Slave to the Computer

Why should we continue to invent new technology? I demand to know, when increasingly we are it's slaves. We are fooled into serving it. It's great lie, is that it will free us. More and more we create that which is supposed to grant us more time. What it allows, is for more to be done in less time.

The cruel paradox is thus: We are expected to do more in less time. We are held accountable to these great expectations by employers, teachers. We're doing it to ourselves, the technology itself does not inherently demand more from us. And the time that is left? We are expected to continue to put in as much as we had before. Which means we are producing much more in the same amount of time, but we are being sorely taxed for it. The human mind and body was not meant to multitask as much as we are being asked. The mind focuses on one task at a time. Our neural pathways don't cross wire mid-task.

What are the total societal consequences of such a pervasive mentality?

Mental break-down, stress, depression, anxiety, sickness, violence, suicide.

This adds up to a huge monetary and humanitarian toll on our society. Is it worth it?

Utility Work in Hell

Dreams... again.

A serpent queen, regal in white cloth. A hall, or palace in golds and browns with a feel of a Mediterranean climate. She see through deception, calmly and without malice she meets out justice.
--
Venomous snakes guard the entry to a cave or tunnel. I wish to pass without disturbing them, but I cannot and I am bitten. I kill one trying to pry it from my hand, and I am sad for the loss and damage that I have caused. The world is underwater... sand cool sea green and rough brown cave wall.
--
I'm in the employ of an adventuring company, trying to set up a portal in a layer of Hell but I'm all out of balloons. I feel daring enough to walk around here, the denizens occupy other parts, and I spot a friend of mine doing line work near a pit of fiery tentacles. (Hell is high tech these days.) We chat for a bit and then I see a Moloch coming this way and I have to run.

I'm in a corridor in one of the less classically looking parts of Hell now. That is to say, not all towering gothic architecture and fiery skies and pits of lava. This is cool white-grey walls and stainless steel. LCD panels line the walls in 8" squares, occasionally displaying video of the dystopian society that lives here... mind control and totalitarian government state. Herringbone like off to the sides of this hall are rooms full of people. They are here waiting, anxiously and frustrated and some angry. They all know they are waiting for something important, but none of them can really say what it is. Just crowded isolation, none of them really paying attention to anyone else.

--Hell is other people.

Like a Lion

Last night, among other things, I dreamed of lions. They seem to be making their way into my life. I see their corded muscle bodies and feel the coarse fur. There's a danger and a mystery and a power to them.
Another less clear reference in the dream, was a Victorian house in Vermont where a lion personality lived that has since disappeared from my life.

Monday I visited Newport with my sister, and I commented at all the lions at the gates. I always wanted lions at the entrance to my home, even if I don't have a massive mansion overflowing with old wealth. They were present throughout my childhood in CT, a symbol in many places, and I even drew lion-headed fountains into my imaginary world.

And this morning, to bring back the memory of this dream that I had forgotten upon my waking, I tune into NPR and Garrison Keiler's deep rich voice reading the poetry of the day, "Aperture" by Gary Short, just at the moment of the mouse lying still before the cat, and the reference to Livingston and his experience in the jaws of a lion.


In the African journals, Livingston tells
of the charging lion that knocked him down.
When he was held in the lion's mouth,
the human body's trance-like response
was to go limp in an ecstatic giving up
that saved. To assume death

to stay alive.


Do these symbols have meaning in my life? We are not yet upon Leo's time. But the solstice approaches and the Lion of Summer will be here soon. I will have to think more on Lions today.

Mental Meanderings

Stuck in my own
philosophical
ontological paradox.

What is in your head?
How do I share that which is in my own head?
All this social programming
keeps us
from reaching inside ourselves and into each other,
to stroke those waveform thoughts which make us unique.

It's semi-lucid, an arabesque of meaning and summation.
There is no
road map
to these stars
within our heads,
a great inky sheet strewn with sparkling diamonds.

And within each a burst of colors and light!
How can we share this?
Touch,
explore,
feel
with all our senses these little
dream-windows
into a grander scale of universe?

And here I ramble on in impotent language
writhing like a clutch of newborn garter snakes in spring
moving towards intangible heat.

Stillness comes at times, but more so
is the liquid movement
of life
in a sea of green and gold and azure.

Everyday swimming
in the glittering sea of living things,
infused with the sweet scents and pheromones
of urges
and desires
and dreams.

Todays Mission: Failed

Take note: spring rolls are neither samosas nor burritos. Also I need a more elegant way preparing Chinese vermicelli. Using scissors was a bit embarrassing.

Moon Bright

(Feb 2008 pic)

Full Moon today. My dreams were troubled last night. Losing my teeth again. Ugh. I dislike that theme immensely, but interestingly enough it's happened so often in the dream world that I recognize it as something familiar there. One common thing lately is my family's presence there. I do not dream about them often, and now almost every night for a week. Maybe it's my anticipation of seeing them for Easter.

Bloom

The Magnolias are opening, and even the rain cannot dampen their spirits, though some of their petals may brown. Their scent is heavenly.