Hyperbolic Time Chamber

Hello, everybody, Que Tal? May has been a slow blogging month for me. Just taking it day by day, taking it slow, like a sloth. I've written a lot on the blog about time, how time seems to have different states; slow, fast, constant, stopped, nonexistent, perpetual. What does time feel like during COVID to you? 

For me time seems to be in a vacuum. By that I mean that time seems to have slowed down exponentially, perhaps it's even stopped sometimes. Yes, things are happening in the world, more Americans dying and getting infected, for one thing, the biggest and most important story right now, but there's also our own small, yet still equally important personal lives, meager as they seem.

It's a given that those that get to work from home during COVID are privileged. Hell, I think I'm privileged because of the fact that I have enough money to take two months off from work. As a result, the last two months have been the slowest days of my entire life.

Now, is that good or bad, or is there neither praise nor blame attached? Well, it's good because I get to practice my skills, however meager in the nonexistent economy they may be; guitar playing, writing and reading literature. It's bad because all the extra free time conduces me to spend copious amounts of video game hours just messing around. On the other side of this spectrum, one could say that it doesn't matter much but obviously that's just a cop-out.

The best thing about lockdown during COVID for me other than the fact that I've been away from work for two months after having worked seven years straight with hardly any vacations is that I've been able to develop even more of an interior life. What am I talking referring to?

Interior life is the life you live inside yourself without others. Do you constantly need to be around other people more often than not? Are you uncomfortable with being alone in a room by yourself, doing nothing, in particular, just relaxing, perhaps reading or staring at a wall? Interior life can only be improved upon with you knowing that you don't need to be around other people all the time. You have to have alone time to gather your thoughts, energy, and focus on the tasks at hand, which is important to you and you only. Or are you constantly searching for that something, like an affirmation or anything else, to always be around other people for various reasons? This concept also applies to the online world as well. Think about how many people keep checking their notifications on social media apps all day. They do this because they get pleasure from seeing notifications, a shot of dopamine. If you want to develop the interior life you should not check your social media or smartphone notification apps all day. Put a limit on it.

Interior life isn't easy to develop. For me, it started with my solo guitar practice sessions, long reading sessions, and epic pug [pick up group] online gaming sessions. For you, it could develop in various ways that are more personable to you and your life.

In case I didn't explain clearly enough, the interior life is a sort of spiritual, not just a regular solo experience. Reading the news every day online is part of my interior life. When I read the news after I wake up in the morning, I feel a sense of urgency to see what all the news headlines are, and read them, and make my own assessments based on said articles. When I do this, I go into a flow state, a similar flow state I go into when I practice guitar; where time and space ceases to exist, and I enter a state of simply 'being,' the more you do these sorts of things, the more you develop this flow state, which will help you in nearly every aspect of your life.

One of the subtle ways of developing an interior life that has improved my friendships and relationships is that I know when to back away from people socially, to allow and give them space. When I'm in a setting where there are more than two people I know what questions to ask, when to lay out and listen, and when to let the others talk more so than myself. In short, it's improved my social skills a lot as well as giving me a guiding light in my personal free time.

Now, going back to the beginning. The snake eats its tail, as they say. At this point of the pandemic journey, and my own personal journey alongside it, I would say that it has been my interior life that has saved me from sheer agony or perhaps one could call it the killing boredom; the loss of in-person hangouts, not eating at restaurants with my family or friends, not playing open mics, not hanging out with girls, even not working for two months straight.

It was the interior life that shackled time and allowed me to do my thing and free myself. In these daunting times, it was just the thing I needed. A hyperbolic time chamber.

Struggle and internal contradiction

Oh, that magic feeling...

Lately, I've been writing a lot of op-ed sort of blogs about life, my ideas, philosophy, my particular thought processes as of late, autumn 2019. Here's one for you: struggle and internal contradiction. 

A lot of my posts have been sort of feel-good type of things [you need to push yourself, keep going, don't quit, etc], and some of it has been sort of depressing to write about, yet also uplifting in a philosophical way, zen-like. 

There were some continuous themes. Getting older. Changes that weren't necessarily good or bad. But seem bad. Work getting harder, more physical. Being more tired. How do deal with all of this? Keeping your mindset strong rather than just positive.  Or strong and positive.

The thing about all that is that there are struggles and contradictions with regard to all of that. You have to be young to become old. If things didn't change you couldn't appreciate how good things really are/were. For work to become more difficult means you'd have to have had a much easier time at some point in the past. You have to have been full of energy [younger] before you realize you're getting more and more easily tired [older]. 

I might write/say/think one thing and yet may not completely mean it at that moment when proclaiming it. Does that mean that I really mean it? This goes into the analytical side of thought. [which is my true aim out of all these vlog type posts]  To question everything, even yourself.

Consider this: I've been more and more easily tired at work for no particular reason in particular. I was dead half my shift. Dead, as in not very responsive, overly tired, slow, prone to error. Yet, half-way through my shift today I came back from lunch and my attitude was completely changed. I was in the best mood I've ever been in at work. It manifested as me smiling a lot, laughing a lot with my co-workers, being very engaging with every customer. How does something like that happen? And how do you keep such an enlightened state going the next day, month, years, a lifetime? 

The answer could be whatever you make of it. Something just hit me, a pierce in the veil. Sitting under the bodhi tree. Could've been a result of a good lunch. Or a good reading session on said lunch. Realization of something that wasn't thought about consciously or self-consciously. Many things, one thing, or nothing at all. It's important to remember moments like these. It feels good and it was memorable work experience. I think even my co-workers noticed and reacted in kind. It was fun. Cheery. Jovial even. What do you do with this sort of realization? Anything or nothing at all I suppose. This goes to show [character] that a lot of our internal struggles and contradiction could, in fact, be something we can overcome, somehow, in our own way, on our own time, in our own condition. Perhaps I will meditate more. Ruminate on peace and love in the universe. Namaste.

Nowhere to go...

Eifelheim

Eifelheim is a book written by Michael Flynn that came out back in 2006. Flynn is a notable third wave science fiction writer that's won some prestigious awards. This book is ancient by today's memelord society (because it came out in 2006). Its a science fiction novel about aliens that visit human civilization in medieval Germany (1340s AD). Meanwhile, in the future these physicists are trying to decipher what happened to the town because it seemed the town of Eifelheim just disappeared right off the map. Its an interesting idea and noteworthy because of how prolix the writing is.

The writing in this book is hard to get around. Difficult. Unrewarding throughout the entire book until the very end. However, that doesn't mean its a terrible novel. Rather, you get to notice how much work went into this projeckt. This isn't just a book. Its about a historical narrative, science and physics, metaphysics, and spiritual searching and reformation. All great ideas rolled into one book. Something like Star Wars could never compete with something like this. Although the book is 'difficult' (for lack of a better term) you get a sense that you are learning about something, all the things I just mentioned.

The book starts with the aliens crash landing in medieval town Eifelheim and this priest named Dietrich is the first human to meet with them. He eventually comes to befriend these demons from the sky and he realizes that they aren't so bad. They crashed and their ship was wrecked. Now they were stuck and had nowhere to go. They needed to get supplies to fix the ship and fly back to their home planet. Simple enough.

Dietrich learns to converse with these grasshopper-like creatures and he comes to the conclusion that these creatures must be saved in the name of Christ. So he tells them about Jesus and converts them. Can humans convert aliens? Michael Flynn says yes you can. Why not, right? Its a novel idea and something I've never seen before in science fiction. That alone constitutes reading the book. If anything its a great idea. Of course it makes you wonder if that's really possible why is it that sometimes we can't even convert ourselves? But I digress.

The aliens steal some steel wire somewhere and Dietrich gets upset. But in the end the aliens fix their ship and fly home. However, some aliens stayed in Eifelheim. The Black Plague was purging the entire region and it had reached Eifelheim. Those remaining aliens that stayed helped to take care of the sick, as they were immune to the disease. What a wonderful part of the story. You help me and I help you, what a great intergalactic Utopian moment for the book.

At one point Dietrich is accused of being a heretic for converting demons but he gets out of it through politics and knowing the right people, mostly knights in the army. The book ends with Dietrich fleeing the Black Plague-infested Eifelheim. Meanwhile in the future the physicists had worked out the idea of how the aliens used time and space travel to get there and leave. The idea that aliens had been there was ruled out until the very end of their findings. There was talk (earlier in the book) that these demons might have even been Chinese.

They decide to go to Eifelheim and look for themselves. They dig up the town's graveyard and find skeletons of the grasshopper aliens and even their German names written down on plaques. Knowing that they discovered something of lasting importance to the human race and civilization they revel in their discovery, and that ends the book.

Pretty great idea ain't it? I think so. I haven't read science fiction like this before and I'm not sure there's really any other books out there that are like this one. It got me interested in the Dark Ages and I've even got Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror checked out. History can be science fiction too. Its so foreign to me that it might as well be from another planet.

Long live the Devil home!