Describing The Undeterminable

A place of the unimaginable,
That reality inside ourselves,
The place of the unstoppable.
Here’s the place with all the vibrant shelves,
The guardians of deep knowledge,
Ready for all who want to delve,
And live on creation’s edge.
Where all is finally decided,
In harmony with all who pledge,
To be forever united.
The challenge here is to elect
The best among the truly gifted.
Then train them in how to project
And formulate the unbelievable,
To make utopias a feasible subject
Creating new amazing realities at will, now available
Through precise unity of soul, time, mind and matter.
The time has come for the highly improbable,
All previous perceptions now shatter,
The differences between dimensions become dissolved,
Humanity becomes the bearer of joyous laughter,
And earth becomes the paradise of the highest creativity ever evolved.

Poetic Justice With A Twilight Zone Twist

In the episode “Two” of the Twilight Zone there is a noticeable debate on the benevolence of human nature and its change through a period of warfare. The episode begins with the introduction of a Russian, female character in a worn out military uniform. She searches for food at what seems to be a restaurant, finding a can of chicken and as she opens it, a male, American character appears. These two lonely beings are what is left of a city that has not been inhabited for five years due to a war. They begin fighting as they recognize each other’s uniforms, during the struggle the male strikes her and the female falls unconscious.

The male character rummages through the remains of the city probably reflecting on what he has done and seems to want to create a family as he tells the following words to the woman as he wakes her up and offers her some chicken from the can. “But I’m afraid the only way I could convince you of my honorable intentions would be by force. And I’m terribly, terribly sick of fighting.” (11:00) Even though the Russian doesn’t understand what he says, she completely changes her behavior towards him. She is curious of the man as he walks into a barber shop and shaves his face. They continue walking through the city and pass by a theatre where they both spot the dead bodies of two soldiers and each of them run for the bodies’ weapons. They both aim at each other, giving the viewer a feeling of going back to the old times of war, of the human’s nature to destroy each other, even when both are in deplorable conditions and the simultaneous opposing need to stand beside each other to survive. At this moment, we can understand how ‘perfect’ this punishment is. How life-changing it would be to be alone in a city with a person whose ideals I have opposed with my life and now my life is hanging on the thread of cooperation and union.

They both put their guns on their backs and continue walking. The American leads them to a clothes store where he stares at a woman’s dress. The woman says prekrassnyi which is Russian for pretty. In this moment, we have confirmation that she is Russian, but there is some kind of understanding between them that transcends the spoken language. The punishment they have received by finding each other is recompensed through this unstable and strange relationship which has followed on awkward, uneasy steps that are clearly changing their minds and characters. The man now asks the woman to try on the dress, this resembles a transformation and communion proposal of some sort , which she considers for some time. She then enters a recruiting office where she begins to change her uniform, her past military life, for her new dress as a civilian. In the office, she begins to change her mind as she is exposed to American Posters that contain propaganda in which the Russians are shown as grotesque beasts. “Your… country needs men and women. All ages. Join Now! Our army needs all of you.” (18:27) She hurriedly comes out of the office and shoots at the American who leaves in a heartbeat to save himself. These seconds of the video confirm the poetic justice in this piece clearly showing that the punishment the two main characters receive is proportional to the hatred for the actions of the other and the obsession for the ideals they once stood, fought and killed for.

The Russian who is hiding behind a car and the American meet once again as he comes out of a building dressed up as if for a wedding. The woman shows herself dressed in the gown he had showed her before which finally gives place for what we all hope is the final reconciliation. All these wars, hatreds, divisions and bloodshed finally end in some sort of blending, mending and uniting once again. Will we ever learn and start connecting instead of killing each other from day one? Killing is the quick, stupid, easy yet horrendous way. Downsizing our differences and uniting by strengthening and empowering our eternal similarities takes not only a lot of brains and great timing, but active wisdom, emotional intelligence and a deep love for our frail humanity.

The Unseen On MSN: Periods, Comas And Quotation Marks

John: Hey Mike. How was your trip back to San Antonio?

Mike: Other than the two hour delay at LAX, it was OK. How about you?

John: It was OK, but I’m still waiting for my golf clubs to arrive. American Airlines wasn’t able to put them on my flight. I have a tournament on Saturday, so I’m very nervous that I won’t be able to play as well with my other set of clubs. Do you have any tournaments coming up?

Mike: I have one in two weeks but I hurt my wrist the last day of camp. It was in the 14^th hole, second shot, I didn’t see a rock beside the ball near the lake edge. Remember? I twisted the club coming in to hit it and got the rock instead.

John: Oh, yes. I remember. I hope you get better before the tournament. You were playing like a pro.

Mike: I don’t think so, the doctors here in Bogota told me I may have to leave golf alone, for a couple of months.

John: Well, that’s not so bad. You can read those Spanish books you were almost unconsciously leaving behind in the camp.

Mike: Oh, no it gets even worse. I left them on the bus that took us to the airport. I was trying to unfasten my seatbelt with the injured hand so I left the books in the seat compartment in front of me.

John: Well, it’s great that you live in a Spanish speaking country. Back here that would be a bigger problem.

Mike: Oh, well. How is the piano going? When do you start classes? Remember what Mr. Nolan told us, “It is never good to throw out something that can be of use someday.”

John: I don’t think he was talking about piano lessons. His wife had just thrown out his clothes (thinking he had bought them in China for nothing) out the window to make room for her new flat television and he had to wear his old pajamas to buy new clothes.

Mike: That’s pretty wild. I think you’re tired of piano. Maybe it’s a good idea to change teachers or try out that great saxophone you bought in New Orleans last Spring.

John: My mother donated that one to the orphanage where she works on Saturday to raise money because I never used it.

Mike: Did she ask for your permission?

John: No, she gave me 300 dollars to get my new Nikon camera.

Mike: I’m thinking of taking up guitar to finally put some music to all those songs I’ve written.

John: Well maybe I’ll try the drums and we can start playing together.

Mike: We could try someday on MSN in a few months and then live, when the families fly down to Argentina to visit the rest of the family. I’ll take my guitar and songs.

John: I think they have every instrument on the planet on that ranch. They’re all musicians. We would have a blast, jamming together. That’s really cool.

Mike: Let’s do it. By the way Alexa asked me for your phone number. Do you want her to have it?

John: Now, why isn’t Sandra asking for my number?

Mike: Because she already has a boyfriend, you’ll have to wait until next summer. What do I tell Alexa?

John: Sure, give it to her. We’ll be visiting Australia during Thanksgiving to scuba dive at the barrier reef and she lives nearby.

Mike: Good luck with that. We’ll be in Boston having our turkey, egg nog and pumpkin pie.

John: You opened up my appetite and I’m being called to dinner.

Mike: Lucky you.

John: Look who’s talking, the one with the live-in chef.

Mike: Well you know our home is always your home, staff included. Bye.

John: See ya.

Blogs-A-Million

From the moment we arrive on earth, we are taught that with freedom comes responsibility, a simple truth we carry around throughout our lives. We sometimes forget these simple truths and don’t consider what we’re doing, as we can see from the following maxim: “there are bloggers out there who will do practically anything—start rumors, tell lies, pick fights, create fake personas, and post embarrassing videos—to get noticed and linked to.” (Blogs by Sarah Boxer) Our hungry egos push us to make some pretty silly decisions for the sake of stimulating our fame, in this case to be recognized as an important blogger. It is our individual responsibility to communicate the truth always and try to keep squeaky clean our own part of the web from these lies that become influential information in other people’s minds. The problem is as big as the web is, and it expands as fast as a user takes a couple of simple steps to create an account, which will transmit information all over the globe. “Today there are, by one count, more than 100 million blogs in the world, with about 15 million of them active.” (Blogs by Sarah Boxer) We must admit the cultural, political, ideological and social exchange these blogs manage must be enormous. Due to the accessibility of the internet it is easier to be part of this blog world which could lead to the destruction of a person’s reputation, character, emotions and individual traits. These blogs can effect whole nations and groups of people by posting devious information about what really is going on politically, economically, religiously and socially. You can only imagine what could happen when civil unrest or a war is taking place.

Laws that defend the truth on the web are still to be created and enforced, and it is probably going to be impossible to control all countries which have access to blogging. The whole idea of a web police imposing their brand of web ethics is absolutely daunting. It would have to be universally decided and accepted by some organization like the United Nations. Copyright is just one of the main problems, since there is almost an absolute liberty (I say so due to the low but existent control of the domain the blog is registered to) it is very possible to take credit for another’s work. “Books fret over copyright and libel. Blogs grab whatever they want with impunity—news, gossip, pictures, videos. Making a book out of bloggy material, if it could be done at all, would kill it, wouldn't it?” (Blogs by Sarah Boxer) The possibility blogs give an author are unimaginable in a book. As I think of this, I don’t even believe there could be any control over the material in blogs, even with the strictest of rules (unless a major reset in the www would happen).

The connections between blogs run down the stream to the original source, which in many cases won’t even be credited for the information. Links make this possible with a click instead of the running down through pages to search for the correct footnote. “Links—those bits of highlighted text that you click on to be transported to another blog or another Web site. (Links are the Web equivalent of footnotes, except that they take you directly to the source.) It's not only that the links are hard to transpose into print. It's that the whole culture of linking—composing on the fly, grabbing and posting whatever you like, making weird, unexplained connections and references—doesn't sit happily in a book.” (Blogs by Sarah Boxer) Through links, people can get just the information they want (and even a lot that they aren’t aware they acquired), without an open encyclopedia. It is necessary for all who use the web to reflect on the power of blogging and to try to control our own little thread of it, in order for it to be a constructive tool, a very nourishing and true source of varied information. We are posed with a fascinating challenge: how to keep the internet free, creative, open, tolerant, growing and available to all, yet at the same time honest, healthy and clean. To make this happen we must each start with ourselves and blog about this amazing problem so the web itself finds and activates solutions.