Secondly, logic is not a set of rules which govern human behavior. Humans may have logically conflicting goals.

.: In truth, it feels like today was set adrift, floating still close to the shores of Reality (I can see it from here!) but moving at a very different pace, a meandering lazy current. I have a pervasive feeling of disconnection, like some better part of me is laughing and knowing that that which my senses is describing to me is not quite real, but let’s go along with it for the pure hell of it.
.: I keep looking up, out the darkened window, and expecting to see the hummingbird mother, tucked into her nest… but I don’t see her, or them– they have disappeared…

Tucker had recounted for me how the eggs did hatch, and for a day there were two impossibly small hummingbird babies, black and stunted, curled amidst the breast-feathers that the mother had patiently woven over the last number of weeks. But then, by the time I returned from New York, they were gone. I fear the worst.

Dark outside, and inside the silence that follows the angst-scream of Sunny Day Real Estate when the CD is finally stopped. Trying to find an anchor.

How To Become A Hacker
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

Which also led me to this goldmine:
How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary
http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html

And this– which is immensely important for the work-life as we just began shifting our framework-of-choice to Python:
Why Python? by Eric Raymod
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3882

The following I am not 100% sure about, as they involve some heavy-duty core changes to your OS X setup… and many of them I do not yet understand, so proceed with researched caution:

OSX For Hackers
https://gist.github.com/2260182
(which is apparently a fork of this: https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/blob/master/.osx)

Lately I have been obsessed with reshaping my intellectual/emotional engagement with the world– which sounds quite heavy, and perhaps it is, but I have realized how many blockages and irrationalities have crept into my head from living a life (which I am sure is true of everyone) and now that I am in such a radically different work environment than I ever expected, planned for, or studied for, many of these issues are thrown into super-high relief. So it’s time to change them.

Mostly, thought, I need a new set of mental tools, and so I did some searching for “mental models” and came across a funny/interesting/insightful speech by Charles Munger (of Berkshire Hathaway fame) to the Harvard Business School. The first 1/2 of it, roughly, is what I am most interested in, where he lists (and extemporizes on) his favored “mental models” he uses regularly to apprehend his world and make decisions:

A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom As It Relates To Investment Management & Business
http://www.readability.com/articles/zx7qstah

(I have this pumped over into the Readability service because the small fonts etc of YCombinator drive me batty, I am old now so I like my fonts robust and even serif-ed, when appropriate).

When I lump all these links together, I begin to see the shape of what I’ve been after… and though I am leaving some elements out (not for any particular reason beyond time/fatigue) which might flesh it out more, I think this is pretty sufficiently descriptive to be useful.

I must mention, even though we’re committed to Python (it makes the most immediate business/life/sanity sense) I am particularly crazed about learning LISP. I mean, all things considered, look at the compact elegance of the scheme solution to the Tower of Hanoi puzzle, especially compared to the other languages: http://programmingpraxis.com/2011/10/11/tower-of-hanoi/

The issue sometimes comes down to habit, I am sure, or the lines/definitions we tattoo on our minds to make working for a living (a despicable thing, at core) actually livable. For example, it is nearly impossible for me to keep away from my computer… so I am poking at Python and Ruby, investigating WordPress themes, reading about Hans Zimmer’s studio. Even when I am not sitting here, in front of the computer, I am circling it like a wounded vulture, driven crazy by the scent of it.

Boy: “I hate your stories”

Woman: “I know a story about a boy who hated my stories”

Things I have learned:

1. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because one side of your mouth is at least semi-functional, that side can perform successfully the actions of the mouth as a whole. For example, drinking: it’s actually better to slip the liquids (and I do mean, slip) into the paralyzed side because you can actually seal the other side with the functioning lips. It’s so automatic to use the lips that work, I keep forgetting that limitations and liquids roll out the right side unchecked.
2. Vessels with spouts are the key, as they can funnel the liquid. But, if you’re a normal family, you probably have a paucity of available spouted vessels. On the other hand, we’re a Russo-American family with a) a former-baby/current-toddler with baby/toddler cups galore (though sippy cups are just not up to the job of your average thick meal-replacement shake) and b) a matriarch with a formerly-humorous-but-as-usual-devastatingly-on-it-obsession with plastic Chinese tea thermoses.
3. A significant portion of Bell’s Palsy sufferers experience heavy fatigue. I seem to be one, with a strange cycle of tiredness, usually with an onset of about 3:30pm — 4pm. It’s quite something, let me tell you, and not what I expected.
4. There is also an angle of this I am sure many of you would share, were you to be (or have you been) in similar predicaments… A thing I might express as the added psychological stress of being a burden to others. I think this is one of the most difficult things to deal with, since it alone can propel ‘the one who should be resting’ into moments of ‘semi-guilt-ridden activity’ which, I can only imagine, server to exacerbate the condition. It is a strange and gut-sinking thing to see yourself as a sort of deadweight eye of a storm, sort of like being a hunk of paralyzed lead dropped onto a pool tarp, pulling everything down into its heavy, distorting sink.

Image credit goes to: Yann Souetre from whom I borrowed without permission

Tillandsia ionantha is a bromeliad native to Central America that is classified as vulnerable by the World Conservation Union. This epiphyte is well adapted to its rather unique ecological niche, growing attached to the high branches of trees where it receives exposure to the sunlight that the canopy of trees shades from the forest floor below. The leaves of Tillandsia ionantha possess tiny grayish-colored scales called trichomes that both store water until it can be absorbed and act to reflect intense sunlight from the leaf surface, thereby preventing excessive water loss through transpiration.

Selaginellas are creeping or ascendant plants with simple, scale-like leaves on branching stems from which roots also arise. The plants are heterosporous (megaspores and microspores), and have structures called ligules, scale-like outgrowths near the base of the upper surface of each microphyll and sporophyll.
Unusually for the lycopods, each microphyll contains a branching vascular trace.

Ficus pumila (creeping fig or “climbing fig”) is a woody evergreen vine that is native to East Asia.
This plant requires the fig wasp Blastophaga pumilae for pollination, and is fed upon by larvae of the butterfly Marpesia petreus.

We had not been to the beach in a very very long time. Oh, there were reasons, even beyond our constant cries of “busy”-ness, but they all seems to dissolve into foolish caricatures today when we stood on the shore and watched the white-maned waves come crashing in.

There is a soft, unfocused haze that accompanies these ocean days, something that just registers on the visibility scale but is more like a vintage photo, a sort of summer softening that is, no doubt, a clouding of the atmosphere above the surf with microscopic moisture, but it makes your time there seem like an immediate memory.

So Lucian and I spent a good hour running along the beach and playing a sort of offensive/defensive line game where he would try to outmaneuver me so he might run headlong into the oncoming waves, and I would try to cut him off or, for those times he did slip past me with a head fake or other cleverness (like waiting for me to start texting a description of the stellar picture I wanted to send to Iryshka), catch him from behind with a valiant, stretching leap.

There was such a purity of pleasure, mingled with that specialized nostalgia not for things you actually experienced but for the belief you once had in the way such experiences would feel. I know that is confusing, so I will try to rework it: it felt like I was touching on the feelings I always thought I would feel when I came to California for my endless summer of warmth, love, and oceanic fun.

We have it so good here in California. It is a profound moment when you remember it, not idly but intensely. In a messy stream of days all choked with impatience and lost time, all blurred with fatigue and expectation, it is a gift to awaken (again) to the thought that everything might just be quite perfect.

Summation of stun. That is the night. Broken into shards, unable to collect them together, but still able to get a glimpse of the whole form, an implication of what it was, what it could be. We’re zombies after 8pm. We can push, push, push, and get something out, but it is only recycled detritus of the day.

It’s getting hotter. I used to love the heat, used to love the humid vapor ghost that seemed to shadow me on summer days – but then again, those days were days free of labor, free of general responsibility. Small, wandering days, never really going too far but always loose and happy; hot days of sweat and blinding sun, cool nights of breezes, soft noises, and mosquitoes. Yes, I used to love the heat, back when my body was a net of cords underneath muscle and smooth skin, when sweat was like an ornament and not like a stain.

Now, the vultures of doubt circle over my intentions– small aspirations feebly kicking and crawling in an attempt to actually live. I push because I know that if I let them stop moving, they’re goners. So I write, trying to move into something from the pure stream of nothing I feel inside.

I am out of practice with myself. I think I was so afraid for a while that the self I was formerly communing with was not authentic, not real, simply a wishful and energetically-reinforced construct.

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

Despite being tired, there’s a dark, powerful push that lingers behind the curtains. That’s the best way to describe it, the best I can think of: imagine, if you will, a slowly brewing storm-cloud, a thunderhead-to-be, full of force, slowly becoming something terrible, inexorable, natural.

The ‘portentous storm’ feeling is helped, no doubt, by the grey, wet sky and the chill expectancy that swirls around my naked toes. With the song ‘Closer’ by Kings of Leon pulsing with dark, torn, sexual sobbing out of my speakers, the moment crests to a perfect, precise point, and I look out the back window to see the august silhouette of our resident hawk on top of the telephone pole.

I think it is obvious that good things are on their way, just about to break into the surface of today.

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.