I just had an amazing lunch with an amazing person, it was nicole, from here!

If you don't know her, she's been on some adventure this month, driving around all these different states trying to find which one to call 'home' next.  It's pretty inspirin' to hear about her journey, actually; you should go check it out. Really.

I have no idea what to write about the lunch, though, but it's got me with Zaadz on the brain, so thought I should at least write Something, right?

The key topic was Zaadz (naturally!) and just what an impact it's had on our daily lives.  And really, it's not Zaadz at all that's been such an influence.  It's all the freaking Amazing, inspiring, just great people that it's attracted.  Do you all know how much'a'n impact you all have?  Ack... WE all have?  There's truly something unique about the type of people this place has attracted.  And anywhere that gathers great people together...

I think one of the funniest parts of the whole thing, is that there we were, both talking about how cool it is to get to meet another great person, the inspiration and support and stuff that we both were grateful towards each other for... and then we both talked about we don't really feel very "Zaadzy" compared to some of the just awe-inspiring people we meet on here.  Both sort'a feel like we're "just" regular people, not in the same league as all of "them" (meaning YOU!).  Wonder how many others feel the same way? 

Well, I don't know what else to say about the whole thing, I just know it really was a great time.  I Totally recommend All of us to meet up with any Zaadz people we have the chance to see.  It's really an inspiring thing.  I feel more than ever that there really is something special about the people this place has gathered around it, and the feeling that we can (and WILL) all follow our dreams and really make a difference is more prominent than ever.

Plus, she picked up the tab (Thanks Nicole!)

There's something that's been bugging me for a while, and I think I finally resolved it this morning with a little help from the late, great, Alan Watts :) (he's my homeboy!)

I've had this discontent with my job and career in general for the past year and a half at the least.  I also read a lot of Zen-inspired books, articles, sites, etc over this time... I really really dig the whole Zen philosophy.  Been known to say that it's my favorite thing that humans have ever come up with. So, I kinda looked to these books for some guidance to my issues with my job, right?  And it really didn't help.

The "pop-Zen" american versions seem to push being happy with whatever you're doing. This, I actally do buy into. Wherever I'm at, I might as well enjoy it.  It's really how I try and live my whole life, and it actually works pretty well!  But...This work thing.  They say to just put any discontent out of my mind, focus on the task at hand, and enjoy.  There was something still missing, though.

This morning I was listening to some Alan Watts lectures on the Tao, and some of the ideas contained in Taoism as it relates to living life.  It's great stuff, I really dig Alan, and he was talking about how only this current moment exists.  Pretty typical stuff, really, but there was a jewel beneath the lecture itself that really hit me.

Attaching to the future or the past leads to suffering.  Fer sure, I'm really with that, almost to an extreme actually, where it can get me in trouble sometimes, but..that's another blog.  My favorite example that Alan brought up was this not-exact-quote-that-i'm-about-to-kinda-make-up:

"You see, dying isn't really so bad.  You just die, and that's it.  But, when you start attaching to the things you won't get to do, the memories that will be gone, the impact you won't have on the world anymore...This is where the suffering comes in.  If you were to just die, and that's that; it wouldn't be so bad!"

And yeah, I'm with that.  With respect to work, if I were sick of working because it was more of the same-old, day-in, day-out...if That was why I wasn't happy with my job, that really would be my own doing. Then, I really should just be happy doing it.  But, I realized that that's not the case!

My unhappiness with my job has nothing to do with the future or the past. It's the feeling I have Now, in this moment when I look around at the cubicles, and artificial-lights, and I think "This isn't for me.  This isn't right.  I feel like doing so much more in this moment!"   And I realized that I had lead myself wrong with the popular Zen I'd filled my head with.

My problem isn't the past or the future or my attachments to it; it's how I feel.  It's not the task that I'm unhappy with...it's not the work itself.  It's that in this moment, at this time, my soul feels/Knows that it wants to do more.  The "now" IS the issue.  It's a very tricky thing, at least for me. I've been strugglin' with it for over a year! The logic's slippery, but sound.

So I feel more confident than ever.  I had felt very "un-Zen" and almost dissappointed in my self (ironic?) when I just couldn't be happy doing what I'm doing.  Realizing that there's more to an experience, more to the "now" than the tasks at hand, and that the only attachment that I was torturing me with was to my perception of the teachings themselves (again irony?)... Well, that's really cool. 

Overall, it's a great reminder to always question any advice, any teachings. If I think I'm missing something...I probably am.

I've been strugglin' with ZaadzBlogger-block for the past week or so...Really want to write something, but come up empty!  Thought about doing the "friday five" thing like everyone else (and still probably will), just to get out of the funk, but...i'm not one to follow trends, so I thought about how everyone else has already been there, done that...but then i thought about how deliberately not following a trend, is worse than following it. Because then it's got an even tighter hold on me... And then I spent so much time thinking, I Really didn't feel like writing.

This is take-two.

For some odd reason, over the past two days two people have asked me about my little "Zaadz Title" thing.  What's odd, is that over the past three months two people have asked me about my little "Zaadz Title" thing.  So, since it's 'in the air?', I thought this might be a good time to just write about it. Just write!

I had this seemingly profound dream a few days or so before joining Zaadz.  In it, I had asked this monk-type guy, "Why is it, that we can't see reality for how it really is?"  His answer, which totally blew my mind at the time, was:

"Because we can't cole past the bliff."

When I awoke, I had the most powerful feeling and excitement that I had just received some very profound teaching.  I wrote it down as quick as I could!  Later on, I looked at my notes

"We can't cole past the bliff - The reason we aren't seeing reality as it really is."  I was a little dissappointed.

So, when I was signing up for my Zaadzventure, and it asked for a title, I put "Bliff Coler."  Like, "coler" as a verb.  Later, I wondered if people might think that was actually my name.  Kinda a good porn name.  But, I like jokes to my self, so I've left it.  I might still think deep-down that it's actually profound ;-)

Today, though, I heard an interesting thing!  I was listening to Alan Watts (it's been a very Wattsy past week! One of my favorite people to listen to), and he brought up the profound experiences that people on anasthesia undergoing surgery are known to have.  Apparently, at some point there was a doctor that decided to investigate this and went and dosed himself, pen and paper in hand.

As Watts tells it, this dr. ended up having the profound universally-harmonic-tuned-ego-losing experience that he was looking for!  As he woke up, consciousness still slightly keyed, he madly scrawled out the words which described his experience perfectly.  He'd come back, and brought it back with him.  A little later, as his head was finally clearing, he read what he had written:

"Everything in the Universe, is the smell of burnt almonds."

He was a little dissappointed, it was all so clear before! But Alan Watts still thought it was saying quite a lot. What does it mean to say that "All the universe is Atman" or God, or a multifaceted-interconnection-of-oneness?  Why not the smell of burnt almonds?

Now, I actually think this is great.  I thought about it a little, and yeah, why not?  Equation it, and Everything in The Universe = Smell of burnt almonds.  Smell of burnt almonds = Everything in the Universe.  So, what Isn't the smell of burnt almonds?  Doesn't it basically say "all is one" or whatever? 

How did the zen master reply when asked what is the true nature of the Buddha? "Dumplings!" That's a story I heard, but I dig the almonds thing even more, because it's not a material object that it's equating with All; it's an experience, a sense. 

So, back to not being able to cole past the bliff.  I've grown fond of it.  Onomatopoeia, semiotics, words-sounding-like-they-mean; "cole" has a great harshness, an almost drillingness or puncturingity to it.  "bliff" - It's a puff, a nothing, the fluff. Now I'm just babbling.

Well, so here we go :) Have we all had these experiences?  These seemingly enlightened bits of moment that make perfect sense, only in a different mind? I bet so, huh.  What's that mean? 

And now, I'm done!  Blogging, is the smell of burnt almonds.

Alright, in my attempt to be the last Friday-Fiver (and to avoid a friday-ten!), here's mine. 

If you haven't seen it around, it's from the ”holy memes and kosmic blog starters“ pod, and...well...if you haven't come accross it yet, you should really look around Zaadz a little bit more! ;-)

1) 10 years ago what did you think you would be doing now?
     - Y'know, I'm not sure if I thought about it much at all.  I might'a paid more attention to what I Wasn't going to be doing (college, marriage)...And until recently, I've done a pretty good job at it.

2) Where do you think you will be in 5 years from now?
     - Married, out of college, and doing research on something somewhere.  Working out crackpot theories, and trying to convince intelligent people that I'm right.

3) Do you live life one day at a time or look to the future?
    - I definitely live one day at a time, but by paying special attention to that day, I extrapolate the likely-future.  The more "now" i am, the more of the future I see.  If i don't see it, then i don't pay it any thought.  So it's a sorta day-at-a-time-where-the-time-isn't-necessarily-the-same-as-the-day

4) Do you wish you could go back in time and undo something in your life?
    - I totally buy into the concept that if anything was different in time, everything would be different now. And i like my life.  BUT...There's this damn scar on my arm from a drinking night, right?  And so far...I haven't noticed anything good come from it.  Ask me again at the end of my life; it might be something I'd wish to undo.

5) If you could send a message back in time and give a younger version of yourself some advice, what would it be?
    - "Pay attention to things you might need advice on.  You're gonna send a message back in time some day!"
     - Um, really though.  If anything, I'd probably clue myself in a little earlier to the fact that the less you care what people think, the more they like you.

There's something I've been wanting to blog aboot fer a bit, but it's been taking a while to gel enough in my head to do so.

 I realized a while ago, that the things I think about my self and judge my self on, are typically things that I would judge others on, also.  For instance, I was sort'a  obsessed with thinking that I was stupid for a very long time and as such, seeing a lot of the 'stupid' in others. Which came first?  Did I start looking for others being dumb, just to make me feel better?  Or did my view of my own stupidity color how I saw the world?  I think they sort'a fed off of each other.

 So, this was a while ago; i've been pretty confident and see the great in most people for the past few years.  For some reason, though, this old 'lesson' keeps coming up in my mind the last couple of weeks...It would seem I have something more to learn from it.

If you're familiar with the whole "mirror neuron" stuff (i think it was a big part of What the Bleep? also, and I Know a bunch'a y'all seen that ;), it makes a lot of sense.  This is the stuff where watching somebody performing an action, fires many of the same neurons as if we were actually performing the action ourselves.  So, quite a lesson to be learned: We view other's actions, as if it were us performing them.

 Ever been embarrassed for somebody else?  I know for me it's been sometimes nearly Painful to watch somebody on a TV show or Movie or whatever, going through an embarrassing situation...Embarrassed FOr them.  As if I were doing it myself? Hmm...

There's this interesting social-conflict in my office...This one guy that I always thought was cool, and tried to get know more, but he seriously doesn't like me at all.  At All!  I talked to him about it once, and he said something like "Well, I think we're just too similar to like each other."  Interesting...

 There's this thing in Artificial Intellingence theory called the "Uncanny Valley".  It basically saysls that the more life-like an artificial thing is, the creepier it seems.  Ever seen Shrek 2?  For me, it was totally  like this. The computer-animated characters were so real-like..that it creeped me out a bit.  The closer we relate to something, the more of our brain fires like it was us...But it's still off so much, that we get an odd odd sensation.  Creepy.

 So, I think this is why some people used to seem amazing to me.  They were just so "different" that I could appreciate them as seperate.   Kind of the whole "star struck" type thing; I don't try to compare them to my self at all.   Of course, nowadays I'm fully aware that we're all just people playing different roles.. I think it's why people related to the American president Bush so well.  He's so far from us, but still really dumb like anybody.

I think this has a lot to do with jealousy and such... Brain's firing like it was me in a particularly beneficial situation...but it's not, and so there's the anxious feeling.  I also think it explains stuff like claustrophobia, where you're thinking your brain into firing like there's all this room, but there's not, so there's anxiety.

Um, maybe getting off on a tangent here...Back to others.

 So, it would seem, from the "mirror neuron" type angle... We think of others, what we would think of ourselves in their situation.  I notice this a lot with those pretty girls that don't realize they're pretty... They seem to either:

 A) Make fun of other girls. Therefore, when they view themselves, they view what they would think of somebody else..and since they would think mean thoughts of them, they think mean thoughts of themselves.  Kind of a thinking of me thinking of me.

B) Percieve girls that they think of as "pretty" as completely seperate from themselves. On a pedestal.  No neuronal firing when looking at themselves 

I have a friend in my martial arts class that I've noticed causes emotions to well up.  I see him trying something, and I think "Gah, he's doing it all wrong!  He probably thinks he's right, too..."  but really...I'm thinking of if it were me performing that action.  First of all, I'd be doing it "wrong", so I'd be dissappointed in me...and second, if I didn't think I was wrong, I'd probably think I was right.  OOooo, the nerve!!!!

 Anyway, I'm trying to hurry, cause now it's late. I'm heading to do some camping over the weekend!  Whoooohooo, spring is here!  So I'm sorry if this didn't end up making sense.  It's really long, but really...all I wanted to get accross was the thought I've been having lately, that... I'm realizing that what I  think of others, is (like literally) DIRECTLY connected to what I think of myself.  It wasn't until I started noticing the intelligence in others, that I could appreciate it in my self.   I start seeing it in myself, it helps with noticing it in others.  It's a duality, an important brain function.  

 If we can improve our thoughts of others, the thoughts of ourselves will improve. And vice versa.  So, I will try to "see the change in the world, that I want to see in myself?"  Yeah, that's my current theory, at least ;-)

Camping Friday night was a lot of fun; it was my first time at a KOA site and they’re really not so bad!  It was a “free day” there, so it was pretty packed with all the bargain campers.  Creepy couple next to us came to the site…I helped them set up their tent..they were in there for about a half hour, and then they packed up and left.  Wonder what they were doin’??

Then yesterday we stopped at the Beer Garden of the Gods in Coloado Spring!  I learned that when it was “first discovered” by europeans, the one said to the other somethin like “This would make a mighty nice beer garden!”  And the other replied “Yes, a garden fit for the gods.”  So they called it Garden of the Gods.  But it’s really the Beer Garden of the Gods.  So I think I’m gonna call it that from now on.  I think I’ll also correct others whenever they mention it.

The second I saw them, I was wondering “Wow, what’s the process that creates stuff like this??”  It’s just so beautiful and interesting, it was fun to think about.  I saw some paintings later in the visitor center that showed some snapshots of different periods, from billions of years ago, to millions, then thousands.  They’re created from erosion!  Like volcanic activity covered the area billions of years ago, plus the earthquakes and fault lines that created the rockies, and since then natural weather and rain erosion has carved out these amazing structures.  It made a lot more sense after that.

Since erosion created these rock formations, we couldn’t help but laugh when we saw a sign saying that “Recent wind and rain have destroyed and weakened this rock face! Please no climbing, blah blah blah..” haha… The thing that created them, now is seen by us to be destroying them.  This does mean that some day, the Beer Garden of the Gods won’t exist anymore.  We laughed at the thought of conservation groups in the future trying to coat all of the rocks in a polyurethane to prevent further “destruction”.  Then, no more minerals would run into the creeks, causing flora to disappear somewhere else, leading to some sort of animal and insect extinction. 

The last time my girlfriend or I had been there was from long-past trips with our parents from childhood, so it was interesting to see it from a new perspective.  The thing was, though, that like we remembered it being so much more fun before.  But as we were walking around it was just kinda…a bunch’a rocks.  That’s when I realized what it was: we were being too ‘adult’!

We were reading signs, and walking on the trail. Some signs were up asking you not to climb on certain formations because of reconstruction, or wear or whatever, and so we were leary about touching any of them.  The kids were all up around crawling on everything!  Actually, the group of Russians were into that, too. Usually in places were there were signs saying “no climbing/scramling!” but they had the language-barrier excuse goin’ for them.  The Japanese groups we saw were very reserved, too. Taking lots of pictures.  I decided that I had to be a little more all-terrain.

I started climbing around on this huge rock, and it was great!  The feel of porous rock really brought back some of the memories from being there all those years ago.  That’s when I started having all the fun.  I was climbing up on and around eveything I could find, trying to walk on the sidewalk as little as possible; it was a kick!  Jumping from rock to rock, climbing up, jumping down, running and jumping on to the next one.  The place was still fun, I’d just forgotten why.

So that was really cool. It was interesting afterwards to see all the people that were just walking on the sidewalk. It’s a nice walk, but so much more fun off the path!  The dogs on their leashes, following the sidewalk with their owners were kinda entertaining, too.  I saw a couple of escape attempts, and even this one dog that totally didn’t want to go home!  His owner ended up picking the big guy up and placing him in the car manually.

By the end of the trip when we checked out “Balanced Rock” I was jumping all around, kinda playing with some stuff like this thing called “parkour” which is some sort of french thing.  Check out the videos, it’s kinda neat! They sorta just go around running, jumping over obstacles and stuff. I wasn’t doing anything even NEAR as cool like them,  but got a neat idea of how it might be!  It was just a lot of fun to run and jump and climb and jump, haha.  Was a good time!

I think the idea of "balanced rock" is funny, too cause like...it used to be part of one structure, but now it's eroded and now we consider it it's own a "rock" . And since it's still connected, we think of it as if it were "balancing", but really...it's just all one huge mountain that's eroded that way.

I had a can of redbull in my “cell phone pocket” on the leg of my jeans, and it was interesting to feel it slosh around when I was just walking.  I wanna try to get pants where I can put a can of water on each leg; then I can practice walking more smoothly with none of it sloshing or spillin’!  I seem to have a lot of hip muscle tightness and stuff, and I’m thinkin’ it might have something to do with my jerky-walkin’.  Hmm…

Just had my anual performance review at my job here, and the results are in!  I am a solidly average, mid-grade corporate employee.

 This, of course, comes as no surprise at all.  The only negatives in the talk were about how I could definitely defend my own ideas more, or interrupt others during a meeting to express my opinions.  I kind of smiled on the inside since I couldn't think of a way to express that the reason for this is that I really don't care. 

The things people argue about in these meetings have so little relevance to anything that I feel is important, that I have no opinions to offer.  If I really think things are on the wrong track, I always pipe up with a suggestion or two, but overall?  The inner-spinnings of the corporate machine don't offer any fuel for my inner fire.

 It's a great sign that everything is going in the right direction; why would I want to stay in a job where I'm just average?  I really do need to get out there to somewhere that I can work at with passion.  Something that's important to me and not just another pay check.

Of course, I understand that I should put my best foot forward in everything that I do, but that time has passed.  I started out as the hardest working employee anybody could wish for, and have been rewarded with the opportunity to climb the ladder a'plenty.  Now, though, I'm growing and finally understanding what's really important to me.  And climbing ladders isn't it.

In this sterile environment, driven by profits and marketshare; where highly intelligent people spend large portions of their lives in meetings for the sole purpose of perpetuating an ephemeral noun with no soul... I am average.  When I get out there where I can sink my teeth into something with substance, that is where I will shine

At the least, it'll be a more interesting journey. ;-)

It was an amazingly beautiful day out earlier, and I decided to eat my lunch outside, in "my spot" - past the parkinglot, in some grass down a hill with a little creek and small dam that runs by a few hundred feet further.  Beautiful spot that I'll miss when I leave this job.

I put my book down, and took a bite out my sandwich before getting to reading.  As I breathed in the air, the smell of the grass and the water nearby, slowly chewing, i took in the sites around me.  The trees leaves gently rustling in the wind, the clouds drifting by, the planes climbing into the sky at a nearby airport, and I saw the ants skittering accross this brick divider; seperating manicured green grass from the dirt and leaves of the field nearer the stream.

As soon as spring got into full swing, I noticed these ants running back and forth on these bricks - I call it "the ant highway" because that's definitely what it is!  Ants run seemingly as fast as they can from the left, and others burdened with treasures of dirt, rocks, food, and whatever else make their trek back from the right.  Really fun to watch since you can definitely see the order in their plan.  

Sometimes, ants going opposite directions meet up with each other accidentally.  There's a breif pause as their antennas flick over each others in a kind of greeting, and then they make a slight correction in course and go their own ways back to work.

I've learned how ants follow each other before, finding food and returning to their hills and all.  They basically all leave a chemical "scent" behind them as they run, and then other ants follow the trail of the scent.  The more ants that end up going to and from a direction, the stronger the scent, so the better the trail.  It's pretty interesting to think about... We "leave behind" light that's reflected off our bodies, and that's how we follow each other.  Ants leave behind a "scent" - according to them scientific descriptions.

So I was staring at this scene, eating a sandwhich on this beautiful day, and I start wondering how they know which direction they're going.  The scent-method of seeing isn't the most accurate - sometimes some little fellas get off the trail and kinda go a little crazy, weaving this way and that until the scent's picked back up - so I wondered: how do they know which direction's towards home, and which is from? 

I pondered this for a moment, thinking maybe there was more to it than we thought, an extra sense, but then I saw him: An ant going away from home, with a big piece of dirt in his little mandibles!  Was he mixed up?  Did he have another idea?  Was he rebelling?  I decided to follow him.

 I left the rest of my food behind, and started crouching on the ground in front of the highway, following the little guy as he went.  Other, empty-handed ants, kept racing past him, and he didn't seem to notice.  Sometimes he'd run head on into another ant going the "right" way, they did their little greeting dance and kept going.  Twice, though, he got wrestled a little; they rolled around together, but kept going.  Was it from the added weight they each had, or were the other ants saying "No, this way!" ?  I kept following.

He lost sight of the trail a few times, got caught up in cracks between the bricks on the way.  Unfortunately, I lost him in one of the cracks... Did he get caught?  Go a different direction?  Drop his prize, and continue on the correct way for more? I'm not really sure... Experiment over. :-/

I did follow the rest of the ants to their destination, though. THey all ended up at a couple of little holes dug into the ground by the bricks. They'd go in, and come back out holding a piece and running back towards home.  I figured since I followed them this long, I might as well check out their whole journey.

So I followed a few of the ants.  Some were faster than others, some could go faster with bigger chunks than others; i really felt like they all had a unique personality.  It was amazing watching them navigate the cracks between the bricks. There was always a spot where bricks touched, and they would seem to make a bee-line straight towards that area where the most other ants had gone before.  Very cool system they got there.

Their final destination for the pieces they were carrying was a few hundred feet away from the pick-up site.  It seemed to be a larger crack between the bricks.  I peered in tothere, my shadow over the highway making a couple of ants twitch for a second, and it was stuffed with dead grass and the little pebbles and rocks.  Was it their "home", or just the dump-site for the tunneling they were doing elsewhere?  As soon as I asked the question, i saw an ant coming from the Other direction, carrying dead grass. He went into the crack, dropped his nesting, and ran back out to the grass area to get some more.  

I didn't get much reading done. barely was able to finished my sandwich actually haha, but it was a lot of fun!  I really like looking into other creature's worlds, and i was grateful for the ants to show me.  The really interesting thing was when I looked a little closer?  There was So much life running around on those bricks!  Some spiders I think were hunting the ants...at least following them around, darting towards the sound they must make in the bricks.  Lots of smaller spiders, some eensy weensy millipede type things...and the ants running back and forth on their highway, with their one purpose in mind.

It was a great look into a world not often paid attention to.  It was a magical lunch period :)

 

---

PS: I even tried to make a little poem about it...and I don't write poems.
 

        ants turning brick into highway,
        do they know where they're going?
        they stop to say hello,
        their day makes me smile

I've recently received the best gift from a former me. 

My parents are moving to a new house, and out of the one that I had lived in since I was like 10.  In cleaning up their crawlspace, they told me to come by and get all of my stuff!  I couldn't really figure out what "stuff" they meant...I thought I had pretty much thrown out everything that I didn't move out with, so I was kinda interested to see what they were talking about.

I show up to help them clean out the basement, and they start handing me boxes that say "robert's things". I look in them, and...it's like my baby clothes?  Baby shoes and stuff?  Haha, I'm all what's this?  I didn't really consider any of that stuff "Mine", y'know?  Kind of an interesting perspective...if they weren't mine, who's were they?  When did I become "Me"?

Either way, it was interesting to go through; my parents had saved so much!  Even what I guess they called my "lovey" - a happy stuffed dog-head thing that my grandma bought which was my favorite security item when I was 4 months old.  It was actually really odd to look at; there was some weird sub-conscious emotional type'a feelings I had towards the thing.  They had to throw it away cause the stuffing was kinda rotten, but I got a picture of it:

<>                                                   My "Lovey" that baby-me owned.
       
Anyway, so there were also two other boxes of things; things I had actually packed myself from times when I'd throw everything out in my room.  These were the things that I couldn't bring myself to get rid of, so I actually remember the two times over the years where I packed these boxes for "me" in the future.  And here I was.

There was tons of fascinating things in these boxes.  Workbooks from Kindergarten?  And first grade?  Like, remember the time when you'd draw all these symbols on a piece of paper and ask your parents what it said? I found some of that!  I think my mom had told me to save most of the things, which was pretty cool of her.    Looking through them, i got this amazing feeling of continuity... There's so much of "me" that has been "me" since at least when I was in kindergarten!

I kind of remember that in these workbooks, as we went through them in class, we would have to circle each page number just so the teacher would know we were paying attention or whatever.  Well in these books, mine started out as circles..then they'd get to be squares, and octagons, and houses and all sorts'a things as I got bored paying attention, haha.  The pages where we had to match an item with the sound it started with had a mixture of lines, and squiggly lines, into loopy lines...I do the same type'a things now, which is Really freakin' entertaining.

A funny thing, was some sort of "progress chart" that was filled out for my parents by my teacher in kindergarten.  It was called like "The Path that Leads To...Robert" (this was before I was "ROb!") and it was this flow-chart thing that like rated me from working with others, to health, and spelling and all this stuff... and the last thing on the path was "Citizenship."  And there were notes relating to how well I would integrate as an american citizen. Interesting...

Found some old stories of mine from school, and apparently I have the same type of humor as I do now. Though more sofisticated, naturally. ;) Combining words into new ones, "verbing" all sort'sa stuff.  Really really funny to read. Particularly striking as to how it was the building blocks of who I now am.  Or, at least how I now act?

But yeah, neat stuff... I used to draw this dog and cat that I think a babysitter had taught me; I hadn't drawn them in like probably twenty years, so I went and doodled them on some paper. It was oddly comfortable.  There was even this weird drawing that I had done when I was like four!  I remember always making sure to keep it; i knew it was something "important" even when I was eight. I always made sure to know where it was.  Some weird sort'a half-dinosaur, half-man with eight feet  type of thing, haha.  The symbols and the dino/man reminded me of some of the ancient cave drawings we now find.  A lot of them are of "anthropomorphised beings" and stuff. It's apparently one of those "mysteries" of ancient cultures.  There's very similar themes with my kid-drawings!  I bet we could understand them more by watching the symbolic/artistic development of children. Hmm..

Oh, yeah!  One of the coolest things I found, was this note I had written to my self.  Apparently, when I was in like second or third grade I was in a spelling bee!  I don't even remember it at All, but I guess I took second place!  I do remember writing the note to me, though; it took me over an hour since I made sure to use my best cursive writing as I documented the occassion. 

Apparently my spelling really really sucked, so I decided to study hard for it, and try with everything I had.  My brother helped me study, I always took the spelling-book around with me, and I ended up with second place!  I told my self to remember that studying really does pay off, and that I could do anything if I tried.  Wow, I think I really could use that reminder.  Thanks , me!

There was so much stuff to go through in these boxes, and I was really digging on it!  I kept switching back-and-forth, wondering... was way to approach the moment was to study it like an archeologist, or to enjoy as something I had given myself?

Some other neat things were from school assignments and stuff.  My biggest weaknesses in 2nd grade were: Handwriting, and use of time.  Ack, those are still some of my biggest weaknesses!  What do I want to be when I grow up?  "A teacher, or a constructor".  I think i meant engineer.

But yeah, it was all a very interesting experience.  Found notes my mom had left for me after school, notes in "code" that my friends passed back and forth, notes from teachers...All sorts of homework type stuff, some of my first attempts at writing in bubble letters, hahaha.  It was really amazing.  It's just breathtaking the amount of knowledge that they have to teach us!  Like really left an impression on how much work is behind the current "basic knowledge" I now have. Quite the job to teach so much to such little people; I have a large respect for teachers.

And that's about it that was in the boxes. Some old transformer toys and stuff that I got to have fun playing with all over again. The amount of time I spent with these toys!  It was all great, all the doodles had big smiles on their faces, there were all these bright scenes...I was apparently a pretty happy child.

My parents found some other stuff, too, like from middle and high-school.  That wasn't so much fun. I had some pretty depressed years there, where i hated school, hated the system...got talked to a few times for writing long rants about how they were trying to "brainwash me" on tests I was taking, hahaha...It was kinda sad.  The interesting part was how when I read some of this stuff...i really started having second thoughts about going back to school!  I semi-slipped back into that mindset, it was really interesting.  Naturally, I know it'll be different now, and I'm still really determined, but. ..it was interesting to see the old pattern.

SOoOOooo, anyway!!  I really enjoyed this gift to my self from the past. I think I really learned a lot!  It's great to know that the "me" i am, I've been for a long time.  Just one'a them things, I guess ;-)

One last thing.  There was a cool "Kugi" poem that I actually dig that I had written in third grade. It even got a "Wow!" written next to it by a teacher hehe:

    In the mist of shining sun,
    I can see the Tops of tree Tops,
    and the Tops of the mountains

Haha, and I didn't think I wrote poems.  Wait... Me who?

Last night, my girlfriend noticed a little bird outside our apartments just sitting in the grass chirping.  She figured that it was hurt since it was sort'a hobling around awkwardly, but just to make sure she through a rock near it too, Hahaha.  It didnt' fly away, so we figured it must be hurt.

She looked up some info online, and it said to leave it there and other birds will take care of it, so we did.  This morning though, on my way to a dentist appointment (no cavities!) I checked back outside and yep, it was still there limping around.

 I'm kinda worried about the poor thing since it got injured in a really bad area. This is the strip of grass inbetween buildings where everyone walks their dogs!  I watched the little guy for a bit, trying to think of what I could do for it.  It was chirping, and other birds were chirpin' back; I figured that was a good sign.  One bird flew right down near it for a second, but they sort'a chirped and flapped at each other before the second one flew away, so I wasn't sure if that was good or bad.

I looked back online, and found some really good ideas!  They mainly suggest leaving hurt birds alone, But they said that if it was in danger from dogs and cats that I could A) Toss it in some bushes, or B) Make a basket with some grass and leaves and stuff, and hang it up in a tree.  That really sounded like a good idea!

I got some ski-gloves on, and grabbed a basket and went back out.  Poor little guy hoppin' and chirpin'.  He was making some good progress, though, he had hopped half way accross the strip!  Maybe he was gonna be good, afterall.

Right then, the other bird flew back, and it had food in it's mouth!  It chewed it up, and the baby bird chirped excitedly and kept opening it's mouth up towards it.  They put their beaks together and the new bird fed the baby!  The hurt little guy was really happy, chewing and hopping all around.  Then the other bird flew away again, and brought back more!

At this point, I couldn't mess with the poor guy.  His bird-buddies had found him, and were taking care of him. It was actually pretty cool to see; I really wished I had a camera handy.  

So, I sort'a sat there for a few minutes, trying to figure out what to do.  Couldn't move it, or the birds might get weirded out.  The basket thing sounded like a good idea, but no trees could support it nearby.  I knew the other birds would take care of it now, but there's going to be dogs romping around soon!  It was getting late, so if I was going to do anything, I had to do it quick.   I decided the only thing I could do, was to make a sign alerting dog-owners that an injured bird was around, so that hopefully they'd keep the dogs on a short leash.

I ran inside, got some paper an da hanger, wrote out a little note "Careful with pets!  Hurt Baby Bird Nearby!", stuck it in the ground, and then had to leave.  I can't really think of what else I could'a done...Should I have put it under some bushes?  I'm sure it'll be fine, but I could really see somebody daydreaming and being taken off-guard when their dog dashes off; not even realizing what's going on until it's too late!   Hahaha,  This humanitarian side'a me is getting kinda annoying. ;)

So, that's how my morning's gone so far.  What else could'a I done?  Maybe I'll head back on lunch and check on it again... 

I had the amazing opportunity to see the Body Worlds 2 exhibit at the natural history museum last night!  I've been really really stoked to see it for a while now, and since last night was Corporate Night, I was able to get discounted tickets!  Ginger couldn't go because she had a headache and we're in the middle of moving, but I went anyway and ended up spending over two hours in there, hehe.. they sorta had to kick me out at the end. 0:-)

The exhibit was just blew me away.  They started us out slowly, with some boxes with different bones in them.  It was great to see that it was completely an educational experience; there were little facts and tidbits posted about every part and body all throughout.  The bodies were just magical to see, but the thing I got the biggest kick out of was the people around me's reactions to them!

Right from the first couple of display cases I started hearing people pointing to things and saying "See that? That's where I had broken when..." and "Oh wow, that must be the artificial hip that your grandma just got..." It was great to see. From the start, people were relating their own experiences to the displays!  More fully understanding their friend's and their own surgeries...a beautiful thing.

After a couple of cases there was the first full-body display, and man was it freaky.  It had an assembled person standing, all made out of muscle, then there was a skeleton next to it, and they were holding a baby skeleton's hands.  It was freaky enough to look at, but when I read the description next to it, the muscles were from the same body as the bones!  So this dude's muscles were standing next to his own skeleton!  Freaky!!  The kid was there to show how the bones change from being a child to adult.

The next cool thing I noticed was people starting to use their full senses.  I noticed a girl that was looking at one of the full-bodies turn to her mom and say "i wanna smell it!"  THen she leaned over, and sniff...sniff...She said it didnt' really have a smell.  I hung around each body for a while, just soaking it all in, and there were actually a few people that stopped, looked around, and smelled'em.  And I gotta agree..yep, they didn't really have a smell.

I had known that the human body was an amazing organism, but I hadn't ever grokked it so fully as I did last night.  The way the organs function, the muscles wrap, and the tendons act as pullys...amazing.  I really got a feel for the whole thing through their breath taking displays.  I even think I located some of the muscles in my shoulder area that might be causing a lot of my shoulder issues!  There's this funky one that starts at the elbow, then wraps around up through the bones around there, and connects to the front of the shoulder-joint. I need to learn the names for all this stuff, haha. But yeah, I really tried to trace it in my own body, while looking at that one.  Turns out, as I went around the exhibit I noticed a lot of people just sorta standing next to the body, flexing different muscles trying to locate the ones they were seeing.  Amazing.

There was this display that showed the entire digestive tract, from esophagus to rectum, with everything else removed.  It made me think of this thing Alan Watts always says, about how we're basically all just tubes.  We're all just tubes that require things to go in one end of them, and out the other.  Over the years, we've developed odd little feet and legs and things to move us closer to things to put through our tube, developed brains and such to more efficiently and creatively find things to put through the tube.  And all this putting of things through tubes wears them out after a while, so there's an ingenious way that's evolved to create new tubes to continue all this serious business of putting stuff through them.  It's an interesting bit of mind-candy to roll around, really, but when I was standing there, looking at; at what?  At this really really long tube!  Is that us?  My thoughts were interrupted though, by a girl that when seeing the tiny size of the esophagus said "Whoa...so That's why I choked when I swalled that piece of ice!"  I had to laugh and move on... The lessons people were learning from all this!

One of the things I took away from seeing the insides of all these bodies, is how it's really just one big mush of gunk.  I caught one of the signs talking about how tightly everything's "packed in there" and I had to pause.  "Packed in"?  Interesting western thought process, there; from the perspective of if we were to sit down and Make a body.  Well yes, we'd definitely have to "pack" everything in, but bodies aren't built, they're grown.  I really felt like I could see how everything was grown together, one giant mass of body with just different parts of it adapted to perform the actions appropriate for where they were.  Yes, it would be amazing to pack that much stuff into something so perfectly, but I think it's even more amazing to grow something that does it all by itself.

So, I learned a lot from those couple of hours at the exhibit.  The cool thing is that Ginger still wants to go, so I get to see it all again!  I learned something that i'd wondered about for a bit: How do the muscles of the heart work, to beat the whole thing at once, rather than just pushing sides of it?  Turns out the muscles around the heart form in a spiral pattern, so when they contract, the whole heart pumps.  Awesome.  I saw how the tongue connects through all the different tissues downward into the hip, the support-structure bones develop from impact and vibration, learned about the appendix which was cool becuase i visited a friend's little boy today who is in the hospital from his rupturing. 

 I also know that I don't want to get any sort of hip replacement, or vertabrae-fusing, or metal rods or metal in my wrists... They had a body that had all of those contraptions installed (haha), and it was really interesting watching the older people go up to it and examine the areas where they had had the same surgeries.  I can't think of anything more important to learn about; I was just blown away.  From all of the "wow!"s I heard being gasped around me, a lot of other people were, too.

I tried to make sure to express gratitude to the bodies as I went around the exhibit.  Their bodies may not have been donated to immediately save a life or to be studied for science, but I think they've served an even more important role: teaching so many people about themselves.  I took a moment to thank them all as I signed the guest book and left.  There was so much more to the exhibit that I won't even go on about, but just know that if you have a chance to see this, you may really dig it!!

It's funny, when the offer first came up at work, I had a hard time explaining to my co-workers why I was so excited to see it. They turned the whole thing into an odd philosophical "is it right to display people's bodies" type of deal, which is cool, but these bodies are all volunteers, so... As to the question of "is it right" in general?  They all seemed to think that it was just basically morbid, and that anybody that wanted to see it only had a morbid curiosity of seeing dead things, but that is so not right.  I think it's very important just for people to See and Understand their own bodies.  We all have one, this is what we "are" on the inside.  More of us is on the inside than the out, and it's an amazing opportunity to see the entire human body.  I was extremely glad to see that others were reacting to it that way, no matter what sort'a feelings they had about seeing it before they walked in.  I really feel it's an important thing for everyone to see, and I love the idea that now that we have this technology, it's only a matter of time before every museum has their own display for everyone to learn more about themselves through.

I just got to spend a long weekend moving into a new apartment!  This is the first major step of Operation: Back to School, so i'm kinda stoked and kinda uneasy at the same time.

The move itself was pretty long and took most of Saturday, but luckily we have a lot of great friends so it went pretty smoothly!  The major hickup was that the night before we moved, U-Haul called us to say that our reservation didn't work out right, and that we wouldn't have a truck until 3pm (instead of 10am!)!  Looked online, and apparently this is a thing that U-Haul does often to many people!  Just cancelling reservations at the last second, even for people that were planning to move out of state.  Definitely Not a company we gonna be doin' any business with again.

Overall, everything worked out  for everyone, though. Our friends were actually pretty happy to get to sleep in, and it all worked out in the end.  We had So much stuff that it was actually quite the job!  SO many boxes; our new place has just been filled with them and we have little paths we've carved out so we can get around from room to room.  Moving made me very aware of the weight of our attachments to material things.  Wouldn't it be nice to just throw it all away? Er..give it all away would be better, actually.  But yeah, then we'd just end up buying more. Interesting, that. 

Our cats freaked out a bit from the whole thing, it was kinda sad since they had No clue what was going on!  The stray cat we had taken in a year ago or so was pretty stressed about the whole deal. We were wondering if people had gotten rid of her during a move or something. She just sorta found a place to hide and stayed there for the first day.  Our 10-month old kitten was very adventurous though, and took to explorin' off the bat. She's ballsy like that.

Our friends were a great help, we were all really beat afterwards.  We were pretty glad to know so many decent people that would take their saturday to sweat and work in the sun for somebody else.  Like these things go, I think we actually had some fun doing it.  Definitely was a good memory-making-moment.

So, now we live way up north, close to Ginger's job, and far away from mine.  That was the deal: if i get to go to school, she gets to live right next to work. So, for the next little-over-a-month, I get to drive an hour and a half in the morning!  I pretend like it sucks, but really...it's a beautiful drive.  I got to spend the morning with plains and rolling hills on my  left, and foothills jutting out of the ground on my right lit up by the cloudy sunrise.  I actually miss having a long drive to work! It's where i get to listen to a lot of good music, or audio books and stuff.  I'm also looking forward to later in the year when i get to start taking the bus to school. The reading i'll get to do!

It's kinda funny, this new apartment isn't as nice as the one we're moving out of.  It's a bunch smaller, the area's not as nice, we lose a bunch of those 'creature comforts' that we had at the last place.  Our old apartment was right near this awesome floodplane field with all these trees, paths, little creeks and stuff to walk around...it was great to get lost in.  Our new place, I get to walk around subdivisions, trailer parks, strip-malls...nothing quite as cool.  To trade to be able to go to school, though? Not a problem!

Unfortunately, I tweaked my back a bit from moving :-/  moving a sofa up stairs.  Was trying to have correct posture and all that, and was trying out this thing from my martial arts class, a way to fold at the hips, but apparently I did it wrong!  It's kinda alright, though, cause I've been trying to be more mindful of my hips, so having something in pain right around them kinda helps.  I've found all sorts of movements that are engaging the strained muscles that I'm not sure should be! So I'm trying to find some other muscles to use instead and maybe that'll help  overall.

So, things are shapin' up pretty well!  The cats are already finding the little spots that will settle in to be their own, and so are we.  Found a neat place for a picnic, already checked out some local food joints and our new Wal-Mart haha. Now, to unpack the rest, and watch our daily routines congeal.

Anyway, I won't have internet at home for a bit, but i'll still be checkin' in on Zaadz during the day.  Here's to change!