Death?

D E A T H ' S     L A S T     B R E A T H

In the end each is alone.

Another one? Another lachrymose article? When is he going to pullout of it? It really is getting repetitive. It moves from death to dying, to the end of life with nothing in-between. I'll bet that ...

Okay. Okay, I'm sorry. I admit it again, I have been writing downer article after downer article. But don't worry, I'll pullout of it, someday …

The end is a funny thought. What does "The End" mean? Are there different types of ends? Can there be a new beginning after… All right. All right. That's it! I'm going to pullout of it now! I'm done (for a while anyways) contemplating things such as "To be or not to be, that is the question…"

Speaking of that famous line written by Shakespeare, did you know that William R. Bent, Jr., a Yale Professor, once used a computer to show that a trillion imaginary monkeys, all typing rapidly, would take more than a trillion times the age of the Universe to come up with that line from hamlet,

"To be or not to be, that is the question."

It seems to be that Mr. Bent might have put the computer to better use, even if it was to play video games… But then as Mack McGinnis hit the nail on the monkey’s head when he said,

"Progress isn't always for the best. Smoke signals never got an Indian out of bed at 3 a.m. to answer a wrong number."

Speaking of computers, we all think of storing bits of information when we think of computers. But then brain isn't too bad at computer-like tasks. Human memory is roughly estimated to be capable of retaining 100 billion bits of information, which means that a typical adult brain holds 500 times the information in a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

That's some computer! It would seem that we don't need computers if we just used the natural tools we have. But we do need science and progress because like Bill Vaugham said,

 "Thanks to science you can fly almost anywhere in half the time it will take for you to wait for your luggage after you get there."

How about contributions from people like Californian William McLellen who built the world's smallest motor? It weighs one half-millionth of a pound and is smaller than the head of a pin, measuring a sixty-fourth of an inch on all sides. It has 13 parts and generates one-millionth of a horsepower. It can be seen in operation only through a microscope. It was built using a toothpick, a microscope, and a watchmaker’s lathe.

What can this motor be used for? What would one-millionth of a horsepower drive? It could probably move a nose hair. It could probably drive a turntable made for fleas. It could possibly pass undetected through an airport metal detector, that way, in case the plane has engine failure in mid-flight you could replace it with Mr. McLellan's motor.

The only drawback to this wondrous device is that it probably takes 500 volts to power it. What type of power cord would it have? How many quarts of oil would it need? Would it take only lightweight oil?

What is the source of the most power available to man in the known Universe? It is static electricity from rubbing your shoe across a rug and touching someone's neck. A close second is a transistor battery when touched to the tip of your tongue. How about the jolt of a first kiss? All these rate high above a wall socket for delivered volts. Did you ever go swimming? Hopefully, not during an electrical storm. Nor near an electric eel, as they can deliver a shock with more than four times the voltage of a wall socket. That's a hot fish!

Did you know that the temperature at the center of the earth is nearly as hot as the sun (5,000 - 6,000 degrees Celsius)? Sunshine bears down upon the daylight side of the earth with a pressure of two pounds for every square mile, but the earth only receives 1/2 of one-billionth of the run's radiant energy. In a few days that's the heat and light equivalent to burning all the oil, coal, and wood on the planet. But we can get much hotter than then sun and the center of the earth. A lightning bolt generates temperatures five times hotter than the surface of the sun. If we could only use the power around us in nature there would never be an energy shortage, for the energy equivalent of just one ounce of anything is enough to keep a 100-watt light bulb burning for almost one million years.

I think I'm personally going through an energy shortage. It's a real possibility that I'm getting senile. Symptoms of aging can appear early. By the time we're twenty we may already display an age related drop in intellectual ability. The brain of an eight-month-old human fetus is actually estimated to have two to three times more nerve cells than an adult brain does. Just before birth, there is a massive death of unnecessary brain cells, a process that continues through early childhood and then levels off. So no wonder I've been complaining of headaches the last few years.

I take 200 vitamin pills a day, and people wonder why I look so unhealthy. But after my stomach is filled with these vitamins there is no more room for food. So unwillingly I am on a diet of 50 calories a day.

Truth is the bitterest of pills to swallow, and now that I have rambled on, from one subject to another I have lost all the readers before the finish once again.

In the end each one of us is alone.

'nother one,

èim  Uhr

P.S. Progress is relative. When a person becomes a millionaire he moves from his modern downtown apartment with all the latest contraptions to a nice older home in the country for a bit of the simple living, and calls it progress. Progress is what brought television to even the lowest income families. Research has shown that watching T.V. causes rats to become listless and apathetic. Thus they are less prone to biting the children.

Sometimes it just feels like death...

Have you ever had a near death experience?

Let me know.

A Day in The Life

A DAY I N THE L I F E

I am listening to the radio, trying to write. I remember how unsuccessful that has been for me in the past, so I turn it off…

God, the silence is killing me…

I lean back on my chair, carefully so as to prevent the tablet from falling off my knee. The distant sound of a barking dog and the infrequent passing of cars, echoes in my head. I can hear an indistinct ringing. Not sure if it's church bells or in my head, I block the sound out. The dog continues to bark…

The smell of oil penetrates my nostrils from the oil heater at my feet. Thank god it also penetrates my bones and gives me momentary warmth and protection from the cold.

If there is such great warmth in Hell, then is heaven frigid?

There are two table lamps in the room I occupy, for in this room no overhead light exists. I write in shadows, as the light from these lamps barely succeed in chasing away the darkness.

I like the light…

I thought I could hear the wind rustling through the rafters, but it's just another passing car. I wonder what it would be like to be in that car. Though I cannot see the street below me, I wish I was a passenger in that car I hear moving by, living in his or her world – a world that I will never know or have a chance to understand.

Would that dog please shut-up!

I look at the typewriter on my desk in front of me, smiling at its presence. I think of all the work involved in first writing everything in longhand, half printing and half writing, only to later two finger type it all over on a fresh piece of paper. What a waste! I don't mind the time involved, I just hate to see another fresh, clean piece of paper dirtied… What a waste. Maybe I should start using my computer. But the dust has settled nicely on it and I hate to disturb it.

The blackness that engulfs my soul comes out by way of words and spreads out to cover and taint a nice white piece of paper in the form of black. From white to a slowly growing blackness filling the page. Words defecating on the pristine white of the page, changing it forever

Maybe I should change my font color to red, or something more happy…

It's a shame that there aren't more outlets in this room so I could plug in all my lamps. It's a shame there aren't more outlets in my life so I could put to use a head-full of ideas. I can barely afford to allow two of the plugs for lamps, I need my typewriter and radio, for I am running out of sockets. My radio is off and I'm not using the typewriter, but to exchange plugs on a temporary basis, just for another couple of lights, would only be extra work.

I get tired even thinking about it.

I am glad that dog has stopped barking.

The heat from the burner feels good on my body, just as the light feels good to my eyes. I gaze upon the masses of books about, most of which are scattered allover the floor. The biggest and heaviest of the hardbacks are presently being used to straighten out a crinkled poster in the middle of the floor. I think it's a picture of mass nudes on a beach, but I'm not sure, seeing as it has been a long time since I had last seen it. It takes a long time to straighten out wrinkles in a poster unless you could bend them in the opposite direction for a period of time. But I am in no hurry and I don't mind things a bit wrinkled, a little bent out of shape.

I wonder if there is snow outside. These past days have been so cold. Running the heater continuously is a temptation, but then I would need a steady flow of oil…

Then there is the matter of the smell…

Even after getting up to look out the window, I still cannot tell if there is snow. Even the small amount of light the two lamps shed make the windows look like mirrors, so the wall behind me is all I see when I look out. I notice that the dog has not barked for quite some time as I listen to another car whizzing past. I imagine the zagged tire marks he leaves in the imaginary snow. I'm sure the snow covers those tracks before he can see them in his rear-view mirror. No one will ever know he has been down this street.

Possibly the dog has stopped his incessant barking because he has escaped and found his way to the street… the car… in such a hurry…

I have a globe in this room. The Earth. Smooth. Mostly blue. I look at it and wonder at all the water. So much water, and I – never to have seen an ocean. The land has freckles, spotted with names and bumps, but the water is smooth and a consistent blue, with fewer words written on it. The words and the land dirtying the perfection of the blue. It's a nice globe, except for the land and the writing…

I wish I would turn back on my radio, but I know I really don't want to. It's funny how my radio just sits there next to my filing cabinet, in which this article will also sit upon completion. God knows when that will be! I know that if I were to open that top drawer of my filing cabinet all the way it would topple over, probably on my radio, which really wouldn't matter because I bet if that cabinet fell it would crash right through the floor, taking me and everything else in the room with it. My own private sink hole. The top drawer is the heaviest, mostly filled with supplies. If only I would keep the heavier things in the bottom drawer there would not be the fear of it falling over. I wish it could be better arranged but that's the way things go. Some day I will learn. I hear floors are expensive.

The football pennants and the posters in this room give it a sort of presence. The various posters have a pretty wide range of topics and scenes. From spaceships to oceans and other worlds, from kittens to feathered friends, and robots and lasers to baseball players and fields. Life to death.

I would like to see if there is snow outside, but I dare not turn out the lights so I can see out. I notice a slight headache as I look to the time on my watch. I can almost hear it ticking, but I can't hear that dog that's always barking. Time doesn’t really tick, it ebbs.

I close my eyes, feeling a bit funny, but not abnormal.

If I felt fine – I wouldn’t pay it. If I felt more funny – I wouldn’t laugh. If I felt… If only… I… felt.

My stomach is about ready for a beer or two as it's about time for me to get ready to go out for the night.

I wonder what I'll do tonight?

                                                                                 ‘Til Later,

       èim  Uhr

                                    P.S: Maybe I'll see you tonight…

                                           Bet you won't recognize me.

Silence and I                        Should I let it show?

               Secrets

The Fair Path

The Fair Path

Have you ever been alone in a crowd before?

More precisely, I should ask, have you ever felt alone in a crowd? A buzz all around that somehow goes past or around you, never quite sinking in. Smiles, conversations, jokes, eye contact – that never reach you. You feel invisible at best – shunned at worst.

You may want to run, but there is nowhere to go.

You must move away from this uncomfortable state. There must be a change.

There are two possible roads ahead.

You feel like a boulder rolling down a hill when you come to a fork. All the difference is ahead.

One path is within. The other path is without.

One option is to move outwards. To reach out. To force the situation. To attempt to becoming a part of without the need for an invitation. To take a risk. Stepping out from oneself. To extend a hand, an opinion, a thought – with the knowledge that it may be turned away from, shunned, unwanted, rejected. To take the risk of being a fool, a busy body, obnoxious. The geek trying to break into the click. To expand the bubble around yourself to include others. To open up and be vulnerable. To risk appearing stupid or a social misfit. Trying to gain friendship at the possible consequence of garnering distain.

The reward for this path is you may become part of the buzz. One with the crowd. Known and no longer invisible.

The possible downside is that you are no longer invisible and now all your flaws and awkwardness is out in the open for all to see. Perhaps you don’t fit in and never will. Perhaps being invisible is the best you can do, the most you can hope for.

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." – Abraham Lincoln.

Then there is the other path. The other direction. Instead of turning outwards in the hope of a connection, you can go inwards. Turning away from the trappings of the outside world. Moving toward self. To focus your attention to what’s inside. Your feelings and thoughts. To delve into your beliefs and emotions, to circle downwards deep into your personal cave. Trying to find you center and what makes you tick. What makes you unique. Searching for love of self and a deep inner respect. To find that place of knowing, that space of oneness. To seek the stillness, to explore through meditation.

The reward for this path, this direction, is pure radiance of being. Knowing that nothing can really hurt your pure essence. You are all. You will find that needs are merely flights of fantasy that we create out of the nothingness of fear. All is within and all is love.

The downside of this path is that sometimes when we go within we can spiral down and around until it becomes a narcissistic exercise. Self-worth somehow turns into self-importance. "We are one" becomes we are the one.

Sometimes seeing the beauty, weakness, and perfection in another is also the quickest way to seeing it within. Yes, somehow seeing the weakness in ourselves and in others becomes important. For it is only when we can see and come to terms with weakness and realize that they are just blocks, barriers to cover perfection. All weaknesses melt away in the light of true examination. Many times this is easier to see in others than in ourselves. Deep secrets become antidotes when the weight of darkness is lifted off.

Many times it is easier to move beyond judgment toward another than it is to do the same for ourselves.

So in the end I believe it’s the contemplative blend of reflective searching within and the reaching out, and shining out of our light towards the outside world in the hopes of connection that is our most beneficial and should be our ultimate goal.

Understanding ourselves and understanding others is a chicken or egg type of scenario.

Instead of asking which came, or should come, first – perhaps the real road to enlightenment comes from the realization that one cannot survive without the other. For if all is truly one… then there is no difference.

                                                           Sincerely signing off,

 

                                                                                             ò im Uhr

P.S. Again I am always playing the middleman. Walking the fence. Looking for that middle path. I usually end up in the ditch of the embankment that separates the two paths…

Ken Wilber

                                  Spiritual Path

  

                                                                         Path of thorns

Pandora's Path

Windows to the Soul

Windows of the Soul

Windows of the Soul

Windows. I have always loved windows. Standing in one atmosphere, gazing out at another environment that may be totally different. Removed, unconnected. Like looking out at a blizzard from a cozy warm home, the totally white frozen obliteration contrasting to the warmth and varied colors within. A thin, clear membrane separating you from frostbite. A thin clear line between Nevada and Alaska. It’s like looking at an historic painting that you feel so distant from – like instead of gazing at another time, you are looking into another dimension.

Sometimes when I’m depressed I can gaze out a window and imagine another life. It’s always nice to put glass between your pane [sic].

Just as children growing up strive to separate themselves from grownups, so we in general as humans are prone to feel the need to separate ourselves from history. Denying past errors. Maybe that’s why windows dominate today’s society, since we like separation, with windows we can at least be conscious of the division and pretend to care. (Kind of like seeing starving third world children on television and feeling compelled to send off a dollar or two to alleviate our guilt, pretending that we're not separated from their blight.) We air condition against the warmth outside, just as we heat when it is cold outside. Man – always trying to be separate from, trying to change reality. Never satisfied with the way things are.

For it is the change that always stands out. The difference is what’s important. If almost all birds were either blue or red, I’m sure that it would be the brown one’s that we considered beautiful.

We climb mountains with great delight in being able to look down into valleys. We live in the valley in order to have a view of the majestic mountains.

And it is with the help of windows that make all this so obvious. Windows let us see our separation, make us aware of the modifications we have made. Windows are constant reminders of man’s attempt to turn reality up-side-down.

Windows are barriers that at least let light get through so that we can fool ourselves into thinking there is no separation. Thus we can say, “I live in Moscow” or “I live in Cleveland” or “I live in Chambly,” instead of “I live in a 70 degree heated/air-conditioned bubble – just like you and most everybody else.”

We play with reality until reality loses it’s meaning. Is reality the inside of the cage or the world outside? It depends on which side one has his perspective from. Whether they are bars of steel or piled up bars of gold, poor are affected as well as the wealthy - as your personal prison can be from theft as well as riches. Money can separate us as it stacks up around us forming an inpenitratible barrier that no one can reach through. Seclusion can be our own private jail. The rich as well as the poor can experience alienation from society. Lock me away, or shun me. Observe me only through windows. Keep your distance! Not like a lion in a cage, but more that of a fish in an aquarium. You could never truly know my world. My glass separates universes, dimensions. My glass is a bubble that surrounds me as I float in and out of your reality.

It is sometimes said that separation is an illusion – but in reality anything and everything but separation is the illusion. Each object, each person, is made up of individual cells. Each cell in your body has as much connection to each other as do the planets in a solar system.

Space. Space is the truth. There is space between everything. The only connection between us is space. The Universe is essentionally empty. It is a vacuum by any standard. Even a pane of glass is not really solid. A neutrino passing through a window has a very small chance of colliding with any molecule in the glass – most assuredly it will pass right through without any effect. It would be almost impossible for it to strike anything.

Although you can see a completely different world outside your window, you have little chance of having any effect on it. Of all the animals on Earth it’s the human beings who are known as the creators on the planet, always building things, but in actuality our creations are small and usually temporary – just waiting for entropy to overtake them. As the debate rages on whether we are destroying the planet I think that we are locked in a perspective that is far from reality. I’m not sure we are as of yet able to destroy the Earth, we are only able to change it – possibly destroying the atmosphere and any possible living conditions. But the Earth, in one form or another, will survive. So the only thing we would probably be destroying is ourselves, along with a few billion animals. I think that long after we’re gone the Earth will repair itself. Maybe then the next incarnation of life will get it right.

Maybe we’re just like microbes in a Petri dish. The experiment of life on this planet may have passed its half-life. Maybe the scientist running this experiment has as much feelings for us as we do for mold spores. Possibly we are just a little experiment in filling up some space. We take up about as much space in the Universe as we do time in it’s history. We would not even register as a blip on the radar screen. We are dandruff on the head of the Universe, exaggerating our self worth. Is it man’s deterrent or his blessing to be so self-centered? Man’s ego is what has caused him to expand beyond any reasonable measure. In this microcosm, man is king. Man’s inflated self-importance is what makes him rise above the other microbes in the Petri dish.

The ultimate question is whether he can rise up enough through his own compost to really communicate with the scientist running this experiment and possible save himself with something more than complaints or simple pleas of help.

                                                                                    éim Uhr

P.S.   It is said that a millennium is just a moment to the Universe. Do you want to give me a moment to see if I can unstick this widow?

The eyes have it. [sic]

which window video is the best??? - let me know!

Window1                                   Window2

Window3

W I N D O W S