In My Tree

Advice to anyone living on the street

Posted in Uncategorized at 10:24 am with tags: musings

to the nice fellow I talked to downtown the other day, if I’d had change I would have given it to you, I enjoyed our conversation. However, some advice for future panhandling, it might help with other people if you don’t follow up “hey man can I borrow some change for the bus” with “i just got out of jail”.

You might see a slightly higher return that way.

anyways, glad they dropped your case.

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Superhero Suffering

Posted in Uncategorized at 11:36 pm with tags: musings

Been thinking a lot about ‘heroism’ lately, and what attracts us to heroes and the idea of the hero in general. My thought is that in most films, and stories for that matter, what really defines a character’s heroism is their extraordinary capacity to endure suffering.

Seeing the commercials for the X3 DVD got me thinking that super-heroes are really a particularly amazing (and obviously exagerrated) example of this, but really I think any major hero (especially 80s action star heroes) exemplifies this idea.

The beauty of the hero with ‘super powers’, is that those powers actually allow the character to experience levels of suffering far beyond that of a mortal person. In many cases, while these powers don’t completely nullify physical suffering, they almost always remove it from the equation to the degree that often times the super hero ends up being challenged mentally in terms of their will to endure that suffering, not their actual physical capacity.

Superman, Spiderman, X3, Blade, Daredevil, all those characters endure incredible amounts of suffering, yet manage to prevail, usually by sheer force of will. Why is that attractive, and why is it entertaining? I suppose seeing another human go through so much pain makes it easier for us to endure ours. If Superman can take that much of a beating, and still stand up, maybe I can too. Maybe I just need more resolve to be able to deal with all the shit in life, etc etc.

Jesus, William Wallace, John Mclaine, Rocky, Samuel in Long Kiss Goodnight, Arnold in T2, Odysseus, Frodo, Rick Blaine (casablanca), Mr. Smith (that went to Washinton), Leeloo in the 5th Element, Maximus, Darth Vader, the Dude (even if its the emotional suffering of losing one’s rug), Indiana Jones, Wolverine, V, etc etc.

There’s probably enough meat here for a full proper write up someday, but that’s it for now.

*note, a coworker brought up the point that The Joker suffers too, but he’s certainly not heroic. The suffering I’m talking about generally is for the benefit of others; it’s a bodhisattva thing.

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One to Many to One

Posted in Uncategorized at 1:29 pm with tags: musings • technology

Not only do I love the Daily Show/Colbert Report for the insightful political humor, but I also love each because of the way they play with media. The Daily Show for its powerful editing techniques, and now the Colbert Report for successfully combining Broadcast media with User generated media into an amazing loop:

Checkout the Stephen Colbert Lightsaber challenge:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t27FxaHgvM8 (original footage)

And some of the many responses! (the best ones get shown on the show!)

HERE

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Time

Posted in Uncategorized at 12:06 am with tags: musings

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

So this one’s for me. You might want to skip it. It’s a bit of time travel if you will; journaling but with a twist. I’ve always been fascinated with time, particularly writing little notes or words and stumbling across them later in life. I always find they interrupt the chaos, I center, and think back to what the context of that moment was, which always gets me thinking about what the context of this moment is. So here’s a new forum to try it with, the blog. Which allows me to access it from anywhere at anytime from this moment on.

So if you’re so inclined, feel free to do it yourself. Read this entry now. Then read it again sometime in the future. Whenever you feel like, it’ll be here.

It’s June 1st, 2006. I might read this in two months, I might read it in two years, who knows. But at some point, I’m going to sit down, and quietly read this piece to myself. By reading it I’ll remember what I was listening to at the time, what I was thinking and feeling at the time, and where I was at in my life at the time.

So you, you sure were stressed out and worrying about a whole bunch of crap at the time, can you even remember what any of that was now? If so, what did you do about it? And if not, was it really that important then?

Now ask yourself, are you happy? Did you do all the things you wanted to do? Have you reached any of your goals? Seems like it went by in such a flash doesn’t it? Was it naught but a blur, or did you manage to stay fully present and conscious through it all? Did you make the most of your time? Or are you sitting here reading this thinking, DAMN, I really wish I had done this and that.

What’s different in your life? What’s different in you?

More importantly, what’s the same? What hasn’t changed? What is exactly the same right now as it was all that time ago? (which is now right now)

And of course, how the fuck is the latest Pearl Jam album?

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