My Musings

Today, after a couple of hours working I found myself wont for things to do there. It would appear that most of the things I've been working on are ready for a final stage that I have no control over, so I left and called my boss after eating some lunch. He told me he'd get back to me when I explained that the only thing I have left to do is scuff up a front fender to ready it for painting. Tomorrow, as if to make up for a lazy Wednesday, there is probably a day's worth of work to be done on a Toyota Prius - the car for which I harbor the most hate of any car. So today I rest up for now and blog away. Just in case it's not already obvious, I do collision repair. My boss is a religion teacher here at the school, but for 46 years he's been buying totaled cars, fixing them, then selling them. Somehow, I've acquired sufficient knowledge and skills to do this kind of work (or at least enough to convince someone that I can learn this kind of work). It's sati...

There are times that I look over this blog and wonder what the ultimate end of all this "musing" is. There must be some kind of purpose, after all. Were there the combination of no real purpose and me having no conscious knowledge of any purpose, there would then be no significance to thought or action of any kind, for if we are neither striving to obtain some goal in either state of mind, then we are not striving for anything. And if there is no striving, then why are we here? Since there is purpose to our existence, we can then conclude that there is a greater intelligence out there, or a God, because how can there be an intelligent purpose to all things if there is not one that can comprehend the sum of all purpose? And if there is a God, then he would care about the well-being of every creature, including us; were that not the case, He would not be God because all things would not obey him. Since He cares, he would make known our purpose, either explicitly or implic...

Occasionally - and only occasionally - a person that has become unaccustomed to reflection will take time to comment on the theater of life that continuously unfolds before him. If only it were a theater, and merely that; then maybe its poignancy might be removed. Perhaps the things that destroy us would only be the subject of laughter and entertainment. Such sentiments are forbidden to us, however; we are bound to a cruel - and sometimes felicitous - reality. It is a theater, but the stage is cruel; it is merciful; it is a place of both joy and despair. Within the duration of the last few months, I have seen both sides of the coin, so to speak. The extreme case of the dual nature of reality is expressed well by Victor Hugo: "Love, at that height where it is absolute, is associated with an inexpressibly celestial blindness of modesty. But what risks you run, O noble souls! Often you give the heart, we take the body. Your heart remains to you, and you look at it in the dark...

"Algebra applies to the clouds, the radiance of the star benefits the rose--no thinker would dare to say that the perfume of the hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who could ever calculate the path of a molecule? How do we know that the creations of worlds are not determined by falling grains of sand? Who can understand the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely great and the infinitely small, the echoing of causes in the abyss of being and the avalanches of creation? A mite has value; the small is great, the great is small. All is balanced in necessity; frightening vision for the mind. There are marvelous relations between beings and things, in this inexhaustible whole, from sun to grub, there is no scorn, each needs the other. Light does not carry terrestrial perfumes into the azure depths without knowing what it does with them; night distributes the stellar essence to the sleeping plants. Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw....

There are times when I think I've come across some great truth, and in those times I normally write. Presently, however, I've only come across the feeling that there is some great truth to be stumbled upon, but I lack the depth of thought to comprehend it. Blind I wander through a foreign landscape and endeavor to give distinctness to an ethereal idea that may or may not exist. What is this great truth? This feeling came during my differential equations class. I sat there in an ignorant stupor as the teacher scribbled symbols and numbers on the blackboard. There was a block in my mind, like a plane that can't rise above the clouds. I could sense that there was a greater understanding to be had, but I could not excite the faculties of my mind with my own strength. During this time, I thought of the many connections and relationships that exist in the math world. It is like a brain, each neuron networked with every other. I would imagine that I would think it beauti...

Memorial day in Idaho marks the opening of hunting and fishing season, and this year it also has marked my third experience fishing... and also my second experience not catching anything while fishing. While this all sounds very boring and uneventful, the day at the Snake River left me with a fair share of scrapes and bruises. It was a scenic drive with my room-mate and his brother up to Ashton, on east of there a little further, and skyward into the mountains. I'd forgotten that Idaho had a tree'd side to her, and I was much pleased with the scenery. The stress of school became inversely proportional (a little engineering lingo) to the distance I was from Rexburg. All my cares melted away. Once we arrived at our destination (some trail head), I quickly jogged to what appeared to be an old mine shaft in the side of the mountain. I had spotted it on the way up, and it seemed way more interesting than fish. It turned out to be a tunnel - not a mine shaft - and it was quite...

That's all...