In the world in which we live today, it can be hard to find sources of joy, the kind of all-encompassing passion that fills us, when the Universe presents us with an event that stimulates our sense of wonder…. This joy should be courted with great enthusiasm, to bring it into our lives, with the intent to make it a permanent part of our existence…. Such wonder brings with it the knowledge of beauty, that can inspire us, lift us until we feel as if we can touch the stars….

Now, I’m going back out for a bit to watch…. I’ll be back, hopefully less motivated to get so flipping New Age on you…. It happens a lot to me when I get a chance to indulge my passion for astronomy….. It’s one of my best held secrets, you know…. I wanted to be an astronomer, and for the longest time, had every intention of becoming a science geek, who would have been completely content to have lived his entire life on top of some isolated mountain, peering through a telescope, taking pictures of galaxies and nebulae, playing with computers, & staying up all night….

Plans change, though, for all of us, so, I just keep in touch with what is going on in space, watch the occasional eclipse like this, and try to be happy with that…. Such is life…. But, it still gives me a big thrill to experience the wonder we can feel when we watch such an inspiring event, so, I tend to get a bit excited…. at least, for me…. Most of the time I shoot more for “phlegmatic”, rather than “enthusiastic”….. It fits my self-image a bit more closely….

Okay, so, I’m going out again, to see if the clouds will part for a few minutes to let me see what’s happening up in lunar orbit…. I’ll be back shortly…. Besides, you’ll never even notice I was gone….

See? What did I tell you? When will y’all learn to trust me?…. SIGH…. Oh well, at least the Eclipse gave me an intro…. I guess, given the number of clouds that keep getting in my way, Murphy is going to play his games with me for the duration of the time I’m up here in the middle of the night…. too attractive a chance for him to mess with me, I suppose… I just hope he relents long enough for me to get a picture or two before it’s done…. In the meantime….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“Enjoy what you can, endure what you must.”  — Friedrich Wolfgang von Goethe

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s going on 2 AM here in California, where I’m up trying to see the full eclipse that is taking place outside as I type; clouds still in the way…. I did find a pretty good rant, though, while searching the archives yesterday or the day before (it all runs together a lot these days, so I’m often not sure just when I did most anything…. Good thing for me we have time, or everything would have to happen all at once…. Enjoy, if you please….

From 6/7/13:

“All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.” — Leonardo da Vinci

I knew when I included this above that I would be using it another time in the future. It is such a succinct observation,  one that parallels my own thoughts about what happens in our minds, and in truth, about what our minds are…. “What is the mind?” Where is the proof, the hard evidence that our minds, our conscious self-awareness, actually exist in a real sense? We know, because we are inside it, that it exists; but is that existence really a part of the real world? If so, how do we know it, if not only by our own perception? I’m not entirely sure, myself, that this can be answered in any way other than by acknowledging those perceptions as having validity because we perceive them, which is, seemingly, a tautological impossibility….

Of course, we can use the definition of Reality as proposed by Philip K. Dick, which says that reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. This accounts for the inconsistency, but does so by transferring the validity from the perception, to the absence of the perception. I know, that’s a bit of a tenuous connection, but, it points out the difficulty of trying to validate reality with perception; first one must validate the perceptions, and to do that, we must assume the mind to be part of reality, and consciousness to be the connecting tissue.

“A reverence for life does not require one to respect nature’s obvious mistakes.” — Robert A. Heinlein

I realize this subject is not one common to most folks, especially early in the morning. (Note from the future: nor, it seems, is it a common theme for late at night….. )…. I also will admit to knowing that much of what I’m saying is not particularly of interest to many people, but, I don’t write for many people. I write for me, to get out of my head all the stuff that otherwise would sit in there and cause havoc to my own equilibrium… It’s sort of an aftereffect of the course of my earlier life, admittedly a bit cumbersome, but, with the help of my trusty laptop, and a willingness to use time, given by my situation, to keep from building up so much angst and/or mental frustration that it starts to affect me adversely…. which is a polite, discrete way to say, it keeps me sane….

I think about stuff like this because, to me, it is important to know our own place in the scheme of things, and we can’t do that without a clear understanding of both ourselves, and the way we perceive, and react to, the universe at large; in other words, our response to our perceptions, and, ultimately, our response to Life. We determine our own happiness according to what we do with what we perceive, and I believe it is critical to stay aware of that process, and how we are utilizing what we perceive.

It’s good to take out our attitudes now and again, to examine them for necessary updating, dusting off any acquired prejudices, and giving them a good shake to let them fall into the proper shape to pick up the clearest perceptions, in order to use them efficiently, and compassionately…..

“‘T is strange, but true; for truth is always strange,– Stranger than fiction.” — Lord Byron (1788-1824) — Don Juan, Canto xiv, Stanza 101

And so am I, for I live for the truth. I accept that (strangeness) as the proper price for the understanding I have of reality, and for my own ever-increasing ability to deal with it on my own terms. It does make me a bit conspicuous at times; that is probably why I don’t go out in public all that often. It gets chancy sometimes, trying to maintain a cloak of normalcy when I’m out in the Big Blue Room, so I tend to avoid most public venues, just to avoid controversy…. I’m social, but not sociable, if you catch my drift…..

Well, I see I’ve blathered on about this until it petered out…. Not much left to say, really, about Reality, and our perceptions, that I haven’t said before….

In life, “True power is control of the routes of perception.” — gigoid

This is a universal truth, my own deduction, based on observation and historical fact. The BRC and the churches know this, and do everything they can to control what people perceive, and what they are allowed to believe. I have no illusions about the degree of their control over society… This knowledge gives me a certain degree of defense against such control, as knowing it is there is the first step to resisting its influence, or to making it appear as if I am allowing it to control me, while maintaining my own reality….

And THAT is quite enough of that…. I don’t wish to pull ALL my covers, not at once anyway, and it makes little sense to give away my best defense… I don’t think I’ve gone too far today; after all, it’s just a little bit of truth…. What harm can that cause?….

“I don’t think they could put him in a mental hospital.   On the other hand, if he were already in, I don’t think they’d let him out.” — Smart Bee

More notes from the future…. Oops…. By the tone of the last line from Smart Bee, it probably wasn’t the best idea to tell it so much…. now it’s spilling my secrets for all to hear…. Ah well, I’ll just go back now, into the grip of real-time, where at least I know I’m anonymous, mostly….

“Sometimes the need to mess with their heads outweighs the millstone of humiliation.” — Fox Mulder, X-Files “Squeeze”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’m not sure right now just what poem will suit tonight…. I’ll get back to you on this… Okay, I’m ready to pick one now…. Let’s see…. Oh, I remember…. Here, here’s a good one, from a modern genius, one whose work stands as the voice of the American people in the twentieth century…. at least, for those all-too-numerous Americans who spend much of their lives struggling to survive on the streets…. as this poet did….. If you haven’t ever heard of him, he’s an interesting man, well worth reading about, as is his poetry; this one is a particularly strong piece, a poem I believe will affect everyone who reads it in a powerful way …. Enjoy!…..

Relationships are tough…. we all know this, if not instinctively, we learn it before long in our lives, or suffer the consequences on a regular basis. It’s way too early, now, (or late, depending on where one stands to view it….) to get into a deep discussion of the ins and outs of Love, or how people deal with all the complexities inherent in interacting with another human on that level…. Good grief, it’s probably ALWAYS too early/late for THAT discussion; we all have a tendency to get a bit worked up over our triumphs and/or our defeats along these lines…. and I’m not what might be called stupid, so I’m not going to get caught writing about the opposite sex…. I’m old enough to know better….

But, what I CAN do, and SHALL, is to put together an old school pearl that deals with that issue, subject, material, whatever it may be…. Love, and all its ramifications, is obviously a part of life none of us can avoid altogether, though it makes us nervous at the thought of the pain we experience when it doesn’t go well…. Most of us would rather put up with that, though, to get to the rewards, which are beaudacious, to say the least. With that in mind, let’s see what Smart Bee can find to say on the matter…..

“If you don’t like yourself, you can’t like other people.” — Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men.” — G. K. Chesterton, A Handful of Authors

All human history attests
That happiness for man,–the hungry sinner!–
Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner.

— Lord Byron (1788-1824) — Don Juan, Canto xiii, Stanza 99

“No woman ever falls in love with a man unless she has a better opinion of him than he deserves.” — Ed Howe

Parting day
Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues
With a new colour as it gasps away,
The last still loveliest, till–‘t is gone, and all is gray.

— Lord Byron (1788-1824) — Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto iv, Stanza 29

“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.” — Albert Einstein (1879-1955), when asked what his Theory of Relativity was by William Randolph Hearst’s mistress during a visit to Xanadu, the Hearst mansion

“The more you love, the more you can love — and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just. ” — Lazarus Long, Time Enough For Love, by Robert Heinlein

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Approximately five minutes after the eclipse’s beginning, clouds began to cover the sky overhead here, giving me mere glimpses of the moon periodically, and all too randomly…. so much so I’ve managed to finish today’s Pearl, at the ungodly hour of 0322….. I did manage to get the camera charged up, just in time to take some lovely photos of the unrelieved gray sky…. Oh, well, there are supposed to be three more eclipses this year; maybe I’ll get some pictures of one of those, if they are visible here…. One may only hope….

I’m going to press my luck here, and go ahead & post this, then go back to bed, to see if I can make up for the lost three or four hours here in the middle of the night, futilely waiting for a glimpse of the Blood Moon being eaten…. To do so, however, I have to stop writing, so…. See ya….