Security

If you were to find Shakespeare (or Da Vinci, Mozart, or Buddha) deep in a forgotten cave in a state of suspended animation and to wake him, would you let him go hang gliding? And if not, what does that make you? Are the limits we customarily place on other people with the stated intent of keeping them "safe" (or more ominously, "secure") justifiable? All of them? Any of them? What of the limits we insist upon for ourselves (and often our very thoughts) for the same reason? Can greatness be achieved under such constraints? And if not, then what are we doing to ourselves and to one other?

Directions (Powers)

Turn left at bewilderment. Keep going till you hit despair. Pull up at complete oblivion, turn around, and you're there.

Richard Powers, The Time of Our Singing

Ideology is inadequate

The world demands adaptation, and ideology is inflexible.  Face life with an awareness of complexity and an attitude of creative adjustment.

Chicken adobo with fried plantains

Scotch bonnet fire apple pork chops

This is the hottest thing I've made in a long time (and for me, that's saying something). Brown rice in the background.

Experimenting

Last night, I came up with this green chile potato-and-spinach dish. It wasn't bad.

On karma

Karma, like heaven and hell, is a seductive concept—and for the same reason. The natural world has no strong force for (or understanding of) justice or the redress of wrongs/reward for good, and so superstition imagines one for the satisfaction of the sufferer. However, like the Christian promise that all will be made right after death (an acknowledgement that it cannot be done in life), it is mere wish fulfillment and apophenia and utterly baseless in the materialistic cause-and-effect mechanism of the universe.

Upward levels (Hofstadter)

In every intellectual field that I had encountered, ranging from mathematics to music to art to poetry, I had the sense that the moment that patterns were perceived at one level, this immediately established a higher level of abstraction, opening the door to the perception of totally unanticipated types of patterns.  At least in principle, there was no limit to the number of upward levels one could reach.

Douglas R. Hofstadter, Le Ton beau de Marot

Recent food

Beans on toast and spice-roasted
broccoli and cauliflower.

Easy potatoes and carrots.

Oatmeal cake with coconut and pecan topping.

The edge

Be carefree, not careless
'round the edge of the abyss.

Flounder

Flounder with a wasabi cream sauce, mushroom-
flavored oven toast, and sauteed balsamic squash.

Are you busy?

To be forever busy is to avoid the responsibilities of humanity.