Words Written Down

by WR

Posting date: 4/30/07
Returned from: Iraq
Milblog url: walterreed.blogspot.com
Email: snapshotdc@gmail.com

1. Always have a notepad, pen, watch, knife, and flashlight on hand.

In life, as in the Army, there are always unforeseen events. An important note needs [to be] taken, you need the precise time, something needs fixed, or you just can’t find your way. All these items are small, cheap, and lifesavers when you have them and deal breakers when you don’t.

2. Have a copy of everything. If its important have two copies.

If it has your name on it, then you need a copy. If it affects your health, paycheck, or other element of well-being, then you need two copies. Records get lost, computers crash, and sometimes people just need to see a piece of 80 bond under their noses to get anything done.

3. Make friends wherever you go.

It doesn’t matter if you are there for 20 minutes or 20 months, make friends. Inevitably, you will see them again. You will go to where they are. They will go to where you will be. And at the end of the day friends are the only ones covering the front of your position.

4. Make an SOP. Know the SOP. Work the SOP.

Civilian. Military. It doesn’t matter. There should be a Standard Operating Procedure for daily life. Often we don’t have fulfilling days or lives because “we just don’t have time” and that is because we often don’t have good processes. On the battlefield there is a place for everything and everything in its place. There is a rote routine (often personal) for everything from showering in the morning to they way we check our gear. We do this because often there are times when there is no time, but the task still needs done. Routine accomplishes this, and we accomplish more when we have a routine.

5. Sleep.

Sleep is one of the things in life we don’t appreciate until we aren’t getting it. Sleep recharges us, heals us, and lets us put a new perspective on the world. If it was bad when you went to sleep and its still bad when you wake up, well then I guess you weren’t missing anything. If by chance its better when you wake up, then apparently the world doesn’t rest upon your shoulders. So take a nap Atlas.

6. Don’t go cheap.

On a personal note, I didn’t grow up with money. I have learned to make due with what is available. There are times, however, that you can’t afford to go cheap. Whether it be getting the brakes fixed on your HUMVEE or your Ford, get it done, get it done by a professional, and get the warranty. If you are buying shoes (yet again personal) don’t get them because they are cheaper. Get them because they are comfortable and durable. If not it’ll be more than your wallet that will hurt.

7. Find humor everywhere.

I have been in some pretty crappy places, some pretty crappy situations, and forced myself to find some humor, somewhere. It helps you cope. It takes that sting out of the painful, awkward, or otherwise difficult moments in life. And humor is one of those conversations you can have with yourself because you always get your own jokes. As a side note, as much as it may pain you, never ridicule someone for a dark sense of humor. We aren’t them and they aren’t us, but we are just trying to get by. I think Plato best puts this in perspective by saying, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”

8. Don’t tolerate oppression.

I am again reminded of someone that is more intelligent than myself.

“First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Stand up for what you think is right. In the end if you were wrong, so be it.

9. Tell your Story.

Battles are not merely lost by the Soldiers on the field, the armament, or the weather. They are one and lost by the lessons learned of prior battles. We learn these lessons because someone told their story. As a young Soldier I was a sponge for knowledge; it was before the current age of mass communication. Older Soldiers told their stories in hopes that a single silver strand of wisdom would be gleamed and be passed on. It is part of what we contribute to society. When one can gleam wisdom from the lessons others have learned we have possible prevented the hardship by which the another person gained that knowledge. And by sharing our lessons we are helping someone else. That is one of our greatest contributions to humanity.

10. Never forget.

Never forget who you are. Never forget what you have done. Never forget where you are. Never forget what it is you want from this one life we have. Never forget the people that stood behind you in support, beside you in camaraderie, or in front of you in adversity. Never forget to write home. Never forget that someone is missing you. Never forget what you have learned. Never forget to share what you have learned. Never forget anything; lest you forget everything.

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Draw a window on the wall to remind you of the moonlight that soaks the walls while you are asleep

Yoko Ono

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Art lives by constraints and dies from freedom.

Leonardo DaVinci

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Excerpts from Into Africa by Marq de Villiers & Sheila Hirtle

A river might have a beginning, but people don’t really. They only have a time and a place where they finally impress themselves on history.

On Apartheid;

That was over, a curiosity of history. It seemed to me, from up there on the Mountain at Night, that the historians of the future will look back on apartheid with bemusement but not very much interest. The only real issue, I saw, was this: How can cultures adapt? Can they invent new ways of dealing with the ever lasting present, or must they remain imprisoned by the past, and stagnate, fade away into insignificance?

On Shaka, the Warrior General of the Zulu;

Then in an episode of high symbolism, he murdered a pregnant aunt, and was proclaimed muninu, chief.  Georges Balandier, the French ethnographer, explains the event this way: ‘By killing his kin, Mbene (Shaka) acquires the state of solitude necessary for the domination of men and the consecration of power. He is comparable to the heroes of Greek legend who seek the royal succession only after they have ceased to respect the prevailing laws. This defiance of the fundamental laws of any society is the mark of an exceptional being. Sacred violence remains the privilege of a sovereign with two faces: one brutal and tyrannical, the other justice loving and conciliatory.

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The Language of the Goddess by Marija Gimbutag

Mythic thinking is not accidental but occurs within an organized system of divine activities and functions. Thus Mythology reflects an ideological structure. Comparative studies show Indo-European mythology and society as consisting of 3 classes: sovereign, warrior and pastoral-agricultural; these relate to divine functions in the 3 realms of the sacred, of physical force and of prosperity. Thus first light was shone on the nature of Indo-European life and ideology.

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The main theme of Goddess symbolism is the mystery of birth and death and the renewal of life, not only human but all life on earth and indeed in the whole cosmos. Symbols and images cluster around the pathogenetic (self-generating) Goddess and her basic functions as Giver of Life, Wielder of Death and not less importantly, as Regeneratrix, and around the Earth Mother, the Fertility Goddess young and old, rising and dying with plant life. She was the single source of all life who took her energy from the springs and wells, from the sun, moon, and moist earth, This symbolic system represents cyclical, not linear, mythic time. In art this is manifested by the signs of dynamic motion: whirling and twisting spirals, winding and coiling snakes, circles, crescents, horns, sprouting seeds and shoots. The snake was a symbol of life energy and regeneration, a most benevolent, not an evil, creature. Even the colours had a different meaning than in the Indo-European symbol system. Black did not mean death or the underworld: it was the colour of fertility, the colour of damp caves and rich soil, of the womb of the Goddess where life begins. White, on the other hand, was the colour of death, of bones.

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If we hope to lie not just from moment to moment, but in true consciousness of our existence, then our greatest need and most difficult achievement is to find meaning in our lives.

The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettleham

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If life is a Game These Are the Rules, the 10 Rules of Being Human.

Cherie Carter-Scott PhD

(Carter Scott references this quotation:) “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” (Helen Keller)

Rule One – You will receive a body.
Whether you love it or hate it, it’s yours for life, so accept it. What counts is what’s inside.

Rule Two – You will be presented with lessons.
Life is a constant learning experience, which every day provides opportunities for you to learn more. These lessons specific to you, and learning them ‘is the key to discovering and fulfilling the meaning and relevance of your own life’.

Rule Three – There are no mistakes, only lessons.
Your development towards wisdom is a process of experimentation, trial and error, so it’s inevitable things will not always go to plan or turn out how you’d want. Compassion is the remedy for harsh judgement – of ourselves and others. Forgiveness is not only divine – it’s also ‘the act of erasing an emotional debt’. Behaving ethically, with integrity, and with humour – especially the ability to laugh at yourself and your own mishaps – are central to the perspective that ‘mistakes’ are simply lessons we must learn.

Rule Four – The lesson is repeated until learned.
Lessons repeat until learned. What manifest as problems and challenges, irritations and frustrations are more lessons – they will repeat until you see them as such and learn from them. Your own awareness and your ability to change are requisites of executing this rule. Also fundamental is the acceptance that you are not a victim of fate or circumstance – ‘causality’ must be acknowledged; that is to say: things happen to you because of how you are and what you do. To blame anyone or anything else for your misfortunes is an escape and a denial; you yourself are responsible for you, and what happens to you. Patience is required – change doesn’t happen overnight, so give change time to happen.

Rule Five – Learning does not end.
While you are alive there are always lessons to be learned. Surrender to the ‘rhythm of life’, don’t struggle against it. Commit to the process of constant learning and change – be humble enough to always acknowledge your own weaknesses, and be flexible enough to adapt from what you may be accustomed to, because rigidity will deny you the freedom of new possibilities.

Rule Six – “There” is no better than “here”.
The other side of the hill may be greener than your own, but being there is not the key to endless happiness. Be grateful for and enjoy what you have, and where you are on your journey. Appreciate the abundance of what’s good in your life, rather than measure and amass things that do not actually lead to happiness. Living in the present helps you attain peace.
Rule Seven – Others are only mirrors of you.
You love or hate something about another person according to what love or hate about yourself. Be tolerant; accept others as they are, and strive for clarity of self-awareness; strive to truly understand and have an objective perception of your own self, your thoughts and feelings. Negative experiences are opportunities to heal the wounds that you carry. Support others, and by doing so you support yourself. Where you are unable to support others it is a sign that you are not adequately attending to your own needs.

Rule Eight – What you make of your life is up to you.
You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. Take responsibility for yourself. Learn to let go when you cannot change things. Don’t get angry about things – bitter memories clutter your mind. Courage resides in all of us – use it when you need to do what’s right for you. We all possess a strong natural power and adventurous spirit, which you should draw on to embrace what lies ahead.

Rule Nine – Your answers lie inside of you.
Trust your instincts and your innermost feelings, whether you hear them as a little voice or a flash of inspiration. Listen to feelings as well as sounds. Look, listen, and trust. Draw on your natural inspiration.

Rule Ten – You will forget all this at birth.
We are all born with all of these capabilities – our early experiences lead us into a physical world, away from our spiritual selves, so that we become doubtful, cynical and lacking belief and confidence. The ten Rules are not commandments, they are universal truths that apply to us all. When you lose your way, call upon them. Have faith in the strength of your spirit. Aspire to be wise – wisdom the ultimate path of your life, and it knows no limits other than those you impose on yourself.

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The theatre is a place where one has time for the problems of people to whom one would show the door if they came to one’s office for a job.

Tennessee Williams

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The hero is one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by.
The saint is the man who walks through the dark paths of the world, himself a light.

Felix Adler

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An edge is an irregular zone that comes into being between environments. It is not a line.

Edge effects are the phenomena that inhabit edges and the ways in which they do so. They and their worlds are not predictable from within the rules specific to the environments to either side. They are their own and in-between.

If language is a system a sequence is an environment.

If language is a system we are all edge effects.

Everything that happens is an edge effect.

Stephen Hawking

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Before I studied the art, a punch to me was just a punch, a kick just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick no longer a kick. Now that I’ve mastered the art, a punch is just a punch, a kick just a kick. The height of cultivation is really nothing special. It is merely simplicity; the ability to express the utmost with the minimum.

Bruce Lee

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Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of his existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God.

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Nature/nurture is not an either/or duality but, rather, represents a both/and type of complimentarily.

…the history of our species could be written from the perspective that males have spent the last 150,000 years trying to regain the power they so emphatically lost to females when we differentiated away from Homo Erectus.

The key is women’s ability to say “no” – which can determine whether a man will reproduce.

Leonard Shlain – Sex, Time & Power

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The interaction between reasoning and decision making.

In order to decide, judge;

In order to judge, reason;

In order to reason, decide (what to reason about).

Philip Johnson-Laird – Cognition

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I don’t know if you’ve heard

how the junkies in our subways are the canaries of our soul.

David Ross MacDonald – Hugh’s Room Undesirables CD Release Party

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… the facts of life mattered nothing to him who by the power of fancy held in fee the twin realms of space and time.

W. Somerset Maugham – Of Human Bondage

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Everything that was magical was just a way of describing the world in words it couldn’t ignore.

Terry Pratchett – Pyramids

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One meets the alien through a haze, a fog composed of the vital questions that nobody thought to ask.

Gwyneth Jones – Spirit

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If the exceptionally gifted adult with an IQ of 150, or 160, or 170 has problems in adapting to his world, what must it have been like for William James Sidis, whose IQ was 250 or more?

Aldous Huxley once wrote:

“Perhaps men of genius are the only true men. In all the history of the race there have been only a few thousand real men. And the rest of us–what are we? Teachable animals. Without the help of the real man, we should have found out almost nothing at all. Almost all the ideas with which we are familiar could never have occurred to minds like ours. Plant the seeds there and they will grow; but our minds could never spontaneously have generated them .”

And so we see that the explanation for the Sidis tragedy is simple. Sidis was a feral child; a true man born into a world filled with animals–a world filled with us.

http://www.prometheussociety.org/articles/Outsiders.html

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THE OPTIMA INTERLACE

A higher frequency of a gene for extra testosterone might be useful in dealing with predators and other hostile groups, providing genes for peacekeeping within the group were also more abundant.

If enough evolutionary experiments are tried over the immense vistas of time available in the history of life, then very improbable adaptations in group size, say, or in the balance between inbreeding and outbreeding – can be institutionalized. Here we are talking about the evolution of a mechanism to guarantee continuing evolution, a second order or meta-evolutionary development.

Cultural diversity helps preserve genetic drift.

Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan – Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

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The bridge between who we are and what we do is “work”.

unknown

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When Aristotle first saw an ostrich he is reported to have said “This great bird can only be a cross between a mosquito and a giraffe”.

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Spontaneous or preternatural combustion of human beings is something that happens often enough for it to have been given a medical description – Autooxidation.

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In Emmerson Pugh’s words – “If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.”

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“In my opinion his parents had met briefly at a masquerade ball.”

Double Star by RAH

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A Separate Reality by Carlos Castenadas

The Task of Seeing

Don Juan speaks: Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he is incapable of abandoning himself to anything. Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently a=detached so he can’t deny himself anything. A man of that sort, however, does not crave, for he has acquired a silent lust for life and all things of life. He knows his death is stalking and won’t give him time to cling to anything, so he tries, without craving, all of everything.

A detached man, who knows he has no possibility of fencing off his death, has only one thing to back himself with: the power of his decisions. He has to be, so speak, the master of his choices. He must fully understand that his choice is his responsibility and once he makes it there is no longer time for regrets or recriminations. His decisions are finl, simply because his death does not permit him time to cling to anything.

And thus with an awareness of his death, with his detachment, and with the power of his decisions a warrior sets his life in a strategical manner. The knowledge of his death guides him and makes him detached and silently lusty; the power of his final decisions makes him able to choose without regrets and what he chooses is always strategically the best; and so he performs everything he has to with gusto and lusty efficiency.

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He was an anomaly in all that nothingness, a chance trick knot whereby nothingness redoubled upon itself had produced somethingness – consciousness, being, life itself. He was nothing and he was everything there was. He was the interface. He did not exist. He was all.

Jofe D’mahl sucked void in Riding the Torch by Norman Spinrad

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Chatelaine interview with Gore Vidal

You can’t generalize about women or men. The only difference they’ve ever determined as far as I know is that women lack depth perception. Men are born with it. Look at women drivers. When you see a car up ahead that’s hugging the centre line, you know that’s a woman whose depth perception is slightly off. This is supposedly because men were hunters and had to throw things at animals, while the women sat at home tending the fire because they couldn’t run as fast. And they couldn’t run as fast because as the human race developed, the head got bigger and in order to accommodate that, the woman’s pelvis got bigger, and when the pelvis gets bigger the legs become knock-kneed. The one thing women seem to be absolutely hipped on in males is their trim bottoms. It’s as though women have an atavistic memory of when they had slim bottoms and narrow hips.

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Fear was the other side of the coin of imagination, the primeval heritage that no amount of intelligence could ever deny.

A Flight of Chariots by Jon Cleary

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A Child’s Garden of Values

C. L. Frost 

Once I imagined that the dusk, each day,

Would dust crags golden and let fall a shower

Of gold coins that the high sky’s bronze vault

Could no longer hold. That, of course, was why

The morning lawn showed and showed off

A wealth of dandelion heads not there before —

Pure gold disks abutting, overlapping, in tiers

Rising like piles of newly minted, pure gold coins.

So I thought in awe until they all, by years

Wiser, scolded, “Dandelions are only yellow.

Don’t ever call one gold; they come too freely

To have worth, financial or of other kind,”

And so demoted the sky to miser and riches

To mere yellow weeds best mowed over, fool’s

Gold, a counterfiet specie. Still, when by drops

The day’s luster slipped away, I wondered where

All those colored chips had fallen, onto which

Green laps the largess had randomly splattered;

And wondered why no touted pansies or petunias

Could so multiply overnight and grow glowing

Like new money or a thousand sprinkled tiny suns

As one disgraced mere weed always could.

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Frivolity, at the edge of a Moral Swamp, hears Hymn-Singing in the Distance and dons the Galoshes of Remorse.

Edward Gorey

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Over and over again Andean stories tell of spirits embodied in stones and giants transformed into natural features. The landscape has an intricate numinous geography; it is charged with meaning that must be respected and heeded. The earth, in this view, is not some thing to be left alone; the wak’a (sacred stones) that litter Puruvian anthropological sites are often partly sculpted, as if they had needed some human attention to manifest their sacred qualities. Thus, the human-made tunnels into the temples were part of what made it embody the power of a mountain. As I walked down the dimly lighted corridor toward where the torchlit deity had stood, my fingers ran along the walls created by Chavin craftworkers. They were fit beautifully into place and as cold and hard as the mountains they came from. But they did not gain their p;owed without my hand to close the circuit. The natural world is incomplete without the human touch.

Charles C. Mann 1491 – Part II – Very Old Bones

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Spandrels

A term Stephen Jay Gould and Henry Lewontin borrowed from architecture.

Spandrels are evolved traits having no particular impact, either positive or negative, on survival or reproduction. Spandrels are features of evolution that did not evolve for the purpose of enhancing an organism’s survival or reproductive abilities. Spandrels are the extraneous manifestations necessitated by an earlier adaptation that may have evolved to perform an entirely different function. Not every physical feature or behaviour pattern organized by the genome has a beneficial purpose. Do not ascribe a “purpose” to every feature of an organism.

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What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves, and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

Victor E. Frankle – Man’s Search for Meaning

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People unfamiliar with the world in time find themselves marooned in the ceaselessly dissolving and therefore terrifying present.

Lewis Lapham American Editor

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Cynics are persons who make themselves the measure of other people

J. M. Barrie – When a Man’s Single

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God sent one chosen son because He understands theatre. One man walking on the water is a miracle. Two is quite ridiculous.

Morris West – The Clowns of God

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Now a sign has, as such, three references:

1st, it is a sign to some thought which interprets it,

2nd, it is a sign for some object to which in that thought it is equivalent,

3rd, it is a sign, in some respect or quality, which brings it into connection with it’s object.

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Absent a mechanism for connecting symbol structures to experienced reality, thinking is nothing more than empty symbol crunching.

Charles S. Peirce – Journal of Speculative Philosophy

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Isaac Asimov – Man and Evolution

Man was intelligent enough to be a tool-designing animal in a large way, and that meant that a new kind – a much faster kind – of evolution began to take place.

Man did not have to evolve claws very slowly; he developed stone knives and hatchets very rapidly. He did not have to develop missile projection, but developed spears and arrows. He learned how to use fire, and in this way developed an attribute that no animal had ever evolved or, apparently, ever could evolve in the ordinary way.

Over a relatively short period of time, man ‘evolved’ through intelligence into a much fiercer and more deadly animal than he was to begin with. No other species of life could evolve quickly enough to cope with him. It meant that man began his at first slow but ever more rapid climb to predominance.

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He who judges shall be judged in kind, but whosoever fails to judge for fear of being judged himself shall suffer tyranny.

Prolog to ‘The Lattice of Evidence’ – Courtship Rite by Donald Kingsbury

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Pride, Wrath, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, Avarice, Sloth – the 7 Deadly Sins

Faith, Hope, Charity, prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance – the 7 Virtues 

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The Arts – music, visual arts, writing, cuisine, fabrics – These are our intellectual wallpaper – this is the background noise of ouir culture.

The magic that suspends us above the mundane.

The architectural bones and flesh of our civilization.

moi

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In Search of the Miraculous by P. D. Ouspensky

Our Consicousness and perceptions of “I”.

Eastern teachings have found that Man consists of 4 bodies to work through.

1st body – Carnal Body, the “Carriage” – (body), the Physical Body

2nd body – Natural Body – the “Horse” – (feelings, desires), the Astral Body

3rd body – Spiritual Body, the “Driver” – (mind), the Mental Body

4th body – Divine Body, the “Master” – (I, consciousness, will) the Causal Body

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“She urged me for many years to write a book for the general reader and has often helped me resist the pressure for the urgent to drive out the important.”

Paul Seabright – The Company of Strangers

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He went down to his hut in the woods and sat down to read what he had written on his new book.

It’s blind poverty left him aghast. to call it ridiculously naive would have been a compliment. He could hardly believe that he was responsible for such supercilious trash.

Thomas Covenant “You Cannot Hope” Lord Foul’s Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson

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However, one also owes loyalty how his lives work and to the great catalog under which one listed it, as Aristotle had listed his knowledge, and which was being taught once more. Thus, under Art, one placed painting. And under Painting, art and artifice. And under those, this Caravaggio and himself. Truth to the catalog required that one remain pure in his subscriptions. So Caravaggio must become pure artist while he himself remained artificer.

The Goliath Head – A Novel about Caravaggio by Charles J Calitri w. Bertram D Brettschneider

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‘Creation is not making something up out of nothing. You can’t create in the physical universe – the best you can do is reorganize its molecules. No, real creation happens in here’ –  she reached over and tapped my head.

‘Creation is the act of discrimination. You separate this from that and you have created a space between them. Creation is also the act of connection. You connect this to that and you have created a new entity or a new relationship. Creation is the act of drawing a line. You use the line to separate or connect or enclose; but you’re the one who drew the line in the first place.’

A Day for Damnation by David Gerrold

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