IRC-Galleria

22/100

Inability to sing beaten by morning hour

An infinite-bandwidth white noise signal

If betting ends at 22:00 It's whistle time

Just at this moment, my sister sends me a postcard from Oberlin, where she's going to college. It's written in pencil, with small symbols - it's in Chinese.

Joan is nine years younger than I am, and studied physics, too. having me as her older brother was tough on her. She was always looking for something I couldn't do, and was secretly taking Chinese.

Well, I didn't know any Chinese, but one thing I'm good at is spending an infinite amount of time solving a puzzle. The next weekend I took the card with me to Albuquerque. Arlene showed me how to look up the symbols. You have to start in the back of the dictionary with the right category and count the number of strokes. Then you go into the main part of the dictionary. It turns out each symbol has several possible meanings, and you have to put several symbols together before you can understand it.

With great patience I worked everything out. Joan was saying things like, "I had a good time today." There was only one sentence I couldn't figure out. It said, "Yesterday we celebrated mountain-forming day" - obviously an error. (It turned out they did have some crazy thing called "Mountain-forming Day" at Oberlin, and I had translated it right!)

So it was trivial things like you'd expect to have on a postcard, but I knew from the situation that Joan was trying to floor me by sending Chinese.

I looked back and forth through the art book and picked out four symbols which would go well together. Then I practiced each one, over and over. I had a big pad of paper, and I would make fifty of each one, until I got it just right.

When I had accidentally made one good example of each symbol, I saved them. Arlene approved, and we glued the four of them end to end, one on top of the other. Then we put a little piece of wood on each end, so you could hang it up on the wall. I took a picture of my masterpiece with Nick Metropolis's camera, rolled up the scroll, put it in a tube, and sent it to Joan.

So she gets it. She unrolls it, and she can't read it. It looks to her as if I simply made four characters, one right after the other, on the scroll. She takes it to her teacher.

The first thing he says is, "This is written rather well! Did you do this?"

"Uh, no. What does it say?"

"Elder brother also speaks."

I'm a real bastard - I would never let my little sister score one on me.

--
Richard P. Feynman - What Do You Care What Other People Think?

"Arlene and I began to mold each other's personality. She lived in a family that was very polite, and was very sensitive to other people's feelings. She taught me to be more sensitive to those kinds of things, too. On the other hand, her family felt that "white lies" were okay.

I thought one should have the attitude of "What do you care what other people think" I said, "We should listen to other people's opinions and take them into account. Then, if they don't make sense and we think they're wrong, then that's that!"

Arlene caught on to the idea right away. It was easy to talk her into thinking that in our relationship, we must be very honest with each other and say everything straight with absolute frankness. It worked very well, and we became very much in love - a love like no other love that I know of.


--

It's hard to explain. If a Martian (who, we'll imagine, never dies except by accident) came to Earth and saw this peculiar race of creatures - these humans who live about seventy or eighty years, knowing that death is going to come - it would look to him like a terrible problem of psychology to live under those circumstances, knowing that life is only temporary. Well, we humans somehow figure out how to live despite this problem: we laugh, we joke, we live.

The only difference for me and Arlene was, instead of fifty years, it was five years. It was only a quantitative difference - the psychological problem was just the same. The only way it would have become any different is if we had said to ourselves, "But those other people have it better, because they might live fifty years." But that's crazy. Why make yourself miserable saying things like, "Why do we have such bad luck? What has God done to us? What have we done to deserve this?" - all of which, if you understand reality and take it completely into your heart, are irrelevant and unsolvable. They are just things that nobody can know. Your situation is just an accident of life.

We had a hell of a good time together.

I came back into her room. I kept imaginig all the things that were going on physiologically: the lungs aren't getting enough air into the blood, which makes the brain fogged out and the heart weaker, which makes the breating even more difficult. I kept expecting some sort of avalanching effect, but everyhing caving in together in a dramatic collapse. But it didn't appear that way at all: she just slowly got more foggy, and her breathing gradually became less and less, until there was no more breath - but just before that, there was a very small one.

The nurse on her round came in and confirmed that Arlene was dead, and went out - I wanted to be alone for a moment. I sat there for a while, and then went over to kiss her one last time.

I was very surprised to discover that her hair smelled exactly the same. Of course, after I stopped and thought about it, there was no reason why hair should smell different in such a short time. But to me it was a kind of a shock, because in my mind, something enormous had just happened - and yet nothing had happened.

--

One night I had a dream, and Arlene came into it. Right away, I said to her, "No, no, you can't be in this dream. You're not alive!"

Then later, I had another dream with Arlene in it. I started in again, saying, "You can't be in this dream!"
"No, no," she says. "I fooled you. I was tired of you, so I cooked up this ruse so I could go my own way. But now I like you again, so I've come back." My mind was really working against itself. It had to be explained, even in a goddamn dream, why it was possible that she was still there!

I must have done something to myself, psychologically. I didn't cry until about a month later, when I was walking past a department store in Oak Ridge and noticed a pretty dress in the window. I thought, "Arlene would like that," and then it hit me.

--
Richard P. Feynman - What Do You Care What Other People Think?

21/100

I saw myself gasping, in the darkest hour
Now we flourish and thrive, awaiting our fate
Some of us will be picked to brighten a day
Others will decorate this field; here to stay
Some will celebrate life. Some will witness death

20/100

Naurattaa:

16:43:11 <xxxxx> näytin tos wowii tolle tytölle ja nyt iski wowinitkut :(
16:44:05 <xxxxx> se sano et "toi näyttää kyl aika tylsältä peliltä"
16:44:09 <xxxxx> ja meni suihkuun
16:44:10 <xxxxx> jäin pelaa

Onneksi todellisuus ei ole ihan noin mustavalkoista :)

19/100

"Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

"The truth - Written in your hearts by the Spirit of God, shall make you free - From guilt, sin, misery, Satan." John 8:32

18/100

I hear
So stay in the light,
don't take your eyes from the prize

I got a rainbow
In my hands tear

out of here

They say
Promised myself I wouldn't weep
One more promise I couldn't keep

out of mind

Im so
out of pillows
and Cat blues

and if they say
Little out of touch, little insane

out of sync

Yet another swing hits
If this is heaven then send me to hell

Hey, they've got the bell
Why I've got an aching in my bones

out of time

I've been livin' in a river of darkness
Beneath the neon lights

No more falling
except one calling

17/100

Pouch of crying iron nuts, lying leaning tower and Dymaxion Sleep. ~><~

Scala miliarium

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16/100

Tattva, acintya bheda bheda tattva
Like the flower and the scent of summer, like the sun and the shine
Well the truth may come in strange disguises
Send the message to your mind

Tattva, acintya bheda bheda tattva
At the moment that you wake from sleeping and you know its all a dream
Well the truth may come in strange disguises
Never knowing what it means

Tattva, acintya bheda bheda tattva
For you shall be towmorrow, like you have been today
If this was never ending
What more can you say?

15/100


Other than that

Best friends pimp'n'hoe pre xmas party followed by

All the forgotten sleep switching places with rooftop mocking birds

Morning filled with the echoes of groundhog days and shining dreams

Ask me how I feel?