growing pains

in recent years i have done a significant amount of growing. motherhood, the end of college, moving across the state and the number attached to my existence have aided in my personal growth. i know now i need to grow in another way. i need to forgive myself. i was once young, immature and way more bitchy. i knowingly burned bridges, used people, was terribly selfish and probably hurt many people with my ignorance. when i remember something i am sorry for i try to apologize with sincerity. when i think of something i am grateful for, i log it, and will some day show my appreciation. this effort has not lead me to feeling great about myself. i often think about how wrong i have been and yearn to go back with my 27 year old self and sit my 22 year old self down and have a talk. not that 22 year old ruby would listen, she knew everything. if i could sit down with my younger self, i bet i would tell her this:

you may be smart but you don't know everything and your way certainly isn't the only one. you are beautiful and deserve greatness but no more than anyone else. try to be as polite, humble and compassionate to every last person you meet. even if you didn't offend them, the first and lasting impression of yourself may haunt you. try to be more considerate! your little agenda may seem muy importanto but it really is not anymore important than anyone else's. also, take care to love yourself more. you deserve love. especially your own love.



i'm not sure i am equipped to forgive myself today. but i'm putting it on my bucket list. i liken it to loving yourself; how can you love another person if you don't love yourself? how can you forgive others if you don't forgive yourself?

a secret post

i generally read non-fiction. i love philosophy, Christopher Hitchens, psychology, non-thesim, the studies of evolution, humanity, genetics, mathematics, economics, genocide, politics... i have read my share of Dave Berry, but that is about the closest thing to fiction i generally read.  but lately i have found myself picking up... fiction to read myself to sleep. while i was pregnant with my babies i picked up twilight. i could hardly stay awake so Friedman did not sound particularly achievable. i read twlight in a week. every word of every book in the series in 5.5 days. recently, a friend suggested i read the sookie stackhouse series and lent me a copy of the first book. i like it. it flows relatively smoothly and i can pretend you can avoid death. i am glad i didn't start reading books like this until my twenty somethings. my thoughts:

What would twilight have done to my more impressionable mind?
A) made me long for a love unattainable
B) make me love my odd self more thereby perhaps allowing myself the simple pleasures of nerd love
C) succeed in making me believe that the man in my life should have the reigns in our relationship and immerse myself in his love
D) create bonds with other nerdy girls and form a nerdy coalition helping me be more confident

How has vampire fiction effected my adult life?
A) helped me sleep
B) gave me perspective on how I want my daughters to date and the principles allowing them to understand how wonderful they are
C) helped me see the flaws in myself are cute
D) given me unreasonable expectations for chivalry
E) gave me a break from a hobbsian world of inherently evil humans

i may not read much more fiction, but i have enjoyed my brief encounters with it. next on my reading list is: the psychopathy test by jon ronson. a review of the book is here. after that, hitchen's newest, arguably: essays. here is the daily hitchens product description.

tonal amusement: eluvium's an accidental memory in the case of death

a chemical reaction

playing dress up

sometimes people let you down. it is an experience that isn't terribly unique to the human journey. being let down means you've made yourself vulnerable or lent more of yourself than you could afford to protect or lose. i am still wondering what the appropriate reaction is to feeling let down. i practiced my own philosophy and made my expectations known and still i was hurt: deeply, not in some shallow, you called me a bitch kind of way. a way that i haven't let anyone ever hurt me before. i suppose there is a first time for everything. and unfortunately for me, not the last time for feeling let down.

app approved

i, like most people i know, actually and not so secretly detest working out. i do it anyway because i want a perfect body, i want a perfect soul. but, i'm a creep. no, seriously, i fight myself with every mile i jog and every 15 minute ab sesh that drags on. i need serious rewards and incentive to accomplish my physical fitness goals. i found a neat free app for my iDevices! it is called nike trainer. there are four categories: get lean, get toned, get strong and get focused. each have a dozen or so 15 minute workouts. the "trainer" counts the seconds for you and let's you know what workout your doing next. there are cutesy "rewards" for every 60 minutes you've spent torturing yourself. sometimes those rewards are actually gratifying, since results on ones own body can take upward of 17,000 years to see. with nike trainer, you are able to listen to your playlist with flawless transition.

in summation:

i am driven by incentives.

i love music.

I rather dislike exerting unnatural amounts of energy unless the result is immediate six pack abs.

i'm partial to nike.

i'm a materialistic 'merican. shiiiiiiit.

inspired art

a new piece i made today.

.

i also did a few cards.

tonal stimulation: the rip tide and elephant gun both by Beirut.

thoughts on the porcelain god

life.
the laws of energy transfer.
goofy eyeballs.
a noticeable amount of unfairness?
probably not.
it seems like existence may just "be."
no order.
no chaos.

A Phenomenological Examination of Video Games and Time

“I do not hear the melody but only a single present tone.”

Husserl’s examination of consciousness and internal time begins, as always, with questions, this time specifically concerning the constitution of time. In, On the Phenomenology of the Conscious of Internal Time, Husserl asks the reader to accept a couple premises leading to his evidence; not to disregard all transcendencies and that a temporal object contains both time and space. I think to understand this concept you must also accept that objects present themselves in profiles. He uses a melody for an example of a single immanent profile; hearing as perceiving in a simple form of perceiving. He asserts that you are able to differentiate between one note and the next and from note to note you no longer hear the previous. That being said, you must also accept that you don’t lose the notes past altogether in consciousness, you retain them in order to continue making sense of the tune. “Anticipatory expectation” is the first appearance of a protensive plain of consciousness. Further, Husserl discusses tones in the present; you only hear one tone in the present time. The entirety of the three phases he calls an act-continuum. He concludes that immanent time appears as a continual flow. You can’t distinguish one moment from the next because as you intend the idea of distinguishing, each of the moments to be distinguished have passed, nearly unnoticed and would then belong to memory and neither would be a present blip of time. That is not to say that whether something is noticeable qualifies it as a distinguished moment, however the act of distinguishing takes a part in the consistent unity and flow forward of conscious time.


In an effort to better qualify my understanding of the unity of conscious time, I actively sought an example to examine phenomenologically, and came up with the video game Guitar Hero. Guitar is set up representing to play like a guitar, you “strum” and press “frets” and you do so in time with “notes” and a song on the screen. The flow of notes on the screen move continuously forward with only a sequence of four quarter notes consecutively able to be seen at any time. The object of the game is to be proficient in all of the act-continuum of time-consciousness’ relationship. At times, while playing Guitar Hero, my fingers respond to the visual mark on the screen too late, especially when playing songs I do not know. I have no protension in my present moment, so from one moment to the next I must tell my fingers to do only what I am receiving through perception in visual marks and tone-now’s. Sometimes, if a rather popular grouping of tones occurs, they collect in the past conscious, while being stored in retention and form a memory based apprehension. That is to say, from memory recollection in the retentive quality of time-consciousness’ relationship, a protension may occur without base of knowing the song but know tone groupings, similar.
Other instances, while playing Guitar Hero, my fingers preempt the timing for the game. My mind relies on its long-term memory signals to give me smaller time samples of time, so I may project what is to come. Unfortunately for my game, my long term memory is not sharp enough to accurately protense the tone-moment to come and I miss the point (and the tone now). Protension can be beneficial to game playing. The more I can anticipate accurately on the game the more probable it is that I will command my fingers properly. The protension of soon-to-be tone now’s are going to be both the now point and the past in a stream of consciousness Husserl’s vision of the relationship between time and consciousness is a continuous flow of acts; the current, the recent past and the projected future. This model is accurately applicable to, along with among most other experiences, playing video games. The examination Husserl gives of the tone in a melody is thorough and applicable also to all music and embodies consciousness and time relationship. 

the distance between us

here are some tips for maintaining long distance relationships (when sex isn't involved, because as we all know, sex is a great incentive):
pick up the phone when you're driving
a voice rather than an email is a nice change in communications with your far away beloveds. what better venue than the car when your children are contained and you can't text.
use traditional mail to surprise a friend with a greeting
it really invokes smiles to get a cute or goofy hello instead of a bill from insurance for $16,000 from that test they decided not to cover last year.
utilize technology like Skype
perhaps you won't be able to smell the garlic on your pal's breath but seeing someone's face once in a while can aid in keeping you tight.
muster up actual concern
even though your bro's drama probably doesn't affect you, showing honest concern for their ups and downs can help keep you tight. if you're on the book of face and you read that your friend is having a quarter life crisis, make your ear available for a bitch-fest or brag-fest. even if they don't take the offer of your ear, at least they know you care.

bliss

a philosophy professor once told me he that if you could see my mind in an valley of grass, it would make random beautiful patterns stretching across the entirety of your field of view.

last week, i spread the nerd on thick. i found myself with a few people willing to enjoy pondering the latest in physics and biology. we took PBRs and tubes on the river and chatted about life and giggled as we enjoyed our time together. we bathed in the hot springs under a full moon and clear sky for the perseids shower. i got to forget how fucked up things in Africa or 'Merica are, let go of my uptightness and exercise my freedoms. we weren't married to time. what a refreshing state of being.

my dear friend sent me a message recently that read "ignorance really is bliss." but, you have to be aware that you're being ignorant to feel blissful. it just cannot be blissful to feel compelled to hate gay people or to feel uncomfortable around people that have darker skin than you.

as we enjoyed friend love in the mountains, i made sure to stop thinking and just take it in. that was bliss, sweet chaotic bliss.


my current tonal amusement: cocorosie, devendra banhart, and billie holiday

mental masturbation

as i sat before the blank screen, listening to the soundtrack of my life, i thought about the concept of blogging. is this my living journal? i have kept a few journals in the past. personal journals, shared journals, art journals, all avenues for mental masturbation. i was trying to figure out if i wrote these posts for myself or my potential readers? i undoubtedly have plenty of love and revere myself, but is that the point of my posts? as i read papers on the Mandelbrot Set and the application of quantum theory to explain human irrationality, an old familiar song played over my headphones: Echoes by Pink Floyd. 

By chance two separate glances meet 

And I am you and what I see is me 
And do I take you by the hand 
And lead you through the land 
And help me understand the best I can 

i have long forgotten the days i thought i could feel the interconnectedness of existence. the memory reminded me of how i did as a small child believe in ghosts and spirits, and how much of my childhood i was without doubt. i used to believe i could feel others. really. but i have lost this feeling of interconnectedness. am i he as you are he and we are all together? or were the beatles seriously high on some lysergic acid diethylamide? probably both. as philosophically eventful ones own existence is,  the existence of others is even more epic. so, solution to my earlier ponderings is that i am writing for both me and the potential you, because i am a skeptic of your existence.  

i think the clouds have passed and the meteor shower has started. i can properly ponder the news that nasa published about meteorites holding the building blocks for dna and then reread  Meditations for the the product of the first three terms of Sylvester's sequence'nd time. 

amus.ic.ed

today, i am inspired by beirut's new album the rip tide. you can listen to it here: @ NPR First Listen.  it is wholly satisfying my auditory needs currently. i will probably listen to this album 10 times in the next 48 hours. give the track "goshen" a spin. i promise, you'll like it.

 i read an amazingly interesting blog today, "Anything But Country", that disqualifies the Music Genome Project's postulation that there are 400 factors in music similarity casting. i wish the customary way to get to know someone was to have a gander at their music collection. you can assume, if they have basically the jack johnson pandora station on their apple device, that they are relaxed, mellow people. if  the artists that pop up are children of bodom and dying fetus, you should offer that person some whiskey and some gun shooting. if they have all dead composers, schopenhauer may be safe to bring up in conversation. if you get an apple device with all the indie and eclectic happiness that you could drink PBRs to and all the beatles, neil young and pink floyd you could ask for, you've found me.

 hi, nice to meet you.

i am a hypocrite

sometimes it takes perspective to pull your head out of your ass and realize how great you have it. hopefully whatever news source you turn to has been presenting you with images of starving Somalian children. the media might then mention that hundreds of thousands of people starved in the early '90s and how - hold your breath - 18 soldiers died trying to deliver food, thus halting  food relief efforts. there is chatter around the interweb from 'mericans who think instead of feeding people who are legitimately unable to overthrow their shitty government because they are too hungry, we should throw food at people who refuse to get jobs. i am all about helping the slightly mentally disabled veterans who beg for money on the streets, i think we should figure out how to get them the help they deserve. i am NOT an advocate of perfectly competent people sucking off the system that experience negative incentive to get jobs. the business of living off of government aid is too lucrative. i knew a girl, once, who used to have strong work ethic; and one day she discovered she didn't need to work.  since she lost the will to contribute to society she has lived with food stamps, housing assistance, loans, grants, none of which she will pay back. she refuses to get a job because if she does, the government will take a percent of her money for housing. she said she would lose some of her food stamps. she might not qualify for WIC. why would she bother having a job when she would have to start paying taxes and putting back into the system? this type of 'merican makes me want to scream. it's funny, she also does not think 'merica should have international aid programs. gee, i wonder why.

i acknowledge there are a plethora of things going on in 'merica that we should address. however, that does not mean we shouldn't convince NATO, 'merica and it's allies that a little aided coup, implementation of schools, and the presence of International Organizations or Non-government Organizations could save a couple hundred thousand lives. the Somalian people have no resources. they live in the desert. they have no opportunity to thrive. they need education on how to sustain-ably live in the surroundings they are born into. i feel guilty even typing this in my temperate dwelling on my over-coveted apple gadget.  my little family certainly could use a few of those thousands of dollars we are giving to system suckers. we would even try to contribute monetarily to a greater cause with the excess money we had. instead, thousands of children are starving, all while their shite government is still in power, and 'merican system suckers are living pretty and i am feeling awfully fucking guilty for ever feeling less than totally grateful for the situation i am in right now.

my current tonal amusement: besh o drom's album, can't make me

imagination farm

Leona chasing turkeys.

Watching the goat.

Chickens

My little brother thought his junk was in danger.

Her name was Louise. She was a kind soul. 

Stella was so curious!

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Puppy Love

becoming reasonable

hoppie birdie, gma

my last post i addressed the application of making expectations known in relationships. i had an interesting conversation today about expectations. it was regarding being reasonable in expectations thereby increasing rates of success and reducing stress. we were chatting about how frustrating doing chores with children can be. take a grocery store visit for example. three-quarters of the way into a grocery trip with two 18 month old girls usually turns into a shit show of them trying to run free and then fits of frustration when they cannot run around. as you can imagine, i react with a little embarrassment and some blood pressure rising. why? because i unreasonably expected my little tiny people to sit still and not grab things. that was an expectation that i set up for myself and them to fail. now, i have reevaluated my expectation of my children in that situation. an immediate positive reaction to the reconstruction of rules and expectation occurred today. i set a goal of mailing a thank you card and a birthday greeting and thought we would have to go to the dreaded post office, but i found a couple stamps and we went on an adventure to mail our letters. the girls held my hands as we walked to the mailbox and they dropped in the mail their great gma's birthday card (first time they mailed something, tear). we checked out the tall grass and rocks for a while then walked home. it was fun and not stressful and met and went beyond my expectations of the event.

exercising the most reasonable part of the brain is not always easy. actually quite contrary, the prefrontal cortex is the least developed part of the brain and is easily over powered by the older brain, that relies on emotion and ancient rules of survival. it takes practice and mindfulness to exercise the younger more rational part of the brain and apply the rationale to daily life to relieve stress and create avenues for success.


my current tonal amusement: tUnE-YaRdS' album, BiRd-BrAiNs

known expectations

relationships necessitate expectations. hell, most of life necessitates we expect certain things to occur, it is a function of our ability to succeed as a species. close interpersonal relationships also necessitate certain expectations. usually, you can expect the person to be the same person they were last month; that you can count on them for some level of support; that they will genuinely care about you and your well being; you will probably enjoy their company when it is possible. those are functional and probably known expectations of any relationship. there can be some unknown expectations held against your basic companions.  i, in example, do not offer disclaimers to my sensitivity and without advising my life mates expect them to somewhat give a shit about them. these unknown expectations burden relationships because one person is not being fulfilled and the other person may not a be a mind-reader. i think it is illogical behavior to not let others know what you expect of them before they agree to the task of entering into whatever kind of partner-ship.

i even have expectations towards acquaintances. i expect them to be friendly and mature and  not spastically erratic, at least towards me and my beloveds. i have my own set of rules of engagement regarding any level of acquaintance: i won't give you all of my craziness, i will never be mean to you, i will politely exit your life without a harsh confrontation (unless you are a considerable asshole, and even then, i am trying to be as nice as possible to everyone who deserves it), and i will have my own opinions of you but never hold them against you; i accept you in totality. 

a failed hipster once told me that the cliche about your twenty's being about balance wasn't all that wrong. a shitty relationship or twenty are all acceptable. move on, grow up, create new rules like making expectations known.