crystallizing ice.

One can't help but notice how intricate the crystallization of water to ice is. Specifically the formation of crystalline structures on a piece of glass after vapors from the mouth are exhaled onto it. Within seconds of vapors hitting the surface of an extremely cold surface, we see the beautiful artwork like designs of crystals freezing into place until just as quickly as they were designed, they melt away into nothingness again after a stream of plus zero air wash over them.

We objectively see these crystalline formations as a byproduct of a state change from a liquid to a solid or gas to solid. The same happens in mineralization. We can subjectively see them as beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. It's only natural that we evolved to derive a sense of pleasure from perceiving a natural process as beautiful. It exists. We were created from the same design. These chemical processes are a part of us. So after millions of years of evolution and the creation of a central nervous system that could actually perceive a process like this, we attach a sense of curiosity and beauty to it.

An appreciation for art isn't dependent on sentience or a brain. Neither is the creation of it. People tend to mythologize the human mind as some sort of rare matrix that has some type of control or transcendence over the rest of existence -- it doesn't. Beauty exists outside of us, we don't create it, our minds are simply machines that re-order what already exists. For example, all of the words I am using to communicate these ideas could be used to communicate millions of other ideas. They aren't exclusive to any one single process. Things don't come from nowhere -- ingenuity isn't the proverbial anti-social hermit writing equations on a chalkboard. There are many studies done that correlate creativity with madness and this makes sense. Madness is chaos. Chaos is the existence of matter in an un ordered state. Order is just manifested differently through the human perceptual smorgasbord.

Yea, it's a miracle. It is a miracle that chaos and order exist in the first place. It's a miracle we have language, that such beauty can be created from a process as devoid of cognition as the crystallization of ice on a pane of glass. We're conscious for about 15 seconds before we rely on our memory to place us in space and time and to lead us from one fuzzy moment to the next. If I drop more than 7 things on the ground in front of you, that is the most you'll be able to 'estimate' before you conscious mind limits you (with the extreme rare exception of certain savants).

I fight a daily battle with the concepts of dualism and non dualism -- trying to choose which one makes more sense. Dualism has been made to fit most of our thinking patterns and theories over the last centuries, however, the things that don't make sense, the thing's that seems to hide between the spaces of awareness -- those are the things that dualism can't seem to throw credence to. Non duality might fit quite well with the new theories of quantum physics, but until more things make sense, scientists and philosophers will fall back on dialecticism. What created that beautiful crystalline structure? A chemical reaction that was catalyzed by hot AND cold processes in the same instance.

Go throw some hot water onto a cold pane of glass and see for yourself how quickly symmetry forms. So much detail, so quickly. Would you be able to create and draw what nature can do in seconds? Perhaps it should be an activity to indulge in. Nature doesn't see itself as beauty, the second any stimuli reaches our brain it immediately goes from objective to subjective. Red is just a wavelength outside of human perception..but it becomes a colour as soon as we call it one.

don't wait on a hot plate

this thought is like a hot plate of food
i don't have to digest it now

but if i wait,
this hot plate
of thought

will get cold

Don't Understand It? Seek Out the New Age Section!

It seems when traditional scientific inquiry fails to provide an explanation for a phenomenon that Buddhism or 'New Age' thinking seems to take its place. Why is this?

these are some notes I compiled that I need to organize:

it's interesting to draw parallel's from quantum physics and apply it to the mind
for example, in classical physics we see that dualism has a place and function. so we base our cognitive schemas on this.
but recently, quantum physics has discovered that at the subatomic world, things like superposition (one thing being in two places at once) is possible. and i think the mind might work on those principles
and this is where the study of non dualism comes in

those are culturally created
consciousness is nothing without culture
i think consciousness made its nest in culture
language brought us out of our inner prison.
before language it was a solipsistic world.
there was no symbolic exchanging of thought to be able to confirm with the outside world that any other being was experience any type of sentience

miniaturization.

is the deconstruction of the album to itunes a form of miniaturization that mimics things such as hemispherical specialization..singling out smaller neurotransmitter pathways? we used to buy full albums, but now we just buy the tracks we like. is this good or bad? it seems like we are further dividing life up into smaller and smaller pieces.

if you’re watching only twelve channels why should you pay for fifty-five?

people are just meme hunters
they chase memes like they are a prize
and then they get bored with them
our generation shows signs of this even and we were before i Tunes

until the dust settles.

sometimes it's good to jump ship
before it sucks you down

some people are meant to go down with the ship
but not me
not this time

self similarity.

while digitally sampling a great deal of sound making devices today, I couldn't help but notice that upon zooming in really close on each waveform I could see its DNA. the timbre of each tone is so complex, but there are similarities that you can find in each of them. one of the waveforms resembled that of a mountain range and if I looked even deeper it looked like the outline of teeth.

it is almost a miracle that a simple tone contains the ingredients for a mountain or a set of molars. peaks and valleys. the fundamental laws of physics when applied to the vast amount of diversity that exists in shapes and forms all around us create such beautiful things like symmetry.

I can't wait to keep discovering what is behind each tone that exists out there.

i feel like i'm dying everyday, I better evolve quickly!

While sitting in a lecture on digital audio theory and applications, I realized that we mirror evolution in mostly everything we do particularly in technology. We were discussing interfaces and connectors (USB, Firewird, MIDI, Coaxial, Lightpipe) and I realized that as time progresses and Moore's law stays intact, we are indeed creating more ways to interface our products which are in reality prehensile extensions of our mind and body. The prehensile tail, the prehensile thumb..the prehensile iPhone. A technology which immaculately illustrates growth towards singularity and compartmentalization.

All of the interfaces use different types of connectors as the need for more data transmission occurs in a world of continual growing digital diversity. For example, USB has been a standard since the late 90's, firewire quickly followed suit. This is quite similar to how in cell biology the nervous system evolved certain types of transmitters in an effort to adapt continually to a growing environment of diversity. GABA to control and regulate breathing in a specimen with a growing brainstem..dopamine to begin controlling more complex emotions and reward systems once the brain stem moved into the neo cortex era.

If we look carefully at the method in which technology is growing, we can also draw some direct parallel's to how we are evolving technologically. We keep growing outwards. What is useful is kept...generally. What is useless remains until it is forgotten. Interfacing is a level below modularization. We can also see modularization in digital audio theory in modular synthesis of the 1970's. Modularization in the brain began as phrenology and upgraded itself into an official citizen in science once we starting discovering certain brain areas are responsible for specific functions.

We are cascading into the future, like tobogganing up and endless mountain with infinite levels of complexity. I'm glad my emotionally laden title for this blog tricked you into reading this...emotions sell.

deep bleu

you had an imax sized aquarium for a heart

transparent and filled with such beautiful tropical colours
i saw your love swimming around like little rainbows

a winter walk

walking down college street
the snow flatulates beneath my boots

i clench my fists
to protect myself
from the saturday night
drunks

blowing smoke
into my face
like tired dragons

my ear captures
the intermittent
indecision
found in the gen x'ers

the syndrome
of apathy
complacency

but it's all going towards
something