Crazy Thoughts From the Beach

"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint." - Mark Twain


Late last night I was standing on the picnic table on the back porch of the beach house my family's renting for the week, looking out over the ocean. And I thought about just how freaking amazing the world is.


The universe is enormous. There are stars 13 billion light years away. We live here. We live on a tiny little insignificant planet somewhere in the middle of it all and nothing we do really matters in the grand scheme of things but doesn't that make it so much better?


If I'm eating a really delicious bagel, no one else cares. It matters so little, but I'm sure as heck enjoying that bagel a lot. So who cares if it doesn't matter? I and thousands of other people are eating bagels that are good and getting pleasure from that. The simple fact that you can eat a bagel and it can make you happy is awesome.


I don't understand why it bothers people to think about how all of our emotions are just biochemical processes, because doesn't that make it that much more amazing? A few chemicals floating around in your brain can make you feel so wonderful or so miserable and how does that even work? How can chemicals make you feel so strongly? I don't know. I don't know, but I love it.


And there's so many people. I looked to my left and saw another island all lit up, and there was a couple walking along the beach with flashlights and they all have thoughts and lives and people they know and people they like and I have no idea what all of it is because we don't know each other at all and have entirely separate experiences of life except maybe they saw me standing on a table and laughing at the sky and thought I was crazy. 


Which, you know, would be a fair assumption.


I have a friend who says the only reason to believe in God is if that belief makes you happy.
This is why I don't.

Hazel

"I haven't the slightest idea how to change people, but I still keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out." - David Sedaris


I just got back from a week of intense philosophy-learning at debate camp in Oklahoma (hate Kant, love Rousseau), and that was very interesting and full of adventures, but I really want to talk to you guys about one of the people I met there for completely unrelated reasons.


In fact, I met him because I was sitting on a table in a laundry room attempting to play Oblivion with a track pad.


His name is Hazel (but all of the college students call him Pops), and he's the head of security (or something like that) at the university I stayed at. He's also a retired pilot who fought in Vietnam, and has been all over the world. He wasn't busy doing much of anything so he decided to hang around and tell us stories about his life, local history, and dumb college students he's had to help.


One of them honestly didn't know what an elevator was, or how one would go about getting to the third floor of a building. I ask you.


My one friend's been joking with me a lot this week saying "oh my god, your life is a YA novel." This part actually sort of was. He's a super old, knowledgeable guy who's seen practically the whole world and looks a little like Morgan Freeman and was totally willing to just hang out and tell us stories and is basically just fantastic. It was so cool.


And then we saw him again this morning as we were once again sitting around in the laundry room waiting for our ride to the airport and he came in to do his morning ritual of putting ten bucks into the vending machine to get back dollar coins to put into his Savings Tin Can.


I now have five dollar coins in my wallet.


He also taught us how to identify drag queens by looking at their hands (biological males' middle fingers are apparently proportionally longer?), and is the only politically correct Oklahoman I met on the whole trip. Or at least, the only one who cares about being PC.

The Universe in a Single Atom, by HH The Dalai Lama

"The most important point is to ensure that science never becomes divorced from the basic human feeling of empathy with our fellow beings. Just as one's fingers can function only in relation to the palm, so scientists must remain aware of their connection to society at large. Science is vitally important, but it is only one finger of the hand of humanity...What matters above all is the motivation that governs the use of science and technology, in which ideally heart and mind are united." - The Dalai Lama

Welcome to the 2012 installment of "Olivia Reads Nonfiction Over the Summer and then Blogs About It." Unlike last year when it was all neuroscience, yesterday at the library I found The Universe in a Single Atom.

It's not about reconciling religion with science. The Dalai Lama does not find that terribly interesting. Instead, he operates under the assumption that they can be, and then gets on with his book. Instead of looking at Buddhism through a scientific lens, he looks at science through a Buddhist lens--how does science relate to things that Buddhism and those that practice it care about?

His tutors didn't bother with science when he was growing up, but in his teens he went on an Epic Quest (my words, not his) to learn, using his station to visit some of the greatest minds in their respective fields who were willing to spend a few days talking him through important concepts.

This book is kind of fantastic. It's well-written to the point that the mere act of reading is enjoyable, and contains all of the excitement and wonder that actual scientists got over a long time before they got published. His Holiness is incredibly humble--always stopping to praise his teachers and friends-- and even more genuine in his thoughts and curiosity. It makes me smile.

The religion vs. science rivalry is something I got over a long time ago, but it's still a dichotomy that I find interesting, so it's nice to look at both of them at an entirely different angle. It's not about science's place in Buddhism, or any other religion. It's about science's place in life, and in humanity-- why we should care about it, as well as why it can't and shouldn't be the center of everything.

I'm only about 30 pages in, but I love it to pieces. You should read it.

This is a Post About Love

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." - Game of Thrones

(Title in reference to this song)


Last week my friend was telling us a story in which a man told a bunch of teenagers he knew for certain that they'd never been in love. Now, I'm inclined to believe that he's probably right, but it still made me think.

When we're young, we can't be trusted to know when we are or are not in love. Heck, when I was (much) younger I had this whole thing about "Wait, how am I supposed to tell if I have a crush on someone?" Is it love? Is it infatuation? Is it just strong "like" ? So other people determine it for us-- you are not in love.

But then when you hit a certain age you're suddenly trusted to know these things, without anyone looking at you and saying "Yes, now you are in love. Real love."

So really, how can you trust any given adult to know what being in love is like any better than a teenager? Sure, it's more likely, since most people grow wiser with age (and if you observe them in a loving relationship, then they presumably have experience with these things), but it's not guaranteed. Just like there's 16 year olds who are more than able to vote intelligently and 30 year olds who really aren't.

I really, really like the passage that I quote in this post, since it actually lays out some criteria for it. My English teacher this past year hands it out to her freshmen when they read Romeo and Juliet and her juniors just because. And I'm very glad to have it.

A Comment

"Personally, I'm largely in favor of knowing things, but I think what sucks about being forced to learn a whole bunch of things you aren't directly interested in and don't see any inherent value in and don't need to know is that it makes learning things sort of terrible. Like, I don't think there are very many people who _really_ only care about either mathy things or languagey things. I think everyone has a very unique and eclectic range of interests, and they are interested in things to varying degrees, and I think the good kind of knowing things is having the ability to explore and understand and use those interests in a way that makes you excited about life and knowing even more things and gaining new interests and learning about them." - Ladylechuga, in a comment

I'd Like to Know

I have a friend who once wrote an entire essay (for English) about how he doesn't understand why he, a future engineer, needs to take English or be required to read certain books. I have another friend who's annoyed that important college-entrance things like the ACT require him to do math, even though he wants to go into theatre, which isn't exactly math-intensive.


Personally I'm on the side in favor of English, but I'd argue against both of them--not that I think a theatre major will ever need to use math beyond maybe geometry, but because I basically figure that knowing things is good.


Then again, I'm one of those crazy people who finds most things at least a little bit interesting, so that helps. In Spiderman last night when Harry asks Peter, "Who'd want to know that?" and he replied "Who wouldn't want to know that?" I thought "YOU UNDERSTAND ME!"


I agree that at some point it only makes sense to focus in on one area and not bother learning the other stuff, but I'm not exactly sure when that should be. Because on the one hand, if you really don't care about xyz and really don't think you'll ever want/need to know it, you shouldn't have to waste your time. But I also think that the more you know just in general, the better off you are.


Or, you know, maybe I just feel better about myself when I know things.

I Dreamed a Dream

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.” - Terry Pratchett

I love how dreams are something we can all relate to and talk about, but they're the most intensely private things we have.


We can talk about the "chased but can't run" dream or the "naked in public" dream and almost everyone has had those experiences. We all know how dream logic works, and how flying works and how it feels, and how dreams melt into each other.


But at least for right now, it's completely impossible to actually experience someone else's dream. It's something we absolutely must do alone. (Unless you're Leonardo DiCaprio, of course.)


I don't really have a point here--this is just a thing I was thinking about. There's probably a great metaphor I could find or something, but I'm going to go watch Spiderman with my family instead.

A Blog Post (About Summer and Things)

"A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation." - Mark Twain

Graduation was today, and the valedictorian's speech referenced Lord of the Rings, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Stephen Colbert. Needless to say, it made me very happy. Although I do have a lot of senior friends I probably won't ever see again, so...I'm somewhat less happy about that.


And no, I don't count as a senior yet. Not until the water tower across the street from my school reads "Class of 2013." And to think when I was younger I thought that whole thing was really stupid. Doesn't everyone know that the class of 2006 is graduating in 2006? What's the point? Let's just say I get the point now.


I'm not by any means taking a victory lap class-wise next year (6 or 7 AP classes), but life-wise? I'm good. Really good. Happy about the way things have shaped up, and several lightyears beyond excited for everything coming up. 


(My natural anxiety says everything will fall down in shambles around me, but I'm ignoring him. He's annoying.)


Writing-wise (that is what this blog was originally supposed to be about, right?), lack of a Macbook means lack of Scrivener means lack of ability to work on novels, but I am working on a sort-of play (prose for now, with every intention of switching formats later on), which is a different but fun experience that I'm enjoying. So far it's kind of a mixture of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (except less awesome).


And then of course, there's the sheer fact that it's summer. Hard to be upset about that.

We Are Everywhere

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." - Jack London


I've read a lot of things in various places in the wonderful wide world of the Internet about how history curricula  often overlook LGBT(and all the other letters) history entirely and how that's an enormous problem and so on, so I was pleased when the video we watched in class today actually mentioned the first big protests on the issue back in the 70s.


But I had to laugh when the crowd was shown carrying enormous signs reading "WE ARE EVERYWHERE."


If someone's repulsed by a group of people but they can't always determine whether or not someone belongs to that group on sight...the best thing to do probably isn't to remind them that they are likely surrounded on all sides. Just saying.


I get what they're trying to do--"we're a large minority and you probably (know/are friends with/related to) a lot of us and you should think about that before you say/think offensive things"-- but...I don't know, I feel like I would just be more paranoid and literally homophobic than I was before if I was one of those people.

To Kill a Mockingbird, My English Teacher, and Terry Pratchett

“Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.” ― Terry Pratchett

My English teacher has a lot of quirks when it comes to books (which is probably in the job description, but bear with me). For instance, she cannot go into a book store without buying a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, and then giving it to either a student or a random person she thinks should have it. She worships that book, and would marry Atticus in a heartbeat if she was single and had the opportunity.


She also never keeps novels. She reads them, sure, but after she's finished, she gives them away.


I was thinking about that today, and how I own about 300 books, most of which are novels. Why am I hanging onto them, when almost everything I read is from the library or my book club?


Some of them I just haven't read yet.
Some of them are gifts from my grandma, and you can't really just give away a book if my grandma gives it to you. She's just that kind of person.
Some of them are ARCs, so it's harder to give them away.
Some of them are things me/my sisters have/will need for school.
Some of them I want to reread at some point, or save for my eventual children.
Some of them I just need to own. Need. My English teacher is not a fan of Harry Potter (and in telling us this she referred to it as science fiction-- I about exploded), so she apparently does not run into this problem. I am mentally incapable of giving away my copies. Just...no.


And then there are the rest--about 30--which I took to the used book store today. I felt immensely satisfied.


...And then I promptly spent all of the resulting store credit (plus some) on a copy of every Terry Pratchett book they had.


Funny thing: I'm looking at Goodreads' list of Terry Pratchett quotes (because I haven't actually read anything by him yet-- he's just next on the list), and I found this:

“If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you.” ― Terry Pratchett