Sunday, January 26, 2003
Tragedy Brews...
..elsewhere. This was just a draft. More news later.
~
1/26/2003 09:42:00 PM
Saturday, January 18, 2003
Set Fire to Your Umbrella...
...was here, now it's journeying elsewhere.
Note to editor:
Don't worry, ArgyBarple has a circulation of about two dozen, plus or minus. Rough drafts posted here net me feedback from a few friends, but otherwise go basically unread.
-Shane
1/18/2003 06:51:00 PM
Friday, January 17, 2003
Things
Fall
Apart...
Chaos rules. The Veneer of Civilized Society is occasionally stripped away, revealing that Nasty Brutishness about which Hobbes warned us. Centre Cannot Hold, Dogs of War Let Slip; Etc Etc.
1 in 9 people at my job were “let go” this week. Suddenly. Without warning, only rumors. 400 “positions” were cut in 2 days. That’s 400 people downsized like McDonald’s Not-So-Happy Meals Reverse-Supersized for the lean, hungry Economy. Choose your own euphemism.
Security (yes, Security) began escorting people from their offices, and it's here that the metaphors and literary references really get out of control:
Each cubicle was suddenly A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, with the unknown Nothingness of unemployment lurking in the darkness beyond.
We heard the Queen of Hearts running through the halls yelling "Off with his head," and we sat, cringed, and wondered just whose head would roll next.
We were now walking blind through the lightless Cimmerian black of a cavern maze: "Say something, so we know you're still there!" We sent e-mails to each other and waited anxiously for replies. Anyone silent for too long was presumed to have fallen through a crack in the Earth, never to be seen again. And, of course, any one of us could slip into that abyss ourselves at any moment…
I was one of the lucky survivors. No survivor’s guilt for me, though. I’m only here because I’m worth 150% of most anyone else who does the same job I do, while I’m paid about 75% of their salaries. They let me pitch my tent here and they pay me two bags of peanuts a week. C’mon, who’s gonna fire Dumbo? Job Security. For now.
I mean, when they hired me, they gave me Jim’s job to do in addition to my own, and gave me a salary of $3,000 less than they used to pay ol' Jim. But I’m not really complaining: Sadly, it’s about the most money I’ve made in my life.
So while everyone else made small talk and laughed nervously like Prospero’s guests awaiting the Masque of the Red Death, I was feeling safe and secure as I finally truly appreciated that story by Poe. I was just a voyeur at the party watching from a balcony as the clock chimed Midnight and the Reaper collected my friends. The names of the Unlucky were e-mailed to me one by one:
Angie
Lori
Patti
Debbie
Russell
Rick
You get the idea…
Angie went first, ironically. A year ago, in a moment of genuine paranoia, I had composed a farewell letter to send to my favorite co-workers when the Guillotine of my perceived Imminent Termination would surely fall. I thought Management had finally grokked just how much time I spent surfing the internet and were about to do me in for it. Angie’s name was the first on the list of recipients on that goodbye note that still sits in my e-mail Drafts today...
Now it's all over, it's Friday, the weekend is here with plenty of alcohol for employed and unemployed alike, and we survivors are all a little grateful for the job we used to take for granted.
But you know what? I still hate getting up for work in the morning. And nothing's ever going to change that.
~
1/17/2003 10:03:00 AM
Wednesday, January 08, 2003
I Have No Time for This...
I like the idea of Time. But Time does not exist.
Time is only an arbitrary measurement... a measurement of motion or change. What is a minute? It is the second hand of a clock moving around the dial from the number twelve back to the number twelve again. What is a second? It is the energy state of a cesium-133 atom oscillating or changing 9,192,631,770 times*.
Time is how we "quantify" or "record" motion and change. It is how we understand, or really how we visualize or conceptualize, how quickly something changes or moves. But, if Time does not exist except as a unit of measurement, then we cannot even use words like "quickly" or "slowly." So what is left? Something we have to comprehend differently, with the right side of the brain: rhythm, flux... motion and change, like a graph of a sound wave but not nearly so simple or one-dimensional.
There is no Time; Only motion and change, and sentient life experiencing it.
Of course, Time must exist--otherwise we would not have created a word for it. But wait--a "falsehood" is something that is untrue, therefore something that does not exist... and yet we have a word for it. And we have a word for "nothing," as well. But, then again, there are people who will insist that nothing is something, too. Nothing certainly feels like something when we experience it for a long while...
So, for the sake of argument, let us assume Time exists. Having thought about the things we have just discussed, is "Time" still what you thought it was?
While we're at it:
There is no "Up" or "Down," either. Only Gravity.
And water boils at a different temperature on a mountaintop than it does at sea level.
What is my point?
I wish I knew. I just write these things. It's ultimately up to you to decide what they mean. Just like everything else in life.
*"In 1967, the definition of a second was officially divorced from the Earth's rotation. That year, the 13th General Conference of Weights and Measures redefined the second as '9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom.' Unlike quartz crystals, cesium atoms don't wear out. Their cycles comprise oscillations between precisely defined energy states, and they can oscillate forever without any distortion whatsoever. Furthermore, each atom of cesium oscillates at exactly the same frequency as all others, making each one a perfect timekeeper. Too perfect, even. In order to keep solar time and atomic time from drifting too far apart, the two were combined in 1964 to form Coordinated Universal Time, which is based on the atomic second and kept within 0.9 second of solar time by adding a leap second as needed."
-Encyclopedia Brittanica Online.
~
1/08/2003 11:18:00 PM
Sunday, January 05, 2003
The Tale of Exploding Head Buddha
Every now and then, whilst surfing the internet, I come across a little novelty item called Laptop Buddha. You've probably seen him too (but if not, click HERE).
Laptop Buddha is a cute little guy, but seeing him always makes me wax fondly about my own personal favorite Buddha: Exploding Head Buddha.
Ol' Exploding Head is not actually a Buddha. He's a Bodhisattva. But he's almost a Buddha, and he may as well be one. He's so cool, he's a Buddha to me. But maybe we had better start with some background for the Westerners here who may be familiar with Christianity but not with the spirituality and mythology of the East.
Buddhism is full of characters called Bodhisattvas. To put this in Christian terms, a Bodhisattva is kind of a miniature Christ. Let's compare:
Christ had it all. He lived in Heaven with God, of Whom He was a Part. But humans weren't doing too well on Earth; in fact, humans were (are?) headed straight for Hell. So one day Jesus chucked it all.
"I'm chucking it all. I'm giving up Heaven," He told God. (Or maybe God told Him. Or maybe Both? These things are a Mystery, after all.) "I'm heading down to Earth to save people from themselves."
"Sounds like a Plan," God told Jesus. (Or They told Each Other. Whatever.) "Go to it, Kid."
And so Jesus chucked it all, He gave up Heaven, and He came down to Earth to save people. Now, the Bible is a little inscrutable on the logic of this equation: Evidently people had sinned. A lot. And sin demands punishment, I guess. Anyway, Someone had to die, and it was going to be the Son of God. And by dying Jesus would save humanity from its sins.
(Personally, it always made a little more sense to me if maybe Jesus came to Earth to save humanity from its problems. Lord knows we have so many. And the Bible has been passed down by human hands, translated again and again, and handled by rulers and kings [a questionable bunch], for two thousand years. So maybe sins is a bad translation? But who am I to question The Good Book? So back to the subject at hand.)
Now let's look at Bodhisattvas. If Christ were a metaphor, then all Bodhisattvas would be Christs. The Bodhisattva is a person who attains enlightenment and nirvana; That's inner peace, serenity, spiritual bliss, an intuitive understanding of himself and the world... It's a form of Heaven. But the Bodhisattva sees the suffering of other people and animals. So he chucks it. He chucks enlightenment, he chucks Heaven, and he goes back to what he was, so that he can take on the problems of other people and animals and relieve their suffering and help them achieve enlightenment, too.
The Bodhisattva leaves Heaven to lend a hand on Earth. Like Christ. Only anyone can be a Bodhisattva; Anyone can give up their life to help others.
Christian, meet Buddhist. Buddhist, meet Christian. How are y'all doin'?
Onward now, to the tale of my good friend Exploding Head.
Like the Buddha, a Bodhisattva is always compassionate, and Exploding Head is the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Exploding Head's real name is Avalokiteshvara, at least in India. In Tibet he is called Chenrezig. In Japan he is called Kannon or Kwannon, and in China he is Guan Yin or Kuanyin. He has many names, and he is older than Christianity is on Earth.
Let me simplify Avalokiteshvara's tale a little and tell it the way it has meaning for me.
He was a man who found peace, who came to enlightenment. And when he did, he saw the Suffering of the World. He saw the suffering of humans and the suffering of animals, and it was too much for him. And his head burst open. After he saw the suffering and his head burst open, he could never be the same again. So the pieces of him reformed into eleven heads and a thousand arms, so that he could try to deliver everything that suffers from its pain.
But when I try to picture Avalokiteshvara's head bursting, I can't see it quite that way. For me, his head just explodes. He sees the Pain of the World and his head explodes as if he's just put a shotgun to his temple and popped off both barrels. His mind is blown. Literally. And he's never quite the same again.
So Avalokiteshvara is Exploding Head Buddha to me. I'm no saviour or saint, not even close, but I know how he feels just a little, and I empathise with his Empathy. Every time I see tragedy in the news, or unspeakable cruelty to a child or an animal or an old person or ANYTHING alive, my head explodes a little too, and I wish I were magic and had a thousand magic arms and eleven magic heads just like him.
Exploding Head Buddha.
He's a Christ of a guy.
~
1/05/2003 12:27:00 PM
