"Rigor mortis of the brain"

I think two posts ago I was talking about forgetting and how starting blank again can be like the Cambrian explosion. That approach of a childlike mind extends and reaches in all directions making connections that we often have been habituated to think of as not plausible.  Such a subtly powerful method to escaping a paradigm.

In the epilogue of his "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory," Stephen Jay Gould ends by making a long treatise on the importance of Darwin towards science... not the actual theories and science he published (the conclusions would have eventually been made) ... but by his metaphors, logical and literary skill and Darwin as a character.  [btw, "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory" is pretty much Gould's entire life's work poured into one last final publication before his passing (which he knew was coming)]  It wasn't just his science, but some kind of human emotive element there... in a sense, it was like art... becoming a much broader symbolic embodiment that would inspire and flame the imagination of young scientists for centuries to come. 

He could have published his works dryly, been a dull scientist and the degree of his affect would have been much less.  I guess here is the segway then (seems like a popular word lately) - that forgetting is a paradigmatic escape but that strong inspiration by imagination is another.  A hero, a song, a work of art, a story, a character push in a way that often we rationalize as meaning very little practically and "real", but we cannot deny (at least I cannot) that somehow that emotive response can be so powerful in pushing the limits of what we think as plausible. 

Whenever I watch a Miyazaki movie, I am entranced for a full two hours.  And at the end, my mind feels electric and alert, a strange contentment ... yet I suddenly feel a sense of deep sadness.  Maybe it's because I've left a fantastical world that brings me to brilliant expanses of what's possible.  Or maybe it's because I realize that often our world doesn't emphasize that stretching enough.  I guess it's the same fear I have of walking in a brilliant circle and never really knowing more, only doing more. Or how it made me uncomfortable to think that if I went into finance, I would be analyzing human-created economic systems created to understand human-created monetary systems, which were created to facilitate trade and barter... how we define what is reality is so often further removed from it.

To end this post, I guess this was my appreciation for the arts and those that really dare to imagine.  Every bit of genius starts with a vision. And people need their heroes, their stories, their music and their characters to inspire and push the limits of their imagination.

I forget so I can reinvent...

But again the below post is all part of one long string and I can't just stop there.  The ant took many paths but somehow it still knew it was all part of one singular straight path leading back to its origin. 

Take the word "Shit."  Originally shit was probably just to describe feces but now it's this shit, that shit, what's up with this shit, that was the best shit I ever had, shit dude.  Maybe it was a vague concept to begin with but whatever its intention, it is so often lost in translation. If it were to ever reach a critical point, where its meaning was so variable and of a new value, the entire system would change... so that it was no longer there or be absorbed.  And in its place a whole new host of words trying to parse subsets or overlapping concepts (like "feces" to keep it defined) [Is it so different for Justice, Truth, or any word/phrase?] Look at the phrases "Axis of Evil," "the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," OMG! etc... and you see what I mean by the loss of meaning. 

In biology, there is periodic equilibrium - a theory of evolution.  If you look at the pre-cambrian, Mesozoic, etc... you see a drastic disaster that caused the erasure of a huge percentage of living things...  And then right after, a huge species diversity explosion! In front of you, pixelations piece together to form colors and shapes.  But not only that, it is not a complete image that your eye and mind receive but bits of rays and lights and even more so, amalgamations of neural signals. Isn't that forces itself and cognition and what is living... things taking attributes beyond their parts? So wait, what was I trying to say... I forgot. 

There are these hierarchies (like the frame and borders the word "Shit" can be taken to) and the systems we define bind things into these certain levels. At first there is an explosion that saturates the system which is then slowly limited and confined and constricted.  When you stretch and tug and pull at things inside this system, at some critical point it just completely pops and everything changes and repeats again. It's this character that is somehow defining of everything, even the constructed, this ebb and flow that is somehow a truth, a characteristic of the universe.

It saddens me that I'll never be a beginner in Weiqi again.  That excitement of not being limited and exploring into the unknown is something I'll never grasp again.  It only happens once every Pre-Cambrian explosion.

"My prime objective"

I remember what I wanted to write about.  My sister had told me about a documentary [Brainman] she had watched on autistic savants. Autistic savants may have difficulty performing daily tasks or holding a conversation yet can often perform incredible mental feats, such as very difficult computations or reproducing the exact ten notes on a piano (s)he had heard played simultaneously moments before. [The movie Rainman starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman was about an autistic savant.] 

The part that struck a chord with me the most dealt with clay.  One autistic savant is catalogued with being asked "what color is your couch?"  To which he would respond "F major."  And then another is doing 9-digit multiplication while twiddling his fingers in the air as if molding objects.  But back to the clay... they asked questions like... is 12507 prime?  And he would know yes or no. The scientists asked him, "How do you know this?" And he would respond, "Shapes in my head." When given clay, the savant molded a shape of whatever form he saw in his head.  And to verify months later, they repeated the clay trials with the same numbers only to have the same respective shapes be molded once again.

Is there any significance?  I don't know.  But when there is something above talented genius, this strange intrinsic knowing... it's a kind of hope to me. Whatever it is... this flickering inside the mind to map a color to a note, a frequency or seeing a number have a shape.

Because, when you're searching for answers,  more times than not, you end up at a dead end.  A self-referencing deconstructed-to-nihl system that doesn't mean anything unless you've already ascribed it meaning. And then you discover what you're trying to think of is nothing new, something philosophers and their greatgreatgreatgreatgrandmothers have already puzzled and gotten nowhere for a few millenia.  And then people around you ask "What's the point if you get no answers and only a bunch of wasted [but conserved] energy?"  (I think some Hindu monk said the pursuit was what was important... but that's so often not enough either; a little "keep-it-up!" phrase bereft of support for what is trying to be a logical and empirical mind.)

And that's why clay is significant for me. There's a person I can point to and say, "THAT GUY SOMEHOW KNOWS!!!... (without trying!!)"  That there's something intrinsic to a guy that lets him know... and that something is because of a pattern, in him, in all of us, in all things... relating together notes and colors and shapes and numbers. Finding a pattern and reason in the universe isn't an endless treadmill, because someone is perceiving that pattern (and it is that "I just know" that supports the existence).  Prime numbers made of clay are my new Hindu monks.  

"You can't avoid pain by fencing yourself in.  Sometimes you need the help of others more than anything else.  But you have to let them help you."  - lyrics from DJ Tiesto song

I was in Dallas last week when my mom and jiejie made an interesting comment.  They quoted some other guy saying, "If you can name five people who are truly good friends, then ...[something along of the lines that you can say you have a fortunate and happy life]."  Seems kinda duh, seems kind of simplistic, but finding five people who you can truly entrust your life to and be best friends with is something I find many people have a hard time doing - even amongst family. I think true friends are somewhat of a rarity, and being a person that people can be the best friend of, a rarity as well. 

You can't progress as fast playing Chess against yourself.  You need a rival. People reveal and push each other at a speed no single person can achieve.  Sometimes a stubborn ass can't jump out of a paradigm without another stubborn ass a totally different side.

Climb a different path, climb a different mountain...

So happy, found a different hike to go on finally. Best one we've found yet - strong slope adjacent to Stinson Beach and the ocean.  Cool breeze makes it pleasant even in Summer. 
- strangest call I've heard in a while, bird let out a long, heavy resonating, almost unnatural sound.
- a good hike alters foliage/scenery. At one point you can see how the moist sea winds cleave the slope, full green forest and suddenly a distinct border with stark yellow summer grasses.  Guess we chose to live on the wrong hot side,
- middle of a deep forrested path, all green.  On the right side, a forked plant breaks the monotone green, two small orange bulbs dangle in unison like earrings.
- one thing about going in a loop always forward, you always think everyone has chosen to go in the loop in the opposite direction... but that's just because it's harder for people to overtake going the same way.
- didn't appreciate the Milford Sound hike I had in New Zealand as much as I have lately. So many funny incidents too... they looked at me incredulously at the airport when I brought the smallest pack... ended up eating all my canned food first day to lighten my pack furthermore... lungs felt like they collapsed crossing glacial river... girl peeked at me when I was in the can... rainy days... ended up having to help lots of people carry their pack.. walking in a valley flanked by a dozen waterfalls...