home, sweet home...

...and a happy new year to you and yours wherever you are.

jh..

psa from the vbc

"citizens of Golden, the vbc is in your town! go home and tie your daughters down!"

ah, memories. christmas is great for a lot of reasons, but the reason of greatest import, for me anyway, is that the holidays are the time of year when best friends come back home. all of the shit that you deal with during the semester is over and done with, and you have nothing but time to hang out with the best of your best. it seems that there's never enough time, of course, but limited availability just makes the time that much more precious. it's even overwhelming, on occasion, to be that emotionally fulfilled in such a short period of time. it's one of the most satisfying things in the world. though it's they who are actually returning, it still feels to me like i'm the one coming home..

..it would appear that i'm growing sentimental in my old (hardly so, the hyperbole amuses me) age. and i would agree. i am. there are a lot of things that i miss already, and even more that i'm soon to miss. i can't help but be sad in the realization that these present years are very much the end of an era. the perpetual nature of these growing pains renders me weary, cyclically so.

'i long for things that have passed me by, while the world flits o'er these weary eyes.'

if you love them, let them know.
jh..

fi'n to be gettin' my learn on.

i've been reading a lot of psychological theory lately. and i mean a lot. something close to 1400 pages, the bulk of which has been devoured in the past 7 days. my mind is effectively a mess of names, facts, definitions, details of countless experiments, theses, and their dialectical antitheses.

at the same time, it's some of the coolest stuff i think i've ever read. my only regret is not having read it during the semester, like i was supposed to. it's a shame to think, but much of it is going to end up laid to waste when my working capacity empties itself without having had a proper chance to consolidate said information and store it in long-term memory, due to my gross lack of proper preparation and effective learning. but that's my problem, and nobody else's.

doh...

it's enough to make a person want to attend class. at least once every few weeks if not every day. baby steps, right? i'll work my way up.

it dawns on me that this next statement may be one that paints a picture of yours truly as the epitome of geek. i can see myself as a career student. i don't like assignments, papers, attending class, or writing exams, but i'll be damned if i don't love learning. i can't get enough of it. granted, there's a lot of stuff i don't care much to learn, but there's more than enough that i do to keep me semi-satiated for the remainder of my life expectancy this time 'round.

and on that note, i head to bed. then to my last two exams. then to the mountains.

big ups to freud, jung, erikson, maslow, rogers, and the rest of the gang. schoolin' suckas since the 19th century.

jh..

the hours stretch on 'til the night is all gone..

the world is a different place in the tiny hours of the morning, especially somewhere like campus. during exam period some of the buildings are open round the clock to more readily facilitate last-minute cramming. this year i'm actually a bit ahead of the game as the cramming started almost a full 5 days before my first exam. for one night i managed to go fully nocturnal, falling asleep as the suns rays began to shine, and awaking again as they were fading on the horizon. but apparently my years are catching up with me. without continued consumption of caffeine, last night just wasn't as long as it could (and perhaps should) have been. i'm getting a bit of a cold already, whereas in years past it would have been the full week of exams and then a day or two of rest before my immune system jumped ship on me. thankfully there's cold-fx, which is the only thing that's ever worked for me in pseudo-medicinally battling the sniffles.

when it's all said and done, though, despite the physical, mental, financial, and social stresses of school, and especially exam periods, i really do enjoy it. many others say that they do, too.
perhaps it's the sense of accomplishment, whether it comes from managing to cram the better part of a course into your head in a matter of days, or even hours, or from having learned something difficult and esoteric, regardless of its actual usefulness in everyday life thereafter.
perhaps it's the sense of purpose, however dilute, that working towards a degree gives you, even if it is an arts degree after a science degree before a yet-to-be-named degree of also questionable economic value.
perhaps it's the sense of camaraderie with your fellow students, and more importantly with your best friends. if it wasn't for a best friend to laugh, talk, and walk with during these long nights this week, i don't think i'd be getting much done. and i surely wouldn't be having even a fraction of the fun that i am.

thanks to the kid who won't need to read this because he's been there for every minute of it so far.

and thanks to you, too.

jh..

word life? nah, son. it's 'word, Life.'

winter in alberta really abandoned its sense of subtlety in arriving this year. within a matter of days we went from +7 to about -30 degrees Celcius. a lot of places on earth don't experience that large a swing between january and july. it's kind of crazy, when you think about it - living in a place where the temperature reaches quite near to +40C the odd day in the summer months, and quite near -40C, windchill not accounted for, during the winter months. it's amazing that floral and faunal life survive it all. it puts the miracle and majesty of human technological and scientific achievement to absolute shame. and gracefully so, at that.

it seems that sometimes we as humans entertain the thought that we can "conquer" nature, and show that we truly have risen above any and all taxonomic relatives of ours, both close and distant. that we've harnessed the knowledge and power to tame and control the surface of the earth and atmosphere as we wish.

but the thing is, if we succeed in destroying the earth, making it unlivable for even the vast majority of plant and animal existence, we probably still couldn't completely eradicate this world of life. somewhere - be it in the ice at the apex of a remote mountian peak, or in the jets of boiling water streaming from the ocean floor, heated by tectonic movement - life will remain. nature will always be greater than us, and greater than anything we can hope to become. at the very essence of the thought, it seems ridiculous to think that we ever could; how can an element become greater than the sum that it's necessarily just a part of? (think "sum of positive real numbers," all of you math-loving trouble-makers out there.)

still, even though life will persist despite the human race's best effort to quench it, it's a scary thought that we're slowly poisoning an entire planet. an entire planet. so what are we to do? revert to the life and functioning of some pre-industrial era? shun industry, technology, and most of what the western world seems to thrive on and stand for? not at all. we should use our heads and exhibit the creativity and resourcefulness that we're so proud of to make things right again. sustainability. environmentally and ecologically compatible technology. hell, even recycling, not wasting water, driving less, driving cleaner-running cars, composting. i'm sure we're all smart enough to make our effort where we can.

so, then. if you have the time and inclination to read any of this (thanks for that, by the way) then you might also be able to find the time to read the weekly articles by Dr. David Suzuki, aptly entitled, as a collection, 'Science Matters'.

then go out and join the green party, recycle more, start a compost in your back yard, and buy a hybrid car.

alright, i'll be more than happy if you just read the articles.

word, Life.
jh..

it's time.

it seems to me that it's the most consistent thing that exists for each one of us. our time. why for each of us? well, because it's different for each of us, of course. if we're going to really get into it, it's different for every single elementary particle that makes each of us up, but for the sake of simplicity, we'll stop at the personal level.

so how is time different for each of us? thanks to einstein, the population at large was presented with a theory of the physical universe, aptly named 'relativity' ('special' relativity in this case, to be accurate.) we won't get into the gritty details of transformations, tensors, space-time diagrams , and the like, because they're not necessary. what is necessary? well, only the two simple postulates of special relativity, worded here so that hopefully all who read it might understand.

.....1. The laws of physics are the same for all things moving at a constant
..........velocity relative to each other (this includes thing that aren't moving,
..........their velocity being constant at zero!)

.....2. The speed of light is defined to be the exact same, denoted 'c', for all
..........observers, regardless of reference frame.

and thus, our understanding of the universe was changed forever. from these two simple statements, our classical interpretation of the universe was rendered obsolete and terminally short-sighted. (although it is duly noted that the ingenious work of our scientist forefathers is the basis for everything we do know. as the brilliant sir isaac newton so modestly put it, 'if i have seen farther than others, it is because i stood on the shoulders of giants.')

so why were these two statements so revolutionary? because they re-defined time as being relative, not absolute. until that point, time had been something that ran independently of everything else. time was the same for every person on earth, and for every atom in every corner of the universe. and then, it was not.

so why did time have to change? well, if every observer in every reference frame is to measure the speed of light with the exact same value, then something has to change. time has to change. space has to change. the universe has to change. (for the sake of brevity, this isn't an explanation of why these changes are necessary, but a presentation of the fact that they are. if you're at all interested in the topic, there are countless books on relativity available at bookstores everywhere, so i implore you to read, learn, and understand.)

that being said, time is unique for every infinitesimal bit of matter in this universe. from the relativist perspective, the faster you move, the slower an outside observer sees your clock running. you, of course, see it as running perfectly fine. and as you gain velocity, you begin to shrink in the direction of motion. but again, to yourself, you appear perfectly normal and proportional. but that's not all. your mass begins to increase in proportion to the square of your velocity. though you don't notice anything changing at all. thanks to the second postulate of reltivity, though, you'll never be able to reach light speed, because your mass approaches infinity as your velocity approaches 'c'. no matter how much energy you pour into propelling yourself ever-faster, you'll never make it. it's simply not possible. light will always leap away from you at an amazing 300,000 km/h, no matter how hard you try to catch up with it.

and of course, none of this helps us to truly understand or manage our time any better. in the midst of pain and adversity, time runs ever slowly regardless of how relativistically slow we ourselves move. in experiencing joy and love, time runs ever quickly, despite our most intense efforts to slow it. we try so desperately to hold on to moments in time, and yet they escape our grasp and move from us unimpeded by our hopes and wishes. were we to try and freeze time, we'd exhaust the energy of the universe before we'd even come close. nay, time only freezes for light itself. for light there exists no such thing as time.

there's never enough time. not enough to spend with the people we love. to do the things that we enjoy doing. to accomplish everything we aspire to achieve. to see everything we want to see. to experience what we wish we could. to live for as long as we wish we could.

and yet we have all the time in the world. perhaps in the end that's all we really do have. it's something that no one or thing can steal away from us. no matter what happens, our time is just that. ours. unique to each of us and unaffected by all except us ourselves, it lies ever pure and ever constant. in realtivity that is what's called 'proper time'. the time measured by an observer in the rest frame of that observer. you measure your own proper time, and that time is yours. pure, constant. the time of everything else in the universe is different. a near-infinite number of clocks running at a near-infinite range of speeds, resulting in a near-infinite number of unique temporal existences - always changing, speeding up, slowing down. everything so incredibly different and unique, yet tied so inextricably together by the ubiquity of both the nature and source of that uniqueness.

when you truly understand this, it seems to me that it's impossible not to be absolutely amazed.

here's to you living a long and happy proper time,
jh..

'when there's nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire..'

we all seem to do it from time to time. there lies nothing else near enough at hand towards which we might channel our energy, frustration, hurt, anger, or desperation, so we light ourselves on fire.

some of us drink until the tidal wave of our emotion washes us clean. or more likely just washes us away..

some of us scream until we're out of breath. and energy. and life. and we drop to our knees, and finally give in and collapse despite the lack of trust that the world will hold us up when we fall..

some of us fight. we fight without consciousness, without gauge, without inhibition. we fight whatever stands before us. men. walls. windows. streets. ourselves..

some of us shut ourselves down and the fire consumes us from the inside. what ails us is incinerated in the bomb calorimeter of our otherwise lifeless, stone countenance..

...and it goes. perhaps far more quickly than it came. the hours, days, months, years of climax all come crashing down, sometimes in a matter of seconds.

and like all fires, there are tell-tale signs that refuse to fade completely, if at all.

if the time is at hand, and the fates are blind to us, we might just burn up and become the diffuse bits of mendeleev's periodic table that we were in the first place.

if we're lucky, we carry them as scars and reminders through the rest of our days. and if we're even luckier, they bear the longevity and intensity to keep us from facing the same fires again. and if we're luckier yet, we can learn from those that have survived their own fires, and extinguish those flames before they have the chance to consume us when they spark and breathe and take life and leap out of the aether, whence they came.

_____________________

i'm remembering my fires past a lot these days. and though the burns still hurt from time to time, they're healing always. and i'm better for it. and the same, in your own way, i hope you are, too. i think it's really all we can ask.

from me to you,
jh..

*title quote taken from the rather great song 'your ex-lover is dead' by stars, which you can hear by clicking arts-crafts.