My Musings

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...