linking to my other place and back and forth again. two short stories and explanations
http://www.jakestephens.net/thoughts/index.html
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Monday, February 09, 2009
in response to the idea of wishing someone luck
I don't like wishing people luck when it comes to things that require skill. I thought about it and have this to say:
"There is luck when creating, I know that. I try to avoid framing it as such, however, as it takes the power out of us and places it on a pedestal which we can’t reach. Going back to that place where we inhale divine breath of inspiration requires often either ecstatic exercise, whereby we are forced to gulp it down as quickly as it comes, gasping and rattling form the exertion, or to breath slowly, regularly, and intentionally, allowing the power to infuse and suffuse within us.
The former can be a more powerful and profound experience, but it requires us to simply wait to be hit in the head with the anvil and observe the constellations that appear before our eyes and can often lead to the mistaken idea that it was the anvil – the outside force – that acted, Newtonian, upon us. This can lead to drug addiction and superstitious habits of magic pens, notebooks, places, and typewriters.
The latter requires much more cultivation and discipline and can appear to the uninitiated as a boring and uninspired way to create. It is true that the elixir that comes from this alchemy is oftentimes less potent than its ecstatic counterpart, due to its carefully crafted nature, but it takes form and shape through force of will and intensity of purpose that comes from within.
The truth is that both of these endeavors arise from our own mind, as does the world and we have to be both able to be disciplined and ecstatic so as to carefully craft both the pure form of the creative element and the untamed elements, then take these reagents and allow them, with proper heating and cooling in a sacred vessel, to react to each other in unexpectedly formulaic, arcanely mundane ways.
Inspiration is one part inhalation, one part exhalation, one part exaltation, and the rest is probably hard work, but mostly just happy accidents."
"There is luck when creating, I know that. I try to avoid framing it as such, however, as it takes the power out of us and places it on a pedestal which we can’t reach. Going back to that place where we inhale divine breath of inspiration requires often either ecstatic exercise, whereby we are forced to gulp it down as quickly as it comes, gasping and rattling form the exertion, or to breath slowly, regularly, and intentionally, allowing the power to infuse and suffuse within us.
The former can be a more powerful and profound experience, but it requires us to simply wait to be hit in the head with the anvil and observe the constellations that appear before our eyes and can often lead to the mistaken idea that it was the anvil – the outside force – that acted, Newtonian, upon us. This can lead to drug addiction and superstitious habits of magic pens, notebooks, places, and typewriters.
The latter requires much more cultivation and discipline and can appear to the uninitiated as a boring and uninspired way to create. It is true that the elixir that comes from this alchemy is oftentimes less potent than its ecstatic counterpart, due to its carefully crafted nature, but it takes form and shape through force of will and intensity of purpose that comes from within.
The truth is that both of these endeavors arise from our own mind, as does the world and we have to be both able to be disciplined and ecstatic so as to carefully craft both the pure form of the creative element and the untamed elements, then take these reagents and allow them, with proper heating and cooling in a sacred vessel, to react to each other in unexpectedly formulaic, arcanely mundane ways.
Inspiration is one part inhalation, one part exhalation, one part exaltation, and the rest is probably hard work, but mostly just happy accidents."
Saturday, December 06, 2008
do it now! this i command!
How many times do you use it? You know you do. Support them and all of us!
Please?
Monday, December 01, 2008
fecund times
muchtoomuch to do. been to long. will get this damnable contraption to work by the fair. oh wait, that's beauty and the beast. anyhow. posting depth charge and about facing to the left hand terminal. arbitrary shifting noncompensating dampener thimble gristle torn and whistle. let's all dance dance dance.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Idea for the day:
Save a chunk of the world political/topographic map to your desktop and learn geography while you work.
One thing I am grateful for this morning:
Flow. That state of grace that entails peak experience; for me, it is when I create, be it music, art, songs, or poems. I've even lapsed into the state while woodworking, so for me, it is very much about creation. My mind quiets and even though there is chatter it is constructive chatter, urging and guiding. I can see the item that I will create and I keep moving things around until it feels right. For digital art, I rather enjoy mixing up a lot of images and pixels then moving them around until my mind creates a shape or an idea, then flow turns on. Click, clickclicklcikdargclickclickdragundoclickclickundofaderedoclick and before you know it, there it is. The piece I did, mapping the stars, was like that, as was the Autumn King as was the random numbers piece. I'll get that printed one day... ten feet by ten feet. Wonderful.
Well, I am at work and in the IT zone, so more later.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
more thoughts on the will to power
another email, this one about power and who has it. why we're all so apathetic and complacent... and overworked and unable or unwilling to try and see what's really going on. without further ado, here comes the sun:
-------------------------------
I really don’t know. Perhaps if we all become more educated, concerned, and, most importantly, involved? But we’ve got other responsibilities. Imagine if wealth were distributed more equitably across the spectrum; if we all went home with a greater percentage in our pockets while CEO’s and Board Members of various companies got less. Imagine if the working poor continued to work, but was not just able to subsist.. if our minimum wage was enough to, if both parents worked, pay the bills and for child care? Imagine that we didn’t have to work two jobs to be able to afford a house and “The American Dream”. Now, imagine… would any of us voluntarily give up that extra time to participate in government?
Judging from the number of people that I’ve heard complain about jury duty, how ineffective voting is, and never attend local town/city hall meetings, I’m guessing few or none. How do we motivate our citizens to get involved? We certainly can’t be compelled by law… we do have state-run educational institutions… and yet, they teach kids to be compliant, unimaginative, to take sides unfairly and arbitrarily based upon silly divisions such as geography or chronological age, and not to be creative, concerned, involved, or educated in the operation, protection, and upholding of our Constitution, both state and federal.
Who has the power? Who wants to keep the power? Who should have the power? Who wants the power? Who has the means to acquire the power? Who has the power to take the power?
Like in Fahrenheit 451, people want their choices to be simple. Fewer choices makes it easy, especially if they can be made without thinking – vote for the side you always vote for or for the one that has the best hair… eventually, people won’t want any choice at all, they just want to go back to having fun and not worrying.
Toward the end of the Roman Empire, citizens worked one-two days to pay their taxes… while armies of slaves took care of all the work. In my opinion, consider the CEO’s and corporate higher ups to be the only real citizens of the US, since they are the only ones who can really exercise a vote with their almighty dollar. Us? well, we’re just the slaves that have to keep the gears greased and turning. Thank goodness we have other slaves to make our food, mow our lawns, change our oil, take care of our children, and wipe our asses when we get too old to do it ourselves.
In the words of Rage Against the Machine, “We gotta take the power back.” and “What better place than here? What better time than now?”
-------------------------------
I really don’t know. Perhaps if we all become more educated, concerned, and, most importantly, involved? But we’ve got other responsibilities. Imagine if wealth were distributed more equitably across the spectrum; if we all went home with a greater percentage in our pockets while CEO’s and Board Members of various companies got less. Imagine if the working poor continued to work, but was not just able to subsist.. if our minimum wage was enough to, if both parents worked, pay the bills and for child care? Imagine that we didn’t have to work two jobs to be able to afford a house and “The American Dream”. Now, imagine… would any of us voluntarily give up that extra time to participate in government?
Judging from the number of people that I’ve heard complain about jury duty, how ineffective voting is, and never attend local town/city hall meetings, I’m guessing few or none. How do we motivate our citizens to get involved? We certainly can’t be compelled by law… we do have state-run educational institutions… and yet, they teach kids to be compliant, unimaginative, to take sides unfairly and arbitrarily based upon silly divisions such as geography or chronological age, and not to be creative, concerned, involved, or educated in the operation, protection, and upholding of our Constitution, both state and federal.
Who has the power? Who wants to keep the power? Who should have the power? Who wants the power? Who has the means to acquire the power? Who has the power to take the power?
Like in Fahrenheit 451, people want their choices to be simple. Fewer choices makes it easy, especially if they can be made without thinking – vote for the side you always vote for or for the one that has the best hair… eventually, people won’t want any choice at all, they just want to go back to having fun and not worrying.
Toward the end of the Roman Empire, citizens worked one-two days to pay their taxes… while armies of slaves took care of all the work. In my opinion, consider the CEO’s and corporate higher ups to be the only real citizens of the US, since they are the only ones who can really exercise a vote with their almighty dollar. Us? well, we’re just the slaves that have to keep the gears greased and turning. Thank goodness we have other slaves to make our food, mow our lawns, change our oil, take care of our children, and wipe our asses when we get too old to do it ourselves.
In the words of Rage Against the Machine, “We gotta take the power back.” and “What better place than here? What better time than now?”
Was Heidegger a bastard?
This is an email that I sent Eric the other day. Probably get my house firebombed by Rush Limbaugh... Nah, it's pretty innocuous.
I'll just cut and paste and do no editing. Eric's email had been something to the effect of well if you had been around when the Nazi's were in power, you'd have gone along with them (it wasn't a slam, just an observation). We were talking about Heidegger after I mentioned trying to learn Spanish and Eric said he could read a little German and Latin... at any rate, I'm becoming long-winded:
--------------------------------------
I would’ve been a Nazi at the time. Much the same way as most of us stand idly by and keep our heads down while the “Patriot Act” is still on the books, and journalists are strong-armed into revealing their sources in the name of “Counter Terrorism”. SO, much the same as the German citizens who claimed, after the war, “we just did what we were told, we had no idea it was that bad”, we go on thinking that Arabs in general are not to be trusted and that the USA is AOK while our CEO (I won’t give him the title of President, he doesn’t deserve it and longer) goes on the books and down in history as officially condoning torture of prisoners. Meanwhile, we are left to consider the things that affect us more day to day, like our jobs and friends and local IT policies.
So, no, I’m not blaming Marty. If I were in his position and Unkle Adolf walks in and says, “Hey, you’re smart, we want you to be our official smart person spokesperson,” even if you think the guy is insane (especially if you think he’s insane actually), there’s no way you’ll turn him down. You’ll thank him for the honor and go about your business, just trying to keep on keeping on, all the while watching your back and hoping it doesn’t get any worse.
Then history makes you into a bastard.
On the other hand, Mr. Sartre can sit in his smoky underground resistance lair and pen all kinds of goodies about responsibility and taking it. Since he’s on the side that can get killed for saying boo… why not go the distance and really lay it on thick? So, Sartre (who was actually involved in the resistance, I’m not calling him a weak-kneed academic) goes down in history as a hero who stood up for his cause and Heidegger goes down in history as Nazi scum. Ironically enough, they’re both Existentialists whose works I greatly admire.
Much like Americans during the time of McCarthyism, and Germans during the Third Reich, think that we’ll look back one day and shake our heads in shame that we let it go that far. Much like Senator Joe finding commies, I think most Americans think Crazy W will just give up if he finds one more terrorist… if he shreds one more amendment to the Constitution.
So, actually, I said it also for humor, but I also chide myself for not being more like Sartre than Heidegger. However, we’re more in the boat of the Germans than the French (insert your own joke there), so we don’t have the “luxury” of being able to put our finger solidly upon something for which we stand, since there’s no oppressor’s boot in our face, rather a velvet glove around our throat.
I'll just cut and paste and do no editing. Eric's email had been something to the effect of well if you had been around when the Nazi's were in power, you'd have gone along with them (it wasn't a slam, just an observation). We were talking about Heidegger after I mentioned trying to learn Spanish and Eric said he could read a little German and Latin... at any rate, I'm becoming long-winded:
--------------------------------------
I would’ve been a Nazi at the time. Much the same way as most of us stand idly by and keep our heads down while the “Patriot Act” is still on the books, and journalists are strong-armed into revealing their sources in the name of “Counter Terrorism”. SO, much the same as the German citizens who claimed, after the war, “we just did what we were told, we had no idea it was that bad”, we go on thinking that Arabs in general are not to be trusted and that the USA is AOK while our CEO (I won’t give him the title of President, he doesn’t deserve it and longer) goes on the books and down in history as officially condoning torture of prisoners. Meanwhile, we are left to consider the things that affect us more day to day, like our jobs and friends and local IT policies.
So, no, I’m not blaming Marty. If I were in his position and Unkle Adolf walks in and says, “Hey, you’re smart, we want you to be our official smart person spokesperson,” even if you think the guy is insane (especially if you think he’s insane actually), there’s no way you’ll turn him down. You’ll thank him for the honor and go about your business, just trying to keep on keeping on, all the while watching your back and hoping it doesn’t get any worse.
Then history makes you into a bastard.
On the other hand, Mr. Sartre can sit in his smoky underground resistance lair and pen all kinds of goodies about responsibility and taking it. Since he’s on the side that can get killed for saying boo… why not go the distance and really lay it on thick? So, Sartre (who was actually involved in the resistance, I’m not calling him a weak-kneed academic) goes down in history as a hero who stood up for his cause and Heidegger goes down in history as Nazi scum. Ironically enough, they’re both Existentialists whose works I greatly admire.
Much like Americans during the time of McCarthyism, and Germans during the Third Reich, think that we’ll look back one day and shake our heads in shame that we let it go that far. Much like Senator Joe finding commies, I think most Americans think Crazy W will just give up if he finds one more terrorist… if he shreds one more amendment to the Constitution.
So, actually, I said it also for humor, but I also chide myself for not being more like Sartre than Heidegger. However, we’re more in the boat of the Germans than the French (insert your own joke there), so we don’t have the “luxury” of being able to put our finger solidly upon something for which we stand, since there’s no oppressor’s boot in our face, rather a velvet glove around our throat.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Vista SP1 is coming
I'm sure that anyone who uses Vista will appreciate that SP1 is coming in the second half of 2007. Better domain performance, better coping and extraction of files, better hibernate and resume funtionality... all the stuff that you'd expect from a first service pack. I may actually start deploying it on something other than the laptops at work.
And for those that are using VIsta now, and are irritated becuase you can't find a quick way to access the network settings quiclly in Vista, well I have the answer for you. You used to be able to just right click and go to properties for My Network Places and hey presto... now, you have to right-click, go to Network and SHaring Center and then go to Manage Network Connections, and then finally you get to the network properties. Well, mein freund, it's easy when you know the command. I poked around a bit in the SYSTEM32 directory, looking for CPL files (Control Panel) and EXE's of interest. The old standby's are all there - throwbacks to an older time, like MAIN.CPL which is the mouse properties and DESK.CPL which is the Display Properties... then I started taking note of new CPL applets... and one-by-one I tried them and finally had the answer and the quick way to start it: at any Command or Run Prompt, just put in NCPA.CPL and TADA!!! you have the network connections folder at your fingertips.
NOW THAT'S A HAPPY DEVELOPMENT! W00t!
And for those that are using VIsta now, and are irritated becuase you can't find a quick way to access the network settings quiclly in Vista, well I have the answer for you. You used to be able to just right click and go to properties for My Network Places and hey presto... now, you have to right-click, go to Network and SHaring Center and then go to Manage Network Connections, and then finally you get to the network properties. Well, mein freund, it's easy when you know the command. I poked around a bit in the SYSTEM32 directory, looking for CPL files (Control Panel) and EXE's of interest. The old standby's are all there - throwbacks to an older time, like MAIN.CPL which is the mouse properties and DESK.CPL which is the Display Properties... then I started taking note of new CPL applets... and one-by-one I tried them and finally had the answer and the quick way to start it: at any Command or Run Prompt, just put in NCPA.CPL and TADA!!! you have the network connections folder at your fingertips.
NOW THAT'S A HAPPY DEVELOPMENT! W00t!
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