Thursday, December 31, 2009

Contentment (2001)

Contentment

Contentment curls up on the rug by the fire.
Wind doesn't chill,
Rain doesn't soak, and
Worries don't dance with the shadows on the wall.

The unread book lies open on page one;
Leaves are uncreased,
Buds are un-pressed, and
The words of tomorrow are waiting to be told.


(4/19/2001)

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

First Kiss

First Kiss

I'm looking back now,
'Cause I'm here, alone again.
The show was pretty good.
Our way home, we're at the stop,
Talking, still so shy.

Just a while to wait,
Going home, we will part.
I tried to see your eyes
On a May night, so cool but dry,
By stars and bare streetlights.

I sat and stopped, then
You took my hand (unasked),
And searching eyes found mine.

So I look back now,
'Cause I'm so alone again.
I still remember that night.
Our way home, at the bus stop,
We talked, then, both so shy.


(12/23/2009)

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

My Life

My Life

Disappointment, I never seem
to stack up to myself.
Afraid to fail, afraid to try,
I'm the first to criticize.

If my life were a book I might
rip out every page that hurt me,
kept me scared,
But I'm a poem.

Awake at night, my eyes so tight
I cannot even dream.
I need some pride in what I've done,
but I just make a mess.

If my life were a book I could
burn away the pages that shame me,
keep me alone,
a closed book.

I need to do what makes me free.
I need to open up.
My heart wants me to sing out loud, but
fear has kept me shut.

If my life were a book I would
rewrite all those pages that hurt me,
kept me down.
My life is a song.


(12/8/2009)

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

With Me (2008)

With Me

It is, perhaps, too much
to ask someone to
hold onto my dreams
for me,
to hold my hand if I'm
afraid, or
love me any time I
need.

I wish, perhaps, too much
and wait for someone to
say just the right words
to me,
that make me always feel OK
with who and how I
am, and
mean when they say they
love me always,
forever.

When I am tired,
when I feel too
feeble with frustrations,
who sits with me and
shows they care?

I am OK.
I am that one, always,
for me.


(2/7/2008)

Roots in the Sky (2003)

roots in the sky


and this time look up:
the tree has roots in the sky

to pilot the crystal dimension
between wind and here

look and see how green
the nuts are still in the branches



(8/1/2003)


Green things in trees are clearly a-seasonal for December in Oregon. Clearly, I'm still thinking back on late summer, but it was midsummer when I wrote this six years ago (!). I dislike the cold, except for the delightful snow it plants in the mountains for me to ride down on.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Two Non-Poem Thoughts...

Apparently the "geek" part of me was unusually active today. Aside from feeling alienated by my computer not doing what I want, I don't usually think a whole lot about how it works or why it's not simply the greatest thing since the macaroni noodle.

As it happened, I was lying down for a rest/nap (I've been recovering from a sinus infection lately), and listening to some music on my iPod. I had the first thought: Why do "modern" computer operating systems still force users to manage the hierarchical tree layout of files on our storage devices?

I think what got me started on this thought was something I was working on recently. I've been trying to organize a bunch of old computer files I had on 3.5" floppy disks from years back. I didn't know what was really on most of the disks until I put them into my old PowerMac 7200/90 computer. In many cases, the information on the disk labels was incomplete or completely inaccurate. To try to get a handle on the situation, I copied all the disks to a "folder" on my hard drive, and then copied them across an Ethernet connection to my newer Powerbook computer. I then burned the whole lot onto a CD-R, pitched the floppies, and proceeded to try reorganizing and sorting out all these crazy documents and programs from my past.

Well, today it dawned on me that I'd done all this reorganizing of files on my laptop, and then I was going to need to deal with the same exact slog of files on the Power Mac 7200, because much of the content required older software that may not even run on my newer computers. I was faced with the problem that I've sorted the files in one place, and may need to do much the same work all over again in the other place. Gads.

Wouldn't it be nice if I could just "synchronize" the two file systems somehow to match up. But it was painful enough just to do the copy maneuver one way. There's a good chance what I'll end up doing is sorting the files on the laptop and copying back whatever I decide I want to preserve on the older Mac. It will probably not be that simple since I can't open many of the files on my Powerbook, so I may still have a lot of sorting out to do once I get things back over to the 7200.

Anyway, hence my disillusionment with the hierarchical file structures of "modern" operating systems. All those nested folders with arbitrary names is a real bear to work with, especially considering I created all these files so many years ago and often have no idea what I'm looking at until I open everything up and take a look.

Well, what is the alternative? First off, I want to point out a deeper thought I had at the same time, as to why trying to manage files in a hierarchical tree structure is not a great situation.

Don't ask me why, but the other day I was reading up on a bit of Greek mythology on Wikipedia, and I came upon an article that pointed out that a labyrinth, in the classical sense, is not the same thing as a maze. (You can check out the article if you're curious what the distinction is.)

Then I read an article on mazes that points out that a common type of maze is a course of branching paths, topologically mappable from 2D (or higher dimensions) to a hierarchical tree graph. In other words, mathematically speaking, a hierarchical tree structure is the same things as a maze. A maze is a puzzle purposely invented to make things hard to find. So why in the world are we hiding our files in mazes of folders and subfolders? Start to see what is bothering me about this picture yet?

I did an Internet search for alternatives to the Mac OS X Finder, to see if anyone has addressed this question with a software solution. The closest I found was someone's graduate class project, a file system called "Birch" written by Casey Marshall. (See a PDF of his write-up.) Clearly, Casey gets what I'm thinking about, though I'm not about to try his solution because it's clearly not a mature "user-friendly" system. (Yet?)

But Casey Marshall's write-up acknowledges the situation thus: "The issue with hierarchical file storage is that it depends on the user to create and manage these hierarchies, and so the quality and usability of a particular hierarchy is only as good as the effort put into defining that hierarchy. Good classification schemes are difficult for the average computer user to define — we have historically relied on professionals to organize large collections of data."

In other words, file systems are like a maze of our own design. So they can be helpful and clear, or obscure and difficult, depending on how good a job done by the designer. Most likely somewhere in between, because I expect really confusing structures are probably more trouble to create than most people are willing to undergo.

Alternatives do exist, for special-purpose media browsing. Apple's iTunes and iPhoto each create self-contained islands of file organization based on attributes of the content (artist, album, last played, rating, ...) rather than exposing the underlying file system. Granted, they do allow limited hierarchical organization with "folders" of playlists, but the nesting level is limited. You can't bury your music or photos inside 17 layers of subdirectory madness. And even if you could, there would still be easy access to the files by their attributes in the search box or music/photo browser. The iPod itself has a scaled back version of the iTunes interface. It is even more purely non-hierarchical.

iPhoto has a cool feature that makes this all even more appealing: you can tag photos with your own keywords. Think "vacation photos."

My thought is, would it not be great if all the documents of any significance on your computer were accessible in much the same way as in iTunes and iPhoto? If you could add your own custom tags to any file, and bring them up, classified six ways from Sunday?

Well, it's a thought, anyway.

My second thought I want to share today occurred while reading the description of a file browser (still fairly hierarchical, so I won't mention which one because I don't remember the name). The web site was oozing about how cool its graphical interface was. It talked all about perspective rendering on-the-fly. I had the thought, well, wouldn't it be really cool if the objects drawn on your computer screen were presented as if lit by the lighting in the room where you're sitting?

These days a lot of computers have built-in or attached cameras. So what if the computer used the information from its camera to decide how to draw the "virtual lighting" falling on the objects on the screen? Think shadows behind windows and icons moving as the sun tracks the sky. Maybe tiny reflections of your office rendered on "shiny" things. It might really seem like you could almost reach out and touch whatever it was you're looking at, as if it were a solid, tangible object. Granted, maybe you're sitting in a dark room and couldn't see things on the screen. But in that case you could "turn on" a virtual lamp somewhere "inside" the computer, and it would light things up well enough to read your homework or play your games or find your lost files in their mythological labyrinth.

On second thought, maybe this is not such a cool idea. Why do we need computers to be so realistic? What's wrong with the reality we've already got?

Me so geeky. :)

Saturday, October 31, 2009

The Other Side

The Other Side

I feel comfortable when
I take responsibility for
my own well-being, and
see through to the other side
of an experience:

I can protect myself, and
if I fall down, I
can either pick myself back up
or make a comfortable place for myself
on the ground.


(10/31/2009)

Sunday, October 25, 2009

The Moment

The Moment

I remember a day (well,
really, lots of days) like this
Feeling I've got laundry in the dryer
And I'm lying on my bed in the next room
Listening to some music.

You'd rented us a condo
on the coast, and
Picked me up from work—
It was a sweet surprise gift,
I felt, for the both of us.

Cozy and nice, it was just we two
alone, away from all the rest:
Our own gentle world.

I think there's poetry in this,
the poetry of living in the moment,
With laundry in the dryer and
Us two lying on the bed in the next room,
Listening to some music.


(10/25/2009)

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Surrounded

Surrounded

I step across a field alone,
as bent
And tossed tall grass abreeze the world around,
Made amber-rust by hard and sunny days.
I walk
surrounded by late summer hues.

As acrobatic dragon-flies nearby,
Hunt
two or three, surprise by angles' speed,
Half drunk, half keen, their territorial chase
I watch,
then pass them by on my own way.

I find
no thing, just grasses' drying stalks – and:
Time is th' entombment of this bodily Being.
A palpable force, we must contend, and join
Each,
cut by moments, exceeding weight or wind.


(10/21/2009)

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Ubi sunt?

Ubi sunt?


I lonely wander meadow ruts where
Cobble rocks and soil trace forth
And stop me now at water's edge,
All steps before led to this point.

The steady breeze lifts up the pond, a
Cool tone wafts on endless breath, as
Rhythmic ripples tap the rocks, yet
All songs voiced presaged this sound.

Birds coast and fly the dusk's approach.
The water's dark beneath their feet
And noble hilltops fringe the trees.
All souls to now purchased this sight.

The sky lets blue and green on waves,
And gold is the sun on the foam.
I sit upon a shelf and peer:
All life to now was worth this wait.


(10/11/2009)

Sunday, September 13, 2009

The Green Dragon Visits

dragonfly
The Green Dragon Visits

A guest stopped at my East window this morning,
Wearing green stripes.
With wide eyes he stared, and
Didn't say a word.
So suddenly arrived,
So sudden he moved on.


(9/13/2009)

Friday, August 28, 2009

Summer Rain

Summer Rain

The summer rain is sweet and welcome,
   like a round, ripe plum.
The juice runs off the day and
   splashes my face with freshness.
Each bite, each munch, is plentiful, savored.


(8/28/2009)

Saturday, August 22, 2009

I love

I love

I love
looking up through the trees
how the leaves change the sky
while little impatiens grow by the porch
the kind breeze touches my bare skin
and old friends ask how I am.

I love
going out so I can come back
how the Saturday afternoon sun
makes angels of it all.


(8/22/2009)

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Tiger Lilies

My tiger lilies are blooming right now. They come out and do their thing only once a year, and they don't last long.

I love their vibrant colors, tight curves, and bold spots. They are aptly named.

This is their time: they signal the second half of summer.

It feels to me like it's been an especially warm summer this year. The sun has been nice, but it would also be nice to get away to someplace cooler, like the coast. I think that's what hot days are best suited for – time to move, time for a change. This month I'm packing and moving out of my house, into an apartment or rental – a very big change for me. Cooler days will be welcome.

Maybe my new place will have lilies, too.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

In Defense of Descartes' Malin Genie Hypothesis (1996)

In Defense of Descartes' Malin Genie[1] Hypothesis
by Chris Kaltwasser
(OSU Philosophy Department Matchette Award Winner, 1996)

Suppose one day you walk into a room and see flowers in a pot on the table. Are those flowers real? How can you tell? Suppose you take a closer look. You reach your hand out and pick up the pot. You feel the weight of it press down on your palm. As you bring the flowers closer you can smell their pleasant fragrance. Reaching out your other hand, you touch the petals. They feel soft and delicate. Setting the pot by the open window, you observe as a lazy bee alights on one and then another of the blossoms, busy collecting pollen. Do you know these are real flowers now? Might they not be a clever illusion, designed to fool you into thinking you are seeing, holding, smelling, and touching flowers? René Descartes proposed just such a problem in his Meditations on First Philosophy: We know our senses can be mistaken—perhaps this is always the case. O. K. Bouwsma, many years later, suggested this hypothesis was itself a case of trickery. He argued that flowers you can see, hold, smell, touch, and so forth could not be an illusion, but instead that reality is what we should call them. However, Bouwsma is the one who is playing tricks with the words "illusion" and "reality."

In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes takes as his project to discover and defend a trustworthy basis for knowledge. For him, reality is the substance of existence and not mere perceptions or appearances to the senses. Two contradictory claims about reality cannot both be true. To have true knowledge means to have ideas which correspond accurately to reality. Knowing he has often been mistaken in his former beliefs, Descartes determines that he will systematically demolish his "house of knowledge," to find a solid foundation on which his knowledge can be built reliably. Believing that his mind will habitually fall into its old ways of error, Descartes determines that he will withhold assent from any of his former beliefs, as he employs a number of skeptical hypotheses to strip away all which is not manifestly true. He realizes that nothing which he formerly had believed is beyond reasonable doubt, because he finds that he has valid and well-considered grounds for doubt (Descartes, 4). By employing his method of doubt, he intends to discover some unshakable foundation for knowledge, something which he can know to be true without possibility of doubt.

Each of Descartes' skeptical hypotheses takes the form of a supposition that reality is in some way not as he has formerly believed, but instead some other reality accounts for his beliefs and perceptions. By a wave of three such hypotheses Descartes soon reduces his grasp of truth to mere elementary notions of extension, size, quantity, and number of things. He can doubt his beliefs of the external world, by supposing that all he senses of the world around him is pure fantasy, the product of his own dreaming mind independent of any reality, much as a painting might depict objects and creatures which never existed nor could exist in reality (Cottingham, 40-41). Then, as his ultimate hypothesis, by which he calls into doubt even these last elements of belief, Descartes supposes that his mind is deceived every time he contemplates even the simplest of ideas. When he adds two numbers, some mischievous agent insures that he produces the wrong sum without realizing his error. Not merely may he err, as he knows he sometimes does, but he is consistently deceived by the design of a malicious power:

I will suppose, then, not that there is a supremely good God who is the source of all truth, but that there is an evil demon, supremely powerful and cunning, who works as hard as he can to deceive me. I will say that sky, air, earth, color, shape, sound, and other external things are just dreamed illusions which the demon uses to ensnare my judgment. I will regard myself as not having hands, eyes, flesh, blood and senses—but as having the false belief that I have all these things (Descartes, 4-5).

Then, with a note of final triumph, Descartes handily smites his malin genie and establishes one truth which he asserts even this strongest of hypotheses cannot call into doubt: Descartes himself must exist, if he is deceived. As much deceptive power as he grants to this demon, Descartes cannot think himself to be nothing while he thinks that he is something (Descartes, 7). Armed with the unshakable knowledge that he exists as a thinking thing, Descartes proceeds with the rest of his Meditations to construct what he believes to be a framework for reliable knowledge.

We shall now briefly consider Descartes' theory of perception, of which the two central components are his concepts of causality and of ideas. Of the former, he holds that there must be as much reality in a cause as in an effect, and that the causal relation between things is a transfer of some formal or eminent reality from the cause to its effect. Hence, "it follows both that something cannot come from nothing and that what is more perfect—that is, has more reality in it—cannot come from what is less perfect or has less reality" (Descartes, 18). Of ideas, Descartes holds that ideas are modifications of thinking, which is the essential quality of his existence from which he cannot conceive himself to be separated. The view of perception that Descartes takes, then, is that there must be some archetypal reality which is the cause of all ideas. All ideas are like images of that formal reality from which they derive, and perceptions are representations of real things either from the mind itself or from things outside of the mind (Descartes, 19).

The validity of Descartes' arguments for a foundation of knowledge depends very significantly on the coherency of his skeptical hypotheses. By them he has toppled both his senses and his imagination as reliable means for attaining knowledge of reality, and builds instead on nothing but reasoning from his own existence and thought. If the illusions of the evil demon do not call all but his existence as a thinking thing into doubt, as Descartes claims, then his arguments are effectively crippled. If his supposition about the evil demon does violence to reason in some way, the consequence is that he has doubted what cannot reasonably be doubted and laid the foundations for knowledge far "below" where they ought to lie.

In his essay, "Descartes' Evil Genius," O. K. Bouwsma argues that Descartes' last hypothesis has in fact done violence to the concepts of illusion and reality. He submits the hypothesis to a trial by proposing two adventures for Descartes' evil demon. By the first of these exercises, Bouwsma proposes to show an ordinary illusion. It is one which can even be detected by the careful attention of one of the demon's victims. In his second exercise, Bouwsma proposes to reproduce exactly the scenario Descartes describes at the end of his first Meditation, and this, Bouwsma argues, is no illusion at all.

For the first adventure, Bouwsma supposes the evil demon is in the mood to exercise only some of his unlimited powers to deceive. He will construct a malicious deception, changing everything in the world to paper. Flowers, trees, sky, sun, and even human beings will be nothing but paper, carefully crafted to fool the unwary eye. This is the illusion Bouwsma proposes: that everything will appear very like normal, but in fact everything (except paper itself) will be changed. Bouwsma then supposes there is a young man named Tom who sees through the illusion. The flowers on the table are really paper. The young woman, Milly, is paper. The window, trees, houses, sky, sun, clouds, rain, and Tom himself are all paper. Tom experiences the illusion, but is not deceived because he knows the difference between paper and these other things, despite the fact that the paper illusions are carefully designed to fool him. An illusion, according to Bouwsma, is something that seems like something it is not. The given illusion is that the world is as we take it to be: flowers, trees, people, and paper, all distinct and real. The reality is that there is nothing but paper (Bouwsma, 30).

Ever cunning and malicious, the evil demon is not satisfied with his first attempt at deception. In what will be his second adventure, Bouwsma supposes that the evil demon now undertakes the project of constructing a world of illusions by which poor Tom will be thoroughly deceived. When Tom thinks he senses a thing, he will in fact be deceived, because there will be no such thing. To this end, first the demon must do away with all that is real in the world except for Tom himself, to which he restores his former life. Now the demon arranges things so that Tom believes everything is as it was before, that what seems to him solid and real is as it was before, just as solid and real. All this Tom believes, but all in fact are the products of the demon's deception.

Bouwsma now examines the illusion world created by the demon, and concludes that it is in fact reality, not illusion, which the demon has reproduced. The demon desires recognition for his cunning deception, and so decides to enter into Tom's perceptions and plant the seeds of doubt. Instead, Tom shows the demon that he has failed to deceive. The demon enters into Tom's experience, sharing with him the senses of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling. Nothing is missing. The flowers are still as pretty to see, as delicate to touch, as sweet to smell. Tom can gather their pollen, send them to Milly, or do anything else one could normally do with flowers. It seems that the demon has not done away with flowers or Milly or Tom's body, but only with what it was the demon could sense of these things beyond human sight, hearing, touch, smell, or taste. Tom is not taken in by the demon's deceptions. To Tom, everything is as it was before. The flowers are still flowers, the sky is still sky, and Milly is still Milly.

How is this so? According to Bouwsma, Tom is a clever lad. The demon may say that the flowers are not real, that he has in fact destroyed all flowers, but there they are in front of Tom, as real as they ever were. They are real and not illusions, Bouwsma claims, because they do not differ from real flowers as far as Tom is concerned. Sight, smell, and touch all verify the existence of these flowers, so for Tom, what the demon is insisting are mere illusion are in fact what a human being would call reality without a second thought. The demon may be able to reach out with some extra sense and miss the presence of the flowers, but no human being could do this. So, the demon has in effect constructed his own illusion. The flowers and Milly and everything else are still present and real to Tom. It is only the demon who has removed what it was he sensed of the flowers and Milly and the rest beyond the senses available to a human being, and is left with a world of illusions.

But there seems to be a trap in Bouwsma's argument. What about Milly? Poor Milly has no life. She has no awareness and no senses. She has no existence. We have granted this demon unlimited power to do and to deceive, and he has done this terrible deed: he has killed Milly and replaced her with an illusion. The demon, even in his perverse desire for recognition, never thinks to tell Tom this fact, but only uses the flowers as an illustration of the deception. There is no Milly, just as there are no flowers. If Tom speaks to Milly, or touches her hair, or kisses her, she will not subjectively hear or feel or give that kiss in return. Tom is alive, but Milly is dead. Tom can sense everything he could before, including the flowers and Milly, but he is deceived if he thinks they exist in reality. All that exists in the world is Tom, Tom's perceptions, and the evil demon, and though the demon has insured that Tom's perceptions lack nothing they formerly contained, they clearly are illusions.

An illusion is something falsely believed to exist, or, it is a false belief about reality. Reality is what exists in the world. When Bouwsma argues that the paper world of the evil demon's first adventure is an illusion, he is correct. The paper flowers and people and sky are imitations designed to fool. Those who mistake the paper imitations for the things themselves are taken in by the illusion. When Tom discovers the truth, that there is nothing but paper in place of these things, there is no more illusion for him. When Bouwsma argues that the dream world of the second adventure is reality, he is mistaken. What Tom perceives may seem real to him, but they lack real existence. How, then, does this concept of reality differ from Bouwsma's?

When I see flowers in a pot, I suppose that there is something in those flowers which I call life. This life is what makes the flowers grow, and when that life is disrupted, the flowers wither and die. I can see the flowers, smell them, collect the pollen or send them to a friend, but if I suppose sight and odor and arrangement is all flowers are, I am thinking about something less than the flowers themselves. Flowers are more than just my collected perceptions of them.

Similarly, when I see my friend sitting across the room, I suppose that he is a real person who has life and senses and awareness. I believe that his life and senses and awareness are similar to mine. If I speak his name, he hears me and knows I have addressed him. If I give him the flowers, he subjectively sees, feels, smells, and enjoys them just as I do. If I recite a line of verse, he hears the words and remembers that what I am quoting is The Tempest. My friend, like the flowers, is more than just my collected perceptions of him.

In the case of both the flowers and my friend, I am supposing there exists something of which I have no immediate experience. In fact, I seem to be basing my knowledge of both the flowers and my friend not on some sensory impression immediately present to my mind for experience and reflection, but on the combination of all of my sensory perceptions, as well as my reasoning and my expectation that my perceptions are consistent with reality. That is, I trust that what I perceive through the combination of sight and hearing and the other senses is a true impression on my mind of some real thing outside of my mind. I seem to assume the representational theory of perception as Descartes does, supposing that my ideas are of something outside of my mind, and that unless my senses and reasoning are deceived, my perceptions are reflections of some objective reality beyond them. There are physical flowers in the pot, and there is another thinking, feeling person sitting in that chair.

What I mean by the words "flowers" or "person" or "sky" is not just my perceptions of these things, whether colorful or firm or bright, and I would argue this meaning is the common one. What is meant is the thing itself, which, if it possesses senses and awareness can likewise perceive the things around it. The distinction becomes transparent when the object of our speaking is another person. Perhaps the flowers can be said to have no objective reality, and their existence independent of my perceptions is something essentially unreal to me. Presumably they do not have feeling or experience. But, to say that my friend would have no objective reality is to likewise eliminate his own subjective reality. So, when Bouwsma argues that the word "flowers" applies to the perceptions of flowers, he is perhaps not taking any great liberty. When he argues that the name "Milly" applies only to Tom's perceptions of that person, he is surely mistaken. When I say "flowers" I may not draw a sharp distinction between my perceptions of flowers and objects outside of my mind, but if I say "friend" I most definitely mean a person who has ideas, subjective experiences, and perceptions just as I do.

In contrast to my view, which I take to be very like Descartes', Bouwsma's theory of perception might be characterized in terms of positivism[2]. That is, he considers only what can be conceived to be contingent on some set of criteria, and shown to be true by those criteria. In this view, what is true is what can be demonstrated to be so, and whatever cannot possibly be demonstrated is meaningless. So, to speak of objective existences which I cannot possibly know of by direct experience or by some other means is futile in such a view. I do not have experience of what I call "real flowers," and therefore I am speaking of what I know nothing about and can know nothing about, because I cannot directly demonstrate the existence I describe.

What then might Bouwsma say about poor Milly, who I have claimed he has abandoned to nonexistence? In his second illustration, he argues that Milly is present and has been reproduced in the "illusion" in her full reality. At least, so far as Tom seems to care, she is fully as real as ever. Briefly, the theory of behaviorism considers mind in terms of behavior, identifying mental phenomena with the activity of some material. Such a view seems to fit Bouwsma's argument well, for if we suppose that we know Milly only in terms of how she acts, the things she says, and so forth, then she is fully present and real for us if we have the full sensory appearances of her outward behavior. After all, we would hardly concern ourselves with the inner working of a person's nervous system when we say that person is happy or is feeling pain, just as we would never conjure images of chemical structures when we say a flower has a pleasant odor. Yet I do not think that when Tom sees Milly, talks to her, or gives her flowers, that this subjective reality of Milly in his mind thereby reproduces the subjective experiences of Milly herself. The notion is in fact totally inconsistent withwhat is meant by "subjective experience."

So, one might argue that all we can possibly have knowledge of is our perceptions of things, and this is a difficulty which Descartes faces in relation to his representational theory of perception. However, it is what I or any other speaker of the word "flowers" believes which is very much at issue in this matter. When I say "flowers" I probably mean what I judge to be the reality causing my sensations. When I say "friend" I definitely mean what I judge to be another person with whom I have an amicable relationship. If there is no such reality or no such person, I am quite fooled by an illusion, for this is what is meant by the word "illusion": a mistaken belief about reality.

Hence, I have shown that it is Bouwsma who has in fact done violence to the common concepts of "illusion" and "reality" in his critique of Descartes' evil demon hypothesis. When we speak of reality, we speak of more than mere appearances. Consequently, when Descartes supposes an evil demon has the power to cause him to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel all the things he presently does, and that in fact the demon is deceiving him by this means, this is a coherent hypothesis. If such a demon had such power and were using it in this way, the illusions he employed would truly be illusions, and Descartes truly would be quite deceived. So, apparently, is the philosopher who thinks that when we speak of "reality" all we mean is our perceptions.

Works Cited

Bouwsma, O. K. "Descartes' Evil Genius." Ed. Alexander Sesonske and Noel Fleming, Meta-Meditations: Studies in Descartes. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, Inc., 1965.

Cottingham, John. The Rationalists. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Descartes, René. Meditations on First Philosophy. Trans. Ronald Rubin. 2nd ed. Claremont, California: Areté Press, 1986.

Malcolm, Norman. Problems of Mind: Descartes to Wittgenstein. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.

Notes

[1] malin genie
French, "evil genius." Descartes supposes that he is under the influence of a powerful and intelligent being that is capable of deceiving him at every instant." I will suppose, then, not that there is a supremely good God who is the source of all truth, but that there is an evil demon, supremely powerful and cunning, who works as hard as he can to deceive me."(Descartes, 4)

[2] positivism (logical)
Logical positivism, also known as logical empiricism, is a philosophical position which holds that there are only two sources of knowledge, logical reasoning and empirical experience, and that any statement of fact (e.g., "the grass is green") is only valid if it can be tested against empirical observation. Hence, logical positivism rules out any metaphysical hypotheses (synthetic a priori knowledge) or any inductive reasoning (analytic a posteriori knowledge). For a fuller discussion of this topic, see the Wikipedia article on logical positivism and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on behaviorism.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Snowboarding!

(Yes, it is the height of summer, but...)

One of the most fun things I've ever done is snowboarding! I started learning to ride back in February 2006 and have ridden quite a few times during the past few seasons here in Oregon.


My favorite place to ride is Willamette Pass on highway 58, because it is pretty close to home, the conditions and runs are pretty good, and the scenery is amazing. There are beautiful views of lakes, wilderness, and other peaks in the Cascade Mountains. I've also visited Mt. Bachelor near Bend a couple of times and had fun there as well.

Riding my board down a fast run feels almost like flying. It is a very freeing and confidence-building experience for me. I have a similar interest in skateboarding, and recently started riding a longboard. It's not quite as thrilling for me as snowboarding, but it's a very cool way to get around, and the feel of carving a longboard can be similar to connecting turns in snow on a gentle slope. (I've yet to dare going very fast on concrete. The street is a little less forgiving than snow!)

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Do you have yellow mushrooms?

I keep a lot of houseplants. I like to have living things in my space. They also help make things interesting: a little bit of Nature here and there to break up the monotony. Actually, in some rooms they pretty much are taking over. But I feel responsible for them and like them to be doing well. I am not an expert, but know something about how to keep some kinds of plants alive and occasionally thriving.

A few years ago I started to notice a yellow fungus growing in the soil of a few of my potted plants. Assuming it to be not a good thing, I applied fungicide and it dried up and seemed to go away. Problem solved?

Well, eventually I noticed this yellow stuff had a tendency to come back, and if I let it go for very long it quickly grew these bright yellow mushroom heads. Oh! Kind of cool, but still, that can not be a good thing, could it?

Thank you, Internet. I decided to find out whether these mushrooms are a problem and if so how best to deal with them, so I did a search and learned the following:

They are a species of fungus called Leucocoprinus birnbaumii, also known as Lepiota lutea. Common names are "flower pot parasol" and "plant pot dapperling."

The yellow mushrooms are the "fruit" of the fungus that mostly lives as a fibrous colony under the soil. It is not known to damage plants, as it feeds on dead organic matter and apparently does not interfere with the plant itself. It likes warm and moist conditions, and can grow outside in warmer climates. They are rather difficult to remove, as you need to eliminate not only the fungus itself but also its spores, which become airborne and can be carried surreptitiously on clothing, tools, etc. They are not edible and may be toxic or at least cause digestion problems. It is recommended to let them be and enjoy them, but remove the mushrooms if there is a danger a child or pet might eat one.

Here are some links to sites I found that talk about these little fun-guys. They include some photos, but you can probably recognize what I'm talking about and now you know what they're called:


Monday, July 20, 2009

This Empty House

This Empty House

Everywhere, this place is filled
with treasures and opened boxes
of past dreams, benevolent ghosts,
a life's accumulation:
Baby's smiles, ribboned hats,
dry flowers, candles and keepsakes.
Grandmother's watercolor Rose and my
gleeful baby niece's photo album afford
a blanket woven of love
and other people's memories
to wrap me up
on a chilly evening by myself.


(7/20/2009)

Friday, July 10, 2009

Electronic Conscience (1999)

Electronic Conscience

by Chris Kaltwasser

Copyright ©1999-2009 Chris Kaltwasser, do not redistribute without the author's permission.


"The instruments say we've got about six minutes of breathable air left, Max, Peter. What do we do now?" Janice Mers checked readouts and jabbed buttons on the operations panel. She was trying not to panic, but it was clear she wasn't going to succeed for long without a little help.

Three people sat staring at one another in the operations cubicle of a very small mining station. Each waited for a sign of hope from the others. Situated on an asteroid circling the sun at just under three times the distance as the planet Earth, their air supply in the man-made station was slowly leaking away because a small but significant crack had developed somewhere in the wall of its artificial habitat.

"We must have caught the full brunt of a micrometeor." The best Janice could tell, it must have been a fairly large micrometeor--perhaps half the size of a baseball, but smashing into the station at about fifteen thousand times the speed of a pitcher's swiftest fast ball.

Relatively few such rogue space rocks existed in the asteroid belt naturally. Except for the wakes of comets, most of the smallest rocks had long since been swept away or captured by the gravitation of the larger planetoids like Ceres and Vesta. But humanity has a knack for making a mess of his environment even when he thinks he's being careful. Years of deep space mining operations to harvest the bounty of raw materials in the belt had left a fresh supply of pulverized remnants. Most particles were sand-like, racing outward without air to slow them; some were quite a bit larger and made for much more devastating projectiles. Because of the clear risk--and a few deadly mishaps--precautions to protect people and equipment in the region had become severe and costly.

The potential disaster of a high-speed collision with such a projectile had been anticipated in the design of this particular mining station, which was why about 95 percent of it had been dug into the surface of its host planetoid for protection. The rest might have been well secured by sophisticated range detectors and electromagnetic fields, except that these systems were still far from perfect.

"We need to find and patch the leak. Are the integrity sensors showing the location of the breech?" asked the station supervisor, a solid man in his mid-forties, just starting to gray at the temples.

"I'm not sure. They're not all on-line. I'm trying to reset the detection grid, but I think there's been physical damage to some of the nodes," Janice replied. She paused, turning back from the console. "Shouldn't we be able to hear the leak?"

"Not necessarily. The walls are well insulated. Any vibration is probably muffled by all the layers of thermal and radiation shielding. It would be far easier to detect from outside of the dome. But there's hardly time now to get into an pressure suit, let alone get out there and look."

"OK, so how about our backup systems? Don't we have reserve air tanks? Shouldn't we seal off the different compartments of the station and take refuge in the unaffected areas?" As she saw more options, Janice was mastering her panic, but like her two companions, nonetheless agitated.

Jenkins thought a second and said, "I don't know that we have time for that. And, the leak is probably on this upper level somewhere, but this is where all the major operations and communications equipment is. If we abandon this level we'll be cut off down there and we aren't even sure yet what is causing the decompression. We could end up trapped and at the mercy of a more serious systems failure."

The other man present on the station had yet to say anything. He sat quietly, reviewing their options in his mind. Trapped indeed, he thought, but what else could they do? He thought back to when he'd arrived at the station, barely three hours earlier.



Maxwell Hume had walked into the operations room and found the station supervisor frowning hard at the operations panel. It was a smallish room, really just an office with desk, a small table, and the major communications and computer consoles needed for running the station. The supervisor didn't look up as Max came in; he just sat there in deep concentration, hunched over his consoles with a data tablet in one hand. Max caught himself wondering if the man was trying to levitate the panel with the power of his mind.

Maxwell was here on business. He tried to be cheerful, but feared the mood would turn sour all too quickly. "Hello, Pete. It's been a while since I've seen you. How can I help? What's the matter?"

With a disgusted frown, Station Supervisor Peter Jenkins slapped down his reading tablet, but he didn't turn to face the entering engineer. He kept looking at the displays with a grimace that indicated he expected they were about to tell him something else he didn't want to know.

"I don't understand this new technology, Max. I'm just at my wit's end! I can't find anything wrong! I've gone over this worthless manual twice waiting for you to get here!"

"Well, I'm here to help. The message I got sounded pretty urgent." Maxwell was a contract engineer and happened to be at a facility on a nearby planetoid when he received a call from a representative of the asteroid mining company asking him to come to their station to help deal with serious technical issues with some of their robotic equipment. They hadn't been very specific about the problem, but they were clear that it was serious enough that he should come quickly.

Jenkins did look up then, and finally made an obvious effort to be civil.

"Sorry. I don't mean to snap at you at all. It's our AR-XII unit. It's about 4,000 kilometers out in the field right now and it's stopped responding to my command inputs. The diagnostics are giving me conflicting reports, and I can't spare anyone to go out there to check on it. You do have some special tests or something you can run on it from here, don't you?" Jenkins asked.

Maxwell breathed a quiet sigh to himself. He was always called on to be the repairman, he thought. People hardly ever came to him unless something was broken or wasn't doing what they wanted. At each job complaints and impatience greeted him. Nothing could exasperate him quicker than an impatient, critical client. He asked himself: Why was he still doing this after nearly seven years?

Jenkins continued, "We've no time for having the rig idle as it is. Procedures would have me reel the blasted thing in if somebody sneezes, but with all the quotas and deadlines and no end of reports telling me we're not working fast enough, I hope you can get this thing working before I get too much more behind."

"All right," Maxwell said calmly. He straightened his back and put on his most professional attitude. "I'm familiar with the unit. Do you have data from before the trouble? You're using the monitoring protocols, right? What sort of work did you have the unit on?"

"Yes, yes." Jenkins shifted the pad across his desk with a sigh of resignation. "It's here. I had the diagnostic software following it the whole time. This is the first time we've used the AR-XII since we got it. It had been out for a little over 900 hours when it started reporting weird anomalies in the diagnostics. Different systems would shut down with reported failures but I couldn't tell what was going wrong. Whenever I tried restarting the driver software it would work again as if there was no problem, but after a while another system would break. I had figured this was the new version of the AR, so I'd better keep a close watch on it, go by the book, and all that. I admit I don't ever really trust the newest version to be right all the way. I haven't had any rest for 20 hours because I've been working on this thing, so I'm sorry if I'm a bit irritable right now. I'm under a lot of pressure. Sometimes I don't understand all this stuff."

"OK, don't worry about it. Let me take a look at this." Maxwell grabbed the tablet. He pulled out his own and started checking off his troubleshooting grid.

In five minutes he was scratching his head. In eight he was biting a nail and staring at the pad and the operations displays. Jenkins paced the nearby corridor, deep in thought.

Ares Mining Station One was an asteroid mining operation under contract to several major corporations back on Earth. The company that owned the station didn't really specialize in deep space operations, but had purchased it during a push to diversify its assets. Jenkins had worked on the station for three years. He'd worked on lunar excavations for eleven years before that. He had felt he was diversifying, too, but maybe he just hadn't wanted to admit he'd felt stuck at his previous job.

"Ahem--hey." Jenkins cleared his throat. He raised his voice a bit from the doorway: "Making any progress? Can you see what's gone wrong with it?"

"Ah, well." Max didn't like to look foolish in front of a client. "Well, I believe this is not a simple problem. I suggest we bring it into the service bay. I'm afraid it's that serious."

Jenkins muttered and swung a fist at the air in front of him. "Just like a new machine! Just like it to go and blow a fuse on the first run out! This is going to put me way behind. Can you bring it in under power, or do we need an EVA pod to go fetch it in?"

Maxwell stared out into the darkness of the office portal as if he would be able to see the robot from this distance. "I think I can get it running enough for a powered flight back, but we'll have to tether it for the final approach. I can't guarantee that in this state it wouldn't smash into something if we try to bring it inside with its own maneuvering thrusters."

"Well, I guess we've got a mess to deal with, then. Makes me wish I'd stayed in bed or something."

Forty minutes later station mechanic Janice Mers massaged the service bay controls, maneuvering the AR-XII unit inside the hanger and closing the airlock doors. The silvery sinews of the traction net brought the large robot to rest in the middle of the service bay and retreated back into their niches in the ceiling.

The machine's great drum-like body nearly reached the top of the control booth, five meters above the hanger floor. It had no proper head, only a set of sensors and communications equipment. Its many articulated "arms" rested some at its side, others in a jumble near the base. Shielded against micrometeors and cosmic rays by a thick gold- colored synthetic fur, the larger arms resembled those of some kind of wild beast. The smaller, thinner arms seemed more like hairy snakes with complex instruments and tools for heads.

Mers jumped down from the control booth and tethered the machine's base with a large set of mooring clamps. It wouldn't do to risk having the big machine tip over or jostle about in the low-gravity hangar.

"There you go, Archie: all safe and snug. You just rest now, and we'll take care of whatever's been bothering you."

Jenkins walked down the steps from the operations level. "You shouldn't bother chatting it up like that, Janice. It's nothing more than a machine."

Mers ignored the man and patted the robot's hairy arm. "Don't let these guys get you down, OK Arch?" With that she stood up and walked out of the hanger through the lower set of doors.

Jenkins clicked his tongue and he and Maxwell moved into the hanger bay to take a look at the machine.

"OK, well, no obvious damage from this angle. How long do you think it'll take to get inside this thing and figure out what's gone wrong with it, Max?"

"Well, the first step is to check the automatic diagnostics. I can hook it into the station computer to run a more thorough check of the software and hardware. All in all, it should take no more than a couple of hours, tops."

"Then I should leave you to it while I go see what work isn't getting done right now," Jenkins grumbled and left.

Maxwell walked around the AR unit and looked up and down the thing. He couldn't see any signs of physical damage to the exterior of the self-driven vehicle. All of the arms seemed to be in place and functional, too. He tapped one with his knuckles and the hairy thing retracted slightly, a bit like a startled animal. He noted the normal reaction.

The AR-XII was the twelfth in a series of autonomous robotic deep space vehicles designed for various unmanned investigations and hazardous operations. The robust cylinder that served as its "body" housed the computers, sensors, and optional equipment bays that allowed the machine to be adapted to whatever challenges were required of it. Being the twelfth of its kind, years of research and experience with previous models were built into its advanced hardware and heuristic AI software.

Maxwell pushed open a recessed panel on the side of the robot, revealing a readout display and touch interface. He pressed a few icons and stood back.

"Archie: acknowledge command interface codes."

The display rearranged itself with new sets of figures, while a seemingly disembodied voice replied: "Command interface codes accepted. Hello, Maxwell Hume. How are you doing?"

Maxwell chuckled to himself slightly at the expense of whatever eccentric programmer had given this machine its "charm." He pulled out his work tablet and noted a few of the robot's codes.

"Archie, run software checksum and report base level one diagnostics."

The screen became an amber blur as new sets of figures began to stream by. After a few seconds the voice returned: "Checksum completed. No discrepancies detected. Level one diagnostics completed. No errors in hardware blocks. No errors in file system blocks. No errors in driver software blocks. No errors in heuristic blocks. No errors in neural network blocks. Total errors reported: zero."

The last word rang out in the cool, airtight space of the hangar with a harshness that almost sounded like pride. I guess the XII has a bit of an attitude built in, Max thought to himself.

"Archie, establish communications protocols for interlink with station computer, channel zero-one-four."

"Channel zero-one-four initialized and prepared for interlink." Pause. "Test data confirms no interlink problems, Max. I am ready for further tests."

"Good. Good, Archie." Maxwell wondered a bit to himself that the computer sounded so confident in its assessment of the situation. He had begun to marvel at the engineering that went into this machine. "Prepare to download additional diagnostic routines, Archie."

About an hour later, Maxwell wandered into the operations room.

"You look like a beat man, Max," Jenkins told him. "I guess you aren't making a lot of progress, then?"

Maxwell sat down in an empty chair across from Jenkins' desk. He spread his empty hands out in front of him.

"Actually," he said, "I've made quite a bit of progress. I've run a huge test regimen. I've thoroughly scanned the logs and analyzed the various automatic system reports. I have successfully ruled out a huge number of possible problems, from physical damage to data corruption. I think I see some odd patterns in the malfunctions, but I've no clue what's been causing them."

"Now you know how I feel sometimes," said Jenkins with a bit of a smirk. "It's enough to make me want to become a Luddite some days. Keeping all the technology on this station running well is no fun or easy task."

"Oh, I doubt you'd really want to be a Luddite out here, Pete. We'd all die pretty quick and horribly if this bubble of technology should break suddenly."

All the more reason why I shouldn't be out here at all, Peter Jenkins thought to himself. He got up to get coffee from the dispenser. He needed some caffeine to get his head to stop aching from all this annoyance.

At that moment a loud klaxon rang out, and Jenkins spilled half his fresh coffee on the floor.

"Drat! What the--!"

Janice Mers appeared from the corridor and rushed past him to investigate the operations console.

"Pete," she said, catching her breath. "You're not going to like this. The computer says we've sprung a leak!"

After a minute or so of near-panicked brainstorming with Jenkins, Mers offered another thought: "OK, here's an idea," she said, much more in-control than she had been a few moments earlier. If she had actual wheels in her head they would be spinning at full speed now. "We need to get outside to find and patch the leak, but we don't have time to get suited. How about putting out an instrument pallet using the docking tethers from the hangar. They should be long enough, and then the sensors on the pallet can find the hole and we can try to patch it from in here."

Jenkins was silent, considering, but Maxwell became animated. His eyes flashed as though a light bulb had just lit up his brain.

"That's no good," he said. "It would take too long to reprogram the tethers to put out and steer the pallet. They're not really designed for anything but retrieval. But," a note of caution entered his voice: "we do have something else to send out there to find the leak. Archie can go."

Immediately, Jenkins and Mers both protested.

"We can't send that thing out there, Max! It barely made it back in here," argued Jenkins. "It's become totally erratic and unreliable! Earlier you said we couldn't trust it to steer itself without wrecking, and now you want to trust it to go out and find a hole in the wall? It might just as well go haywire on us and blast a whole new one!"

"No, Pete, I think we can trust it for this. I believe I now know why Archie's been acting strangely, and I can get around the problem. I'd call it a mild case of 'robot neurosis.' I think his higher AI programming is what's become erratic and caused all the diagnostic errors. But, I've already got him all interfaced with the station computer, so it would take me no time at all to bypass his higher AI routines and have the station computer guide him out there and find the hole and patch it."

"Well, you seem confident enough, and we can't just sit here and keep shooting down all our ideas," said Jenkins. "By all means give it a try!"

So Maxwell stepped up to the operations panels and started entering new codes. "Archie," he said to himself, "we're going to put you to sleep for a bit. Pleasant dreams, kiddo."

Jenkins rolled his eyes at the display of sentimentality for a machine, but Janice Mers was right by Maxwell's side, looking out at the hanger below as the new instructions took effect and the big robot awakened.

The mooring clamps released. The hangar doors parted with creeping silence. The robot lifted from the repair bay and maneuvered through the opening with nearly angelic grace.

Ninety-two seconds later the three humans were looking at one another, barely daring to breathe as the robot applied a patch to a small crevice it had detected in the station exterior.

Four seconds more and their lungs were aching from their own raucous outbursts at the most exhilarating rush of relief any of them had ever felt.

The three of them crowded around the AR-XII as they welcomed it back into the hangar bay. Even Jenkins caught himself patting the robot's barrel chest in an irrational expression of gratitude to the thing.

"Max, you saved our lives. I can't say how grateful I am that you were here," he said.

"Hey! We have Archie to thank, too, Pete!" interjected Janice Mers, giving one of the machine's big arms an affectionate tug.

"Yeah, well, sure," said Jenkins. "I sure am pleased that Max figured out what was messed up with it, at any rate."

As Janice and Maxwell headed back to the habitation section, Jenkins stayed back for a few moments, drifting in thought after the stressful event. This, he thought to himself, is a sign. Why was he still running away? First the moon and now even farther into deep space, he hadn't been chasing dreams or even following a sensible career path. The truth was that he was running from the things on earth he hadn't wanted to face when he was so many years younger. Maybe it was time to stop running, and go back and see if he could put together the pieces of dreams that he'd been too afraid to let himself dream.

After an impromptu celebration, as Maxwell was putting together his equipment to get ready to leave the station, Janice came over to see him.

"There's one thing I'm not sure I understand still, Max. How did you know it was all a problem of some kind of psychosis in Archie's AI programming?"

"To be honest, Janice, I wasn't ever 100% sure. But now that I've gone back and rechecked Archie's logs and diagnostic reports, I'm pretty certain I was right. You see, while I was going over what had been going wrong with him out in the field, I noticed that the malfunctions always coincided with directives in his instructions to activate his gamma torch, either to excavate or analyze an asteroid fragment. It wasn't until later, when our lives were endangered by that micrometeor impact on the station that something clicked on in my brain.

"You see, back when I was still in school studying computer engineering, I happened to take an introductory class in psychology. It was something that interested me somewhat back then, though it turned out I never had time to really get into it because my major requirements were too demanding as it was.

"Anyway, one of the things we studied in that class was how people can sometimes become physically sick because of something they can't or won't face directly. It's a kind of psychosomatic illness that can be brought on by a fear or mental conflict over a situation or thing or activity.

"All my testing hadn't turned up anything actually wrong with any of Archie's hardware or software. He was apparently working exactly as he was programmed and designed to work. So what was causing the mysterious shutdowns of random systems right before he started cutting into a piece of rock?

"Well, all of this clicked in my mind when I remembered that one major component of Archie's programming is to anticipate and try to avoid possible problems, such as damage to himself or people. It's a fairly new sort of AI that's been used in a lot of automated systems like transit cars and construction equipment, but nothing as complex as the AR-XII.

"As you know, one of the more serious hazards of mining operations out here is that the methods used to find and excavate useful ores happen to have the nasty side- effect of blasting a lot of potentially deadly micrometeoric material in all directions. Even the smaller bits of debris can cause dangerous electrostatic discharges. The result is that we've actually made things a lot more dangerous out here by increasing the concentration and number of these dangerous bits of flying junk.

"So I reasoned, maybe Archie's learning heuristics had put two and two together, leading to a conflict between his direct orders and his risk avoidance programming. Because he couldn't directly avoid a direct instruction, he somehow triggered the diagnostic glitches that kept him from performing the action that he saw was potentially very dangerous to himself and others."

Janice was shaking her head in amazement. "Pretty smart robot! In a sense, you're saying Archie's so advanced that he's got a kind of a conscience. He felt bad about what he was doing, and made himself sick over it."

"I think that's a fair way to put it. And it really came down to the fact that he has started to see the world as more than black and white. His state-of-the-art heuristics and neural networks tested out fine in the controlled environment of a research lab, but his programming is not quite advanced enough to figure out how to cope with the sometimes contradictory facts of the real world."

Maxwell finished packing up his diagnostic computers and tools. It was a quiet moment as he and Mers looked out the broad overhead hangar window into the deep black expanse beyond. It was a daunting world out there indeed; a very big place for a little human--or robot--to get itself lost in.

"You never know," said Max. "Maybe I've just pioneered a brand new field of robot psychology!"

Copyright ©1999-2009 Chris Kaltwasser, do not redistribute without the author's permission.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

boxes of blank paper (2005)

boxes of blank paper


(he checks the skirts like)
most,boys do

i feel kinda sorry for him
he wears the required:shirt
it's black,polo
and carries a box to punch things into
as he works.on unloading

boxes of blank paper
unlike the coral white neck-lace
and skateshoes that say
life is for-fun
or at least beer and balls


(8/18/2005)

I wrote this one a few years ago while sitting at my desk at work, looking outside my window. I had a lovely view of the nearby city park through the alley access to the building where I was working at the time. Generally I wished I was down there doing something more fun and interesting and alive, instead of sitting in front of a computer contemplating how I was going to keep doing a good job as the odds seemed to get stacked more and more against me and my ability to stay interested in my projects waned. In reaction to the moribund company spirit and my own boredom and feeling of not wanting to be there, I was writing more poems just as a way to help keep myself sane.

I have a "wandering eye" for all sorts of beautiful things. I think this poem is a reflection on identity and a feeling that your life is divided up in ways that maybe you wish could be more unified.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

You Know

You Know

You know how to get through a cold really fast?
You know what you do to get better?
Drink fruit juice with vinegar, that will clean you right out,
Flush the toxins you've stored up away.

Vitamin pills in a massive dose
Put you back on your feet in a beat.
Your head will be clear as a bell on the wind.
That's what to do if you want to get well.

Rest up and fluids and hot chicken soup.
If you want to get better, you're needing that broth.
Well maybe, I think, I'm impatient as any
to get well and keep running my marathon pace.

But maybe, oh gosh, I don't mind feeling ill.
And maybe I'll stop for a change and consider,
This wake-up call to slow things and just be,
A patience pill may be all that is what I now need.


(7/5/09)

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Listen and Hum (2006)

Hydrangeas in bloom
Listen and Hum


What would I miss
(if I could)
after
I'm gone from this place?
Perhaps (others will
miss them in my place)
to listen and
hum along
with my favorite tunes
and my lover's presence
with me
drinking tea and
eating whatever is
for breakfast on the weekend.


(9/2006)

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Writers

I'm cleaning things up on my interwebs and want to "re-post" here a short reflection I wrote a few years ago.

Writers are:

  • passionate, because they are fully engaged in a subject;
  • considerate and friendly, because they care about others;
  • playful, because they are connected to their "inner child";
  • balanced, because they value diversity and differing perspectives;
  • thoughtful, because they are careful thinkers and dedicated communicators;
  • socially adept, because they engage, listen, and communicate skillfully;
  • warm and caring, because they value people most of all;
  • normal, because everyone is a writer, so they are no different;
  • ordinary people, because they have the same needs and dreams;
  • special, because they have found the calling to be artists of words.

I admit that all of these qualities may not be universally true and evident for everyone who writes. Everyone is a unique individual and makes different choices about how they express themselves and experience life. But I can't help but perceive that the act of writing itself must necessarily draw a person more deeply in touch with themselves, as well as with humanity.

The above statements may be the naïve notion of a young writer starting out, but I feel it is true for myself, if for no one else. And this is my motivation for writing.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Alone (written Dec. 5, 2005)

Alone


I am the man who
smiles
while his tears fall,

articulations
my foot taps, dancing
to the music
the beat of my spine

I keep you at a distance
so I can know you, face
to face

Alone, I am with you,
(I love you)
time burns and I am the ashes.


(12/5/2005)

One of my many restless nights in late 2005, I wrote this. Perhaps I'd had a fight with my partner. Perhaps I was just feeling keyed up and was thinking about my life and relationship with him. I know I was working through complex, seemingly contradictory and irreconcilable feelings (antinomy), undeniable life processes, fear of being hurt and causing hurt. I can still feel the experience very closely.

Somewhat ungrammatical and a bit asymmetrical, I probably scratched this out in the dark on the notebook I used to keep beside my bed for my journal. I see the central theme as very hopeful and life-affirming, even through the fear and pain. The last image is like a phoenix, recognizing that we are always constantly being reborn in each instant, a new (existential) self faced by totally new and novel choices: but only if we recognize that power within, the fire that burns. This is inexorable, a fire that doesn't go out but continues. It is passion and creativity, eros/searching out, constant living on the edge, living in the shadow of death. The present self is always already passing away.

I probably was feeling lonely, too, or afraid of being abandoned. My answer: I don't give up. I must not abandon myself.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Older poem: "rain song"

rain song


a faint mur-mur over the othervoice rooms,
trickle driz tric murr
soft song of a nother-world
a world of trickle-drizzle sounds
a world far from drylit place

look through clear-glass shield confirms
trickle driz tric murr
coming down with steadybeat wurrs
softandwet beads up where smooth
few dare go past safeguard doors

look at sky – not much to see
trickle driz tric murr
an ocean of grays above me
patting on the tiles – driz purr
sing until the morning sun come


(3/15/1988)

I wrote this poem for my literature class in the 8th grade. I'd dabbled in poetry starting in the 7th grade, and I was very impressed with a few poets we were reading, like Emily Dickinson, e. e. cummings, and Robert Frost.

I can see some features in this poem that make it like a song, and relate to my style as an artist: parallel, almost strophic structure with a refrain tying the three stanzas together and creating a distinct rhythm; occasional use of rhyme, but not following a strict rhyme scheme; playful running together of words to create image-phrase neologisms ("othervoice", "nother-world", "drylit", etc.). It would be interesting to try to set to music.

To me this poem doesn't relate a lot of meaningful feeling or reflection, just some images and sounds of rain and being inside on a rainy night. I think if it is very significant to me at all now it is mainly because my teachers liked it quite a bit, and I felt very self-conscious to stand out like that. I saw myself as an artist, a poet, but felt very sad at the time because that was not really an identity I felt comfortable in. I really did not want to stand out. I wanted to fit in with my age peers and have lots of friends. Needless to say, adolescence is a challenging time. In my case, I remember how I struggled with a crisis of identity mainly centered on who was I going to try to please, my parents and teachers, or my peers. (At the time it did not occur at all that I could follow my own inner voice.) Just for personal interest, I continued to write an occasional poem through high school, but by about the 11th grade had mostly stopped my creative writing. Some time after college, when I was thrown upon the reality of not caring about the kind of work I'd set myself up for, I started exploring my creative interests again.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Gentle Wind

Gentle Wind 

Tiny spider, your bones appear so slight 
that my barest breath near you comes 
over you as a hurricane of terror. 
The silk-taut line you tug and twist upon 
is invisible to my eyes, merely a 
suggestion of gossamer scaffold. 

You may now cling so tightly, and I fear 
you will fall instantly and be lost, or 
my breath draws you so close and 
you will grab my hair, burrow 
down my skin, down my back, and be lost. 
So we joust the air, my breath and you. 

Your silent twitching music of a 
one-cord harp bewitches my thoughts 
in this momentary song of emotion: 
I am suddenly in your place. I am 
this little fellow, pendulous to life. 
Dry tears touch my eyelids. I reflect. 

The artist 
blows upon the zephyr breeze of Being, 
and hopes the coming rain 
may not dissolve all. 


(6/18/2009)

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Two Minus One


Two Minus One

I lived by myself in a big house with
many rooms. I'd choose each night which
big bed to sleep in, and I spent
much time in my kitchen.

Friends and neighbors came to visit, and
we had Christmas in my front room with
a big green tree, all the gifts, and
stockings by the fire.

I stirred in my slumbers, then,
and as I woke the dream veil parted:
I saw how this could soon be my life,
is my life now, and felt a comfort.

In my house I have many rooms. Some
I choose to spend my time in, while
others I leave aside with the door open,
as I may need them later.

In my dream it was only me in this
big house. In my dream I could wander
as I may, exploring, finding the space
I needed in order to be myself.

And as each night I found a new bed,
pulled up fresh covers and opened up
the window to the night air,
I was not lonely in my house.


(6/4/2009)

Monday, June 1, 2009

One

One 

I am fire 
and the sun, 
and the cold, deep ocean water. 
I am the meadow lark's song. 

I am ash 
and the rain, 
and the dark, starless night. 
I am the color of clay. 

I am before 
and right now, 
and the middle of a blink. 
I am the story and the teller, 
and always already awake. 


(6/1/2009)

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Fences

Fences

The sun abides today,
in glorious spring brightness:
out in my garden I browse
flowers among the bees.

I glance above me and find
tracks of jets cut the sky,
blue haze and wind-swept glow,
like Hyacinth's astral Lover.

It's said good fence, good neighbor,
but I've also heard how
a wall to keep others out
will keep oneself as well.

How much is my garden a garrison,
fenced and walled around?
And if I should look up,
what beyond this do I find?


(5/21/2009)

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

The Victim

The Victim


To know pain, live pain, cling to pain,
what then is
given back to others?

To know joy, live joy, cling to joy,
how might that
turn around better?


(5/19/2009)

Saturday, May 9, 2009

May

May



The meadow lies flat on its

back between homes and roads.

Green whiskers and fat little

trees laze in the May sun.

Not a bee's flower touches this

tall grass in its sweet repose.




(5/9/2009)

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Let the Summer Begin!

Today I brought home a new piece of sports equipment that I've been looking forward to owning for a while: a longboard skateboard. I picked up an Arbor Koa Fish longboard at the Tactics Boardshop in downtown Eugene. I found that Tactics' location on 4th is nice and spacious and has a great selection in this department. The salesperson who assisted me was very friendly and helpful, so my overall shopping experience was terrific. She admitted to not being an expert in all aspects of their longboards, but I'd done some homework and had looked at boards elsewhere, so I had a good idea what I wanted, and she did great at helping me find it.


The pavement was wet today and I have never ridden a longboard before, but I was eager to give my new ride a spin. So on my way back toward the bus station I picked a moderately dry and clean sidewalk, set the board down, and pushed off -- and I almost immediately felt at-ease with the feel of this setup. The 38" length is just perfect for my 6' 3" height. I found myself able to step a little forward or back and still keep a solid stance on the deck.


As I rolled up my driveway on my new bundle of joy I immediately felt like I wanted to take it back out on the streets! This is a great feeling to be so excited about riding again. In fact when I saw that the clouds had parted for a bit, I decided to take my new prize for a spin right after dinner. And it was a pure joy to push around the neighborhood. I found it able to handle turns fairly smooth and tight with the trucks adjusted for just a nice amount of play. Cruising and carving were totally fluid - a big change from what I've been used to on my 30" trick deck. If the Oregon liquid sunshine had not started up again I think I would still be out riding. I literally could see myself riding for miles on this thing.


The deck is concave with 7 plies -- 6 of maple and the top one of Hawai'ian koa wood. Arbor uses a clear re-grip so you can see the rich koa wood grain. Overall this makes for a fairly rigid setup, but I found that it does have a nice touch of flex under my 200 pound frame. I could see that being useful in some technical turns and pumping, but I'm not that advanced of a rider yet. The slight flex also provides a little more spring to pushing action, so the ride is that much more fun. There are no wheel cut-ins, but between the risers and the placement of the trucks I can't imagine wheel bite even being possible. The wheels are size 65mm at 78a hardness, which I'm finding quite agreeable so far for traction and smooth riding. Combined with the risers the bumps and cracks in the sidewalk give a very slight, low ping that is very easy on my 35 year old joints. The trucks are Gullwing Chargers, and appear quite sturdy without being overly heavy. The whole rig weighs about 6 or 7 pounds, so it's not too bulky. Bearings are Grease Ball ABEC-5's, not super fast, but very smooth. With a little breaking in so far they are feeling faster, so they are probably literally greased and if I degrease them when I clean them perhaps they will be faster.


For looks, the graphic is gorgeous and really sold me on this model. The fish scales and water ripples are cleverly ornamented by small versions of the Arbor tree logo. The blue wheels coordinate well with the print, and I like the look of the Arbor logo on the top and the koa grain. Really, aside from how it felt to stand on in the shop, the looks are what sold this one to me. Or as I told the salesperson, this one wanted me.



I'm definitely looking forward to riding this baby a lot this season!


Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Our Child

Our Child


Someone is here, and I may look and 
 imagine the child self. 
It's often quite easy to do. He 
 or she is plainly here as well, 
Living under the adult-like frame 
 and face, but the eyes and 
Limbs give it all away: 
 hurts never really understood, with 
Such acrid breathless tears 
 secreted away many many times. 
I know that child too well, 
 I'm so very sorry, for all of us. 

The child still sits there sulking 
 through those narrow age-red eyes. 
Beaten and locked out, weeping, 
 at doors of stone-hewn faces. 
The Grown One is still this 
 child as well, wishing to come out: 
He's guarded, despised, and tired. 
 So tired. She aches for life. 
Giving up is not yet death, but 
 sad awaiting broken joy to cease. 


(4/28/2009)

Friday, April 24, 2009

Monday, April 20, 2009

Transformed

Transformed

I saw a small dog changed into a child today.
Curly doggy hair, now tawny locks
on a quiet little boy,
Shyly resting on the bus seat face down.
Doggy sweater and leash are toddler clothes,
kiddie leash.
This woman is a grandma. I feel silly.


(4/20/2009)

Would I Know (song)

I wrote this as a poem a few years ago, and more recently adapted it into a song. Sorry I don't have a good demo to share... yet? ;-) Still maybe a work in progress, but here it is:

Would I Know?

I walk down roads as the sun is setting.
They seem familiar - can I find my way home?
I am dreaming as I am waking.
Am I lost? How would I know?

I both believe and don't believe;
I place my faith in the path ahead.
The truth is I feel so naïve.
Am I lost, or am I still in bed?

My life is like a journey, and I left my bags at home.
Now I've started, there's no turning back.

The truth I hold is merely rightness.
I do my best from day to day:
I live my life in dark and brightness.
Am I lost? How could I say?

My life is like a journey, and I left my bags at home.
Now I've started, there's no turning back.

I walk down roads as the sun is setting.
They seem familiar - can I find my way home?
I am dreaming as I am waking.
Am I lost? How would I know?


--
I actually often used to have dreams where I found myself wandering around the streets as the sun was starting to set, and I tried to find my way home but I kept getting lost or feeling like I couldn't get there. I decided to write about the dream and came up with this. The image of feeling lost in my life and needing to have faith in the process makes a lot of sense to me. Am I lost? I choose to say that I'm on the right track. It just may not look that way sometimes.