Found Writings

This past week was Passover, and included in that time was a lot of offline time. The offline time provided quite a bit of time for reflecting on things, but it also provided time to look at what I had on the bookshelves. In addition to many good books I had a wonderful find of a printout of my poetry, a bundle of which I knew was somewhere, and I have been looking for it, but also there were a few additional sheets of paper including a few poems I had thought I had lost forever. (n.b. much of my poetry is somewhere between poetry and prose.)

Ironically all of these copies of poems are print outs, so these all existed in some electronic medium at some time, and some of them (the ones I thought I had lost forever) had been posted on web pages. Although you cannot rely on online data fading away, you also cannot rely on it remaining available.

Having found my poetry I thought I would post a few of poems from the stack:

Pavonia Station
The dragon stirs
It's warm breath rustles the air.
The little mice scurry for cover
In the moldy lair.
Long last the green eyes gleam
And its sleek body slithers forward.
The scales peel back.
Unwittingly,
Oblivious to our host,
We enter.
"Hoboken Train!
Hoboken, Next stop and Last Stop!
Please watch the doors"

4/18/1995

Early Morning Shift
If you wake up in the morning
And see the sun bright rise
You'll know that I have gone
And rubbed my weary eyes.

The morning has come
And i have risen to my task
I sit now at my terminal
In its hews I now bask.

Morning, bright morning
will the sun not rise soon
In darkness I ride
Wishing I slept till noon.

12/23/1992

Dreams
Sunrise comes
Too early and too late.
My dreams have come and gone
In that sotten dark,
'Tween Witches hour
And dawns breath.
The dark road
On that darker mare
Carried me through
My restless hours.
Asleep,
Yet not resting.
Eyes closed,
But not unseeing.
Tossed and turned.
The sun creeps under my eyelids
Telling me to rise.
A new day is come.
And that dark riptide
Shall be left behind
In yesterday.

6/5/1992

Bedika Chometz

Last night was when we performed bedika chometz. It is a ritual where we hide 10 bundles of bread (well wrapped) and then search the house for any chometz (including the 10 pieces we just found.) The search is done by candle light after dark in preparation for Passover.

Passover is a holiday chock full of symbolism. Bedika chometz fits in with that definition. Each year it seems a bit different and this year it seemed poignant.

You see - chometz - which is leavened bread - is something which is puffed up, it stands for one's ego. 10 bundles corresponds to the 10 levels of the soul. As we search it is dark, and we are searching by candle light. Darkness, well think of any time that you thought was dark, it is place of limited vision.

In preparation for Passover, which celebrates the redemption from slavery - in particular the redemption from Egypt but in general (or perhaps in a personal sense) it is a time for personal redemption from whatever limitations or shackles we are experiencing.

So as I searched I thought of how the soul of (hu)man is the candle of G-d, and so how in the darkness we search out with the light of our soul to find any hidden ego, at any level of our soul, whether it is ego in our expansiveness or ego in our limits on things and so on. Through this searching we prepare to go out from slavery into freedom.

In a simple ritual we are shown that we hold the keys to our own shackles. If we can see beyond our own ego, burn it away (the found bread is burned the next morning) we can leave beyond that which is holding us back.

Video Photos and Fun

It is fun watching as video evolves on the net and how many different ways video can be served up.

The latest in that genre is "A movie is a moving photo" - the 90 second videos on Flickr. There are quite a few folks playing with that and I'm having fun with that idea too. What would a picture look like if it could move. Or if you were making a snapshot of life rather than a movie. There is lots of potential with the idea. Sometimes imposing ridiculous limitations actually brings out more creativity.

Here are my first "Moving Pictures". I'd love to see yours.

Adventures of the Virtual Sort

Before you is a passage. Blocking the passage is a large sign made up of a wide plank with four pendant planks.
The top plank invites you to press with the words 'Install World of WarCraft(tm)'


A small creaking voice of warning is heard 'don't press that - turn around! turn around!'.


Do you
1) Press Install World of Warcraft(tm)
2) Listen to the warning and press Exit Installer or
3) waver and examine the documentation.

With a bold stab of her staff she presses "Install World of Warcraft" and proclaims loudly to all who would hear her "She who hesistates is lost""

And with a swift motion she was hurled into another world.

Post and Attitude

I've been thinking a lot on the technologies we use, the way we communicate, and on virtual worlds, real worlds, human interactions.

So why no posts. Well sometimes the reason is the distance between idea and cogent post gets to be a little long, but lately it's been more of an issue of attitude.

As I put it today, I've been feeling my inner snark a bit more lately. Most of my thoughts have been on how things are broken, what I don't like about different services and general complaints. A few negative posts here and there I'll let fly, but I'm hesitant to post when my thoughts seem overly negative.

The down side of this is that if I sit on an idea for too long it gets a bit stale sounding to me, and then I don't post it either. Perhaps I'm overly concerned with the balance and that it will all even out in the end.

So what do you think about negative posting?