islanded in a stream of stars

I blame evan_nicholas for readdicting me to Simon and Garfunkel.

"Old Friends, Bookends Theme" reminds me of so many people. "The Dangling Conversation" always gets to me, maybe because I find it easier to express myself in writing than vocally.

Every time I post here, I feel like I'm a different person. Not in a pathological way, mind you. It's just that with each day you can feel a little part of yourself turning inwards and getting woven into the fabric of existence and then some new pattern emerges and becomes altered in another interaction with some other person or their life product. The sheer amount of messages we come across is staggering - one of my e-mail accounts hast literally 1300 e-mails, and that number grows each other. And I'm only 19 as of very soon, and I can only imagine how many more messages will be passed, more lives (mostly my own, but I hope others, too) that will be altered when in contact with each other, however briefly.

Something of st_crispins from "Uncertainty Principle" that always stuck with me:

Remember that Heisenberg's so-called "uncertainty principle" is less a question of uncertainty than indeterminacy. That is, the problem is not that a property has a definite value unknown to the researcher, but that a property may have no definite value at all. It is always in flux, and can be affected by various operations, such as the mere act of observation.

Human beings are in constant flux as well. And we are not always what we appear to be: we are often quite a bit more. Just as Einstein demonstrated that light can have particle-like properties, de Broglie showed that matter can have the properties of a wave. Wave and particle; particle and wave. Which nature becomes apparent depends upon the circumstances --- such as when the waves from two sources pass through the same region of space. Then, they are likely to interfere with one another, and the particle nature of one becomes more apparent...

Which form is apparent at any particular moment --- well, just as in physics, that depends upon the circumstances. But in the end, isn't that what the nature of all good and true friendship is ultimately about?

Yes, laleia, I'm nowhere near as clever as I pretend to be.

I'm not quite sure why, but I've always been drawn to this particular passage of Ian Fleming's. The man's not John le Carré by any means, but Fleming does have his profound moments amidst the "kiss kiss bang bang" of the Bond novels.

He was amused by by the impartiality of the roulette ball and of the playing-cards — and their eternal bias. He liked being an actor and a spectator and from his chair to take part in other men's dramas and decisions, until it came to his own turn to say that vital "yes" or "no," generally on a 50-50 chance.

Above all, he liked it that everything was one's own fault. There was only onself to praise or blame. Luck was a servant and not a master. Luck had to be accepted with a shrug or taken advantage of up to the hilt. But it had to be understood and recognized for what it was and not be confused with a faulty appreciation of the odds, for, at gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck.

One day, and he accepted the fact he would be brought to his knees by love or by luck. When that happened he knew that he oo would be branded with the deadly question mark he recognized so often in others, the promise to pay before you have lost: the acceptance of fallibiity.

[/end tonight's studying]

Ack, I have to decide on a Baccalaureate quotation to say outloud by midnight. I've already used Hitchhiker's Guide/Alias/the Lion in Winter frighteningly often so I'm trying to use something new that's not too long and not too flippant. The choices are down to the following:

"In a world where carpenters are resurrected, anything is possible." (Have I used this one too often?)

"Truth takes time." (Again, used too often?)

"You could always tell what kind of a person a man thinks you are by the earrings he gives you. I must say, the mind reels." (Too out of context?)

"Ultimately you will do what you want. That's what free will's all about." (But I don't believe that...)

"Time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so." (Too flippant?)

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something more bizarrely inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened." (The most likely at the moment? Too absurd?)

"The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?" (Too long? It can't be longer than 3 lines as it must be printed in the program.)

Something else?

Edit: I ended up picking the Hitchhiker's theory one. I'm just that predictable.


On a different note, I've been trying to teach myself to play Mozart's "Turkish March" with my eyes closed because I was having a case of the mean reds. Surprisingly, it worked-I can do the second half of the piece pretty accurately at a decent speed but the beginning portion I can't do very quickly at all.