One More, I Guess

The advent calendar thing means I got to almost-daily, a first.  In theory if you want to be read you have to post daily, if not more.  But I don't know - as a reader, with dailies, I wonder if there are episodes I've missed.

But the continuing theme here, and I bloody well mean it, is that it isn't about attracting readers.  (A good thing - currently I have maybe five.  I guess.  I don't know how to ascertain that, actually.)

What this is about is writing, and waving my arm over my head and saying "Here!"  As in second grade.  (Where I really took off as a hand-raiser.  I didn't stop until the second year of prep school, where coolness trumped everything, and hand-raising isn't very cool.)  (OK, no more parentheses...)

It's also about risk and choice, of course, and about the passage of time, and about searching for the Deity.  On the last front, last night as I worried my way through my nightly 3 am wakeup, I reencountered Martin Buber and I-thou.  He may be onto something.  At least it's a process, and lord knows I need one.

And Goodbye To All That

Sometimes this is just spilling, sometimes free-form thinking, sometimes with an agenda, sometimes just a compulsion to be here.  I'm here.  I'm breathing.  I'm typing with my eyes closed, but editing with them open.

There is not much good about the end of the year, a great pile of things left undone and ought not to have done, and I have only seldom loved the arrival of the New Year.  This one, 2012, has every indication of being just another in the pack.  But what a number - what a science fiction number.  By 2012 we were all going to be travelling on light beams and living forever in 28-year-old bodies and wisdom of the ages.

Still waiting for the light beam, with 32 hours to go.  As for wisdom, if it comes, all I know so far is that it won't come from some damn computer.

Christmas Eve and the new moon

A sliver of light that set early.  A long cold night but with stars, those sad remote stars.  Leading to daybreak, the third morning after the solstice.   Another year, another redemption.

A Solar Sail

"...a spacecraft propelled by sunlight. Whereas a conventional rocket is propelled by the thrust produced by its internal engine burn, a solar sail is pushed forward simply by light from the Sun. This is possible because light is made up of packets of energy known as “photons,” that act like atomic particles, but with more energy. When a beam of light is pointed at a bright mirror-like surface, its photons reflect right back, just like a ball bouncing off a wall. In the process the photons transmit their momentum to the surface twice – once by the initial impact, and again by reflecting back from it. Ever so slightly, propelled by a steady stream of reflecting photons, the bright surface is pushed forward."  From The Planetary Society's website.

Solstice

My ancestors, the Welsh, called it the "point of roughness".

I heard a story about its connection to Christmas.   That the propect of each day's light growing shorter was terrifying - was the sun going away... it has always comes back, but will it come back this year? Then, each time this year, the process stopped and the next day it reversed.  They'd wait three days to be sure - yes, the days were growing longer.  God isn't leaving us behind.  Calls for a holiday.

Time Travel.

One of those many times when I need it, since I failed to open a window yesterday. 

We think about it lot this time of year, as New Year's Eve approaches.  Through the magic of documentation and "as of" execution, we can often go a little back or forward.  But midnight on 12/31 - that's a tough one.

Only one I know that's tougher, and that's death.  Lots of things can be fixed while the client's alive.  Once he's gone, he's gone.  That Will better be right.

Cash

The gift that everyone loves.

But don't forget The Clovers:  your cash ain't nothing but trash.

"She said this ain't a circus and I don't need a clown."