every one partial success and still achieve enough to receive a degree. While those around me will rate me lower and lower in a sinking ship's rank of command, drowning does not imply a raised white flag.

At the end, I am just selfish. I mean look at the statement I made. The pronoun "I" shows up twice. The entire sentence is self-centered. Lacking any real thought or desire to understand. It is just a stupid mantra uttered by a stupid practitioner.

And so the failure takes unto its usual path with stumbling strides. Maybe one day (       )