Before I get into it, here’s the article:
The Willpower Paradox from Scientific American, July 2010

I might expand this later, but the operative ideas include:

1. the ‘before me’ would accomplish less by self-direction, more by exploration.
2. The negative of this was: things could end up half-assed, if I didn’t push to conclusion; and also, I took a lot of direction from exterior sources (especially insistent people and constructed, fantastical models (like, ‘rock star’)).
3. The ‘recent me’ has been trying the opposite — extensive planning, self-imposed deadlines, revisioning, etc. (which has been frustrating and disappointing, and leads to inner rebellions thru the cracks).
4. The ‘recent-recent me’ has been questioning this, and now (perhaps because I opened up myself to discovery) a flood of information and stimuli has swept in to help (like this article).

Now — the article isn’t conclusive. In fact, the experiment is a bit narrow, and some commenters point out some questions that I think are relevant…

But I still get fired up at the potential confirmation– and to wrap it up, I might talk about “Night Skiing” and how much we know by guessing.

Here’s the really good news: CIA director Leon Panetta says there are fewer than 100 Al-Qaeda combatants in Afghanistan. Here’s the utterly confusing news: The U.S has over 94,000 highly trained human beings in Afghanistan whose express purpose is to destroy Al-Qaeda. I bring this up as a prod to get you to question your own allotment of martial force, Gemini. You definitely need to make sure you have a lavish reserve of fighting spirit primed to serve your highest goals. Just make sure, please, that it’s pointed in the right direction

This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek. To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers.
- Terry Tempest Williams

Now, to dive into the computurgical world of ‘code’, where every word itself is an action, not transmitting so much as instructing. More later.

http://data.worldbank.org/
http://www.thenewhumanism.org/
http://www.npr.org/

This is a rough/simple version of where we are — sitting a few long blocks down from the Forbidden City and Tianamen, and right at the crossroads of some heavy shopping areas. Earlier research suggests — though I cannot be sure — that the highly rated Da Dong Roast Duck restaurant is very very close. Will confirm tomorrow. Here’s the obviously-off-but-close plot of the path to the mythic Duck: google map.

Get to Air China, no wait, up to desk — reservations are cancelled and no one knows why. Call Natashka in China — she’s busy working magic over phone, last minute tickets… Katya some tears “why can’t we do anything right?”. Last minute before the ticketing closes, confirmation comes through — we have tickets. Race through 1st security, then out to the gate security. Send Katya through first to intercept bags on the other side — realizing we have way too many bags for comfort. Family becomes divided — Iryna with black backpack getting manually screened, me with the baby food which must be manually tested … katya scrambling to gather up all the bags, shoes, belts, etc.

Family reconvenes after security — Iryna sends Katya to buy water… young ciunter person from Air China comes to us — “we’re looking for you because you haven’t checked in at the gate yet.” She helps us to the gate — everyone’s already on board. we basically collapse in cordoned off area before the gate –all our stuff is overflowing, blankets trailing, and Iryna wants food for the flight. They try to assure her there’s food on the plane and she uncharacteristically agrees (she’s over-freaked at this point). We trundle on the plane with so much stuff in tow — car seat hanging, bags off shoulder, blankets flowing, etc. — I am over-irritated with the amount of stuff, the jamming in the overheads, the stumbling over people.….….

spent long time getting car seat secured — finally able to tighten belt (but in a way that made it so so hard to open later). get baby in, baby freaking out more than a little, everyone finally shoved into their seats, take off.

baby doesn’t last too too long — though baby in seat behind strikes up a conversation with him, they bond over the single finger “1” … he gets very tired and cries — iryna tries to put him to sleep — arm rests don’t raise up in the front/bulkhead seats. Iryna lies Lucian on ground — stewardess says “you can’t do that — against regulations” iryna says — “only for a little bit” stewardess says “ok”.

they bring bassinet out — doens’t work. Iryna finally gets crew to switch her with others — so she can lay Lucian down on seats. two young chinese men come up and sit next to katya and i — iryna and lucian go back to 3 seats in a row. Iryna puts baby to sleep.

Katya musci and dozing. Me, can’t sleep. check on iryna & baby. watch weird desert city kung fu movie. mummy bandage fight. incredible tea. Liked sesame cookie — told stewardess — she sayd “really? maybe u just really hungry”. Air China the mosst helpful ever experienced.

long night. no real sleep. iryna handles baby poop and food with usual expertise. she is amzing.

Arrive early morning, beijing. amazing airport– shiny, lights, curved space. empty, walk thru entry/passports. gather luggage, stand in tranfer line a few minutes then realize… then go out thru customs no problem.

Nataliya & Shu shu waiting with coffee (later learned this was bought night before, and reheated in AM). blue gumby-like mascot for Shanghai … lucian likes … high fives.

hugs, laughter, walk to car. car seat jammed in. drive from airport to beijing downtown — first looks like Upstate NY, with some curved roofs every so often– same trees, brown colors, small snow, old industrial buildings. Many nests in tree-top. License plates have english letters, surprised.

A mode is just a sequence of steps
– Nathaniel S. Clark

Trying to weave some new modes from old thread, to mix metaphors joyfully. The wind is blowing; it’s going to be tumultuous.

This is always a beautiful shock to my inner-climate-sense, since I grew up in {was forged in the Iroquois fires of} Upstate New York {and also subsequently in the Mohican Valley of Wastefield, MA} where February is still bitterly cold, and March is, more often than not, a sluggish and grimy old Lion. Meaning: my inner senses do not ever expect to see soft green buds, light purple umbrella-flowers, explosions of flower-cones, or rounded peaks of bell-like petals dotting the landscape. But here they are, in this beautiful hybrid world of Southern California.

Walking through our favorite desert-in-miniature a few days ago, we were impressed to see the Yucca bell-towers, the Nightshade, the African Violets, and the feral spike-balls of the Wild Cucumber. And, while not exactly a flower (though bearing a small tuft of flowers at the end of a stalk), the black sage has run rampant, weaving tendrils of its particular dry desert spice through the warm air.

I can’t help but wax a little poetic — it puts me in such a reverie, even while remembering it.

More to write, more to remember– but the day has started, so here we go.

I could move in so many different directions right now. I suppose that is part of my quiet joy — a moment of implicit potential always makes me smile, and the ideas are all jockeying for position in line. In the end, I will probably leave them– all of them. It is too late, and I am too far gone. But it is certainly nice to have them.

We are capable of seeing our future, aren’t we? We can, should we choose, look ahead and see exactly where we’re going, right down to the texture and quality of the air, at night, some decade hence. I know this because I have seen this day, this night, before– and I knew (somehow, somewhere, deep within) that I would experience this. I feel this is one shard of a vision from a night, long ago, in my Easthampton attic. For one moment, I knew New York City was outside my window. Then, I could feel the soft, cool jasmine air on my face. And then… well, much more.

If this seems cryptic, I apologize. I do not intend for it to be so. I mean this very literally– we carry within us not just the seeds, but the vision, of our future. For some reason, we do not permit ourselves to be aware of it, most of the time. So it forces itself on us, in flashes, in moments where we lose control of our single focus and let our consciousness blossom… For me, I see many things when I am entrained in a repetitive task. For this reason, and this reason only, the work at the ‘deli’ in Wastefield was a gift– the repetitive motion was like a dream invocation. I was a shaman for 4 to 6 hours a day, that summer.

I do not understand it, I cannot always evoke it, and I certainly cannot force the visions to be more significant. I see simple things for the most part– dropping coins in a stairwell, telling my father it’s his turn to row, or a particular taste of the air on some spring night in California. Of course, it would be eminently more useful to see some major events.

But there it is.

I did tell you that it was late, and I would not be able to extend the proper hospitality to the small pageant of ideas who got all dressed up for the night’s pleasure. A long long year-and-a-half of broken and shell-shocked sleep leaves me defenseless, at least when the caffeine finally trickles out of the system. And it is that time. Bled dry. So to speak.

So I look back through the many dark windows of past nights, hoping to catch my own eye– for I know I am looking forward, somewhere back there, wondering at this taste, this tremor, this vision. And I look forward, again, to see if I can make sense of the shapes in the dark.

My ears are buzzing like they’re filled with boar bristles. Electric boar bristles. It’s been a long day.

My throat is a continuous lost sigh.

I am going to bed.

Now, we (the daimon, the coffee gnome, the white noise ghosts, and the shadows-of-promise) are left with a disembodied feeling. Like a dream where you don’t notice you’re floating until you start trying to walk, and then you look down to see your feet pedaling uselessly in the air, a few feet above the ground. Good Morning.

But, when the need arose tonight, my hands reached for the classic Walden, which I have now read 3 or 4 times completely, and is very much like an old and well-known friend who manages to surprise you each time you meet — there is a comfort and depth there, and then little miracles under the skin. I read most of the Housewarming chapter, since it’s almost October here and I see all the pumpkin stalls and tents popping up– which is really the vector here towards fall, since Southern California’s weather remains warm and of course we have the bitter and bone-dry, parching Santa Anas ahead. The symbols do a lot to counteract the desert-on-the-shore reality behind the curtains.

Anyway, quite different than Pynchon’s text, Thoreau — while no lush auteur — manages to evoke with simple clarity the crisp taste and smell of autumn in New England for me. It is enough to carry me on to bed.

So, after brewing up a mean cup of Vons© generic brand ‘european’ hot chocolate (which, embarrassingly enough, is the best damn hot chocolate I have encountered outside of the gourmet Max Brenner’s stuff Katya bought me for my birthday {but that is a milk/real-chocolate machine, whilst this is a water-based [and therefore, slightly more efficient] mix}) I got right into trying to rework some pages in the new site/project I had outsourced (to Moldova and Romania) in an effort to get some serious coding. It’s in CodeIgniter, and it is my{our} first foray into frameworks, something we {the dev team (see pic above of our workplace)} have eschewed up until now as a confusing overkill of code.

Anyway, this is me making a short story long. The resolution is, the transfer from the dev server to the live-mirror (penultimate home) server caused some wild train wreck with the rewrites. It took me about 4 hours to figure it all out– that is, just to get it working. I did not get a chance to actually change the pages necessary for delivery tomorrow. Now, I am riding another wave of burn-out and have no desire to work, so it’s off to bed to face the repercussions in the morning.

Strength and Honor

When Creativity Lapses, Appeal to Discipline