MY VIEW OF THE WORLD

Given an idea

how do different cultures interpret and absorb it?

AMERICAN

Layers. Each idea is dissected and fit into a specific layer, allowing entire layers to be moved freely. Interfaces between layers are standardized so one can ignore the small details and think about it at an abstract level, making way for scalability.

JAPANESE

Craft. Drop the idea anywhere you want, but make intelligent, consistent connections so that the whole picture is connected. Mastering the details is the bottom line, and everything is seen through the tinted glass of the nature of these "consistent connections". Very painstaking, but it creates people who are highly skilled at handling a wide array of ideas. Of course, ideas not consistent with the nature of the connections used, will not be connected - not that they are rejected - let's just imagine they don't exist.

CHINESE

Structure. Drop it anywhere you like, as long as it fits into the grid. Highly scalable and able to absorb any kind of ideas. The whole picture is so colorful and exciting sometimes you forget the rigidity behind the grid.

Wider European

Interest groups. Similar ideas are tightly knit together, but different ideas simply exist side by side. Of course that leads to an imbalance in powers - it's not the raw numbers that matter; it's the representation that counts.

INDIAN

Let it be. Similar ideas form groups naturally. Different ideas form their own relationships. There's no one single idea that binds everything together. Diversity is the key factor of resilience.

FRENCH

Egality. Let's abstract it up to a level where everything looks the same, then we can give everybody the same rights.

ENGLISH

Anything that doesn't look like the French will do.

「縁」

If you toss a coin once, you will get either a head, or a tail.

If you toss it twice, maybe you can get both a head and a tail, but there is still a big possibility that you end up with all heads or all tails.

If you toss it three times, you get a better chance of getting both heads and tails. The chances of getting all heads or all tails is much smaller, but the distribution is memoryless.

And if you can toss it an infinite number of times, you will get both heads and tails.

And that is to me what evolution is. A near-infinite number of attempts at life, so that we cover just about every permutation possible, effectively lowering the risk of extermination by an acceptable threshold of threats. Okay "every permutation" is a exaggeration, but that is the basis of why i believe a property of the world is its immense richness.

Within this richness, is it possible to match one animal/person to another such that they function well together? If I have a sample set of 20 people, I can't say for sure. But if I am given the theoretical infinity, then yes.

Is the theoretical infinity possible?

In the macro scale, yes. But on the micro scale, no.

On the macro scale, we see it in nature, how certain species form symbiotic relationships with another. Given enough time, the species works out what it needs.

But that process is not worked out by one generation, or for one creature.

Which is to say, if you ask me if you will meet the person of your life, I will say, maybe yes, maybe no.

But if everybody can reproduce an infinite number of fuzzy copies* of themselves, the possibility becomes very high, and all that is left is for those copies to meet.

And that chance of meeting and forming a meaningful relationship, on the basis that a theoretical infinite number of variations are available, creates the situation where the two persons/creatures can decide to make something out of it.

This is for me, the definition of 「縁」.

*I think this is the mistaken basis why a lot of people want to have children, and have their children be similar to themseles. Cool it, let nature do its work.

It is such a beautiful night tonight.
The rain has stopped
And the trees are rustling over a new gossip in the wind.
From my balcony
I can hear leaves being dragged along the ground by the breeze
Dancing to the mood, though not the rhythm
Of the crickets' incessant calls.
One has to wonder
Whose work it is that the crickets manage to so bring to life
Breathing a tranquility that is not silence into the night sky
Still tinted with a hint of pink.

Further away, I hear cars driving by
Not the roar of rush hour
But rather like the song of the crickets
Whose voices, each singing a very short counter-melody,
Weave together a complex polyphony that is at the same time intriguing and quiet.
It must be the eighteenth day of the lunar calendar;
It's strange to see a moon halfway to a half moon
Look so beautiful against an uncertain blue.
I am tempted to think it impolite to stare at a moon
Changing out of her ceremonial robes, but she sits unmoving, brighter at one edge,
Like a raw tear-shaped gem, back lit,
Adorning the Autumn sky.

There is something about the song of the crickets
It's the loudest thing I can hear tonight
Except when it is interrupted by the occasional hum of vehicles a distance away.
Yet, unlike the soft but insistent mumbling of the rotating electrical fan next door,
The more I try to follow the most identifiable melody and put myself into its sound
The more my ears tell me that I don't hear anything at all.
I was taught to identify instruments when listening to an orchestral work
But this night is full of sounds I don't know how to identify
But I suspect this is what a twenty-four bar rest really sounds like.
I can hear my neighbor packing something into a bag,
And it brings to me memories
of Grandma, packing things on a night
Just days before the Lunar New Year.
Like a nostalgic scent
Reconstructing in my mind a memory I did not see with my eyes
For a moment, part of me, is not quite here.
From time to time, the wind would be strong enough
To make the wind chime ring
Once, Twice, like a clock
Announcing the passing of an hour
As irregular as our memories that mark the years.

Autumn is just an idea
not so much of a season
as it is a period of change between Summer and Winter
which anchor the chain of fleeting moments that just happen to lie in between
just as how Life happens between the two perennial mountains of Birth and Death.
we always use the four seasons as an analogy for Life,
and choose Death to be its opposite.
But if Birth were to be the opposite of Death,
Life would be one single season of change
the next season would seem convincingly its purpose and destination
we forget that all four seasons
inextricably must happen at the same instant, somewhere out there
somewhere out there
someone is born
someone dies
and someone arrives
without having to try

i think one amazing thing about the body is that it was built to live, and built to die. That in the same body was a full package that included what was needed to do cell division, organ formation, puberty, recovery from sickness, reproduction, aging, and death - and every single function is a wonder. every function brings with it not just a biological process, but also a psychological process. the way our bodies change directly affects the way we think, and therefore the way be see the world and make decisions.

i think that this is nature's kindest invention. so that in our youth we will go out and do all sorts of reckless things and push our limits, and when our strength slows down, we change and desire different things. it helps us live our age. i think being able to live one's age is a great gift, because no matter how fast our brains can work, we take time to adjust emotionally. Living our age allows us to adjust bit by bit as our bodies change through its seasons.

simple, isn't it? the toddle ready to walk, the youth ready to run, the adult ready to fly, the wise ready to teach, the aged ready to encourage, and those at the end of the road - ready to die.

Yet one whole lifetime, is sometimes not enough for some of us to learn.

contentment<-reconciliation<-issue<-QUESTION->seeking->answer->satisfaction

Capitalism is beautiful in that it sums up all organizational objectives into the optimization of one single variable - profit.

Profit can be affected by costs, access to supply and availability of demand. Demand drives the demand for demand - and causes marketing and advertising to stimulate, as well as create demand. This causes a lot of people to want things they don't need. This excessive consumption is what causes a strain on the natural balance of things around us - the main one being the Environment.

I think stimulated demands are not healthy. Neither for the planet, nor on a personal level. People end up spending their lives chasing things that they don't really want. I think it is fair to win over a competitor's market, or to open up a new market with a new product that answers an undiscovered need. But to create a desire for a good where there is no real need, is plainly profiting on the goodness of the earth.

There is just so much resources on earth. If someone needs to get really rich, someone's gotta give. And now Nature's giving, and giving too much.

in the game of life,
nobody, has too much too lose.
that's what the floods and earthquakes,
wars and diseases,
recessions and loss,
remind us - that we are mere nothings
putting our everything against a constantly changing world
to stay alive.

Where does the Wind come from?
Where does he go?
He picked up momentum for a little while
and I felt his coming.
When he dies down,
Is he dead?
Is the Wind now, and the Wind later
the same Wind?
How can I tell?
You point to the leaves that were moving in him,
But they're not moving now.
I call to memory of his scent in my mind -
the smell of grass, of the sea, of wood, of pastry -
I can almost smell it now, but I cannot hold him in my hand -
Neither now that he is gone, nor then when he was here.
He comes, he goes, and I let him pass,
Like the shadow of a cloud crossing a river.
How do I begin to explain to you that he was here?
He is only as real as
the experience of that moment
I felt him near.

To err is human.

Not just humans, actually, all life err,
because mutation and evolution results in fiercer genes.
Error tolerance is a fantastic feature of our DNA.
But perhaps rather than saying that we were built FOR error, maybe it is more accurate to say that we were built WITH error.

It is not so much an effort or "correctness" that led to success - but rather, whatever happened to happen, happened because it is the inevitable. Whatever didn't happen, didn't happen because it not happening is also an inevitable.

Between the happening inevitable and the non-happening inevitable, we have enough life forms and variables to go around. This richness is the very essence of our world.

Our survival is simply proof of our diversity, because in diversity we create enough randomness to ensure that something survives.

The only time the word "normal" can mean any sense at all,
is when it is referring to the Gaussian distribution.

Being "normal" under the non-mathematical definition only means that you have inherited a more proven set of genes.

Which means that you are not going to push any frontiers.

Which also means you are largely unnecessary for the process of evolution.

Why are we so obsessed about being "normal"?

It is our weakness that makes us so.

We like to think about a model being that defines what "normal" is.

And we like to put everything else either "above" or "below" the "normal".

We admire those who are not normal, only when they happen to be in the "above" group.

When some choose lifestyles that belong to the "below" group, we look at them with disgust and fear.

The Gaussian Normal on the other hand, is incomplete without the full distribution.

It would not be Normal otherwise.

Yes, it means that the people "above" and the people "below" are part of what makes everybody Normal.

G/R/R/A/A/C/C/E/S/S is a color only when you put yourself in the center of the world.

Come to terms with it.

Diversity is the new Normal.

Grab youtube media

#!/bin/perl 

$0 =~ s:.*/::g;
while ($ARGV[0] =~ /^-/) {
        if (($ARGV[0] eq "-h") || ($ARGV[0] eq "--help")) {
                print "Usage: $0 URL ... \n";
                print "Grab youtube media\n";
                exit;
        } else {
                $0 =~ s/.*\///; 
                $ARGV[0] =~ s/^-*//;
                print "$0: invalid option -- $ARGV[0]\n";
                exit;
        }
}

use File::Spec::Functions qw(rel2abs);
use File::Basename;

use lib dirname(rel2abs($0))."/lib";

use LWP::UserAgent;

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
my $u;
while (@ARGV) {
        $_=shift;
        ($i) = /v=(.+)/;
        $content = $ua->get($_)->content;
        ($title) = $content =~ m/<title>(.*)<\/title>/s;
        $title =~ s/[\r\n \t][\r\n \t]*/ /sg;
        $title =~ s/^\s*|\s*$//g;
        $title =~ s/ /_/g;
        for ($content =~ m/l_map": .+(?:%2C)?5\|(.+?)\|/) {
                $u = $_;
                $u =~ s/%(..)/chr(hex($1))/ge;
                $u =~ s/\\\//\//g;
        };
        print "Getting ${title}_$i.flv...\n";
        $ua->get($u, ":content_file" => "${title}_$i.flv");
}

Imagine, if we could really resize media.

We can decide to watch it as a 2-hour movie, or get it automatically set into a short story. Or we could resize the short story into a photograph with a short caption. Or translate it into a poetry in another language. We can decide how many words, how many photographs, how many videos, how many minutes, how many stanzas, the media should be presented with. Resize-able media relieves a message from having to be restricted to one single form.

I think it is important to be able to communicate what we have to say. But even when we are ready to tell, the world is full of people who are not ready to know. But if resize-able media were possible, then they could choose the version of the story they are ready to hear, and take it with them, until they are ready to see the whole thing. We don't really see people for who they are too much of the time. Not because people don't tell, but because we don't want to know. The people we think we know, may turn out to be not who they are altogether. Resize-able media would, at least, remove the confrontation from the honesty. I hate the idea of living a lie, but I can't come to terms with telling people what they do not prepare themselves to hear.

Things would be so much simpler if people could just have an open mind and always choose to face reality.

Unless we manage to survive on supplements and eat only portion of plants that can grow back, eating more often than not involves us taking a life to stay alive.

That's one way of looking at it.

In the food chain, plants make food and animals eat plants, sometimes plants digest or make use of animals - but whatever is at the top of the food chain finally dies and its body decomposes, giving itself back to the soil. Plants then absorb the nutrients from the soil. At each state of the process, different life-forms act as stewards of the "material" on which life runs. What we call "life" could be just a perceived manifestation of the continuous cycle than runs through the whole food chain. Just like a jar of soil and water when shaken settles into layers - neither the soil nor the water need to "think" about what to do; it happens because the soil, the water, the jar and the Earth all agree that that is the way of things that rises out of natural ease.

That is, until the modern man comes into the picture. The modern eats everything, but in the end when he dies, his body is burnt up and put into a container, so that nothing returns to the soil. "Natural" is hardly an apt description for the modern man.

[fork 1]
Some decide that they should not eat at the expense of another life. Some define for themselves whatever they think is "natural". For me, I think the only things that are "natural" are natural selection and random mutation. In the modern context, this natural selection and random mutation is best seen in the way language evolves. Maybe that could imply that one single person can never be "natural". "Natural" is whatever that happens to happen, when viewed from the collective consciousness of the entire species, food chain, or ecosystem. Man's "un-natural-ness" becomes "natural" when taken into the context of the Earth's history.

[fork 2]
"Natural" and "artificial" in this case could be an analogy for "analogue" and "digital", for "being" and "doing", for "feeling(receptive)" and "thinking(creative)". Modern man prefers "digital", "doing" and "thinking". I would like to think that sufficiently advanced "digital" technology approaches the analogue, an identity based solely on "doing" is also a way of "being", that there is a way of thinking that is indifferentiable from feeling, and that the artificial when taken far enough, approaches the natural.

[fork 3]
Now say, is it possible to create a machine, that can absorb minerals and synthesize sugars, amino acids then proteins, and go all the way until it becomes flesh-like substance that can form a diet that sustains human life, all through made-created autonomous processes? Would the medium of such processes be subject to man's own discourses and receive objections because it could be called "life"?

[wait]

Which is why when I eat, I give thanks, eat my meat, and shut up.

If who you perceive yourself to be is who you physically are, then you are just too lucky. Be happy, but be thankful. You would be a sunshine for those who are struggling.

If you can align who you perceive yourself to be with your physical self, then you have done well. You would be an example to those who are trying.

But if you can't change who you perceive yourself to be, move on - you don't have forever. If you spend your whole life trying to change how your perceive yourself, you're not going to have any time left to achieve anything. Some people decide to change their physical selfs to match how they perceive themselves. They took a stand in life, and stepped forward. It is great courage, and they will be an inspiration.

Whoever you are, move on and come to terms with yourself. If you have been through the struggle and finally come back home to yourself, you would have learned the gifts forgiving and accepting. You would be a great encourager and healer.

If you can't come to terms with who you perceive yourself to be - whatever you achieve in life, at the end of the day, could come to mean nothing to you. Perhaps you would be a hero. Perhaps the world would know you - but what would it mean, if at the end of a whole lifetime, you never got the chance to get to know yourself?

Pattern 25

Pattern 24

Pattern 23 

Pattern 22

Pattern 21

Pattern 20

If we could choose the life we'd live
Like a book from a library of shelves
Categorized by genre, complete with commentaries and reviews
So we could better decide if it would be worth our energies and emotions,
I would suggest you choose to be
An accidental hero.
You would not need to strive
But you will bathe in the glory and smell of fame,
Having been born at the right place and time.
Your very existence would be a landmark in the history
Of an eternity of souls regretting their turns.
I'm not sure if you can call that
A life worth living,
But it would be easy, and that's what you'd want.
I know, because I have always noticed you
Picking out biographices of those who have been through the pain
But in life you would always choose the Safe Way Out.
You always tell me how your heart bleeds when you enter their world
But honestly, I cannot grasp the shape and weight of your heart
When you say these things.
Perhaps one day you will prove me wrong.
And I hope you do - and perhaps one day
We can finally sit down and talk
And you would weep me warm tears
When I bare to you
My pains that have no speakable name.

Pattern 19
山


水

Pattern 18

Waiting

Patience could be life's greatest lesson
because there is always so much waiting
it is tempting to think
what we call life
is a ritual of repetitions
to which we attach a Meaning
that is its orbital period, a prime number
refusing to meet Time at its cadences,
as if this very tension
is the very consciousness
that created the experience which is the human life;
this consciousness,
spinning itself into a restless energy
clenched in hands afraid to open
knowing that should ever its spin connect with Time
Time would pull it into itself
And at that fearful angular velocity
of one Second per Second -
one Eternity per Eternity -
Time would not exist; neither would
this consciousness
that would choose to learn patience
between distractions in its unstable spin
and call it waiting.

Pattern 17

Disagreeing elements cannot naturally reside together, but there are many ways to make it possible for them to do so. Just as living and dying are never good or bad, acceptance and rejection in their different forms are neither good or bad - they just reflect what everything alive does to remain alive.

- Organic integration / aka bound by Chemistry
Host and guest elements find a way around each other and find a part that allow them to click together. Many functional marriages are probably a kind of organic integration, but a good number of those probably go under "cooperation".
(being/balanced,being/additive)

- Synergy / aka aligned by a Vision
Host and guest elements put differences aside and focus on co-operating towards a goal that host and guest elements cannot achieve apart from each other. Host and guest elements need not be intimately related; they can have functions separate of each other.
(doing/additive)

- Cooperation / aka united by the Task
Host element invites guest element to participate in its effort towards a common goal. Host and guest elements need not be intimately bound together; they just need to be functionally complementary.
(doing/balanced)

- Submission / aka bound by Power
Host element invites or forces guest element to participate in its effort towards its own goal. Slavery in all its different forms will come here.
(doing/unbalanced)

- Compartmentalization / aka agree on the Rules
A box is drawn for the guest element so that it does not come into conflict with the host elements. Buffering disagreement elements with mutually-agreeing elements is a form of compartmentalization. Territorial lines, urban planning would come here.
(rejection accepted)

- Cognitive dissonance / aka Escapism
Imagine that the guest element doesn't exist. Or, imagine that conflict doesn't exist. Societies and families are full of this.
(rejection rejected)

- Assimilation / aka trained through Conditioning
Where a guest element is slowly changed so that it fits in among host elements. Brainwashing would come in here.
(being/unbalanced)

- Reconstruction / aka one in Homogeneity
A guest element is taken apart and reconstructed so that it is exactly like the host elements. Digestion?
(being/destructive)

- Rejection / aka there can only be One
Host element rejects or destroys guest element. Eg, antibodies fighting foreign particles; war on a country with a different religion.
(doing/destructive)

Pattern 16

Pattern 15

Pattern 14

Pattern 12

Imagine that we lived in a world where costs are measured by the total impact of our actions and consumptions on the sustainability of the planet, and the perceived environmental costs of transportation become so expensive that almost everything is produced and consumed in the same region. The only thing that really crosses state and country borders are electronic money and information. MNCs and Franchises exists but only in payments and in contracts - knowledge and technologies, expressed as specifications and manufacturing data are provided, no goods are actually moved.

The most accessible transports are the bus and the train, and buses are run by a highly optimized scheduler that allows them to come to your doorstep within 10 minutes of booking. High speed transport is provided by trains. Air and space travel are available, but prohibitively expensive, not just in terms of money costing, but in terms of environmental costs.

And in this world, every human being is entitled to two trips by air, to anywhere you want to go on the planet - either that, or one single trip on a rocket to another planet human beings are living on - without a return trip.

You could take the trip to leave the society on the planet.

You could use it as one single holiday of your life.

Two people could save their trips for their honeymoon.

You could experience live abroad and return to your country and make use of your experience abroad.

You could take the flight to another country, and try to live there and have the second ticket as a back-up plan, in case you want to return.

You could take the flight to another country and live there, and then take the other flight to yet another country, settling down wherever you go.

Or you could just be where you are, and offer your tickets to another person who would want to use it.

Or you could be collecting tickets from people who do not want to travel in their lives, and use them to fuel holidays.

Or you could live a migrant life, moving from city to city with tickets that people around you bestow on you.

Where would you go?

Pattern 11

Pattern 10

Pattern 9

Pattern 8

Pattern 7

Pattern 6

Pattern 5

Pattern 4

4th floor


3rd floor


2nd floor


1st floor

Pattern 3

Pattern 2

Pattern 1

ten thoughts on quality time

1. quality time is any amount of time spent not thinking you'd rather be somewhere else.

2. if every moment in life is a new experience, why should you be thinking about another experience that you cannot yet fully know?

3. while holidays create a period that increases the probability of quality time, do they also decrease the probability of quality time occurring while not on a holiday?

4. 100% quality time should really be the minimum we should aim for in any situation.

5. when we predict what a situation would be like we also define for ourselves the boundaries in which we allow ourselves to experience that situation.

6. my guess is that courage is not calculating risks and going into the situation knowing what will happen, as much as it is being in the situation and simply knowing what needs to be done there.

7. too much of life is lived looking back at the past and into the future. i suspect it has to do with the idea of living life and wanting to look back at it like it's a masterpiece of art.

8. evaluating art, is what a curator does. the artist moves on. once a piece of work is created, it should be already outdated, in the artist's time-frame.

9. in the curator's world, money can buy you quality time. but in the artist's world, quality time is as abundant as the air that you breathe.

10. you can either find time that has more quality in it, or you can put more quality into the time that you have. given any instant, everybody alive has the same amount of time. if that time isn't quality time, by elimination, you must be the problem.

In the face of Struggle, there are those who are resigned to their fate, those who try but don't manage, and then there are two camps that cross the Mountain.

First are those who tear apart what binds them to claim Victory, crossing the Mountain and growing from strength to strength. They are celebrated in history, because when they stood on the mountain, they were standing taller than the mountain. It is always inspiring that a man so small, can be at the same time so tall.

And there are those who struggle. Because when you struggle until you have no more strength left to continue struggling, you can find a place where you can reach out and feel with your hands what had been binding you. And you will know its true nature, precisely because you had so struggled with it. And you will no longer see the Mountain, but the flowers and the trees on the Mountain. And when you reach out to touch the mountain, the mountain will cross under you.

But then Age presents a different mountain. It had always bothered me what would happen when Age decides to take away my strength, take away my sight, take away my hearing. How can i scale a mountain like that? How do folks live with the constant pain in their bodies? How do you come to terms with the permanent handicap?

It is there that I remember our blind and deaf friends. If everybody is unique, what is a handicap? If we cannot see, how much more will we be able to hear?

Age must be life's greatest Justice. It gives everybody one chance to live a struggle you cannot conquer, so that once in your life, you get one compelling chance, to come to terms with yourself. It is not life wanting have the last laugh, but life, telling you, in case you never managed to see, that the biggest mountain that you have unknowingly been struggling with all this while, is really yourself.

Photography, when paired with Tourism, is a very frightening thing. It does not speak of experience; it speaks of conquest. That is why I don't really take photographs anymore. When I do, I try not to be part of the picture - so that my photographs would not tell a story about what I have conquered, but the story of what conquered me.

The premise of photography shouldn't be about what you can capture on film, but how the world around you had so captivated you.

fashion

Give me anything, anything at all, and I can tell you what I like about it, and why. But it would be my own perspective, run through my own design sense; I cannot really say I understand fashion - at least not in the sense of being able to give you a reason why I would love a prada and hate an LV. But I think Fashion, is one of the most important industries in recent civilization.

For a lot of people, glamor is the heart of Fashion. The Runway, the price tag, the Names. Fashion has this power to infect people with its own sense of design - why one color is "correct" and another is "wrong". It creates an idea about what a bag or a shoe is, packages that idea into a product, brands the product into a merchandise, broadcasts the merchandise through the media and retail to create a sensation, and finally runs it through Society's set of values and mechanisms and filters it into a Desire. Fashion transforms an Ideas into a Desire - the dream of every industry with a commercial focus. Other industries tend to squeeze every last drop of commercial value out of each Desire, cascading less desired products down to more budget-friendly lines to present a "fuller" range of products, but Fashion, doesn't recycle. It creates new Ideas all the time.

In Fashion, new ideas supersede old ideas rapidly. As much as each idea creates in its own right a unique desire that shapes people's shopping lists and budgets, old ideas get thrown out like it's worth nothing, all the time. This change, to me, is not unlike the change of the times. Every time a new world order comes into play, the old one would be worth nothing from its perspective. Some choose to persist in the old order - many would view these as not coming to terms with reality. For most people, what reality is, would depend on the size and shape of the Desire that created it. Just like how gods in ancient times were defined by the shape and size of the demographics of their worshipers. That's right - through the times, so much has changed, yet so much more hasn't.

I'm not trying to saying that Fashion is the new Religion. What I'm trying to say here is that, all history has one single theme - constant change. And as far as I can understand Fashion, no industry rests its whole existence on constant change, as much as Fashion. If I could be given two words to sum up what Fashion is, it would have to be "changing glamor".

Yes, Fashion represents how our lives are run and how the seasons weave in and out of the times. It's a way of life. It's my way of life. That being said, I still hold that buying branded is, strictly optional.

f(action) -> reality
f(style) -> action
f(character) -> style
f(development) -> character
f(ambition) -> development
f(inclination) -> ambition
f(self, reality) -> inclination

我如是海。有水而满，却不可满。有水而是，却不是水。无水而空，却不是空。取尽其水则见不得，换尽其水则灭不得。如水滴，滴入海则见不得，分不得，取不得。反问何是海何非海？无海既是海，分不得是海与非海。无我既是我，分不得是我与非我。

你看到空，还是看到色？

Perhaps one of the great mis-accidents of the English Language is its differentiation between "hearing" and "listening", "looking" and "seeing". It creates in the English-speaking psyche an awareness of the cognitive mind that interprets the signals sent out by the senses. Fortunately or not, it makes us always eager to seek out the intention in the words and the meaning in the sights, so that we can perceive what is critical, and understand what is important. We want not just to be hearing, but to be listening, not just to be looking, but to be seeing. We interpret sights and sounds once we sense the slightest indicators - and pigeonhole them into our library of experiences.

But sometimes, we get so caught up with this business of experiencing that we forget to feel what's really around us. Once we match what we see or feel to our experiences, we don't hear the sound in the ears, but the sounds in our minds; we don't see the sight before our eyes, but the visuals in our heads - we try so hard to listen to that "inner voice" that we become deaf the music of the spheres.

Our vocabulary of experiences is both our greatest ability and our biggest handicap. When we attach words to experiences, we give meaning to them. We become able to contain all our experiences within the framework of a language - and words, in representing our experiences, become our experiences.

That is when we need to take a step back, and feel what is really around us instead of rushing into finding meaning in it. We need to learn to hear the "white noise" our brains so conveniently filter out, we need to smell the air, and we need to see the circle in the letter "o". We need to connect back to reality, and not let language remove us from our surroundings. We need to be here now. We need to be "here" in location, and "here" in time.

And I hope you don't manage to read this far. Because if you do, then you are here with me, and that's not where I hope you to be. Words have led you here. Words have created for you Meaning for being here. Words have created Questions. And Questions have created the Need for Answers.

Don't come here searching for answers, because there is none. Go, go back to where you are and find the reality around you. When you sit on the floor, don't ponder. Feel the floor, and feel yourself sitting on the floor. The floor you sit on is not asking you a question - why should you try so hard to find an answer on it?

Listen to the noise
-------------------

Our brains cannot handle a lot of things at one time. But the brain does very clever tricks. It learns to attach meaning to things. It then categorizes, prioritizes and filters out unimportant things so that we need to pay attention only to "important" things - things that threaten our survival, or things that can ensure our safety. I think it's all part of evolution, and the peak of our survival instinct. Attaching meaning to things keeps us in the game; it makes sense of the world - it makes sense of fear, it makes sense of happiness, and it makes sense of desire, and of sadness.

But the problem is, sometimes, the brain decides that so many things are important that we have everything in our face and nothing we can ignore. In trying to minimize the amount of noise we hear, our brain as a result gives us more noise - noise created by meaning - and we fail to hear the real noise - we stop hearing noise as it is, and stop seeing the world as it is. Reality gets filtered by our perceptions, and I think the opinion of most people is that there's nothing you can do about it.

But i think if you try really hard, and listen to the noise - you will start hearing the noise as it is. Your inner noise will be stilled. And you will find the place where meaning is made. And if you can stop that meaning from being made, I think fear, happiness, desire, and sadness can disappear. But I had a lot of difficulty listening to the noise - my mind tries to form images to match the noise i hear. That would create meaning. But my unfamiliarity with hearing the world, did make it easier to hear the world as it is. I wonder what it is like to be profoundly blind. Would hearing be as sight? Or is there no blindness where there is no sight?

I'm sorry this is written with such an assuming voice. I just need to put down what's in my mind.

It's the second time we met
---------------------------

Ten years
In the galaxies' history
Would be a single momment, held still in a thought
Like us now
With my body curled up in the orbit of your embrace.

I have seen your thoughts from afar
Radiating like light from a sea of flames
Dancing to a rhythm I had taken for granted to be
The ticking of your mind, until now. I am surprised
By this warmth near your face,
Surprised by these full lips
And the gentleness of your gaze - it is strange
How an hour could put away
Distances separated by time.

In a while we would be back each to our own orbit
And it leaves me wondering,
How the math of two orbital periods
Shall let us meet again.

Give me a song
  for the feint hearted
  when the night stretches itself out too long
  and the noise of day long departed
  in the darkness that swallows up every word
  written in the sand
Give me a song that dives below the surface
  and gently lifts
  fallen notes with its chords into a harmony
  that puts the beating back into the heart
  in the night of disappointment and fatigue
  the heart cannot speak

And I will wrap it around myself
Like a down blanket in winter
And learn to believe again
In its promises of Spring

Read me a poem
  not weaved with words but with pauses
  in between words that just happen to be there;
  Words are always eager to spell out every sin the mind can conceive
  but broken lines can fit together
  the sky and the sea
Read me a poem
  and breathe it into my ears
  and let it embrace my being
  like a cocoon wrapping around a caterpillar
  eager to know 
  the smell of the wind

And I will sleep like a baby in the cradle
I will learn to forget the future I know
And perhaps when I wake up in the middle of the night
The breasts will be there for me to suckle.

the morning i die

what will it be like
on the morning i die
will there be quarrels left unsettled
last minute goodbyes
i love yous left unspoken
will it be a rainy morning with mozarts requiem playing in a chapel
will it be peacetime or war among the debris
the morning it is proclaimed
eddie is dead

will dad and mum be still alive
or will i outlive them and be able to spare them of such deep loss
will the languages of capitalism and kindness still be spoken
the morning on the day
i exist no more

what will it be like
on the morning i die
will this text be read
by who and to who
and what memories should it invoke what legacy should it recount
on the day dear ones gather in my name
because i exist no more

will they be there
those who knew my soul
and those who knew my body
who saw how exitement tingled through my whole being
and breathed the same air
that kept me alive in my darkest hours
will they be there
those who had been there the day i arrived
who celebrated thence giving thanks for every hour eddie was there

(still editing)

想念以前 -- 想念以前的将来，想念以前的梦。

happiness, i think, is a response to an exciting energy.

when you hit a drum with a mallet, it makes what is usually called a "sound".
perhaps happiness is like this "sound" thing.
when some invisible mallet hits you, you vibrate and emit "happiness".

happiness is not an emotion. happiness is not a motion.
it is a response to an exciting energy.
it is the product of an energy in motion rather than an objective or a feeling.

happiness is not love. love may end in happiness. but it may not.
different people vibrate to different energies, so not everyone
vibrates to love.

that is why nobody can tell you what happiness is, or how you can be happy.

happiness is not a specific manifestation, but manifestations add to
describe what happiness is. happiness is a class of manifestations. it is a template, a virtual class, an idea, rather than a particular instance.

some people find happiness in purpose. some people find happiness in being together. some people find happiness in discovery. some people find happiness in being able to hold together ideas and make sense in its totality.

some people find happiness in roller coaster rides.

but since happiness is the product of an energy, sustained happiness would require a sustained source of that energy.

of course you will first have to figure out what that energy is.

perhaps conditioning and religion can help condition you to resonate to a prescribed energy.

but everybody is different.

some people may find happiness in disrespect, in unbelief, in putting people down. is it fair to say that their unfortunate past made them so?
you are just as unfortunate that your past made you whatever you are.

ideas evolve because ideas get shared. we are all part of some brainwashing.

so let's have a little respect for other people's happinesses, and see how we can fit them in.

Make your mbox attachments searchable in Thunderbird.

#!/bin/perl 
# filename : mboxtagattachments
# usaage   : cat Inbox | mboxtagattachments > newInbox
#            searcch tag "X-META-01" in thunderbird

$OUTPUTENCODING = "UTF-8";

use MIME::Base64 qw( encode_base64 decode_base64 );
use Text::Iconv;
use Data::Dumper;

$STATE = "INIT";
$LASTLINE = 1;
while (($_=) || $LASTLINE) {
        if (!$_) {
                $LASTLINE = 0;
                $_ = "From -";
        }
        s/[\n\r]*$//g;
        $_ .= "\r\n";
        if (/^From -/) {
                if ($RAW_PROLOG) {
                        ## -------------------------------------------
                        ## HANDLE MAIL THAT ENDED
                        ## -------------------------------------------

                        %subvalues = getSubValues($MAIL_HEADER{"Content-Type"});
                        $CHARSET = $subvalues{"charset"};

                        # print STDERR "$CHARSET\n";
                        # if ($CHARSET) {
                        #        $MAIL_BODY = Text::Iconv->new($CHARSET, $OUTPUTENCODING)->convert($MAIL_BODY);
                        #}
                        #print STDERR Dumper(\%MAIL_HEADER);

                        print $RAW_PROLOG;
                        for (keys %MAIL_ATTACHMENTS) {
                                $fn = $MAIL_ATTACHMENTS{$_};
                                if ($fn =~ /[^[:alnum:][:punct:][:space:]]/) {
                                        if ($CHARSET) {
                                                $fn = Text::Iconv->new($OUTPUTENCODING, $CHARSET)->convert($fn);
                                        }
                                }
                                print "X-META-01: $fn\r\n";
                        }
                        print $RAW_HEADER;
                        print "\r\n";
                        print $RAW_BODY;
                }
                $RAW_PROLOG = $_;
                $RAW_HEADER = "";
                $RAW_BODY = "";
                %MAIL_HEADER = ();
                $MAIL_BODY = "";
                %MAIL_ATTACHMENTS = ();
                $STATE = "HEADER";
                $KEY = "";
                next;
        }
        if ($STATE eq "HEADER") {
                if (/^\s*$/ && ($MAIL_HEADER{"From"} ne "")) {
                        $STATE = "BODY";
                        if ($MAIL_HEADER{"Content-Type"} =~ /multipart/) {

                                %subvalues = getSubValues($MAIL_HEADER{"Content-Type"});
                                $partbody_boundary = $subvalues{"boundary"};

                                %partbody_headers = ();
                                $partbody_count = 0;
                                $partbody_filename = "";
                                $KEY = "";
                                $STATE = "PART-HEADER";
                        }
                } else {
                        if (/^X-META-01:/) {
                                next;
                        } else {
                                $RAW_HEADER .= $_;
                        }
                }
                if (/^\s/) {
                        chomp;
                        $KEY = $PREVKEY;
                        $VALUE = $_;
                } else {
                        ($KEY, $VALUE) = /^(\S[^:]*):(.*)/;
                        $PREVKEY = $KEY;
                }
                if ($KEY eq "Subject") {
                        $VALUE =~ s/^\s*//;
                        $VALUE = decode($VALUE);
                }
                if ($KEY) {
                        $MAIL_HEADER{$KEY} .= $VALUE;
                }
                next;
        }
        if ($STATE eq "PART-BODY") {
                $RAW_BODY .= $_;
                if (/$partbody_boundary/) {
                        {
                                ## -----------------------------------
                                ## HANDLE COMPLETED PART
                                ## -----------------------------------

                                %subvalues = getSubValues($partbody_headers{"Content-Type"});
                                $partbody_filename = decode($subvalues{"name"});

                                if ($partbody_filename eq "") {
                                        %subvalues = getSubValues($partbody_headers{"Content-Disposition"});
                                        $partbody_filename = $subvalues{"filename"};
                                }

                                # if ($partbody_filename eq "") {
                                #         for (my $c=0 ; $subvalues{"filename*$c*"}; $c++) {
                                #                 $partbody_filename .= $subvalues{"filename*$c*"};
                                #         }
                                #        $partbody_filename = decode($partbody_filename, "url");
                                # }

                                if ($partbody_filename) {
                                        $MAIL_ATTACHMENTS{$partbody_count} = $partbody_filename;
                                }

                                # print "PART $partbody_count\n";
                                # print Dumper(\%partbody_headers);
                                # print "FILENAME $partbody_filename\n";
                                # print $partbody;
                        }
                        $STATE = "PART-HEADER";
                        $partbody = "";
                        $partbody_count++;
                        $partbody_filename = "";
                } else {
                        $partbody .= $_;
                }
                next;
        }
        if ($STATE eq "PART-HEADER") {
                $RAW_BODY .= $_;
                if (/^\s*$/) {
                        $STATE = "PART-BODY";
                }
                if (/^\s/) {
                        chomp;
                        if ($_) {
                                $partbody_headers{$PREVKEY} .= "\n".$_;
                        }
                        next;
                } else {
                        ($KEY, $VALUE) = /^(\S[^:]*):(.*)/;
                        if ($KEY && $VALUE) {
                                $partbody_headers{$KEY} = $VALUE;
                        }
                        $PREVKEY = $KEY;
                }
                next;
        }
        if ($STATE eq "BODY") {
                $RAW_BODY .= $_;
                $MAIL_BODY .= $_;
                next;
        }
}

sub getSubValues {
        my $value = shift @_;
        my %subvalues = ();
        my $initial;
        my $oldvalue = "";

        ($initial, $value) = $value =~ m/^([^;\n\r]*)[;[:space:]\n\r]*(.*)/sg;
        $subvalues{""} = $initial;
        while ($value) {
                ($key, $value) = $value =~ /([^=]*)=(.*)/s;
                if ($value =~ /^"/) {
                        ($keyvalue, $value) = $value =~ /"([^"]*)"[[:space:]\n\r]*(.*)/s;
                } else {
                        ($keyvalue, $value) = $value =~ /\s*([^;[:space:]]*)[;[:space:]\n\r]*(.*)/s;
                }
                $subvalues{$key} = $keyvalue;
                if ($oldvalue eq $value) {
                        break;
                }
                $oldvalue = $value;
        }
        return %subvalues;
}

sub encode {
        my $fn = shift @_;
        my $encoding = shift @_;
        my $charset = shift @_;
        if ($charset eq "") {
                $charset = $OUTPUTENCODING;
        }
        if ($encoding eq "url") {
                $fn = "$charset''".URLEncode(Text::Iconv->new($OUTPUTENCODING, $charset)->convert($fn));
        } else {
                $fn = encode_base64(Text::Iconv->new($OUTPUTENCODING, $charset)->convert($fn));
                chomp($fn);
                $fn = "=?$charset?$fn?=";
        }
        return $fn;
}
sub decode {
        my $fn = shift @_;
        my $encoding = shift;
        if ($encoding eq "url") {
                $fn =~ s/([^']*?)''([^;]*?);/Text::Iconv->new($1, $OUTPUTENCODING)->convert(URLDecode($2))/eg;
        } else {
                $fn =~ s/=\?([^\?]*?)\?([^\?]*?)\?([^\?]*?)\?=/Text::Iconv->new($1, $OUTPUTENCODING)->convert(decode_base64($3))/eg;
        }
        return $fn;
}
sub URLDecode {
        my $theURL = $_[0];
        $theURL =~ tr/+/ /;
        $theURL =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9]{2,2})/chr(hex($1))/eg;
        $theURL =~ s///g;
        return $theURL;
}
sub URLEncode {
        my $theURL = $_[0];
        $theURL =~ s/([\W])/%".uc(sprintf("%2.2x",ord($1)))/eg;
        return $theURL;
}
exit;