1/2

Well it hit me, one more semester and then I will be facing graduation. I must say I am filled with good feelings. While everything is sure to drastically change as friends move away forever and kids grow into adults, I am happy to say that this is no longer a worry to me. Learning to let go is a great characteristic to have, as new exciting things are sure to happen in the future. I am proud with the progress I have made in improving myself and I am beginning to see that it pays off in the end. Long term rewards are so much more valuable than instant gratification. I feel born again, always having something to look forward too. I used to be someone who always dreaded the next day, but I have become someone who is excited about it. Winter break, we're about to have some fun.

Some Pointers

You can't have a clean mind without a clean living space. Strive for purity, clean up after yourself, take pride in your possessions.

If there's a long wait ahead, and you feel your wasting your time, fill the gap with constructive activity.

The natural way is always the right way, chemicals are caustic, water is pure.

Always assume everyone is famous, you never know who you're talking to.

Leisure time is a luxury, turn off the TV, turn boredom into gratitude.

Don't just hear, listen. We are social beings, we were born to share.

Your body goes to incredible lengths to keep you alive, respect it. 

A cold wind on your face is a blessing, you can feel.

If you don't want to, but you can, then you should.

Showers don't just clean the body, steam rises up.

If you open your mouth, someone will listen. 

Balance is key, enjoy a little of everything.

Passion should find you.

Time is on your side.

Bite the bullet.

Be courageous. 

Be thankful.

Be humble.

Be stoic.

The Front Porch of My House in the City I Live in During the Month of November

Well, it's just a few days before Thanksgiving in November, and I'm out sitting on the front porch in the dark night. As I sit here in the cool air and just listen to the sounds I happened to notice something, a division in the sounds from north to south. To the south, I hear a steady drone, the sounds of the city. A one-eighty in the other direction, and there lies natures rhythm, cardinal north. The city is intimidating, filled with the sounds of motors, construction, business, and voice. It all blends into an unending low frequency belch. The sounds my ears interpret from the north come in not only filling the spectrum, but encompassing a passionate rhythm projecting from such an incredible abundance and diversity of life. Nature is in harmony and we are here as dissonance. The city sounds like a vacuum, taking in everything and giving nothing in return. All too often I wish to be a ghost among people, simply living and observing from an outside perspective. I am thankful that I am here on this Earth now while she still holds on to much of her glory, and I just want to live my life embracing all of it. Suddenly, a number of police and ambulance sirens come to life in the northern end, it seems nature is in trouble. A cold breeze flows across my boney fingers and exposed face, the soft glow inside of my house burns like a kerosene lamp.

Before

You're going to loose your hearing,
You're eyes are going to fail you.
You're hair will turn white,
And you're weak bones will impair you.

A steady climb up and a swift ride down.
It's not complete until you hit the ground. 

To Grok

There is certainly a cusp approaching, soon it will tip and spill. Decision will be a necessity. Change will be inevitable. Until fullness is reached, waiting is.

Si Dices Tan

Solía pensar que las religiónes no eran reales. Ahora, creo que todas las religiones estan reales.

From the Bookshelf

I find myself wandering through the endless rooms and corridors of my school's main library. It is easily the largest library I have ever been in, and it is not difficult to get lost, in both a literal and a mental sense. This place is such a powerhouse of knowledge, and it sometimes saddens me to know that I will not be able to read or understand it all before my time is up. As I sit here writing this, in between L 7 .B66 and L 13 .B99, my eyes and mind wander across the endless collection of titles and authors. Who were all these people? What did they accomplish? What kept them up at night? Most of all, what earned them a spot on these shelves? Every now and then my eye will catch a particular title, and I'll have to pry it off the dusty shelf and read a small excerpt. I'm always curious to read the name of whomever checked the book out last and what the date was when they did. There are books in this place that have not been picked up in years, but my mind reading through the lines seems to bring them back to life. This library is becoming a place of refuge for me, and I regret not having come here more often as an underclassmen, but I am here now, and I do not plan to leave again. There is just too much to soak in, it's unfortunate that I have to pick and choose. We each have a role to play, we must each gather information from the subjects which spark our interests. Afterward, we must make that knowledge available for the masses, to be archived on the multitude of shelves that make up this place, another beautiful example of turning many into one.



“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” 
- James Baldwin

untitled

I like the feeling of being completely supported when letting out the truth to someone close, especially when it comes to anxious situations. I'm filled this right now, and along side it are feelings of excitement, adventure, and rejuvenation. To whom this is about, I cannot thank you enough. I was scared to let it out, but for what reason do I have to doubt anything but your support? That quick blurting of the truth and your instant interest was enough to make up my mind. I'm going to do it, I'm not afraid to hold back any longer, I am unchained. There's a reason all of these experiences have pushed to this one big moment. I am so lucky to have you in my life and I'll always be wondering just what you are up too while I'm away. You were there at that first moment, and I'll be there at your last.

I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning

I've never really considered myself a morning person, mornings are always groggy, and pulling your self out from under the covers is no simple task. I've never really been much of a night owl either. When my body got tired, it was time for me to go to bed, no matter what happened to be going on around me. Now things of course are changing and morning is becoming my favorite part of the day. On my days off, I no longer sleep in, I set my alarm and jump out of bed, ready to take full advantage of the day. My roommates tend to be late sleepers, so morning is really the only time I have to myself. I love to wake up slow, take a long shower, make a big healthy breakfast, sip on coffee, and expand my mind through some activity. I take this time to read, play guitar, blog, discover new music, clean the house, pay the bills, and just watch the sun rise. College has certainly created this new side to me, as I often have to get up before 6 am in order to make it to work or class. At the end of the day I am always exhausted by the days activities, but it's a good feeling, like the feeling you get after a workout. I think back to high school and middle school, where I spent half of my weekends sleeping, literally staying in bed for twelve hours at a time, what a waste! My parents are very much morning people, and now I'm starting to take after them. I would much rather spend my time awake while the sun is young and fresh, rather than when it is dying out. There is always room for improvement in our lives, seek it out.


"The sun came up with no conclusion
Flowers sleeping in their beds
This city's cemetery's humming
I’m wide-awake, it’s morning"

Write Drunk,

edit sober. Well I'm not quite sober, so I'm about to write. Today was an odd day, good things happened, some expectations were met, others were lost. There is a man we called the Captain, his skin had wrinkled and his eyes expressed loss. There was another we called the Yooper, his confidence high and his mouth wide. There was another we called the King, her face met the light in a way unfamiliar, a forward gaze that I could not recognize. Still another, the manager, and another, the law, but one stood out above the all. I've seen her before, but I'm not sure if I'll see her again. We vote some out, and we vote others in. Looking left at a mirror to an object focused right, to the conversations of the morning, to the loss of the night. There was intimacy, there was indifference, there were complaints from us all. Some conclude through spring, others through fall.

Water Is Life

http://waterislife.com/

An interesting video trying to provide some sort of satire to an on going problem throughout the world, poverty. When I watched this video for the first time, I'll admit, I laughed, but I started to think of why I was laughing, and the reasons I came up with provided little understanding. Our problems are a joke compared to the rest of the world, and there are actually a lot of people out there dedicated to coming up with simple solutions on how to change the problem. Follow the link above to learn a bit more about Water Is Life, and check out Core77's social impact awards 2012 to see some other related innovations (from my last post).

Poor Does Not Mean Dirty

Being in an Information and Communication Technology for Development class, I've been thinking a lot about poorer areas of the world and what I can do to help. I love the idea of getting into the mind and culture of the people you are trying to help and creating ideas and products based on their perspective, rather than your own skewed perception. We have learned about how and why so many technologies fail, and it's usually because we aim to high, we think that by giving every poor African child a laptop we can close the digital divide. We do not take into account our prior experiences and education revolving around literacy and cause-effect flow. I am currently in the process of writing a paper on a new technology known as the GiraDora. This product is so simple in design, yet it provides so many benefits to people in ways that a laptop never could. In essence, it is a physically powered laundry machine and dryer for people in areas without running water. It is efficient, reducing the amount of time required to finish a load of laundry from one hour to nearly 5 minutes. This product will provide so many wonderful benefits for women, not just in saving time, but providing them with a sense of integrity, pride, and their own position within the society, as it can be used to start up a small laundry business, helping them to break out of the poverty cycle. I could go on and on here and basically rewrite my paper, but instead ill just put up a few of the links I've been using to gather my data. There are so many innovative products being designed each and everyday, hopefully I have the opportunity in my career to work on such a project, or even create my own!


edit:  whoops, looks like some links would be useful:

Core 77 Design Awards
BornActivist Blog Post
DesignMatters
^scroll down to find it, and be sure to check out the FAQ!

Paralyzed 2

It happened again, this time it was extremely unexpected. I went to bed around midnight after finishing the last few pages of my book. I turned off the light and went to sleep, everything seeming normal. All of the sudden, I was thrown back into sleep paralysis, I really couldn't believe it. Sleep paralysis has only affected me during naps, never before during a planned full night sleep. The lights were off and the room was nearly completely black aside from the street lights shining in through my window. I remember that this experience was a lot more dark, almost as if I was having a bad acid trip or something, but I was at no point afraid. Having experienced it four time now my mind was only thinking about leaving my body. I struggled to pull myself free again, but this time it was as if I was locked in. I remember falling off my bed onto the floor. When I was on the floor, I could barely move due to the paralysis, I was only able to toss and turn in a pathetic way. I remember looking underneath my bed and just seeing some very strange shapes, thats all they were, just shapes with a slight yellow color. I tried reaching for them, but they had no physical weight. I remember looking forward while on the floor at my closed door, wondering if I should try to open it and leave my room. I knew my roomate was awake just outside, and in the end that deterred me from leaving the room. After that, I remember looking back at those strange shapes, then all the sudden I realized I was really looking at my window from my bed. I then left my paralyzed state and returned to a fully awake state. The funny thing was, I was lying normally on my bed, and there was no evidence of me falling out of it onto the ground (no messed up blankets or pillows on the floor). So I was left wondering, did I leave my body and I just didn't realize it. I was most certainly lying on the floor during my state, but never did my actual body leave my bed. A very strange and confusing experience, I believe the darkness of the room is what really made things odd. My only regret is not trying to open my bedroom door during the paralysis.

Anxiety Is Not About the Issue

It is actually about people's "mind" related to the issue that they are afraid of. Change the way you think and you can change anything about yourself. Never again will I let myself not do something because I am afraid of what will come after. I have so much going for me and hopefully a lot of time left to do it, but I can't rely on time, it must happen now. If there's any advice I can give someone struggling to embrace life and laugh at death, it would be to first try to experience death. One can never understand life until they understand death, let go of yourself, commit mental suicide, and realize the importance of every moment. One can achieve this through introspection, meditation, art, literature, or spiritual substance. I think you'll come to find that you're already dead, and that can be one of the most beautiful bits of knowledge you'll ever discover. Take chances, make mistakes, and give incessantly. I hope that makes sense.

Sound/Chair by plummerfernandez

Sound/Chair by plummerfernandez

Lots of dual existence lately, only natural that I would come across this. Thought follows a stream.

Native

As Native prepares for to release their new album, Bobby Markos offers a few words about the album.

"A light that couldn’t be described.
A feeling that could not be accurately captured by human language.
The next session brought new hardships.
A cycle of emotions, between acceptance, hatred, happiness and acceptance.
This work will never be an open and shut case unfortunately, it will never be black and
white.
Too much has been invested, but at least there’s reassurance in that."

Read the full article here. I am so excited for this album. Native is beyond any other band when it comes to truth in words, and this next album will be such an important step for the band.




On a side note, Andrew just got kicked out of the bar after finishing his long island and proceeding to raise it above his head then smash it full force into the ground.

Outreach

Wow, two band's have e-mailed me today within a couple hours from each other asking me to listen to their free music and to make a post about it on my music blog. Really?! Because I'd love to! It brings me back to my last post about downloading music. It has built bridges across thousands of miles. Never before in history has such technology existed that allowed for these possibilities. We are in the first beautiful stages of global unification, imagine seeing and hearing about everything at once, a constant network of beings, all together forming one. It reminds me of a book I'm reading, The Raw Shark Texts. This evil genius Mycroft Ward discovers the means to split his mind and exist in two beings at once, collecting forty-eight hours worth of experience and information in the rest of the population's twenty-four hours. Not to spoil it, but something goes wrong, and the being continually splits and splits to a point where it is able to gather years worth of time and experience in one single day of a normal human, and we can't forget that knowledge is power.

Download Away

My professor and I have been getting into debates about downloading music illegally lately and I think if I write down my thoughts it'll help me get my grasp around it a little more. I just downloaded a recently released post rock album from a band named Across the Waves. This group is one of the few post rock outlets from the country of Iran. Yes, there is post rock in Iran, and I believe that without the ability to download music from the internet I would never have gotten the opportunity to hear their music. Their sound made it around the world and into my ears, which is astonishing to think about. Never before has this been a possibility, and to add to that, this band may have never even formed without the use of the internet. I mean, post rock is a pretty small genre, and it's not very widely accepted in countries like Iran. They were inspired by the music they heard from other bands thousands of miles away. I'm sure you've heard people say that music isn't about the money and now that is being put into literal effect. Bands are going to have to focus their attention on the music if they want to attract a following, they'll need to bring people into their shows and gather real fans. I love it! It's forcing record companies to change everything they know about the business. Sharing music has opened up so many new doors to thought and inspiration. I have the opportunity to listen to more music then I could ask for, finding new bands every single day, constantly searching for new sounds and ideas. The genres are always reshaping and evolving and new ones seem to pop up all the time. There is no way I would ever have been able to pay the money or even have access to all the music I have in my collection without the use of sharing. So for that reason I should never get the opportunity to hear the music they've made? If you're in it for the music you should be happy that people get to hear your music in any situation, and you should feel honored if anybody else tries to mimic your sound or incorporate it in some other way. What happened to the humble musician?

The Places You'll Go

I haven't seen that much of the world yet and it's a strange thing to think about. I'm so used to my own little nooks that it's hard to imagine what it would be like anywhere else. There are quiet places and loud places, crowded cities and remote terrains, languages I'll never understand and people I'll never meet. Soon I'm going to be let go into it all with no real direction and no real guidance other than my own mind and the people I hold close to me. We're always moving away. Nothing lasts, but nothing is lost!

Trial

So last night turned into a expensive night. I'm flying down the freeway on my way to the concert, when I come upon a well hidden cop. Soon as I saw him I knew I was in for it. He pulled out behind me and after a minute or so he pulled me over for speeding. Luckily I was in hickville and he was a very forgiving and understanding cop. He didn't even try and search my car, you don't get that in East Lansing. Anyways I was clocked going 86 but he generously gave me a no points 5mph over ticket. I didn't let it bum me out though, I said thank you and I went on my way. It's so easy to turn a seemingly negative situation in a positive one. Having gotten my first speeding ticket, I no longer feel invincible on the road and will hopefully become a safer driver in the future. Life throws a lot of trials at you, how are you going to handle them?

Minus the Bear - Knights

Going to see this band for the first time in about an hour from now, incredibly excited to see how they perform. Here is one of my favorite tracks by The Bear.

Paralyzed

So for my first post, I'm going to recount a sleep paralysis experience I had just the other night. This is the third of three sleep paralysis episodes that I have ever had in my life, it is also one of the best.

I laid down to take a forty minute nap before going to my next class. I had had about 6 hours of sleep the night before, so it was already prime conditions. I was very tired and nearly fell asleep as soon as my eyes closed. I awoke into an extremely vivid dream. I had just walked out of the back doors of my old high school, and I continued to walk forward across the parking lot and into the field towards my house. This is a walk that I made many times in high school, as I lived so close you could see my house from the school. While walking across the field, I noticed a grand intensity in the colors around me, I could even feel the hot sun on my neck. It was at that moment of realization, that I became aware that I was dreaming. I told myself to open my eyes and look around, as soon as I opened my eyes, sleep paralysis attacked my body like lightning. I recall a dark black floating object directly above my head, and another smaller black object floating above me to the left. Having experienced paralysis before, I knew exactly what it was, which allowed myself to think straight and decide what to do next. I have read a lot about astral projection and so I decided that was my next step. I closed my eyes, and tried to pull my conscience away from my body. At that moment, I literally felt myself rise up from my body, although it was a difficult and slow struggle. I would describe the thing that came out of my body as pure white light shaped similar to a human body, but with no features whatsoever. I got about halfway out of my body, my lower stomach and legs still inside. When I got to that height, it was as if something pushed me back down (possibly the blackness floating above me?). I was forced back into my body and instantly released from the hold of sleep paralysis, I was fully awake.

It's a bummer that I had to wake up, but I am very happy that it happened. I have been trying to achieve the state for nearly two years since my last episode, and this was the closest I have ever come to astral projection. I think there is some meaning behind all this, that in someway I have taken another step forward in my life, but I'm not completely there yet. There seems to be some force that I must conquer before I can understand it all, and it's up to me to find out what that is. Next time this happens to me, I will be ready, I will have absolutely no fear inside of me, and I will look down at my sleeping body from the ceiling and laugh.

Things I did differently before taking the nap: ate a bunch of peanuts, read a chapter of my book.