“In the beginning there was information. The word came later.” - Fred Dretske

Most of the biosphere cannot see the infosphere; it is invisible, a parallel universe humming with ghostly inhabitants. But they are not ghosts to us - not anymore. We humans, alone among the earth’s organic creatures, live in both worlds at once. It is as though, having long coexisted with the unseen, we have begun to develop the needed extrasensory perception. We are aware of the many species of information. We name their types sardonically, as though to reassure ourselves that we understand: urban myths and zombie lies. We keep them alive in air-conditioned server farms. But we cannot own them. When a jingle lingers in our ears, or a fad turns fashion upside down, or a hoax dominates the global chatter for months and vanishes as swiftly as it came, who is master and who is slave?

“Man the food-gatherer reappears incongruously as information-gatherer. In this role, [digital] man is no less a nomad than his Paleolithic ancestors.”

• Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (1964)

“The human world is made of stories, not people. The people the stories use to tell themselves are not to be blamed.”

• David Mitchell

On a philosophical level, [the phenomenon of chaos] struck me as an operational way to define free will, in a way that allowed you to reconcile free will with determinism. The system is deterministic, but you can’t say what it’s going to do next.

At the same time, I’d always felt that the important problems out there in the world had to do with the creation of organization, in life or intelligence. But how did you study that? I always felt that the spontaneous emergence of self-organization ought to be part of physics.

The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them.

How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give.

If I carry only grief, I’ll bend toward cynicism and despair.

If I have only gratitude, I’ll become saccharine and won’t develop much compassion for other people’s suffering.

Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible.

“Don’t just do something. Sit there!” - Zen proverb

I received the gift of a lovely New Yorker essay from a relative, which blessed me with this opportunity to reflect on and clarify my feelings towards travelling.[1] I was at first reminded of my time spent online dating. “I love to travel” became a clear signal to me to just move on! But why? That essay put words to some of my feelings that contributed to developing that heuristic.

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.
From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.

One fig was a husband and a happy home and children,
and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor,
and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor,
and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America,
and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila
                                     and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions,
and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion,
and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out.

A lot of hopelessness, I think, comes from amnesia.
The past helps us understand the future.

Somebody said, “What’s the best thing I can do as an individual?”
And… he said, “Stop being an individual.”

I think we’re beginning to recognize that individualism is lonely and we have a deep crisis of loneliness that Silicon Valley, pandemics, et cetera, have made worse… the solution is community, being a part of a community, finding a community, supporting community… I think that people deeply want to be part of something larger.

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
          So how should I presume?

T.S.Eliot

behold your dark eyes,
glittering with the knowledge
of ancient wisdom

behold your sleek wings,
divine shields, warm blankets, and
instruments of flight

behold your sharpness
beak and talon fiercely honed,
delicately used.

you seek the wounded,
they beg for transformation.
you sanctify them.

you digest their world.
you purify their remains,
you nurture your kin.

great mother spirit,
beautiful, inscrutable,
behold yourself in full.

Audio sources

Knoll by Nitsua, sonsofu (license pending)

i am the peacemaker.
i do not choose one side or another.
i bend the world to my will to bring us together.
from this world you may choose to step away,
but i love you dearly and wish for you to stay.

the feather

the feather of the neelkantha is an omen of good fortune.
when channeling its spirit, listen well to its divine guidance.
lean into the ever unfolding story of transformation.

the stick

sandalwood is a potent fragrance used to enhance meditation and enlightenment.
you may smudge with it, but the resultant scent may be overwhelming.
best held in the hands at throat level.

the prayer

begin with the mahāvyāhṛti, only if a mantra becomes useful, proceed further.
sing the mantra with the entirety of your being.
exhale through the words with the exhalation of the universe.
curated sample of mantras below (satvir gayatri mantra is the most well known).

The story begins, as most stories of this sort do, a Very Long Time Ago.

It begins with the fiery rage of Lord Shiva, directed upon those who fail to walk the path of righteousness. One day this rage made the other gods flee from Lord Shiva, enraging him further and tempting the Lord to violence. At the behest of the goddess Parvati, the Lord purified himself and deposited his anger into a mortal. He thus created an avatar of himself in the raging sage, Durvasa.

What is a sage?

This is the question with which I arrive here, in the valley of the moon. JK died here, on this day, thirty nine years ago.

I blast through the great Central Valley at unsafe velocity. I can’t help it. I marvel at the vastness of the valley before me. I marvel at the Diablo hills to my west, swarming with winter green grass, dotted with cows euphoric for fresh ruminations. I marvel at the distant Sierras to the east, snowcaps distinctly visible through the rain-cleansed air. I marvel at the vastness of humanity that refined the earth into this exoskeleton of metal and glass and rubber, in which I now fly at mercilessly high speed. I marvel at the hands who guided the machines who ground the raw earth into roadways of asphalt and concrete, and constructed my companion the aqueduct, now to my east, sometimes to the west. We dance together, all of us, evaporating water and carbon dioxide, as we descend toward the South.