My Musings

  This is another one of those posts: a first post. Gosh, it's been what feels like years since I posted on this blog. And even more years since I printed it out with the intent of closing the blog - because blogs are for juveniles who take themselves too seriously, right? I don't really know or care anymore what people think of me. I just need an outlet. What does one write about these days, anyway? Now that I lean over the threshold of this post, all my thoughts leave my mind. What began with an intention to shine the light of truth on world events suddenly is rendered impermanent on the canvass of my thoughts, like leaves before the violent and annoying blast of a gas powered leaf blower. What is a mind of such genius as mine to do before this disarming pale screen?  Okay, yes, I'm being a little sarcastic. But really, what is to be done? When I write of important things in the world, I'm never satisfied, much the same way I enjoy other people's photography much ...

Halloween creepy Frankenstein head. Painted it myself. Yes, 2018 is waning. The sun sinks into the horizon lower and lower each coming day, until the 21st of December, when the pagans celebrate the rebirth of their sun god Tammuz. Until then, the leaves of the trees will sprinkle themselves over the soil until only arboral skeletons are remaining. I like this time of year. Exactly one month and one day ago, I began writing a book. There I was sitting at my desk reading and contemplating, and it struck me as ridiculous that, though I've wanted to be an author (off and on) since I was in 4th grade, I've still not written any published work. Nothing was really stopping me other than my own lack of discipline. After all, pretty much anybody can publish a book through Amazon and sell copies through Kindle or in a print on demand format. The only challenge anymore to any aspiring author is the task of writing the book - the most basic, yet most difficult part. With the fodder...

I realize that I write a lot about this blog itself when I post, but nobody really wants to read a blog about itself. That's why I'll make this reintroduction brief and leave it at that. It's been another long time since I've "used" this blog. Isn't that what people do, "use" a blog to elaborate thoughts? Most blogs don't get read much, so the writing isn't for other people. The blog is just a mechanism for people that are too lazy to write with pen and paper (me, increasingly) to organize their thoughts on life, hopefully precipitating out some kind of meaning or improved understanding of what some may call the "human condition". So blogs aren't really an end; they are a means to an end that leaves the blog behind. My last post was about my new "site" on Medium.com. Since then, it has become obvious that Medium is full of a bunch of pretentious wanna-be intellectuals that push their political propaganda a...

Well well well... It has certainly been a log time since I've written on this blog. It is with mixed feelings that I've switched to this Medium site to host my random thoughts and photography expeditions. https://medium.com/river-rock I'm not quite sure of it. My ways of thinking have changed quite a bit since I've written the stuff here, but this blogger site has a homey feel to it. We'll see how this new "medium" goes...

Here is the result of my first modeling tutorial. I think it's pretty cool. It took quite a while. I think it looks reasonably realistic. Many of the ones on the website looked like the sky was too dark.

It feels like one of those times that feels like the right time to say something, but nothing readily comes to mind to answer the question of what is to be said. A little pondering (which works best when the fingers are moving) is in order. Here it comes. The infinite void slowly becomes material, and I step from the shore into the shallow waters of purpose. Do my toes experience a biting cold, or does the vastness welcome an inquiry? It is pleasant, and the sun still tarries above a dusky grave, so then it is safe to roll up my pant legs and venture at least a little ways into the water. False alarm... I've got nothing.

So what do you think? The thought that came to mind is that maybe some schooling tends to suppress the right brain - the intuitive side. I'm studying engineering, and sometimes it becomes difficult to break free from the ultra-rational method of thought and come to an understanding of things in their relationship to one another. Perhaps the flaw with education is that it tries to institutionalize the learning of intuition. Isn't the only real way to understand the world to experience it? Doubtless, there is great value in learning the concrete and compartmentalizing information, but maybe we have tried to shift learning into a spot where it can do both but have only ended up teaching neither adequately. Lately I've become aware of a decreased ability to understand concepts. It has gotten worse over the years of my schooling. Granted, there is the possibility that the material is simply harder to comprehend, but that doesn't explain the more general feeling of a cloud or...

This is the latest of the books I've read. It was written in the 50's by Owen Barfield . Somewhere I read that he was a member of "The Inklings", a group of men that included the well-know philologist/author J.R.R. Tolkien. Barfield , like Tolkien to an extent, is a believer that knowledge of people of the past can be derived from their language. The book History in English Words opens to us a sense of the mind of ancient people and also shows the reader the influences of events on the language we speak today. I have to admit, here at the outset, that it took me a great length of time to read this book. It is one of those books that I have to be in the mood to read. Specifically, I have to be in the wordy, etymology mood to really delve into this book. But once I was in, I was truly fascinated by what I read. History in English Words is not simply a book filled with random facts about words that most people don't care about. The book ends up being about th...

Sometimes (or maybe not) when we look back on life there are the moments when we can see the smoke clearing from the battlefield, and everything that has occurred in this day of life is revealed in the light of the sun. Why do I say "battlefield"? I say it because that's what life is, isn't it? We are in a constant struggle to obtain some sort of purpose, some ideal end to this world of dust. We put all our efforts to tear down the things that are an evil to our purpose, but we forget sometimes that perfection cannot be created from this gritty material of mortal life. The science of alchemy proved to be hopeless to achieve it's ends, but somehow we think that we can change the stuff of which our world is made into something higher in nature. You can't make gold out of lead (well, not stable gold). What do I see now that the smoke vanishes into the wind? I see desolation. I see the rotted fruits of times past, the empty gaze of the survivors who once held s...

Perhaps it's due to the insatiable desire for the human spirit to attain perfection in its endeavors; perhaps it's the glow of Jupiter's red storm on the rings of Saturn; some say that it's because the changing poles of the earth increase the kinetic energy of nerve signals to the pituitary gland. At any rate, I've made a new website . It's different from this blog because it'll be focusing more on hobbies and technical things, but it seems to be a good outlet for those sort of things. Initially, it was going to replace this site and maybe the others on blogger, but the creation process has left me still wanting to muse less publicly. I don't think there are many that read this blog, and I don't have a problem with that - in-fact, I think I'd prefer that. I think less readers makes me more open to explore abstract thoughts and feelings, whereas a knowledge of many readers of this blog would make me less open and personal. Personal may be a bad th...

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...

Are words just an approximation of our thoughts? If so, then what is the integral? Where is the Calculus to exact the sum under the curve of consciousness? Can a man really find out man? Or is he left to only comprehend himself completely, while the thoughts of others exist as the solution to an equation, derived and never known as a present thing? Perhaps the world of language is more exact than is supposed here. Perhaps words are only triggers to complex mental processes. After all, language is only the vibration of air particles, or the ink on a page; pixels on a screen as well. Each, in its microscopic state, is nothingness. But when viewed as a whole, it becomes a symphony that will guide the listener or the reader in his thoughts toward an ultimate conclusion.

"[Plymouth Rock] has become an object of veneration in the United States. I have seen bits of it carefully preserved in several towns in the Union. Does not this sufficiently show how all human power and greatness are entirely in the soul? Here is a stone which the feet of a few poor fugitives pressed for an instant, and this stone becomes famous; it is treasured by a great nation, a fragment is prized as a relic. But what has become of the doorsteps of a thousand palaces? Who troubles himself about them?" -Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America I have recently started reading the book from which this quotation comes, and I am very impressed so far. Tocqueville's writing, even on the seemingly mundane subject of the geography of America, is full of metaphorical description that brings to life the inanimate and gives significance to a history long forgotten by this generation. The quotation above was merely a footnote in the text, but its richness surpasses the ...

In the dark years of adolescence, sunshine was not necessarily a preferred form of weather for me. The clouds were much more suitable to my moods, and they made me feel calm. But as I grow older, maturity changes my outlook. Old age brings many mental changes, such as a sober mind not enjoyed in the years of youth, feelings more poignant than before, and a greater desire to obtain the things in life that last the longest. In my case, a change in my favorite weather is what my "old age" has brought me. Not that I don't still enjoy the occasional rainy day excuse to stay inside, but I now enjoy the sunshine. It makes me happy.