Acht(ung)

     There was no escape.  There was an illusion of escape, a rapidly evaporating mirage, but the detours were merely diversions.  Centripetal force had been pasted on the clock face and there was no turning back.  With increased mass it gained momentum and the fibers were drawn sharply against the grain, as if you ran your hand down reptilian scales the wrong way.  The snake parries and thrusts but it too finds itself subject to the cyclone.  The gods of the winds have exhausted their collected animus and the mundane laws of physics take over.  Magic finds itself beside myth and everyone lines up according to their belief or skepticism.  Can the superstition be quantified?
    

    It's Kandinsky's Kleine Welten VIII and its feeling of movement is compelling; its entropy unavoidable.  We have seen the esoteric signs and have innately known their meanings.  It's a small world after all.

The Green Heron Knows Where the Money Is

       I'm not an economist so perhaps I have no right to comment on this issue but I have doubts about the efficacy of dollar cost averaging.  Since my forays into Wall Street do not extend beyond the necessary and mundane arena of personal finance, I would like to place this topic in a wider space. 

     Undoubtedly, one of the best environments for glimpsing wildlife here in central Florida is the swamp.  On any given day one can observe myriad species of wading birds and reptiles: today I saw a limpkin and an anole; tomorrow I may find a sandhill crane and an alligator.  If I visit the swamp with enough frequency, I should be able to view most of its available panoply of flora and fauna.  But I have to know where (and when) to look.  There are many things in life to which I would agree that simply "showing up" (mindfulness jargon could say "being present") constitutes the majority of the seminal effort.  Dollar cost averaging is a way in which people are encouraged to invest because all they have to do is show up (with the money).  But if I show up to the swamp in search of an animal who hates humidity, I may be hanging out with the mosquitoes for nothing.

     We've all heard the tired aphorism "the early bird gets the worm" so I would like to posit something more eloquent but nonetheless true:

Chance favors the prepared mind

[Louis Pasteur, quoted in a lecture by Jerry Uelsmann (the artist behind those beautiful and strange photographs from the pre-Photoshop era)]

     Of all the birds I have seen in my swamp visits, I love the green heron most of all.  She blends in easily with the foliage and if you are just randomly walking through, you may miss her.  Perched atop a low-hanging branch near water, she is poised and ready for the right moment to strike.  Patient and careful, she is subject to the vicissitudes of nature and yet she takes full advantage of her available resources.  

     Perhaps my feelings are nothing more than a subconscious attempt to assert control over the randomness endemic to life.  How very human, the desire to manipulate the environment while rebelling against a stoic Destiny or Order; how often in literature and the arts we see humanity as the liaison between the earth and the gods.  

     I have not done the empirical research (for something more scientific I highly recommend The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow) but I do concede to both the value of persistence and the tragedy of human foibles.  It may not be of statistical significance but I will continue to research stocks before investing and I will look for the green heron near the water's edge.  Maybe I will someday find a synergy devoid of both ego and futility.

    

"Where are you?"

     Is this question geographical in nature, or perhaps chronological?  Maybe it is a matter of psychological geography i.e. are you here in front of your computer reading this or are you really at Disney World riding Space Mountain while your body languishes uninvolved at your desk?  Curiously enough my dad has recounted to me his unique experience of seeing Space Mountain with the lights on and apparently it wasn't nearly as impressive as it seems in the dark.  I presume this follows with some senses being heightened when others are deprived.  If you were to ask that seminal question right now, the answer would be floating in a pod in some primordial ooze (the topic of sensory deprivation always brings to mind something like Minority Report or The Matrix).  An appropriate corollary would be:

"What is the state of my mind?"     


  
     Sometimes the state of the mind is one of great weight.  It is not light like a blank sheet of paper.  Though typically translated into English as 'emptiness,' the Sanskrit word sunyata is more an absence of things and therefore ripe with possibility like the aforementioned paper.
     Sometimes the state of the mind is the opposite of sunyata.
     Sometimes it is like an overloaded Christmas tree and one half-hearted push would end a few dozen twinkling glass globes.