I’ve, for the longest time, looked for the perfect demonstration of the “correlation is not causation” logical fallacy. Now, having graded a geology test, I’ve found it. Read this and clearly understand: correlation is not causation. A truth can be related to a conclusion but not be the producer. The question:

“Explain why atmospheric pressures are higher near the earth, and lower away from the earth.”

Answer:

“The air pressure is the strongest in the troposphere which is the atmosphere closest to the earth. Hense [sic] the reason pressure is stronger near the earth.”

Correlation: the troposphere being closest to the earth and having the highest pressure. That would be correct -- there is a relationship between the troposphere being nearest to the earth, and its high pressure. Causation: the reason the pressure is highest near the earth is because the troposphere is there. This is incorrect; it does not have high pressure because it is near the earth: it has high pressure because the gasses above push down upon the lower levels.

(I admit that I could be generous: it’s possible that she meant, “The reason the pressure is highest near the earth is because the troposphere is the nearest to the earth”, but that just explicates on a point that already is flawed.)

( C: 0 )

27 April 2005

I long ago lost whatever elan I possessed. I cannot describe how this happened. Nor do I know its destination. But I find it is gone -- the creative fire, my soul, my heart. I look deep inside to find only a grey shade, a strange twilight that neither provides the light to move nor the darkness to flee. An aeonian twightlight.

I desire to write, to craft myself into word so that I can weakly stagger in circles, examining my strange creation -- wondering what has become of it, wondering why, always wondering why. But this method of study has departed me: story-telling cannot be for me anything but an extention of my life and my fire. Poesy and prose both require something of me, something which I cannot give. And because I cannot give it, because I do not have it, I cannot gain it.

And so I am left citing fragments of old, dead thoughts, in the hope that whatever life I placed in them might be returned to me.

My heart still so seeks,
Seeking so weak -
Broken forever, forever defeat.

I bought a book. The Sense of Beauty: Being the outline of Aesthetic Theory, by George Santayana. I want to explore theories of the aesthetic, I want to know more of this thing we call beauty. I am swept away by so many beautiful things... and yet find myself profoundly distressed by a Church that often -- I find -- lacks any true concern for tortured beauty. I say tortured, and I do mean this. Beauty does not, I think, arise in this fallen world spontaniously. The effort of creation is prohibative, agonizing. The world is perverse, ugly. Beauty is not a thing it well knows. Yet in the church I find (except in rare cases) a lack of appreciate, a lack of emphasis on this thing. Perhaps this is not the role of the church -- who can tell? I have a friend who strenuiously emphasises the bounds and constrains of morality and laws on creativity and beauty, for the Christian. When I hear this, I cringe, not because morality is evil and that laws should be broken, but because it seems there ought to be something higher, more beautiful, to strive for than merely these things... what is greater than laws and morality? The God who is Truth, the God who is beauty. If this is the one we seek, can we do other than to utterly seek those things?

Einstein never became part of the body for this reason. As his eyes caressed reality, as they sought out its deepest truths, he touched, in a manner, God. Einstein went to church for a time, and left, never to return. He could not see the same beauty and magesty.

I understand Einstein’s heart.

(insert whatever necessary qualifications are required. Blah blah blah.)

( C: 2 )

26 April 2005

Jeff Buckley, “Dream Brother”

there is a child sleeping near his twin the pictures go wild in a rush of wind
that dark angel he is shuffling in
watching over them with his black feather wings unfurled

the love you lost with her skin so fair
is free with the wind in her butterscotch hair
her green eyes bloom goodbyes
with her head in her hands and your kiss on the lips of another
dream brother
with your tears scattered round the world.

don’t be like the one who made me so old
don’t belie the one who left behind his name
‘cause they’re waiting for you like i waited for mine
and nobody ever came

i feel afraid and i call your name
i love your voice and your dance insane
i hear your words and i know your pain
your head in your hands and her kiss on the lips of another
your eyes to the ground
and the world spinning round forever

asleep in the sand with the ocean washing over

( C: 1 )

I’m in love

( C: 0 )

25 April 2005

From an email I wrote, tonight (expanded a bit):

Does one need to forgive the one he loves? Better yet, can love be offended? I think not; love is patient, love is kind, love is longsuffering... this sort of love needs not forgive, because it cannot be offended. How could it be? Love that is offended no longer loves. It ceases to be longsuffering, it ceases to be patient, ceases to be kind. Love that is offended is self-love.

“How could she have done this to me? Ah, well - I must forgive her for what she has done to me.”

It is not that she has hurt. It is that she has hurt me. Such thoughts are self-focused, selfish. I must forgive. The focus is on one’s self, not the other. It is one’s pride that is offended, not love. Never love. No, if one is broken and he truly loves, it is not the one he loves that requires forgiveness.

( C: 8 )

24 April 2005

Rain falling, pattering feet,
children running, water deep
Though age fall from the sky,
the child is I.

~mj

( C: 1 )

It’s odd: I can hardly believe that I am teaching high school chemistry, having no experience with chemistry at all. Just as odd, that I will be teaching high school math next year, including a class that is designed to bridge the distance between Algebra II and Calculus. I’ve never taken a post-high school math course. I wonder at the strangeness of this all, and I find it odd that I’d be entrusted with these tasks. Am I that intelligent? I’d not say so: I find myself to be incredibly dense -- the simplest of topics can confuse me, especially when I am functioning intuitively (intuitive folks tend to become horribly distracted when the data is flawed, or when it doesn’t “flow” properly. Since they hardly understand what data they are processing, they struggle with examining the data on its own terms, leading to terrible confusion. Well -- that’s true for me). But if I were assessing another man, and discovering these things about him, I’d be quite impressed. I don’t consider myself to be remarkably intelligent, but perhaps I am. When one’s internal beliefs consistently are proven by external data to err, one’s internal beliefs should (likely) be altered.

This post could be construed as somewhat egotistical, but it is not intended to be so. I’ve understood myself wrongly for far too long, and I may now being to wake and stop intentionally hamstringing my mind and my heart. If I understand myself wrong, I need a different perspective...

( C: 3 )

23 April 2005

Why do I waste so much time examining my emotions? They wax and wane as the sea -- but without the rhythmic consistency. Laws govern the sea; it seems as if none govern my heart. I’d not mind, so much, if this applied to the small, rather than the large -- the storm rather than ocean. Could we ever predict the path of every tear in this sea? No, nor have we the need -- what purpose would that serve? But large-scale models allow us to plan, to anticipate. So it ought to be with my heart: small fluctuations within greater consistencies. And yet it is not.

Today lacks -- I would write “spark”, but surely there exists a less-common, more expressive word -- (yet it is accurate, it conveys the mood) spark. A combustion engine does not rest, lacking spark. It stagnates. It does not recover energy. It decays. Metal-clench-metal, fuel-heavy decay, the weight of a ponderous mass pressing, pressing to the ground, rotting colossus in a dead-earth field.

My complaint is not that I lack a spark (there is the problem of the word) but that I am the rusted hulk... ah, each day’s new burden...

( C: 1 )

20 April 2005

Aren’t sunsets a strange sort of cool-bright? Reminds me of the sweet, fading flavor of an ice-orange.

It is a pithy day; it now occurs to me that my scribblings would be less brief (isn’t that a terrible, tangled expression of thought!) were I more honest with myself. It is my belief that many -- I cannot make this generalization. It does not apply to the public, necessarily. For myself, gregariousness is related to both deception & honesty, deception proportionately related to interpersonal communication & inversly related to personal reflection. Vice versa for honesty.

If I deceive myself (and others), I can speak to aothers about anything -- the possibilities are endless. But my capacity for reflection (unless the deception is both utter & elegant) is small. I cannot reflect on myself because I cannot see myself. Should my personal honesty increase, I expect the reverse to be true -- less interpersonal speech & greater capacity for reflection. A slippery slope, both of these possiblities. The wise man is silent because he admits his ignorance.

( C: 3 )

19 April 2005

I’ve read a bit of Kerouac’s Desolation Angels. His is not a life I’d wish to live. Is this the society of literary greats? -- if so, I want nothing to do with their particular brand of nothingness. Reading of their behavior sours my gut. These men & women have words to command: they have power, truth. Or, at least, the ought. Why do they revel in debauchery? -- it clarifies their present state, but says nothing of the eternal...

I’m dissatisfied with my life, for the first time. I’ve been frustrated with life, been dissatisfied with a job... but this morning had me realize that my life, the whole of it, is not as I’d hoped it would be...

Much can be said for mornings -- most of which has already been said. The morn has a fresh beauty to it that cannot be found elsewhere in the day -- one sees possibility, hope. Dreams, dreams of a different sort than are found at sunset. Evening dreams are bizarre, not bound to reality, and nearer to fever-induced hysteria than dreams.

The sun’s failing leaves darkness; in the darkness, anything is possible the human mind mutters, as it bows to every whim and fear. Such dreams are often the result of either our basest desires or our basest fears, neither of which require a real world.

Morning dreams -- they are reality, bound to the mystery of what is, they allow for life-giving hope. The sun rises, gives light to the world, and one sees what might truly be. A life-giving hope...

The truest dreams are these morning dreams. Dreams, awake.

( C: 1 )

17 April 2005

The girl to my left speaks with a sensual huskiness that is attractive now, but will later become repulsive -- age’s odd transition between feminine and masculine. She speaks like that girl from FOX’s “Tru Calling”. Appropriately, considering her fascination with television... and now, an interesting dialogue: “My parents asked me, ‘Where are you going, so we don’t go there’ and I said, ‘No! You’ll show up! -- I know how you reverse psychologists work!’”

The wind is smooth, cool, has the sense of thick, sweet cream. It doesn’t fight through me, as winter winds might. Those winds are furious at a man’s intrusion into the element; they have a path to follow, a destiny that must be immediately be fulfilled. This spring wind lacks the purpose -- one gets the impression that it is curious, that it is carefully swirling about, inspecting you, wondering what this odd creature might be. But it is clumsy, childish, and its velvet hand accidently touches my skin -- only to recoil in surprise at the contact, then smile and continue its innocent, surreptitious inspection.

In the near distance (just across the cobbled road, covered -- disconcertingly -- in modernity’s carriages), I hear the recorded sounds of orchestrated music. I only know that it’s recorded because I looked around the quadrangle for musicians & could not find any. It’s an odd world when cars ride on the sweat of men long forgotten, and we listen to music without seeing its skill...

( C: 1 )

15 April 2005

I wrote this poem a while back, and was reminded of it tonight...

The city,
emptiness hidden in a quilt of rusted light,
Frees a single tear;
Into the darkness she whispers,
I am nothing.
I am alone.

( C: 4 )

14 April 2005

“The Poet’s Testament”

I give back to the earth what the earth gave,
All to the furrow, none to the grave,
The candle’s out, the spirit’s vigil spent;
Sight may not follow where the vision went.

I leave you but the sound of many a word
In mocking echoes haply overheard,
I sang to heaven. My exile made me free,
from world to world, from all worlds carried me.

Spared by the furies, for the Fates were kind,
I paced the pillared cloisters of the mind;
All times my present, everywhere my place,
Nor fear, nor hope, nor envy saw my face.

Blow what winds would, the ancient truth was mine,
And friendship mellowed in the flush of wine,
And heavenly laughter, shaking from its wings
Atoms of light and tears for mortal things.

To trembling harmonies of field and cloud,
Of flesh and spirit was my worship vowed.
Let form, let music, let all quickening air
Fulfil in beauty my imperfect prayer.

( C: 4 )