an UN-typical day in the life of Shawn

Today I went to San Francisco. This in itself is cool but not particularly noteworthy. I've been to SF four or five times over the past couple months for various reasons, and one of those reasons culminated in what I did today.

The story actually begins sometime this summer. I was listening to KDFC, the bay area classical station, and heard about this project called the Crissy Broadcast. It was a giant music collaboration with music written by an active, current composer, Lisa Bielawa. Finding out that the event was open to volunteer musicians, I checked it out and notified my friend Dana who, being very much into contemporary and current classical music, jumped on the opportunity. I joined as well, and long story short, drove over this morning to SF.

The event happened on Crissy field. There were upwards of 500, 600-something music makers together. A wonderful variety of groups were in volved: high school orchestras, bands, a drum corps, choirs, amateurs, professionals, young, old, and everything inbetween.  What happened was each group got music that was split into sections of musical phrases. Given the wide variety of ensembles there were many different portions of music. A few groups had much of the same music, but the timing and order was often different.
Between sections, many of the groups would move to a different location on the field. All groups started in the middle, but gradually expanded and moved around the field, often crossing paths.
There were call and response sections, alternating themes, competitions, exclamations, moans, wails shrieks... you get the idea. One band formed a diagonal line across the field, passing a phrase down the line with each person playing it once. There was a "chase" where one group played a section of music, and two or three other groups walked over and joined in, only to have the first group leave and move to a different location, only to be chased again. This happened 3-4 times at the end of the piece.

Overall it was a fun experience. The music was simple, but put together in an interesting way. There were friends and family in the field, following along as they could, and of course there were also many other people walking through and around, asking questions, and listening. I'm glad I did it.
Hooray for music and people and San Francisco!

remember when

I thought I had a post already entitled "Remember when" or something like it, but apparently not. But I'd like to have some sort of series of nostalgic posts. I guess this will have to be the first then.

Some moments ago I was looking through my twitter feed and something a friend posted about emailing reminded me of when I used to write emails to people. Of course, I still write emails, but now they are very perfunctory - serving whatever communicative need I happen to have.

It didn't use to be that way. When I was still in highschool, at home most every day because of home studies, I would write emails to my friends just to talk to them. Kind of like letter writing back in the day before internet. Or texting now. You see something funny, you have an idea, you're upset about something, you tell a friend.

But sometimes I would send random emails to people. I would come up with whatever sort of random stories or ideas popped into my head when I was writing, put them into a couple of paragraphs, maybe do a little "stream of consciousness" (which half of my blog posts end up doing in some way) and then hit "send."

I thought they were pretty funny, and at least if they didn't make my friends laugh, would hopefully lighten their day a little.

It's probably been over 6 or 7 years since I did that. It was such a fun idea. What happened?
I know part of it is that now I have more people who I see face to face and with whom I can share my life and thoughts. But then I realize I'm just not as random and goofy as I used to be.

Sometimes I don't like getting older.

It's strange to feel that I am stuck, but drifting. Often I feel like I am powerless to control myself. I know things happen in life and that one can never quite completely be in control of one's life. At least, though, one could possibly have some control over oneself.

I feel like I'm drifting away from most of the things and elements in life that have been meaningful and life-giving to me. I feel like all the urgent and demanding things that happen every day eclipse the will to push towards the things that last a lifetime. I've often felt a lack of motivation over the years. Now it just seems to be a lack of will.

I'm tired. Tired of school. Tired of trying. Tired of fighting myself to get simple things done. Tired of being so stuck, so unwilling.

What will it take to change? I don't know. I just know that being me kinda sucks right now.

life goes on

So the last three weeks I started seeing a lovely christian girl whom I think definitely had some potential.

And that's over now. I'm not really sad about it, in fact I'm happy about it. I think I've grown in a lot of ways and what happened, and how it happened, is proof of that. It was also proof of her communication, responsiveness, and maturity.

It was a first for me. In case you haven't connected the dots or didn't read my short post a while back (about two and a half weeks, how time flies!) this is the thing that I said I may or may not reveal. I've never really dated anyone in the respect that I initiated with clear intentions and proceeded based on a girl's response.

That's all. Life goes on. Maybe in a month or two there will be someone else. This one was pretty out of the blue in the first place and that could always happen again. Who knows.

within, through, around, between

Imagine a kaleidoscope. Remember looking through one with awe as a child? Anything you looked at lost its shape and form and turned into a splash of colors and patterns. In fact, you could point it at a bunch of things together in one spot and they would all get mixed together as one giant mosaic of color and light.

Then there are those pictures you see from far away. Perhaps the subject is a face, someone famous, a celebrity. But wait- you look at the picture and you realize that the component colors and lines are not just dots and splotches and marks, but other pictures. More than you can count. All faces. Mind. blown.

Projectors - light so strong that you put a colored film in front of it and the light coming through clearly traces the image of the film on a screen.

And then there's just a simple mirror,  reflecting whatever happens to be around it.


Colors within - the kaleidoscope. But they're formed by objects and colors from without.
Pictures within - the "meta" picture. They have individual aspects but come together to form a complex whole.
Light projected - coming through, showing an image.
Objects around - reflected, clear and understood.

Within is empowering. Through is enlightening. Around is sympathetic.

Within, through, around. But what about between?


Between is isolating.

But Between empowered. Between is both and neither at the same time. Between is influential to what is around it.

Between is also enlightened. Between sees everything. Between can interact with anything. Or nothing.

Between is sympathetic. Between knows and understands. Between feels.

What are you? Within, through, around - or between? Or more than one?

I think God is within, through, around and between.

Friends

Blogathon time! Yay! Ok. On to my topic. Another post from earlier this summer that I'm dusting off.



Friends. No, I'm not going to talk about the TV sitcom that was so popular in the 90's and 2000's. Just to clear up that possible misunderstanding.

What I am going to talk about is, well, friends, and friendship, and the oddities that come along with these core, inevitable (except perhaps for hermits) aspects of life.

I suppose what I have to say isn't really ground-breaking or life-shattering. It's just, well, my experience.

My experience with friends has actually been a little limited. Perhaps my introspective, introverted personality is evident from my writing. I'm definitely no social butterfly, and although I have been shifting on the intro/extro spectrum (towards extroversion), most of my life and friendships have been formed around my more introverted characteristics. But I'm not here to talk about personality according to Myers-Briggs or Carl Jung or whoever made up that stuff. So. Friends.

I didn't really learn how to make friends as a child. But I don't know if children really learn how to make friends - at first they seem to do it just by accepting someone they interact with on a regular basis as a friend.
Sure I had friends like that - at church, kids of families my parents kept in touch with and invited over. But the fact that I was home-schooled did make it more difficult for me to interact with a wide variety of kids my age. Not a bad thing, but it left a bit of a lack in my relationship skills.

When I was a teenager, I socialized mostly with other home-schooled young people. Some of them were fairly normal, but others were more eccentric. Whether they were eccentric because of being home-schooled or just because they were eccentric is not particularly determinable. (Perhaps they were home-schooled because they were eccentric.)

But, as it turns out, those were the kids I got along with better. They were smart, goofy, and weird. And they were comfortable with themselves. They didn't feel the need to develop any sort of social ladder or pecking order, they didn't create drama, and they expressed who they were without fear.

But I still didn't really learn how to initiate and maintain friendships. I just didn't have the knowledge or experience of thinking about people to spend time with and ways to spend time with them.
I became much more aware of this once I was out of high school. I met many others my age at junior college, but I didn't interact with them much. My interaction with the small group of young people from my small church was structured enough that I didn't feel a huge need to try and spend more time with them outside of church activities. But I began to want more friends. I didn't know how to find them. Or make them. Or whatever you do to have friends.

Now perhaps I understand what it takes to make friends. From spending a few years at my university, I have met many interesting, intelligent, interactive people, and many who do not have one or more of these qualities. (I think of smartness and intelligence as slightly different.)
By the time I arrived there (2009) I had pretty well established what a good friendship contains for me. I enjoy people who are open, like to have conversation to share their lives, and are thoughtful and even intellectual. They think and talk about life, and growth, and share about themselves.

The people whom I've grown closest to are all nerdy to a large extent - interested in the details of learning and dissecting life and different aspects of it - music, writing, spirituality, music, science, math, music, and so on. And I am too. I love learning about life. Discussing the fine details. The precise definitions. Nerding out. Geeking out. Getting excited about what makes the universe tick.

But it still mystifies me somewhat exactly how and why my close friends are who they are. There are usually important similarities but often large differences. Some of them continue to surprise me with things they say or think about. But I suppose that's part of what makes them good friends - never a dull moment.

I think I'm learning though. I'm learning how to invite people into my life. How to do things together that are not super structured but give a chance to get to know others.
And I have learned how much of an effort it is for me. I only have so much energy to reach out to people, and so I need to keep myself taken care of. I've also learned that I need to put out a lot of energy persistently in order to have people begin to respond in kind. Some never really do. Accept it, adjust priorities and focus accordingly, and keep living life.

So, to friends: may they always be loving, strange, exciting, open, honest, intelligent, and fun.

Peeves, part one

So. I started this post probably about 3 months ago. It's been sitting in my post list, waiting to be actually written.

I know it's a pain to listen to people whine and fuss about things they don't like in life. Which is why I don't do that much, especially not in public. The internet is basically public. We all know that.

Anyway, so my peeve this time is when people flake at the last minute. So I know that's basically a peeve of everyone, but in the instance that inspired me to write this post, I invited a couple friends to do something. Both of them ended up cancelling, but one told me the night before. That didn't make me too happy but I wasn't mad about it - at least he let me know the day before. The other friend pretty much waited until an hour before we were going to hang out to tell me that he couldn't.

So that just really annoys me. I think it's inconsiderate and irresponsible and bad communication. If you think or know you won't be able to hang out, let the person who invited you know as far in advance as possible. And if they're upset, apologize. Don't make it seem like it's trivial.

That's all.

Short post. Long Postscript. SOML.

Saturday evening. I was driving home, and the entire way I grinned "from ear to ear" as the old expression goes. It was with a strange mixture of sadness and delight that I realized I had never done this before.

Unfortunately, I am not presently at liberty to reveal the nature of "this."

...joking. It's just a personal matter that I'll most likely probably explain more in time. That should keep people checking for new posts. ;)



- Postscript  -

Despite the difficulty I've had in determining whether or not I can be officially diagnosed with Inattentive-type ADHD, sometimes it's humorously obvious that my attention span is challenged.

I had left a light on in the back and, on entering the room, remembered that I should grab my webcam. I returned, checked my phone, and decided to write a short blog post based on a text message I had just sent. It was then I noticed my half-eaten sandwich sitting on the table and the laundry hamper half full and waiting in the middle of the room - two things I'd started just moments before and had completely forgotten about. Sigh. Sometimes.

Also, SOML stands for "Story Of My Life."

Use Your Imagination

An unusual thought struck me the other day while I was working. I think about things, people, life, etc. all the time, so that was not unusual. What was unusual about it is that here I was, prepping a house for painting (masking, mainly) which is menial in nature, and not very conducive to profound realizations about life and myself. As a side note, I often listen to the radio (NPR in this case) so that I actually have something to occupy my mind while work is occupying my hands. Listening to someone else talk is also not conducive to deep thinking. (Unless what they're saying is boring - this generally leads to profound thinking or profound napping.)

So back to this thought. Here I am, listening to the radio, working in the heat at a skilled labor job, and somehow this though occurs to me. I have no clue how I ended up thinking about what it was I was thinking about but it happened.

I was thinking about how much my thoughts, interactions, and the way I talk change depending on my context. It's not something I try to do, and often happens out of my control. I know this is typical for most people at some level, but for me it's more extreme. There are many versions of "me" that show up or stay hidden depending on the situation.
Somehow that thought managed to connect to an experience I had years ago with writing. It was a fantasy story, jointly written with friends. Somehow I managed to immerse myself enough into the story (almost miraculous considering how difficult it is for me to truly immerse myself into anything) that I was coming up with ideas and scenes and events - something totally new to me with writing. Imagination. Creativity.

Now this all happened in about the same time it took you to read the first paragraph, and I haven't even told you exactly what my thought was. Well, it was this: I can use my imagination to place myself into different contexts. I can use my imagination to circumvent the myriad of mental blocks that I consistently run into each time I'm in a different situation with different people who talk a different way.

I can use my imagination to be myself, no matter the context.


In fact, I have already implemented this "technique," if you will, in my musicianship. I have trained myself in different styles, and I am able to pull those styles out, at will, any time, anywhere, with anyone. I don't play irish music only when I'm playing with irish musicians. I don't play classical only when I'm with other classical players. But this is because I've made a study of doing so. I've developed a very concrete structure of what exactly these styles consist of so that I can bring them out at any time.
I also use it with specific pieces. Well, somewhat. But I need to more - it's very effective. It helps eliminate nervousness and the selective loss of focus and memory that sometimes occurs when performing.

I've just never thought of working on using my imagination to be able to present the aspects of myself that I feel are central to who I am, and which like to hide most of the time.

So how am I going to work on this? I'm not sure yet. I've never heard of anyone talk about techniques of imagination. But it's just as much a mental exercise or activity as anything else - memory, logic, motor control, analysis, contemplation. It's not "a kind of magic" that only shows up when it wants to.

So go out and exercise your imagination!

friendly encounter

A second of mild shock.

"Shawn, is that you?" Someone I had not expected to see greets me as I pull up in my own driveway.
"What are you doing here?"

A brief explanation. I've returned to stasis. "It's been a while!"
Updates on life since our last meeting.

The iPhone comes out, pictures of the niece.
An invitation: "Come to my concert!"

You wouldn't think we hadn't had a real conversation in over 6 years.

Oh! it's a post!

So I keep forgetting that I have a blog. It's over halfway through June and I haven't posted once yet this month in contrast to may, when I posted a record 7 blog entries.

Well maybe I should try to get some more traffic over here, which might motivate me to post some more. We'll see.

SO. Howabout some updates. A few days ago I was going to post about some thoughts of mine, but now I've completely forgotten what those thoughts were. Sad day. They were going to be good, too.... oh! wait! I remembered. But before I get to them, I'll just talk about... what I'm up to!

I came back home to live with my folks for the summer. I'm trying to do stuff like work on résumés, practice, etc. BUT. I have a summer job. What type of summer job does Shawn get? One might wonder. Well, it's no mystery, I'm working for a friend of my dad's doing... PAINTING. No, not art. Not drawing, not depicting lovely little scenes from who-knows-where.

Houses, fences, railings. Paint brushes, rollers, masking tape & paper, buckets. Sand paper. Ugh. I hate sanding. Especially railings. They're the worst.

However, the weather has been lovely lately, and the couple jobs I've been working on have been in this gated lake community. One house in particular (a big railing job which needed a ton of scraping and very meticulous sanding) is right on the edge of the lake, which is a lovely place to be working. If only it weren't sanding a railing.

But I have managed to do a bit of playing. I participated in the Classical Revolution Sacramento one year anniversary concert, playing one movement of the Brahms E-flat String Sextet, and two of the Mozart Horn Quintet. Very fun, got to play with some great musicians and I hope to do some more.

Also, I'll be in Stockton this weekend with a rehearsal/CD-Release concert for a friend who recorded an album, which is also a fundraiser for the Gospel Center Rescue Mission. Cool stuff.
And on Sunday, I'll be playing with Wild Branches at ANOTHER fundraiser called the Celebrating Israel Concert, this time for the Sacramento Night to Honor Israel which will be in October.

I've also been playing volleyball every monday night. Yay! And I ran with my lovely friend Sarah. My legs are really feeling it today...

That's it for now! Later tonight I may write that post I was meaning to write a couple days ago...

Thilly thothial medthia.

That's right, you should be reading the title with a Sylvester the Cat style lisp. Good ol' classic cartoons. Don't make 'em like they used to.

BUT this post isn't about cartoons. It's about.... dun dun dun....


SOCIAL MEDIA.

Yes, I know, it's been around for years now. But it's still relevant. I think twitter is hitting its prime and facebook apparently has peaked and is possibly on the downslide. Instagram seems to be doing fine.
But I'm not here to talk about all those sites and how they are or are not doing.

I'm here to talk about ME. Because that's kind of what you do on social media. You talk about yourself, your thoughts, your events, your experiences. It sure is ME-dia. Har har. Sorry. Apparently it's that time of the night.

Which brings me to why I started writing this post in the first place. For some reason, I tend to post more stuff later at night. I mean, I'm kind of a night owl in general. I get more creative and productive and focused at night. Not sure what exactly makes that the case, but whatever. Go with it. Flow with it.

However. It so happens that when you post things on facebook or twitter between midnight and, say, 6am, well, not many people are around to see those things when they first pop up. Then when said people do get around to looking all the ME-dia from other people, all the stuff that's more recent (i.e. after 6am-ish) shows up.

So what's the big deal? Just post during the day. Well, I do that, some. But my brain just doesn't turn on in the same way during the day. Even if I think of stuff to post I'm much more likely to just think it and not actually post it.

At night though. At night. Stuff gets real. Okay so that doesn't really work as a euphemism. So sue me.

ANYWAY. Those of you who actually read this blog will start to see a pattern. Very few of my posts are written during daytime hours, and most of them are written after midnight. (3am seems to be my standard bewitching hour).

Aha. I know I will develop a widget or add-on or whatever that allows me to write and enter things when I feel like it, i.e. late at night, and then actually posts them during higher media traffic times when people are more likely to see them. Great idea.

like that's going to happen. Heh.


BTW if anybody is twitting or tweety birding or sylvester the cat-ing, my twitter "handle" is @violaphoria

I TAWT I TAW A PUDDY TAT. I DID I DID!

O Smelly Night

I don't want to be up right now... it's past 2am. I went to bed last night at like 11:30. It was amazing. BUT NOW I'm not in bed. Why?
Well, I read until about 1:30. probably not the best idea. But THEN. 

I was lying in bed, minding my own business, thinking those deep philosophical thoughts that always happen shortly before falling asleep. 

And something starts to bother my nose. 

What's this I smell? Skunk?

*sigh*

I figure that maybe a skunk just happens to be walking through the yard. They do that at night, wander through suburban neighborhoods looking for food. 

But the smell got stronger. And stronger. 
I'd had enough. I got up and went through the entire house, closing all the open doors and windows. (We have screens, of course.) Stupid skunk, keeping me up at night when I'm trying to go to sleep.

I go back to bed. And what happens? The smell gets WORSE.
How can the smell get worse when I just shut it out? Stupid skunk probably sprayed a cat or dog or car or something that got too close. Now the whole neighborhood REEKS. 

So much for sleep. 

a society of products

So doing some job hunting has got me to thinking about how much our society is driven by products and consumption. There are jobs selling products. There are jobs selling products and services that help other people sell products. There are jobs providing support for the products and services that exist entirely to help other people promote other products and services. It's a giant web of products and services and support networks. Kind of ridiculous.

I do realize that certain products and services really are necessary. People will always be doing a number of things: Eating, using shelter, using transportation, desiring entertainment of some sort, and educating. Each of these categories can in turn cover an extensive number of other activities.

Eating covers farming, food manufacturing, grocery stores, restaurants, catering, and personal kitchen needs. Farming requires having land, equipment, and storage facilities. Food manufacturing requires buildings, equipment, and specialized structures for processing. Grocery stores need things like shelves, carts, counters, computing devices, refrigeration, cleaning supplies, packaging supplies, and so on. Restaurants need utensils such as pots, pans, knives, dishes etc., appliances such as refrigerators, freezers, ovens, stovetops, burners, boilers, deep fryers, etc. They also need furniture to accommodate guests. Catering is similar but also needs containers, portable heating/cooling devices, and transportation. Personal kitchen needs involve appliances, utensils, tables/counters and cleaning supplies.

I was going to give some examples for the other "things that humans will always be doing" but you get the point. Assuming a moderate standard of living allowing access to running water, electricity, and/or natural gas, the simple life element "eating" coves a huge variety of products and possible services.

What gets me though is the sheer ocean of products and services out there that have very little to do with any basic human need, physical or psychological. Communication devices. Entertainment devices, including music, video, and gaming. Millions of programs for computers, doing millions of different things. It's overwhelming just trying to think of a basic list.

And yet, we just keep making more. And more. And more. We have them in red, we have them in blue. We have them with waterproof cases, we have them with bluetooth, we have them with faster processing, we have them with a gazillion features that you'll never use, or with new ways to browse the internet, or new ways to change their color scheme or appearance. When will it ever end? When will people be satisfied with having their needs met and a few things to spice up life a little?
I think we know the answer to that question. People will never be satisfied.

In some ways a lack of satisfaction has been the most significant thing in our existence, producing ideas and inventions that have changed the world for the better. We now have extremely advanced medical knowledge and practices. Babies aren't dying days after their birth. Heart attacks are seldom lethal. People who have failing organs can get transplants. People who have lost limbs can get bionic replacements that provide basic limb functionality.

We can discover amazing things about our world and the universe around us. We've been able to compute massive, unimaginable numbers and test extreme theories using computer models. We can analyze and process mountains of data about people and our environment. Don't get me wrong, our insatiability has proven to be one of our greatest assets.

I think insatiability could also be shown as one of our biggest disadvantages. People aren't just insatiable about knowledge and progress, they're insatiable when it comes to - well, just about everything. Food. Entertainment. Games. Socializing. Drugs. Sex. Power. Money. Tools. Cars. Possessions. Houses. Alcohol. Music. Sports. Winning. Achieving.

Having Stuff.

Stuff. My desk is covered with it. Sunglasses. Tape. Lip Balm. Floss. Business cards. A lamp. A mouse. A keyboard. A USB flash drive. Paper. Envelopes. Sticky notes. A timer.

Why do we need so many things?

When it comes down to it, we don't. But we have an entire economy built on the idea that we do.

Sometimes I wonder if we've really made that much progress. Are most people really very "enlightened"? Can the average person say that, because of the advances of modern civilization, on a daily basis they are able to know and understand more about themselves, other people, the universe they live in, and the principles that run it?

And then I stop wondering because somebody posted a cool video on facebook about the latest iPad app. Pretty cool. Civilization is awesome.

summer stuffs

The funny thing about me and blogging is that usually when I feel like sitting down to write something, I don't have anything in particular that I want or need to say. So I end up rambling for a while until I happen on a thought and develop it from there.

But today, I think I'll just talk about what I've been up to.

Reading!! And playing violin. And a little viola.

I actually picked up my viola for the first time in *gasp* 3 weeks. I know, that's like, forever. It's ok, I can still play. There are two reasons I haven't been playing viola:
1. My bow is at about 2/3 hair right now. It could get warped or damaged in some way if I keep playing with it. I haven't rehaired my bow because, well I don't have a lot of cash and I needed to buy tires.
2. My viola just kind of sucks. It only kind of sucks, though. It doesn't completely suck. I can manage to get a pretty nice tone out of it but volume, projection, flexible sound color... not so much.
I started playing it again because my "violin" bow is really a super lightweight viola bow. So it works, and it gets a good tone but I have to put more weight into it than my other bow.

However, I have been playing my violin almost daily. I've been polishing up the Bach E Major Prelude, a fun little Vivaldi concerto I learned when I was like 13, and refreshing some of the Bach D minor that I learned years ago as well. I haven't attempted the chaconne yet, but I'd like to start it this summer. My wrist is still a little weak from spraining it in April so I think giant chords and crazy stuff like that are probably not the best idea right now. Maybe in another 4-6 weeks.
Tonight I checked out some Beethoven sonatas - Nos. 6-10 to be exact. I have a recording of No. 8 in G, which my teacher Igor also performed recently. I started reading No. 6 and I think I'll start learning it  sometime soon as well.

So about the reading. Well, especially because I had the flu last week, I decided it was time to start some reading again.

Finished reading so far:

Friends and Fiddlers
Catherine Drinker Bowen

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (3rd time reading)
Douglas Adams

Epicenter: why the current rumblings in the Middle East will change your future
Joel C. Rosenberg

Currently reading:

When God Talks Back
T. M. Luhrmann

The Help
Kathryn Stockett

Haven't started: 
Well technically I've started both of these books before, but haven't touched them in a while, and haven't started in again yet.

God Is Not Great
Christopher Hitchens

The Amadeus Book of the Violin: construction, history, and music. 
Walter Kolneder

I'll give more info later... this post is long enough for now. :)

Innocent until proven Human

One of the basic premises of any trial in a court of law in the United States is that the defendant - the person accused - is to be considered innocent until proven guilty.

How then, is it that millions of Americans have forsaken one of the most fundamental ideas of our nation's existence and have become grossly engaged in a case of deadly "doublethink" concerning what is undeniably *the* primary human right?

Yes, I'm talking about the right to life. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I would think that most reasonable humans on this planet, religious, agnostic, atheist, spiritual, materialist, etc., will acknowledge that other humans have a right to live. I'm sure anyone who reads this will be in full agreement with the this simple statement: Any human person has a right to live.

So where is this cognitive dissonance, "doublethink" or whatever you want to call it, occurring?
Apparently, in our legal, political, and medical criteria for considering who is human and possesses this right to life.

Persons are innocent until proven guilty. How about, "Persons are human until proven non-human." Just the idea of proving a person non-human may sound ludicrous. It should. However, millions of persons are treated as if they were non-human and are denied the first "unalienable" right spoken of by the founders of our nation: the right to life.

For the sake of my court-perspective and presumed-innocent argument,  I will momentarily disregard the faith-based idea that the human spirit and soul are eternal and reside in the physical body from conception until it ceases to function (i.e. death).

With this in mind, I will freely acknowledge that there is some ambiguity about when, exactly, human life begins. Conception occurs when a sperm and an egg, two gametes that are (living) cells  each with half of the standard genetic material, join to create what is called a zygote, which later implants on the uterine wall to continue developing as a human baby.
There are a few significant developmental events that happen that could pinpoint the beginning of humanity in a person. At about 4 weeks after conception, the embryo develops a single-chamber heart structure which begins pumping blood. At about the same time, the spinal cord and brain begin to develop. From this point on, a heartbeat is necessary to sustain life.
A baby's ability to detect and react to external stimuli, particularly sound, is present at around 16 weeks after conception. Finally, the famous point of "viability of a fetus," when a baby has about a 50% chance of surviving outside the womb (in America and countries with similar levels of medical technology) begins at about week 24 of pregnancy. This idea of viability is referred to in the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion and influenced the third trimester limitation, which allowed states to legally protect an unborn baby past this point of development. In essence, it was a declaration that, prior to viability (a period of time between 24 -28 weeks of pregnancy), a fetus does not possess human rights such that the state or federal government must protect it and prosecute violators of these rights.

There are some vague and suspect phrases floating around in discussions like this. One of these is "potentiality of human life." When does "potential" become "actual?" Is it the point of viability that changes the "potential" into reality? It seems to me that having a baby's ability to survive outside the womb as the sole criterion to determine his or her humanity and right to life is a weak point that can and should not hold up in a court of law. What evidence supports this claim? I'm sure that the question of viability and potentiality of life is great grounds for philosophical arguments, but not the kind of arguments on which a law concerning the primary human right to life can be decided.

More to the point is this: how can you prove that a baby is human after the point of viability, and non-human before that point? Can the same be done at any other point from conception until birth?

If a baby's humanity cannot be DISPROVED to exist from conception, why does our nation still consider millions of babies non-human until proven human? What allows us to contradict the most basic premise in our legal system? 

There is a somewhat obvious answer to this question - one which I will hopefully be able to further investigate. It is that the judges in the supreme court ruling did in fact have evidence to prove that a baby is non-human, at least to the point of viability, and therefore does not have the overriding right to life. However, my counter question is this: how much of the case was an argument about the humanity and right to life of an unborn baby? If the case had been presented with the perspective of a person's humanity being present until proven not to be, as any accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty, would the judges have ruled the same way? I would hope that their decision was the result of a gross error in considering what the case was about, rather than the arbitrary declaration of when a baby actually possesses human life.

Moreover, philosophy, questioning, and arguments aside, I believe that from conception, an embryo, a fetus, a baby, a person, whatever you want to call him or her, is human and possesses full human rights.  If you don't think so, then, prove it. Please. I would like to ease my conscience of the unprosecuted national crime of severe human rights violations to the tune of about 50 million since the enactment of Roe v. Wade.

In case you couldn't tell, my last sentence was a little sarcastic.

to make up for my previous lack(s) of brevity

There are those who Will, and those who Won't. The rest of us, for one reason or another, or ten-thousand, are scattered willy-nilly between these two ends.

Verbals and Nounites

Isn't it peculiar the wanderings of mind and attention that some of us have when setting to a task?

Having decided it was high time to write another post, I opened up Google+ in my browser. After viewing a few updates and "+1"-ing something, I searched for some sort of "Post Blog" button in vain and realized that Google+ was not the correct avenue for my intent. At about the same time, I also realized there was something I needed to do (brush my teeth) that I could combine with thinking about what to write. However, by the time I had actually opened the Blogger platform and gotten up from my desk, the fleeting thought of dental hygiene had long since dissipated and I was left wondering what it was exactly that I had gotten up to do. I believe there's an old joke of Bill Cosby's (correct me if I'm wrong) about the button each of us has our our respective backsides which enables us, just as we are sitting down again, to remember why we had gotten up before. Apparently mine works.

Well, there you have it, a long, rambling introduction with little point but a little nice verbal imagery for your reading pleasure.

I sometimes think my writing style belongs in a time that is past, in which writing served more to stimulate the intellect and provoke the thinkage of great thoughts. Or at least it seems to me that older writing spends a great deal more time simply basking in the pleasure of language, and all the ways it can express the human experience, and more importantly, recreate that experience for the reader. These days, I even find myself needing to re-read lines or entire paragraphs that contain longer and more complex thoughts, though they may be intended for a public audience.
I've also sometimes puzzled at my apparent lack of vocabulary when speaking versus the veritable dictionary in my head that gleefully offers words that may or may not have been used commonly a century ago. I know it's not really that much of a mystery, particularly since I'm generally more introverted than not and that social interactions that involve using words can often bring a restriction in my brain, like a very mild sort of anxiety. My words are more free when I'm alone and can see them coming out on a page or my computer screen. They willingly meander out of the recesses of my mind and spill into my brain and, instead of "Why can't I think of the words I want?" my internal question is, "What words do I want to use?"

However, as a few of my good friends could tell you, the use of words never particularly eludes me and I'm generally good at talking. Sometimes I'm good at talking too much.

However, I'm always best at talking in two particular instances: First, in which I know the subject matter very well and am eager to share it (typically prefaced with "Did you know..." or "Actually...") and second, when I say whatever the heck happens to be wandering around my brain at that particular instance.

Now it just seems like this is one rather long and narcissistic post. (Someone should make up a tongue twister with the word "narcissistic" in it.) Well, in my defense, it is almost 3:00am and I am not in the best of sorts, as a nasty cold is currently keeping me up. What else do I have to muse but myself, my misery, my ecstasy, my complacency or transcendency? Why yes, I did just make up that word. No, I haven't actually contemplated any of those, and what? I'm sorry, I think my ears are stuffy - did you say "saw the worried programs"or "solve the world's problems?"

Well I'm afraid my tiredness has closed the rusty word gates, stopping the flow of my verbals and nounites from transcendencing my nervous system into the great beyond. Funny how all of this was created by neural impulses. Or was it? Am I merely the "electricity in my brain"? I'll leave you with that thought. Goodnight.

'nother post, entry, thing!

Every time I want to write a new entry, I always *almost* click the "New Blog" button before remembering that clicking it creates an entire new weblog, not just a new post. Annoying.

I'm not exactly sure why I'm posting right now, except that I haven't for a while, and I feel like it. I think those two reasons perfectly justify a post.

Life has been pretty chill lately. I finally played my senior recital. I'm in the process of signing up for my last undergrad class, which was supposed to be finished LAST fall but unfortunately I had some difficulty doing so, as I've discussed previously.

HOWEVER. Lately I've been in a very positive place emotionally, and as I was telling a friend the other day, realizing that a lot of the things I have disliked about myself, particularly concerning other people/social interactions, have been due to just being below a certain level of happiness.
Speaking of happiness, I think a lot of our psychological terminology has tried to elaborate on this feeling, talking about "positive" and "affirmative" and all these other terms. Well, what ever happened to plain old "happy?" I think a lot of us U.S. Americans try to cram so much in our lives that we have to do all this positive thinking and stress management. Here's an idea: how about we start throwing things out of our lives that contribute to stress and excess complication, busyness, and general life clutter. I think most of the happiest people are ones with simple lives.

My life is simple right now, and I like it. I know I'm sitting on a bubble that's about to pop - I desperately need money, I have to finish my degree, I have to figure out what I'm going to do for the next few years, and I have to figure out how I'm going to pay off my loans.

But I'm learning a lesson. Keep my life simple. Have daily tasks, not long-term obligations looming over me. When I do have long-term projects, (which will actually be basically all the time - the primary one being practicing my instrument), break it up into daily goals and just live one day at a time. Don't worry about tomorrow. Don't worry about next week. Don't worry about yesterday, or last week.

At least for me, the simpler my life is and the fewer things I have to do (i.e. I can spend all of my time on just a few very significant things), the happier I am. Put that together with regular social time with good, honest, positive friends, and I think it doesn't matter what I end up doing for a living. I'll be satisfied.

wee hours

I wonder why they're called the "wee hours" of the morning. Are they really any smaller, shorter, "wee"-er, than any other hours of the day?

But here I am, in the wee hours, typing away. I really liked my "violhomme" username/logo/moniker idea. But for some reason I decided to type the words "viol" and "homme" in the french-to-english google translator. Well, suffice it to say, I will no longer be using "violhomme." If you really want to know why, you can look it up yourself.

So why am I writing. I don't know. Because I've neglected my blog, and it's lonely. Poor thing. Also I decided that "expression" as a title was too... cliché, I guess... or obviously trying to be sophisticated and mysterious but just as obviously failing. I figured "electricity in my brain" was an apt, if extremely simplistic, description of what is actually happening when I sit down to write. But it does provide a nice little visual. You can almost see the whitish blue sparks zapping back and forth between my neurons as I type in the early morning darkness.

Which reminds me of an article I read today, someone posted it on facebook I suppose. Anyway, it was about the Glial cells in our brains, which, as it turns out, (surprise surprise) have a lot more to do with how the brain works than anybody realized before. They're not just nutritional support but apparently can have a great effect on what parts of the brain are interacting and connecting. Interesting stuff.

I decided for now to go with violomio (twitter/youtube). It's also almost kind of cliché but in a cuter way. Hm. I guess I probably don't really want to be cute either. *sigh.* I also found out that "viole mio" could mean "my violets" in Italian.

In other news, I'm starting to learn a little bit of spanish.

You know, this time in the morning is more random than anything else. I think I'm going to start calling these the whimsical hours of the morning.