Valentine's Day, remember that?

This is something I started about a month ago, so it's a little dated. Also the scan's not as good as I would have liked. Even so, my thanks goes out to Dave for letting me use his scanner. Also I really need to practice my lettering.

Update: Picture now uses slightly less suck

Transcendence through dance

Hello all. Sorry I do not have a picture for you today.

Having participated in MOSAIC myself as a high school senior last year, I decided to sign up to host a visiting student in my room for three nights this weekend. Thursday I met Justin, a prospective student from Florida, at the Student Life Center, and I helped him carry his stuff back to my room. He asked to come to my morning class on Friday, so I introduced him to my astronomy professor. He seems like a pretty cool guy. However, it is right now 4am, and I have no idea where he is sleeping tonight; it is apparently not in a sleeping bag in my room. I'm not sure if this makes me a bad MOSAIC-er. I did sort of abandon him this evening when I went to din-din and I did sort of imply that he wouldn't actually get in trouble if he decided to party somewhere tonight.

Speaking of parties...

I went to a club tonight, which is something I have not done in quite some time. Or possibly ever. At least not a dance-appreciation club. Now when I say "club" I do not mean one of those plywood treehouses with NO GIRLS ALLOWED signs posted beside their non-existent doors. This club highly supported women joining their ranks, often encouraging them to "make some damn noise" in appreciation of the master of ceremony's musical tastes. This club excludes instead people under eighteen and those who do not have driver's licenses.

"Fuel," as this club was called, did not sell gasoline or any automobile related-products, in fact. Nearly all the men, I noticed, used hair products. The light was dim. I could not suppress the urge to dance. At the end of the night, several half-naked men climbed onto the stage to flaunt their pot bellies and blood alcohol content. This means I had a pretty good night. Thank you Beta Chi Theta; in gratitude, I promise that I will stop pronouncing your middle name like "chai."

Still in Nashville. Even though it's Spring Break

http://www.surelyfunctional.com/pages/08.html

There was once a family with three children who loved tomatoes so much that the mother and the father decided to plant a tomato garden in their backyard. They went to the store and bought a packet of seeds, but when they planted them in the soil, one of the seeds refused to grow. Of course the family did not realize this. All they saw were the tiny green sprouts shooting up from the soil. The one little seed who stayed in his shell was outside of their awareness.
His sprouting brothers would say to him "Why won't you come out? It's much better up here in the light"

"No!" He would cry. "I don't know what's up there, and I'm perfectly fine down here"
So the sun beat down and the tomato plants grew and grew.

The ornery seed soon found that no matter how hard he resisted though, the sunlight somehow drew his stem towards the sky. Hating the light for the monsters it had turned his brothers into, the little seed resorted to eating his own shoot to prevent succumbing to this terrible fate. And it hurt. It hurt him very much, but it was all he knew how to do, so he told himself this pain was all there was. It was worth it, he kept telling himself, because only the weakest plants needed light, and he was going to be strong. There was no alternative.

As the other tomato plants began to blossom they cried out to their little brother. "Seed, please come out. We love you and want to see you, and it hurts us to see you destroy yourself like this." But the seed would have none of this nonsense. He wanted to have fun, and how could a plant have fun by conforming to the lifestyle of all the other plants? He wanted to stay in the soil forever.

Summer came and the tomato plants bore their fruit. The family that planted them made tomato soup and homemade ketchup and salads and sandwiches, and they loved all this food very much. The sprouted plants told their brother how happy the children were and how much care the family gave them by watering their roots, and fertilizing them, and even talking to them occasionally.
"Bah! Children! Family!" Called out the seed. "How do I even know these children even exist! You're all a bunch of fools."

Fall came and the plants still had not given up on their lonesome brother. And he still would not accept their love. But on the eighteenth of October, the tension holding back his shoots and leaves was to much for the little seed to bear. In agony, he did not know where else to turn, but to the sun. And in that first moment when he touched the air, he know he had been wrong all those months. As much as he wanted to deny it and stay in his shell, he had no choice but to obey the transcendent call. And his brothers smiled down on him, and the sun shone his rays on the little sprout as much as on his brothers, but winter was fast approaching.
Though there were no I-told-you-so's, no reproach or condescension of any kind, the tiny sprout shed his only leaf in grief, like a teardrop. He wept for all he had missed spending his life in fear, in isolation, in horrible pain. But there was only love for the little sprout now. A new freedom that fed his soul and made his existence bearable. Only love.

Occasionally I take photographs of total strangers (but only with their consent)

I was coming back from work today when I passed someone walking down the street playing the accordion in traditional Swiss garb. I asked her if it would be weird if I took a picture (it's not every day you see someone walking down the street playing the accordion). On closer inspection it turned out not to be Swiss garb but just really fashionable clothes. She said she lived in the neighborhood and it just seemed like a nice day to play the accordion.

"Well, thanks for sharing your accordion skills with the world"
"Thanks for appreciating"

I realize I should feel weird about doing things like this, but really I'm just a little kid with a toy camera.

"Ethics is the method by which the soul binds itself to the Good"

I've been doing a lot of religious studying this week. Last Friday, I went to a Shabat at the campus Jewish center, on Sunday I attended the morning service at the Unitarian Universalist church, and yesterday I went to a panel discussion with ten representatives from different religions. And now I start research for a paper on a particular religion's concept of the creation of the universe.

I had gone to one Shabat before this Sunday but didn't really take much from it because it was almost entirely in Hebrew. This Friday I followed up the service with a visit to Rabbi Schlomo's house (the Rabbi who hands out pamphlets outside the Dining Center). I've decided the Jewish Identity has a lot in common with the Modernist mentality because it is about alienation. One of the Jews at the lesson explained to me that to be a Jew was to live in exile. Even the Jews who lived in the Holy Land still felt a strong sense of spiritual exile, that is, alienation of the soul from God. Another aspect of Jewish life is the focus on the pain and suffering of religious brothers, which is expressed through an internal focus whether it be individually with an emphasis on private study of the Torah and Talmud or culture-wide with an immutability of tradition and an impenetrability of community. This made sense to me because I associate a strong sense of self (identity) with alienation and with suffering.

I attended the Universalist service with Sean, Daniel and Aimee at the church in Green Hills. It began with the children's choir singing not about some textual Bible story or specific religious concept, but about using their imagination. In fact all the songs in the hymn book were about using the mind through rational or creative thought to find God. It was definitely a service that seemed to bring about the better aspects of mankind. My only problem with it was that since their ideology is so open and accepting there is very little to focus on. Their entire creed fit inside the order of service, which means they have no strong, absolute concept of good that they preach. Instead religious stories are studied from an almost-academic perspective. The sermon was about the Ancient Chinese story of Creation, and the preacher described teaching Sunday school lessons of God as if he were a part of a tale, not too different from a Mother Goose story. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

The religious panel last night was very enlightening. There were representatives Ba'hai, Hindu, Mormon, Protestant, Catholic, Islamic, Atheist, Jewish, Jainist and Buddhist faiths. I thought the Jainist and Ba'hai representatives did an excellent job, and I even learned something about the Protestant faith I didn't know. The atheist representative however did not know how to answer the question and instead started swearing about taxes and Jack Benny(?).

And remember that resolution I made a while back to learn more about Hinduism? Well guess what I'm writing my cosmology project on. Anyhow, I'm now really late for class

Linux has no Blue Screen of Death--it just dies

Wednesday night I had a philosophy paper to finish before my 8am morning class. Which made it the perfect time to erase my hard drive. Yes, even the mighty Linux is not impossible to crash.

***Skip this part if you don't want nerdy techno-babble***

I had opened up Linux's automatic update system to import plugins from the multiverse spectrum, which includes updates outside Linux's approved web servers and programs list. This gives a lot more updates, but it means not all of them are compatible. The computer froze up while compiling one of these. When I rebooted, my kernel was totally gone. In tears, I called up Vanderbilt's ITS help desk, only to find out that no one there knows how to handle Linux. I have nothing.

***Okay you can start reading again***

I was not even able to start the paper until after 3am. Luckily I had my old Ubuntu live CD in my desk drawer, which means I wrote my paper on about 650 megs of Operating System and entirely in gedit. I finished the paper despite all this 'cause I'm a trooper like that. My professor was very understanding when I explained the reason the font was Courier New instead of Times New Roman and there were no headers, footers or citations. I was planning on going to the Apple store this weekend and buying Leopard so I would have a plan B if Linux flakes out again, but my paycheck was late so I'm still running my laptop on a Live disk (gross). I'm also refusing to reinstall the same distribution I had before, which, puts me in a precarious position, system-wise.

Why are things like this looked down upon by conservatives?

I had an interesting experience on Saturday night--my friend Downs invited me to this concert that was being held at the yoga source downtown. It struck me as an odd place for a concert, but that didn't really deter me. In the entranceway before the standing room there was a giant closet/changing space where everyone was encouraged to put their jackets, cell phones and other loose objects. In the concert hall proper (if you could call it that) the hundred or so people that had arrived before us were all sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floor or on one of the prayer mats that the sponsors were handing out. The band, called Samavayah, consisted of two percussionists, two sitar players a lead chanter, and a dancer (I think--it was kind of hard to see). The kirtan-style music was all in a call-and-response format, so the group would project maybe six Hindi words on the screen behind them, explain their meanings in English and then repeat them for the entirety of a twenty-minute song. Most people chanted along with their eyes closed, but by the end of the performance, the audience was dancing and singing in full unity with the musicians. It was an extremely energetic experience. Another one of the people in our party said the sounds inspired to him to see images in the air around him; if you had been there, this would not have surprised you a bit. Would attend again.