commit ce8debcc2bb295fd7730975bd62624065070ac1b parent 3a4ec9cbf9be496a2ff676ac4a0971adadc844f2 Author: dwrz <dwrz@dwrz.net> Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2023 00:55:59 +0000 Add entries Diffstat:
34 files changed, 2000 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/1987-09-01/1987-09-01.html b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/1987-09-01/1987-09-01.html @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +<a href="/static/media/1920/1987-09_1.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/1987-09_1.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/1987-09_2.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/1987-09_2.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/1987-09_3.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/1987-09_3.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/1987-09_4.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/1987-09_4.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/1987-09_5.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/1987-09_5.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/1987-09_6.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/1987-09_6.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/1987-09_7.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/1987-09_7.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/1987-09_8.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/1987-09_8.jpg"> +</a> diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/1987-09-01/metadata.json b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/1987-09-01/metadata.json @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +{ + "cover": "1987-09_1.jpg", + "date": "1987-09-01T00:00:00Z", + "published": true, + "title": "First Photographs" +} diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-02-16/2019-02-16.html b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-02-16/2019-02-16.html @@ -0,0 +1,454 @@ +<p> + I dream of seeing the end of the fossil fuel age in my lifetime. I would love to play a role, however small, in helping to bring the era to a close. And to help the next one – the ecological age – off the ground.<br> +</p> + +<p> + But I acknowledge that in that mission at best there's irony, at worst, hypocrisy. It's unlikely someone with my background would exist in a world without petroleum. <a href="https://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2007/11/last-hours-ancient-sunlight">Ancient sunlight</a> played the matchmaker in my parents' marriage.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Unlike many immigrants, I've been lucky enough to return home throughout my life. I treasure the connection I've been able to maintain with my family. But I also realize it comes at a cost.<br> +</p> + +<p> + It takes 150 trees a year to sequester the carbon from a flight from Newark to Shanghai. It takes a tree about 40 years to sequester a ton of carbon. A flight from NYC to London is about 1 ton. I wonder how much arctic ice has melted, how many <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/11/russian-islands-emergency-mass-invasion-polar-bears-novaya-zemlya">polar bear cubs have had to starve</a>, so that I could live this unnatural life, crisscrossing the globe like one my ancestors' deities.<br> +</p> + +<p> + The ethical choice would be not to travel. At the very least to not travel so often. That would be better for the planet and most its inhabitants. The cost in that case would be personal, limited at most to my family. But so far, I have failed to muster the courage.<br> +</p> + +<p> + In a sense, my travels "home" are days spent listening to sirens' song. The return ticket is the lash that binds me to the mast. The truth is that I am never home. Wherever I am, family, rhythms, the earliest memories, are somewhere else.<br> +</p> + +<p> + And yet, there's the irresistible embrace of the song. The feeling of safety and belonging. The joy of returning to land, natural terrain; for even after all these years, New York City still feels a little like being at sea. A familiar ship at best, a fortress in the archipelago of Cyclopses and lotus eaters. But not home. Not Ithaca.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190205T195842.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190205T195842.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190205T174305.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190205T174305.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190206T070449.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190206T070449.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + My last stay in Shanghai was in January and February of 2017, also for the Lunar New Year. Before that trip, I was absent for five years – probably the longest span in my life so far. In 2017, I felt like I was reviving long lost memories; this year felt more like return to a natural rhythm.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Winter still feels like an unusual time to be in China. Most of my memories of China are of summer. Besides 2017, my memories of China in winter are mainly from 2006-2007 (December and January), then maybe one or two visits as a child. One of my earliest childhood memories of China is setting of fireworks with my uncle Ju Gong (朱巨公), outside the old home on Li Shan Lu.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190206T102651.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190206T102651.jpg"> +</a> + +<blockquote> + <p> + <i>Waiting for the tea lying pillowed in the breeze,</i> + <br> + <i>Spring is in the voice now that the heart's at ease.</i> + <br> + </p> + + <p> + Journey to the West, Chapter 64.<br> + </p> +</blockquote> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190206T162939.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190206T162939.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190206T115448.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190206T115448.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190207T175201.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190207T175201.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + I spent the majority of this stay within a 500 meter radius of the new apartment on Yan Chang Lu. Besides catching up with family, I spent some time on personal projects: getting this website up and running again (using <a href="https://orgmode.org/">org-mode</a>), learning <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs_Lisp">Emacs Lisp</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_assembly_language">x86 Assembly</a>, and catching up on some more practical reading (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millionaire_Next_Door">The Millionaire Next Door</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Life_Changing_Magic_of_Tidying">The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up</a>). Once or twice a day I would take a walk in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhabei">ZhaBei</a> Park (闸北公园), to enjoy the scenery and think a little bit about life.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190207T180027.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190207T180027.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190207T170132.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190207T170132.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190207T170504.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190207T170504.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190207T172035.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190207T172035.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + Shanghai shuts down the week of the Lunar New Year. Nearly all of the local shops and restaurants were closed, and the streets were relatively empty, until about the last two days of my stay.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Unlike 2017, I didn't bring my bicycle. For the most part I didn't miss it, as this was a more sedentary stay. In the long term, I will try to keep one in Shanghai. It's a great way to get around the city.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190208T052925.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190208T052925.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + My alarm clock every morning was birdsong. A pleasant surprise, given the heavily urban setting.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190208T071951.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190208T071951.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + This was my first time seeing snow in Shanghai. ZhaBei Park is visible from the apartment, and vice-versa.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190209T140913.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190209T140913.jpg"> +</a> + +<video autoplay loop muted + src="/static/media/dwrz_20190209T142546_720p.mp4" type="video/mp4"> + Your browser does not support video. +</video> + +<p> + Most of my family doesn't know how to play Mahjong, as it was banned, and stigmatized, during their youth.<br> +</p> + +<video controls> + <source src="/static/media/dwrz_20190209T140220_edit.mp4" + type="video/mp4"> + Your browser does not support video. +</video> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190210T154420.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190210T154420.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190210T154429.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190210T154429.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190210T172452.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190210T172452.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + Authentic Chinese cuisine paints with a different palette. There are nuances of flavor that are hard to find abroad.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz-20190210T124458.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz-20190210T124458.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + My grandfather and grandmother, with my cousin Zhu Yun.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190210T125410.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190210T125410.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + My brother and I with my grandfather. August of 1999.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190210T125837.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190210T125837.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + With my grandmother and cousin Zhu Wei Yi (Kim). August of 1997.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190210T123606.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190210T123606.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + With my parents. August of 2003.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190210T220450.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190210T220450.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190211T111406.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190211T111406.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + Free dance class in ZhaBei park. These seemed to be offered multiple times a day, and were very popular with the elderly population.<br> +</p> + +<p> + I was struck by how much of the community seemed to congregate in the park. Besides these classes, people practiced Tai Chi together, played Chinese chess and musical instruments, and sang in choruses. Others, like me, seemed to be happy to roam in the park, chat with friends, or meditate among the scenery.<br> +</p> + +<p> + I struggle to think of a comparable community life in New York City. Someday, I hope I will live among elders that emanate the same health, contentment, and ease I saw in ZhaBei.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190211T111537.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190211T111537.jpg"> +</a> + +<video controls> + <source src="/static/media/dwrz_20190211T160813_edit.mp4" type="video/mp4"> + Your browser does not support video. +</video> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190211T112317.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190211T112317.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + Sign placed above urinals in Zhabei Park's mens restroom. There is a lot to the Chinese regime, and its history, that is dark. The lingering spirit of collaboration and social camaraderie still manages to shine through.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190211T112925.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190211T112925.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + This machine, widely used, another example.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190211T112939.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190211T112939.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + Perhaps, if we had more PM 2.5 displays, worldwide, more people would be able to quantify the value of environmental contexts.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190211T113930.jpg"> + <img class ="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190211T113930.jpg" +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190211T153903.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190211T153903.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190211T162500.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190211T162500.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190212T104711.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190212T104711.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + At the local market, vendors are now using Alipay. You scan the QR code to place your payment. Two years ago, it was still cash. Perhaps more slowly now, but still the signs are of a nation ascendant.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Also heartening was the strong presence of small businesses in my neighborhood. This made me note the difference in the application of technology. Supporting small businesses instead of a monolithic retailer. The flourishing of the just as convenient as the latter, without the resulting social ills.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/ylj_20190212T180734.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/ylj_20190212T180734.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + With my uncle, Zhu Ju Qi, and my nephew – my cousin Zhu Yun's son.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/ylj_20190212T180644.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/ylj_20190212T180644.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + My niece, HuiHui, my cousin Lin Sen's daughter.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/zy_20190212T202404.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/zy_20190212T202404.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + With my aunt's, uncle Zhu Ju Gong, and cousin Zhu Yun, at the Gondelin Vegetarian Restaurant on Nan Jing Lu.<br> +</p> + +<video controls> + <source src="/static/media/dwrz_20190213T113726_edit.mp4" + type="video/mp4"> + Your browser does not support video. +</video> + +<video controls> + <source src="/static/media/dwrz_20190213T171353_edit.mp4" + type="video/mp4"> + Your browser does not support video. +</video> + +<video controls> + <source src="/static/media/dwrz_20190213T171856_edit.mp4" + type="video/mp4"> + Your browser does not support video. +</video> + +<p> + I love Chinese gardens. They are fractal, meandering, varied, harmoniously integrating human needs with natural patterns. The nooks and crannies offering private, intimate space. It's the kind of setting I would love to work in, every day.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190213T113948.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190213T113948.jpg"> +</a> + +<blockquote> + <p> + <i>In the bamboo grove I delight wise kings;</i> + <br> + <i>A hundred acres of me by the Wei brings fame.</i> + <br> + <i>My green skin is naturally marked by the tears of the Xiang Goddess;</i> + <br> + <i>My scaly shoots pass on the scent of history.</i> + <br> + <i>My leaves will never change their color in frost;</i> + <br> + <i>The beauty of my misty twigs can never be concealed.</i> + <br> + <i>Few have understood me since the death of Wang Huizhi;</i> + <br> + <i>Since ancient times I have been known through brush and ink.</i> + <br> + </p> + + <p> + Journey to the West, Chapter 64.<br> + </p> +</blockquote> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190213T165429.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190213T165429.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190213T170021.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190213T170021.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + There seems to be a healthy, thriving community of community cats in the neighborhood, fed by volunteers. Unfortunately, the vast majority of them do not appear to be spayed.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190213T170617.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190213T170617.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190213T171237.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190213T171237.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190213T124011.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190213T124011.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + The Song Yuan teahouse outside ZhaBei Park.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190213T112852.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190213T112852.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190213T173920.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190213T173920.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190213T192724.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190213T192724.jpg"> +</a> + +<video controls> + <source src="/static/media/dwrz_20190214T162515_edit.mp4" + type="video/mp4"> + Your browser does not support video. +</video> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190214T163432.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190214T163432.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190214T164630.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190214T164630.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + The aparment, seen from ZhaBei Park.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190214T190048.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190214T190048.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + The last dinner before departure, again at the Song Yuan teahouse. The dinner, was 120 RMB, i.e., less than 20 USD. We had leftovers, and a free rice pudding desert was included with the meal.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190214T193818.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190214T193818.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190214T211323.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190214T211323.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + All packed up. If I close my eyes now, thousands of miles away, I can still feel as if I'm there. In the weeks after a return home, the mind struggles to tell which is real, and which is the dream. The reality on return is familiar, but a sudden shift from something that felt just as real.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190214T232759.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190214T232759.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + On the way to the airport, heartbroken but grateful.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190215T090530.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190215T090530.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190215T054134.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190215T054134.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + Recollection is the only way the immigrant can ever be at home – in more than one place at the same time.<br> +</p> diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-02-16/metadata.json b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-02-16/metadata.json @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +{ + "cover": "dwrz_20190205T195842.jpg", + "date": "2019-02-16T00:00:00Z", + "published": true, + "title": "China" +} diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-04/2019-03-04.html b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-04/2019-03-04.html @@ -0,0 +1,83 @@ +<p> + This morning, I dreamed I was in a strange place, a home, and town, built among stairs.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20160118T074711_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20160118T074711_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + In my mind, I was in Hong Kong, and the location was a mix of the escalators and overpasses there; the overall architecture seemed familiar. What was unusual was that the whole place appeared to be in the sky, a neighborhood of building-pods in the air, connected by crisscrossing stairways. In the dream, I was searching for something, people, and a conference I needed to attend.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20160125T082048_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20160125T082048_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + At some point, my alarm went off. I awoke in the dream, at my home in this strange place. Some part of my mind was unsure that I'd actually awoken, and looked for details in the room to reassure that I had, in fact, awoken to reality. Indeed, I found some tell-tale signs – a spot of on the wall of missing paint that's in my current room, the bed was plain wood, just like the one I'd actually fallen asleep on.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20160129T132034_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20160129T132034_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + I got up in the dream, somewhat certain that I'd awoken to reality. The room had floor to ceiling windows, and outside I could see sky and stairs.<br> +</p> + +<p> + In the meantime, though, the alarm kept ringing. Soon enough I realized that I'd not actually woken, and suddenly I came to, out of the dream.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20160122T075513_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20160122T075513_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + There were a few things about this waking that I found peculiar.<br> +</p> + +<p> + First, the sound of my actual alarm made it through the dream. But it was included in it, the mind wove it into the context, rather than taking it as a sign that the context was false. It was used to reinforce an illusion, rather than dissolve it.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Second, some part of the mind was skeptical of waking in the dream, less willing to suspend the disbelief that made a neighborhood with stairs instead of roads plausible. The illusion beginning to crack under something's scrutiny.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Third, some other part of the mind coming to the rescue of the illusion. "See?", it says, "here is the spot in your room without paint; of course this is real!" This is the part that puzzles me the most. It is slightly frightening, in a way, an active, and clever, part of the mind, which seeks to keep the rest deceived.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20160122T065930_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20160122T065930_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + I wonder how much of these "programs" are active even in wakeful life:<br> +</p> + +<p> + A part of the mind which pre-filters inputs, selecting ones deemed coherent to a narrative, ignoring those which damage it. As if the conscious mind, the supposed manager, was really directed by what the employees decided to report to it.<br> +</p> + +<p> + A part of the mind that chooses what we focus on, that crafts a narrative, that perhaps even commands the pre-filtering. A schemer of the senses, an internal manipulator. I wonder why such a mechanism exists, that seeks to keep things cohesive, that wants to suggest continuity and integrity of perception.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Finally the skeptic, which seems to sense that it is being hoodwinked, which wants to offer a second glance at what the senses seem to provide it. Suspicious of its fellows.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20160116T085654.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20160116T085654.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + How strange that evolution has favored the emergence of these processes in the mind. I wonder if the actual relationship, or at least the emergent one, is more cooperative than antagonistic. More enmeshed than separated. Overall, the feeling is of being at the mercy of these processes. At the very least, that the conscious self is not so far up the hierarchy as it imagines itself to be.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20160128T180930_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20160128T180930_edit.jpg"> +</a> diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-04/metadata.json b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-04/metadata.json @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +{ + "cover": "dwrz_20160129T132034_edit.jpg", + "date": "2019-03-04T00:00:00Z", + "published": true, + "title": "Hong Kong Dream" +} diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-18/2019-03-18.html b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-18/2019-03-18.html @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20181202T104802.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20181202T104802.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + Over centuries, the domain of philosophy has narrowed. Ancient philosophers articulated theories about the nature of matter, today we accept or reject such theories on the basis of empirical evidence. Aristotle was an ethicist but also a biologist and a psychologist and a political theorist. Today those areas of knowledge on their own are considered general, and are subdivided into various areas of specialization.<br> +</p> + +<p> + A core of questions, however, remains in the domain of philosophy, though the mother can now seek the counsel of her daughters. The question: "what is the meaning of life?" does not belong to either biology, neuroscience, or linguistics. It is a purely philosophical question – one that searches for wisdom more than knowledge. But to answer it in the abstract, discounting the progress made in those other fields, is akin to leaping off the shoulders of giants. We have greater visibility into our condition now, more than any other age, and greater introspection, too.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Two thousand years ago, if you'd asked an everyday Athenian about the meaning of life, they might have replied that it was to "please the Gods." That, is to please Zeus and the pantheon of Mount Olympus. Today we know for a fact that there are no Gods on Mount Olympus, and the vast majority of modern Athenians no longer believe that Poseidon controls the seas. They get their meteorological forecasts from the weather service, not an oracle.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Notwithstanding a more generous interpretation of that response, what can we make of it at face value? Is the meaning of life to please Zeus and Aphrodite? Very few today would find that answer meaningful. To discount knowledge is to distance oneself from wisdom.<br> +</p> + +<p> + As far as we can tell today, we inhabit a universe approximately 13 billion years old. The planet we inhabit is a third of that age. Our first ancestors emerged out of chemistry not too long afterwards. We are born, live for an unknown number of decades (if we are lucky), and then we die. We share this with almost all of our brothers and sisters, that is, all things that are carriers of DNA. It seems billions of years of experience have suggested that mortality is a prudent long-term strategy for the success of that molecule. But so is the desire to live.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Our portrait of the world is clearer not only in what it includes, but also in what it defines as unclear. There is no empirical evidence of a soul, though conscience and subjective experience is not yet understood as a phenomenon. It is still at the boundaries of our knowledge, as is the origin of the universe itself.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Still, we know that the software of the mind runs on much more well-defined set of hardware: neurons and nerves powered by sugars and oxygen. We can group the neurons by functionality, those tasked with processing speech, those which give rise to emotion. Perhaps a subset that handles queries into the meanings of words.<br> +</p> + +<p> + We must account for this context, and more. Our focus has narrowed but the bar has been raised. To answer "what is the meaning of life" we have to, if we want a good answer, a satisfying answer, discuss language and questions and the meaning of meaning. We have to explore the feelings that give rise to the asking of that question, and the feelings that arise from the possible responses. And we have to address those feelings, and weave them into not just into the answers but the inquiry itself. For what is sought is not a number, not a fact, not a plot on a graph – but understanding, comprehension, and peace.<br> +</p> diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-18/metadata.json b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-18/metadata.json @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +{ + "cover": "dwrz_20181202T104802.jpg", + "date": "2019-03-18T00:00:00Z", + "published": true, + "title": "Philosophy in the 21st Century" +} diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-19/2019-03-19.html b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-19/2019-03-19.html @@ -0,0 +1,81 @@ +<a href="/static/media/1920/giordano-bruno-mnemonic.jpg"> + <img class="img-center-small" + src="/static/media/720/giordano-bruno-mnemonic.jpg"> +</a> + +<blockquote> + <p> + <i>He inferred that persons desiring to train this faculty (of memory) must select places and form mental images of the things they wish to remember and store those images in the places, so that the order of the places will preserve the order of the things, and the images of the things will denote the things themselves, and we shall employ the places and the images respectively as a wax writing-tablet and the letters written upon it.</i> + <br> + </p> + + <p> + Cicero, <i>De oratore</i>. Traslated by E.W. Sutton and H. Rackham.<br> + </p> +</blockquote> + +<p> + On the 11th I dreamed of a house that was a blend of many former homes. A long hallway connected a series of rooms, as was the case in the last apartment in Naples, and the second one in New York. The last bedroom was a combination of a bedroom in Shanghai and one from the apartment in Naples.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20071202T143426.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20071202T143426.jpg"> +</a> + +<div class="caption"> + <p> + The master bedroom in Naples, more than a decade after it was vacated.<br> + </p> +</div> + +<p> + In the dream, my brother woke me. I had overslept, and was confused. Apparently, I'd missed a flight. As I started to waken (in the dream), I realized I'd not actually missed the flight, but was very late in getting ready for it. A driver was waiting, the image was of a black car outside the apartment complex in Shanghai. It was night, and raining hard. I vaguely recall speaking to the driver on the phone – he was an American, from Boston, though like myself also an immigrant.<br> +</p> + +<p> + In the last bedroom, speaking with my parents about the upcoming journey, my mother asked where I would be staying. Would it be at the Roosevelt Hotel – or home? I told her I wanted to stay home. That was the end of the dream.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20110805_65.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20110805_65.jpg"> +</a> + +<div class="caption"> + <p> + <i>Curtains in Shanghai</i>.<br> + </p> +</div> + +<blockquote> + <p> + <i>If we are not content with our ready-made supply of backgrounds, we may in our imagination create a region for ourselves and obtain a most serviceable distribution of appropriate backgrounds.</i> + <br> + </p> + + <p> + <i>Rhetorica ad Herrenium</i>. Translated by Harry Caplan.<br> + </p> +</blockquote> + +<p> + It was a stereotypical one in many ways – the prominence of architecture, and the compression of architectural features from different places into a single contiguous location. I wonder if these are the mind's attempts to establish continuity, by crafting a consistent signal from many varied ones – a superposition of neural waves.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Then, the ambiguity of home. Traveling to a different place, but having the option of staying home. Roosevelt Island – where I've been living since 1994 – designated hotel, not home.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190314T075645.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190314T075645.jpg"> +</a> + +<div class="caption"> + <p> + <i>Roosevelt Island</i>.<br> + </p> + +</div> + +<p> + On the 16th I dreamed of Montesanto. The weather in March is possibly a trigger, a reminder of travels in Italy and Europe while on Spring Break. Even now, watching the darkening dusk, the memories come flooding back.<br> +</p> diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-19/metadata.json b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-19/metadata.json @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +{ + "cover": "giordano-bruno-mnemonic.jpg", + "date": "2019-03-19T00:00:00Z", + "published": true, + "title": "Dreams of Home" +} diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-23/2019-03-23.html b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-23/2019-03-23.html @@ -0,0 +1,89 @@ +<video autoplay loop muted + class="video" src="/static/media/dwrz_20100310_6_edit.mp4" + type="video/mp4"> + Your browser does not support video. +</video> + +<blockquote> + <p> + <i>HEAVEN signifies night and day, cold and heat, times and seasons.</i> + <br> + </p> + + <p> + <i>EARTH comprises distances, great and small; danger and security; open ground and narrow passes; the chances of life and death.</i> + <br> + </p> + + <p> + Sun Tzu, <i>The Art of War</i>.<br> + </p> +</blockquote> + +<p> + I'm sitting in bed watching dusk turn to night. Outside, the wind is gusting hard; inside, stillness. Trees sway while the wind swishes, then thuds. The keyboard clatters quietly as I type.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Earlier, I saw photographs of dead baby owls. The wildlife rescuer that shared them suspected the wind was to blame, though they noted that the parents had not been having much luck bringing food back to the nest. The mother was still roosting, a sign that perhaps another chick remained.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/bobby-horvath_20190322.jpg"> + <img class="img-center-small" + src="/static/media/720/bobby-horvath_20190322.jpg"> +</a> +<div class="caption"> + <p> + Photograph by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/bobby.horvath.9/posts/10217122088912000?__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARCWvxZvniLKhIdT4Av0wv9N1w6rnFO3Z25Oemjv718eEwkYhb4DRdbWC2opxVUHgLQeVGmGXit_EBiONv-bw4-AezdZ6mmNuoboeslxMtXnB_YRqjHUDqqYnisVfjd_tkGaq87uILMg8OWoWzXnpWjO1OPm3VAKANztAey5P2UfbHs9wqy32vv5emQOl29DZo2-rLjt2lxiFdDcj4pOgW8RmA0OZJoM7a8p4xQj86WegdNAShAMQjmse-hIyFW15Zce8BsjqYiPg1oGNjfNLdJWVT7br_Xioh1JW7Sh5wZcZb-rcHOQbnO0Rd0MsxEoHW6duZiQBawUAyEeZiwm0JDLQA&__tn__=C-R">Bobby Horvath</a>, via <a href="https://www.facebook.com/WINORR-Wildlife-In-Need-of-Rescue-and-Rehabilitation-113685721999067/">WINORR</a>. + <br> + </p> + +</div> + +<p> + I wonder how responsible we are for this wind, for this new, kinetic climate. I, satiated and warm, recall the brief periods of my life where I have felt unending hunger. And my heart breaks for the world.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Memories of the School of Infantry surface. Nine years have passed, but I feel like I was there yesterday, shivering on a range, machineguns thudding in the background. Apollo occasionally bestowing mercy, Aeolus wiping it away.<br> +</p> + +<p> + I remember:<br> +</p> + +<p> + My water freezing at night, and clouds of breath under starlit skies.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Snow falling over fire, while crimson tracers pierced the darkness.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Rain splattering into my tray of white rice and green peas.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Lying prone among pine needles, trying not to fall asleep.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Defecating on a hilltop and soaking in the sun, the first warm wind of the year. In the distance, fields of dry grass shimmering golden.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20080616T183048.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20080616T183048.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + Everyone responds to hardship in their own way. Although it has taken time, I have found my days spent living like an animal have become a foundation for compassion and empathy. When I see pigeons huddle in a blizzard, I remember nights spent being cold and exposed, with no alternative. I've come admire their resiliency and respect their patience. It always delights my heart to see their dedication to their chicks, when the warmer months return.<br> +</p> + +<p> + I think about the baby owls, and how they got to the ground.<br> +</p> + +<p> + What road is it we're on, that's marked by all these milestones of death?<br> +</p> diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-23/metadata.json b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-23/metadata.json @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +{ + "cover": "dwrz_20080616T183048.jpg", + "date": "2019-03-23T00:00:00Z", + "published": true, + "title": "Nightfall" +} diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-26/2019-03-26.html b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-26/2019-03-26.html @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190325T194749.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190325T194749.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + Today, I went to the Italian Consulate to get a new passport. Unexpectedly, the visit prompted a moment of reflection and recollection.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Stepping into the Consulate felt almost like traveling to Italy. The <i>Carabiniere</i> at the door, <i>RAI</i> on the TV, the sound of the language floating in the background, the decor and office furniture – the experience was surreal in its consistency.<br> +</p> + +<p> + The interior reminded me of the <a href="https://lascuoladitalia.org/">Guglielmo Marconi school</a>, and memories from my three years there came flooding back. During the interview, the topic of my first years in Naples came up, and those memories followed. The office furniture bubbled up memories of my year abroad in Bologna. I felt a little stunned by it all.<br> +</p> + +<p> + I speak Italian with my mother and grandmother nearly every day, read the language regularly, and visited Italy last fall. So I wondered why it was that this experience triggered such a strong reaction.<br> +</p> + +<p> + With computer memory, there's the concept of <i>direct access</i> and <i>sequential access</i>. The typical metaphor is that the former is like a book, the latter like a scroll. With a book, you can open up any page and immediately view its contents. With a scroll, you must first unwind the sections preceding the one you are interested in reading.<br> +</p> + +<p> + In human terms, perhaps the former is like being able to recall where one was on New Year's Eve, or on September 11, 2001; the latter is more akin to describing a meeting or an accident. One recollection focuses on an instance, the other covers a chronology.<br> +</p> + +<aside> + <p> + When people remark that "life has gone by fast", perhaps this is a result of performing a direct access on a small set of memories. Recalling sequences tends to emphasize duration.<br> + </p> +</aside> + +<p> + I wonder if in human memory there is another kind of access – a sort of <i>vertical-slicing</i> access, that is the combination of the two. What happens is that <i>durations</i> are accessed directly. It's perhaps akin to remembering Christmastime instead of Christmas, 2000, or remembering springs past instead of March, 1997. In my case, the remembering was of spans of time from across my life – childhood, early adolescence, early adulthood – all in one go.<br> +</p> diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-26/metadata.json b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-03-26/metadata.json @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +{ + "cover": "dwrz_20190325T194749.jpg", + "date": "2019-03-26T00:00:00Z", + "published": true, + "title": "New Passport" +} diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-04-05/2019-04-05.html b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-04-05/2019-04-05.html @@ -0,0 +1,54 @@ +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190328T192239.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190328T192239.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + I have had enough days in nature to know what it is like to long for the simplest comforts of civilization. But the brightest memories are not of those comforts; I have spent enough days in civilization to know the longing for the wilderness.<br> +</p> + +<p> + On every return from nature, I am shocked by the physical and spiritual malaise of city life. The litter and noise, the constant, constant sales pitch, omnipresent reminders of rank and status, and people broken in all manner of ways.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190330T143212.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190330T143212.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + It's strange to return from the world of stone and trees to this one that at times seems even more savage than nature. Here every message is that some thing will give you happiness. But away from the artificial world, the default state seems to be exactly that one. Even when the basic needs are only partially met, the reward seems to be beauty and meaning. Eating simple meals over a cookstove, more joy than at world renowned restaurants.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190330T151616.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190330T151616.jpg"> +</a> + +<blockquote> + <p> + <i>Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while virtue finds and chooses the mean.</i> + <br> + </p> + + <p> + Aristotle, <i>Nichomachean Ethics</i>.<br> + </p> +</blockquote> + +<p> + Earth supports life because it is exactly the right distance from the Sun at this point in the stellar lifecycle (i.e., within the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstellar_habitable_zone">circumstellar habitable zone</a>). In a universe where the temperatures ranges from about -272°C to 3,000,000°C, the healthy temperature for a human body is ~36.5-37.5°C. The trick to life has always been <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeostasis">balance</a> – not too hot, not too cold, not too much, not too little. Success is not first place, not maximums or minimums, but <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averageness">averageness</a>.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190403T170425_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190403T170425_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + There is a point of balance between the state of nature and the technology that we have today. It is possible to build quiet cities that interweave with and respect nature. It is possible to enjoy shelter and agriculture and books while still being able to delight in the hooting of an owl and blinking fields of fireflies. And yes, <a href="https://www.drawdown.org/">it is possible to have the best of civilization without wrecking the foundations on which it rests</a>.<br> +</p> + +<p> + But that is not where we are today. What we have instead is a world where millions starve while others drown in the misery of material possessions, where we are safe from the elements but blind to the stars, and where nearly every metric of planetary health is failing. Our planet is sick because our civilization is sick. Our civilization is sick because technology cannot, has not, and will not answer spiritual and psychological dilemmas. In fact, the very things that can, nature and community, are being destroyed by the it.<br> +</p> + +<p> + The task before us is moderation – dialing back excess – finding and choosing the mean.<br> +</p> diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-04-05/metadata.json b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-04-05/metadata.json @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +{ + "cover": "dwrz_20190328T192239.jpg", + "date": "2019-04-05T00:00:00Z", + "published": true, + "title": "Homeostasis" +} diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-04-13/2019-04-13.html b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-04-13/2019-04-13.html @@ -0,0 +1,47 @@ +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20110122T220843.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20110122T220843.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + On Thursday, I received news that a Marine from my former Company was KIA in Afghanistan. He was 25 years old.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Marine Corps warfighing doctrine emphasizes the psychological level of war. The true objective of combat operations is not to kill the enemy, but to break the enemy's willingness to fight. The former is just one of many means to the latter.<br> +</p> + +<p> + The attack on my unit was delivered by means of an SVBIED – a suicide-vehicle-borne improvised-explosive-device. This is one incident, but it seems to underscore this fact: after 18 years on Afghan soil, the United States has failed to undermine the enemy's resolve.<br> +</p> + +<p> + A trillion dollars and the most advanced weaponry in the world and 72,000 enemy KIA have failed to convince an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_Developed_Countries">LDC</a> that it can aspire to better.<br> +</p> + +<p> + It's possible that numbers alone could have predicted this outcome. Divide the enemy combatants killed by the cost of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Enduring_Freedom">OEF</a> and the result is ~14,000,000 USD per head. The Taliban has inflicted only a fraction of its losses on the United States, but probably for orders of magnitude less in costs, too.<br> +</p> + +<aside> + <p> + In reality, the Taliban has been even more "efficient", if you consider that they have killed not just ~3,500 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_casualties_in_Afghanistan">Coalition</a> troops, but ~60,000 servicemembers in the Afghan Security Forces.<br> + </p> +</aside> + +<p> + If we judged wars the way we judged businesses, perhaps the United States would have gotten out of Afghanistan years ago. Perhaps it would never have committed, or been smarter about its engagement, more precise about the problem it was seeking to address. In a way, the country was cursed, as is often the case, by its wealth. A poorer nation wouldn't have been able to afford a blank check.<br> +</p> + +<p> + But here we are. A family now mourns the loss of a son. In Afghanistan, there are families that have been mourning loss after loss after loss. Some Afghans fear what will happen when American troops finally depart. And I will never forget the footage of the jumpers on 9/11.<br> +</p> + +<aside> + <p> + But who remembers the 4 million people killed by air pollution every year?<br> + </p> +</aside> + +<p> + All this in a world where the Arctic ice is evaporating, and Antarctic ice shattering, and life, on the whole, vanishing. I wonder how we will judge this history in twenty or thirty years' time. Sooner or later, we are bound to have a moment of clarity.<br> +</p> diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-04-13/metadata.json b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-04-13/metadata.json @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +{ + "cover": "dwrz_20110122T220843.jpg", + "date": "2019-04-13T00:00:00Z", + "published": true, + "title": "The Cost of War" +} diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-07-05/2019-07-05.html b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-07-05/2019-07-05.html @@ -0,0 +1,363 @@ +<p class="poetry"> + The things that one grows tired of—O, be sure<br> + They are only foolish artificial things!<br> + Can a bird ever tire of having wings?<br> + And I, so long as life and sense endure,<br> + (Or brief be they!) shall nevermore inure<br> + My heart to the recurrence of the springs,<br> + Of gray dawns, the gracious evenings,<br> + The infinite wheeling stars. A wonder pure<br> + Must ever well within me to behold<br> + Venus decline; or great Orion, whose belt<br> + Is studded with three nails of burning gold,<br> + Ascend the winter heaven. Who never felt<br> + This wondering joy may yet be good or great:<br> + But envy him not: he is not fortunate.<br> + <br> + <i>Wonder and Joy</i>, Robinson Jeffers<br> +</p> + +<p> + During the final days of my travels in Italy, I felt a recurring sadness, which I could not place. It would surface in quieter moments, when I was alone; I would perceive it, and attend to it, but it would not speak its discontents to me. It was present – it wanted me to know that it was present – but otherwise, it was mute and indecipherable.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Confused, I tried to give it space, on walks, or at night, meditating over a glass of wine. It was a shy sadness, one that seemed to communicate indirectly, gesturing at memories, using images of the past as metaphor.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Its vocabulary was the arc of my life. It spoke to me of my childhood. Together we remembered Christmases at my grandmother's house, the doors with inset glass, behind which lay presents waiting for midnight. Summers at Montesanto: the morning light caught in Naples' rough textures, and echoing church bells interrupted by droning scooters. Walking by the sea at night in Procida – the summer of 1998 – the dark waters brimming with life.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Eventually, we made it through the painful years of adolescence and early adulthood, when Naples became a place of mystery and adventure, of undergrounds and tunnels and secret ruins. The chorus of lunches and dinners with family, which restored the spirit as much as the body. Travels with girlfriends, with feelings amplified by the sensuality of the Neapolitan landscape.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Then, the recent years, suddenly quieter and more serious, more brooding, less carefree. Remarking the visible passage of time on my own face and that of others, while Naples, old but unchanged, remained like a goddess that outlives her mortal children. Clear-eyed, watching civilization stumble towards downfall and extinction.<br> +</p> + +<p> + I wondered if this was the sadness: returning preoccupied to the place of earliest innocence. But I was rarely a cheerful child, certainly not as an adolescent. As a young adult, the inverse: I have found moments of joy and happiness have tended, at least so far, to increase with the years.<br> +</p> + +<p> + The last played note of an unheard piece presages those following, but it does not speak for the entirety left unplayed. One story of my life is an awakening to the gloom of the world. But another is an ascension to greater states of gratitude. Yet another is the constant grapple with impermanence, and the unpausing, unwavering march of time.<br> +</p> + +<p> + The travels themselves, up to the origin of the sadness, had been mostly stressful. I was tired, burnt-out. Europe was in the midst of a heatwave, and rather than rest and think, I moved around a lot. But I began to recall that there had also been many glimmering moments. Trees swaying in the wind, which wafted the scent of jasmines. Insects – vanishing at unprecedented rates around the world – here flourishing, busy with the work of life. Stars treading the Milky Way, the sound of waves withdrawing from the shore. The voices of family and friends – many which I've known for as long as I've been alive – recounting the recent past.<br> +</p> + +<p> + Beneath the stress and exhaustion, there had been many unappreciated moments of delight. Reflecting on that delight brought me joy, but that joy in turn brought me sorrow: a departure was coming that entailed separation from all these things. A separation that echoed the first one, in 1994.<br> +</p> + +<p> + A filling moon foretells imminent wane. For every return home there's a farewell and a return to another home, a reminder that my heart is forever split across the world. Every choice to be in one place comes at the exclusion of another. All that can be lived is one portion at a time, so every return becomes a joy reborn, a death anticipated.<br> +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190624T204814.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190624T204814.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190624T205910.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190624T205910.jpg"> +</a> + +<video controls> + <source src="/static/media/dwrz_20190624T205926.mp4" type="video/mp4"> + Your browser does not support video. +</video> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190624T214020.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190624T214020.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190624T225352.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190624T225352.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190624T234129.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190624T234129.jpg"> +</a> + +<a 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href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190702T202701.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190702T202701.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190702T203155.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190702T203155.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190702T204552.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190702T204552.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190702T223316.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190702T223316.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190702T223326.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190702T223326.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190703T155913.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190703T155913.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190703T155917.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190703T155917.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190703T202712.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190703T202712.jpg"> +</a> + +<video controls> + <source src="/static/media/dwrz_20190703T202930_edit.mp4" type="video/mp4"> + Your browser does not support video. +</video> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190703T225545.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190703T225545.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190704T064804.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190704T064804.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190704T091923.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190704T091923.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190704T180801.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190704T180801.jpg"> +</a> diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-07-05/metadata.json b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2019-07-05/metadata.json @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +{ + "cover": "dwrz_20190702T201906.jpg", + "date": "2019-07-05T00:00:00Z", + "published": true, + "title": "Italy" +} diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2020-07-23/2020-07-23.html b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2020-07-23/2020-07-23.html @@ -0,0 +1,149 @@ +<p> + Dear Assembly Member Seawright, and Borough President Brewer, +</p> + +<p> + I attended the Southpoint Park tour on Friday and wanted to follow + up on the concerns I expressed to you there. +</p> + +<p> + I understand the importance of repairing the sea wall. But I want + to share why this patch of invasive plants, resting on + contaminated soil, is so important to me. +</p> + +<p> + I've been a resident of Roosevelt Island since 1994, since I + emigrated from Naples, Italy. Growing up here was special. My + childhood memories include ladybugs and hummingbirds, watching + cormorants and seagulls fish, and the southern tip of the Island, + when it was still green. As a child, all of these were sources of + joy, delight, and curiosity. Later, they often prompted feelings + of gratitude, and appreciation for the gift of life. +</p> + +<p> + Over my lifetime, I have seen most of these sources vanish. I have + seen one hummingbird in the last decade, maybe a handful of + ladybugs. I understand that there were compelling reasons, + sometimes, to develop the Island. But I still mourn the losses I + have witnessed. +</p> + +<p> + I visit Southpoint Park several times a week. I've been there in + all seasons, in all kinds of weather, at dawn, afternoon, and + dusk. It is perhaps the one place left where I can still + experience the delights I remember as a child. This summer, it was + watching red sparrows eat mulberries, or the rainbow after a storm + caught me reading in the park. In 2014, I studied for the bar + exam there. When my grandmother suffered a heart attack last year, + I went to Southpoint Park to collect my thoughts. +</p> + +<p> + I know that, in days to come, I will walk to that park and find + its shores bare. In place of the maze of green branches will be + overturned dirt, machinery, and views of man-made structures on + the horizon. Even now, I dread to see that view. +</p> + +<p> + While I have watched this reverse alchemy of the Island -- of + turning emerald to stone -- I have also learned more of our + planet's situation. It is a fact, today, that the ecological + foundations of human society are buckling. I am wondering when we + will start to turn things around, and if governments' approach to + nature can shift in time. +</p> + +<p> + RIOC's current vision for the park entails a loss of twenty trees. + This number hides the fact that some are mature trees, whose + equivalent cannot be planted. There will also be a net loss in + terms of square feet left to nature. This outcome, better than the + original proposal, is only because residents stepped up. + Otherwise, we would have been facing a greater loss. +</p> + +<p> + I would love to see RIOC commit to, at the least, maintaining an + equivalent number of trees in the park. I would love for more + space to be left wild. More than that, I would love to see RIOC + match residents' passion and appreciation for the nature we have + here. +</p> + +<p> + If you can help to bridge this gap, I will be indebted to you. +</p> + +<p> + Thank you very much for your time, +</p> + +<p> + David Wen Riccardi-Zhu</br> + 555 Main Street +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20180604T185738_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20180604T185738_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20180702T194515.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20180702T194515.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20181202T120957.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20181202T120957.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190302T170654.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190302T170654.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20190922T172424.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20190922T172424.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20191110T154821.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20191110T154821.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200321T145850.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200321T145850.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200414T182733.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200414T182733.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200512T221837.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200512T221837.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200512T222426.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200512T222426.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200525T222228.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200525T222228.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200528T220022.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200528T220022.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200530T221922.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200530T221922.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200629T223151.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200629T223151.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200701T225232.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200701T225232.jpg"> +</a> diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2020-07-23/metadata.json b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2020-07-23/metadata.json @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +{ + "cover": "dwrz_20181202T120957.jpg", + "date": "2020-07-23T00:00:00Z", + "published": true, + "title": "On the Loss of Southpoint Park" +} diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2020-10-08/2020-10-08.html b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2020-10-08/2020-10-08.html @@ -0,0 +1,79 @@ +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200926T110433_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200926T110433_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<blockquote> + <p>I asked the leaf whether it was frightened because it was autumn and the other leaves were falling.</p> + + <p>The leaf told me, "No. During the whole spring and summer I was completely alive. I worked hard to help nourish the tree, and now much of me is in the tree. I am not limited by this form. I am also the whole tree, and when I go back to the soil, I will continue nourish the tree. So I don’t worry at all. As I leave this branch and float to the ground, I will wave to the tree and tell her, 'I will see you again very soon.'"</p> + + <cite>Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Heart of Understanding</cite> +</blockquote> + +<p>At 33, I've found my recollection of the past has started to change. The moments longed for are frequently more than a decade gone. Frolicking in the Paris Catacombs, that was the summer of 2006. The year abroad in Bologna -- 2007 and 2008. Shooting rockets at dusk, that was 2010.</p> + +<p>I remember wandering to these memories when they were just a few years old. It's strange to see them now so far away, like landmarks receding into the horizon.</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200906T223917_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200906T223917_edit.jpg" + alt="New York City, seen from West Mountain."> +</a> + +<p>I can distinguish chapters now. Middle school, high-school, college, the Marine Corps, law school, three years working in policy, the transition to software engineering, then the journey with Good Uncle. The story itself still doesn't make much sense to me. Sometimes I can detect the faint pulse of a purpose, like a thread that's been stitched, but not yet pulled taught. Other times, I'm not sure if I'm sensing so much as imagining that pulse.</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200926T114004_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200926T114004_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p>I call my grandmother almost every day. She asks me about my health and tells me it's the most important thing. "Solo quando si sta bene si lotta" -- only when one is well can one fight -- through life's difficulties. She speaks from experience, I know. 55 more years of it.</p> + +<p>Only 33, I can still tell that the "oomph" has started to wane. Slight but detectable. I loved hard workouts before; now I appreciate them, but it requires a little more coaxing. Jamie, my wushu instructor, spent his twenties as an acrobat in the Beijing Opera. At thirty, he too could notice the beginnings of physical decline. For him, the rate was steady until about 50. Then, it accelerated.</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200926T112953_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200926T112953_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p>I wonder why we are wired to take things for granted. Health and vigor are invaluable treasures for those lacking them, but not sufficient to satisfy their possessors. Was it less so in a world less privileged, where suffering was more visible? When more of us were poor, oppressed, incurably sick -- did gratitude come any easier?</p> + +<p>Are we wired for ingratitude, or is our jaded state attributable to unnatural circumstances? Diabetes, obesity, and insomnia are more common in the developed world -- are psychological dispositions also so? Privilege hides the suffering of others -- factory farms, children mining rare earth minerals, police brutality -- things constant in the world are reduced to momentary trespassers in our conscience.</p> + +<p>This blindness hurts us, too. It hurts us because inevitably these evils will catch up to us -- in the form of rising seas, shattered storefronts, and depression caused by addiction to technology. It hurts us because we pass over the beauty that is there, already in the world. Take an ancestor from a few centuries back and show them a supermarket, or a hospital, or video calls. They would shed tears of joy. Do you understand the privilege of not being hungry? We are fortunate beyond our ancestors' wildest dreams, and yet their delight is our indifference.</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200926T132417_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200926T132417_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p>At 33, I've started to gleam this lesson, that happiness is found primarily in gratitude, moreover that one can exercise this state of mind. I look over my photographs every Sunday, and it's hard to ever come away without some sense of amazement. This -- all this -- happened to me? So many faces and places lost in time, loves faded, friends separated by distance, the donning and doffing of different costumes, and sights so beautiful they still capture my breath.</p> + +<p>I find, in this gratitude, love for the world. This universe, the nebulas, star wombs which we were never meant to see -- the electromagnetic radiation that the sun bathes the world in, which cells in my eye detect and encode into visions of green and blue and pink and orange -- and in these cells a double helix, my bond to all living things, trees and birds and hornets, for even the grass that I walk over is a distant sibling.</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200926T093938_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200926T093938_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p>Did it have to be this way? Is the world we inhabit as inevitable as geometry -- or is there a certain amount of magic that's made it possible?</p> + +<p>Thirty-three orbits in observation. I feel very lucky, as if all I need to see fortune's smile is remember to look for her -- and she is everywhere, in every thing.</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200926T114327_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200926T114327_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p>But somehow, I don't always remember. For every day of gratitude there seem to be at least a few of anger, heartbreak, and drudgery. It's hard to accept the suffering in the world as beautiful design. The intentional injustice, so pervasive, eclipses even the most spectacular of sunsets. I wonder if time will bring acceptance of these things. Right now, I'm not so sure.</p> + +<p>These days, it feels like we're in the autumn of human civilization. The arc of the universe bends towards justice, but perhaps we're now on the other side of the parabola. Things are falling apart, fast, and I wonder if the four figures on the horizon are horsemen.</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200926T112127_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200926T112127_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p>I simply don't know if the equation can be balanced. A rocket either has or does not have the energy required to reach and maintain escape velocity. If it does, orbit is an option, if it does not, it might go high into the sky, but eventually tumble back towards Earth. I don't know if our civilization's goals are attainable. If they are, then the problem is alignment on action, which is not a given. If they are not, then it might be time to reassess these goals.</p> + +<p>Some afternoons ago, watching the tide swell at dusk, I felt a mandate coalesce, then surface: "repair the circle of life". History is full of men that have dreamed of wealth, power, and conquest. I am utterly disinterested in these things, which slip through our hands like water. But to live in a world where biodiversity is increasing, where the populations are coming back from the brink, regenerating -- what I would give, to make it real.</p> + +<video controls> + <source src="/static/media/dwrz_20200926T180908.mp4" type="video/mp4"> + Your browser does not support video. +</video> diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2020-10-08/metadata.json b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2020-10-08/metadata.json @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +{ + "cover": "dwrz_20200926T110433_edit.jpg", + "date": "2020-10-08T00:00:00Z", + "published": true, + "title": "Autumn" +} diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2020-10-30/2020-10-30.html b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2020-10-30/2020-10-30.html @@ -0,0 +1,121 @@ +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20120708_64.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20120708_64.jpg"> +</a> + +<blockquote> + <p>When kissing one's child, one should, said Epictetus, say to oneself: "You will perhaps die tomorrow." Ill-omened words, these! "No word is ill-omened", he + said, "which signifies a natural process. Else it would have be ill-omened to + say that the wheat has been harvested."</p> + + <cite>Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.</cite> +</blockquote> + +<p>On the morning of October 7, on my way to the Roosevelt Island pool, I came across a belted kingfisher flailing on the ground. It was unable to move, except by dragging its body, and looked terrified by this newfound vulnerability.</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20201007T123414_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20201007T123414_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p>I did not know what to do. But others started to walk past, and then a few cars rumbled along the road; then, I knew I could not leave. As I picked him up -- he was a male -- I could feel his heartbeat accelerate, strikingly powerful in such a light body. My heart too, began to beat a little faster.</p> + +<p>I contacted the <a href="https://www.wildlifefreedomfoundation.org/">local wildlife rehabilitator</a> and asked her if I could bring him in. When she said yes, I started walking back home, holding the bird gently against my chest. To my surprise, his heartbeat settled -- until we passed our first dog. Then, he began to squirm, and again I could feel the drumming in my hands. When the dog went out of sight, he was calm again.</p> + +<p>This happened a few more times. It was a sunny morning, and many were out for their first stroll. Each time we began to draw near a dog, I could feel the kingfisher's heart beat faster -- and out of concern for him, so did mine. I was struck by this bond, a common language. Millions of years of evolutionary history separated us -- but I knew what he was feeling: fear.</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20201007T123545_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20201007T123545_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p>When I got home, I put him in a padded basin. I'd never seen a kingfisher on the Island before, much less this closely. He was beautiful, beyond anything a human hand could make. Silver-blue, with a stone colored beak, and a flamboyant crest.</p> + +<p>I brought him to the rehabilitator, who lives next door, and left him in her care. Together we wondered about what had happend to him. With no visible injuries, we guessed blunt trauma. He'd either struck a window and dragged himself to where I found him, or the impact was with a vehicle on the Queensboro Bridge.</p> + +<p>I abandoned my plans to swim that morning, and went back home, to work. I felt like I'd just gotten off a roller-coaster. Throughout the day, I wondered whether he'd manage to pull through. The next day, I checked with the rehabilitator, and she told me he was not faring well -- not eating, not moving much. When I checked again a few days later, she told me he hadn't made it. He was gone.</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20201007T123646_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20201007T123646_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p>It's difficult to capture this loss with words. This was an animal I did not know, and our shared journey was less than a half-hour long. But I was -- I am still -- heartbroken. Why?</p> + +<p>I wonder how much of the difficulty I can attribute to its symbolism. I pass by dead pigeons regularly -- one today -- and while I feel a sense of loss -- it's easier to accept. That's the course of life, inevitable. But to have come across something spectacular as it lay dying -- that hits close to home. That is the story of my generation. We have come into a beautiful world, and found it flailing <a href="https://www.hugomichellgallery.com/portfolio/narelle-autio/indifference/">on the side of a road</a>.</p> + +<p>It seems common, at least in the northern hemisphere, to associate this period of the year with mourning. Last Sunday, it was the Double Ninth festival in China, where it is tradition to visit ancestors' graves. The coming Sunday is <em>Tutti i Santi</em> -- All Saint's Day -- where the same tradition is observed in Italy. So I find myself, in the wake of this loss, in this season of mourning, reflecting on the year's departures.</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200321T144854_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200321T144854_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p>On March 21, walking through Southpoint Park, I came across one of our community cats, Cremina, who was yowling. I went to console her, and she settled down -- into my lap -- and we enjoyed the returning sun. She was sick -- and something like seventeen years old. During her remaining weeks, I went to help with her care, and she would nap in my lap for a good half-hour, waking to purr here and there. I wasn't there for her passing, on April 15, and the regret lingers.</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200408T170558_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200408T170558_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p>On May 7, walking with my mother around Roosevelt Island, we passed the Octagon Gardens, where I fed the community cats from 2015 to 2018. Two notables from that crew were Tom and Candy, who were inseparable. That day, too, they were sitting next to each other, probably waiting for their evening meal. But something was different.</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20170831T183326_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20170831T183326_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p>Candy had a huge tumor on her nose, which had disfigured her, nearly blocking half her left eye. This was the feeling: you're good friends with someone, you see them for three years, in all kinds of weather -- snow and rain, summer sunsets, falling leaves. They come to expect your arrival. Then life separates you, until you run into them on the street someday, and they confess -- although it's evident anyway -- that they are a terminal case.</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200507T224108_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200507T224108_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p>I asked Candy, "what happened?" -- and she slowly blinked at me, then looked away, as if embarrassed, acknowledging. That night, I inquired into her condition. I was told that she needed to be put down, but that, because of the pandemic, donations had dropped and there wasn't a budget for it. I, conflicted but following my intuition, offered to take care of it.</p> + +<p>I read up on nasal tumors in cats, and set up an appointment with the vet. The next day, May 8, I borrowed a carrier and went with another volunteer to catch Candy. We coaxed her with food. She seemed in good spirits, and went to eat with appetite. Suddenly, I wasn't sure about my timing. But for better or worse, I stuck with the plan.</p> + +<p>When I grabbed Candy to put her into the carrier, she struggled, and the tumor burst open. Crimson streaked onto the insides of the carrier. The left side of her nose, now mangled, was moist with blood and pus.</p> + +<p>Then, I discovered I'd forgotten my wallet at home. I had to walk with the other volunteer back home, with Candy in the carrier. I hated every minute that I added to her suffering.</p> + +<p>Finally, we went to the vet. We waited outside, and it started to rain. I looked at her -- and could tell she was hurting -- bearing her pain with the stoicism that only animals are capable of. A young woman exited the office in tears, devastated. It seemed like the whole world was mourning. The only comfort came at the end, the minute we had when she was asleep, before the injection. She looked at peace, resting lightly.</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200508T163756_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200508T163756_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p>Afterwards, I kept thinking about how I'd seen her eating only an hour earlier. Was it too early? But if it had been done earlier -- before the tumor had grown so large -- it wouldn't have been as messy. She would have suffered less. Then again -- who was I to decide this creature's fate? Who was I to take away Tom's companion?</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20100309T152226.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20100309T152226.jpg"> +</a> + +<p>During my last year at university, I had already begun to prepare for my enlistment in the Marine Corps Infantry. I knew the experience would be psychologically demanding, even in the best case. The darker end of the spectrum included the possibility of my own death, and the taking of the life of another.</p> + +<p>Anticipating those possibilities, I read two of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's books: <em>On Killing</em>, and <em>On Combat</em>, which explore the inner journeys that potentially fall on members of the warrior caste. Things like survivor's guilt, helplessness in the face of horror, and the psychological stages of killing in combat: exhilaration, remorse, rationalization, and acceptance.</p> + +<p>But it's one thing to read a map and another to walk on roads marked by it. My unit was never deployed. There was no trigger pulling, except at paper targets. All I have are blundered attempts to do the "right thing" in an emptying world. No moral clarity. The cats that I have rescued live off the <a href="https://weanimalsmedia.org/hidden/">canned remains of caged birds</a>. Like combat, there aren't so much wins as degrees of devastation.</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200804T231801_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200804T231801_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p>We have lost something like a hundred trees on Roosevelt Island this year. The vast part were felled by chainsaws and bureaucrats. A smaller part by highly kinetic storms, turbocharged by climate change. Walking around after Tropical Storm Isaias, I came across a sparrow sleeping on the ground, alone. She looked exhausted, and let me sit next to her for a few minutes. When she flew away, I wondered where her tribe was, and what it must have been like to bear this storm outdoors.</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20200804T230813_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20200804T230813_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p>Every adolescent goes through Siddhartha's awakening, the realization that we grow old, grow sick, and eventually die. The child's fairy tales yield to recountings of our brutal history. On the personal level, I can see a path to acceptance, even though I'm not there yet. But I don't know how one comes to term with the smirking, shrugging murder of entire ecosystems.</p> + +<p>The internet is a young place, run by a generation that, in the aggregate, has not experienced much loss. Time is catching up to us, though. Perhaps the silver lining is that difficulty will breed introspection, which in turn will blossom into maturity. In coming to terms with our own impermanence, I hope we will begin to recognize that meaning cannot be found in likes and the perpetual scroll of delight, physical or virtual. We are caretakers, guardians, of something much bigger than us, and much more enduring. It is only in returning to the world that we can give our lives meaning.</p> + +<div class="video-container"> + <iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EaI-4c92Mqo" allowfullscreen> + </iframe> +</div> diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2020-10-30/metadata.json b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2020-10-30/metadata.json @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +{ + "cover": "dwrz_20120708_64.jpg", + "date": "2020-10-30T00:00:00Z", + "published": true, + "title": "Traveling through the Dark" +} diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2021-02-06/2021-02-06.html b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2021-02-06/2021-02-06.html @@ -0,0 +1,8 @@ +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20100319T061649_edit.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" + src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20100319T061649_edit.jpg"> +</a> + +<p>We are often scared of sacrifice, but I have found it to be the most certain path to fulfillment and joy. The reverse is that, if you have a sense of purpose, the consumptive delights become irrelevant. A person with a mission has an internal source of happiness, or has found something more important than their own happiness. For many veterans, the memories that glow aren't the ones of supreme ease or fine dining, but of being in the field, surrounded by friends, working towards a common cause.</p> + +<p>What I would give to make that cause our planet and our future, and to render an entire generation invulnerable to the temptations of luxury, consumption, and status.</p> diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2021-02-06/metadata.json b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2021-02-06/metadata.json @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +{ + "cover": "dwrz_20100319T061649_edit.jpg", + "date": "2021-02-06T00:00:00Z", + "published": true, + "title": "Planetary Purpose" +} diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2021-02-24/2021-02-24.html b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2021-02-24/2021-02-24.html @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20110710_2.jpg"> + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20110710_2.jpg"> +</a> + +<blockquote> + <p>The things they carried were largely determined by necessity.</p> + + <cite>Tim O'Brien, + <a href="/static/the-things-they-carried.pdf">The Things They Carried</a> + </cite> +</blockquote> + +<p>Some of the most valuable lessons in life, I've learned from living out of a pack, for work and for pleasure.</p> + +<p>A pack has limited space; the typical bathtub has more volume. The first lesson for anyone heading outdoors is prioritization in the face of scarcity. There is only so much you can take, and the essentials will leave little room for luxuries.</p> + +<p>The real problem is weight. Every thing you add to the pack, you add as haul for the journey. Your agility and endurance is negatively correlated to your pack's weight; the heavier the pack, the slower you move, the less distance you can cover. And if you are traveling for pleasure, your joy and the contents of your pack are to a degree at odds. Light shoulders make for pleasant hiking.</p> + +<p>Every decision to add something to a pack will be cross-examined by the future self, typically late in the day, on a strenuous climb. One learns to hate the weight of the few big things just as much as the sum of many little things. The accumulated regrets transform into intuitions on necessity. These intuitions carry over to other areas of life.</p> + +<p>For example, when it comes to software, every feature takes up space in the pack and represents weight borne somewhere. Early on, the constraints were imposed in terms of memory, computation, bandwidth, storage. But for a while now, the real limitations have been human: labor hours, or the mental capacities of the engineers, who have to carry the code.</p> + +<p>The same goes for our planet. The paradigm of modern life in consumptive societies is to fill the pack. We have more space for more stuff than most of our ancestors could ever dream of. But something still has to carry the weight. To a degree, we do -- with our time, money, and attention. Most of burden, though, has been off-loaded to natural systems, which are crumbling underneath the weight of it all.</p> + +<p>Usually, when I return from a longer outing, I find myself a little more grateful for civilization. Things I normally take for granted -- plumbing and shelter and flat surfaces to sleep on -- sparkle like magic. When it comes to all the other frosting on the cake, all the other things in the pack, I'm not so sure. I find myself wishing we didn't have to carry it. Maybe without it, our footsteps would be lighter, and the going, easier.</p> + +<div class="video-container"> + <iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/pCLzMDtUZmI?start=520" + allowfullscreen> + </iframe> +</div> + +<blockquote> + <p>You're humping too much stuff, troop.</p> + <p>You don't need half this shit.</p> +</blockquote> diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2021-02-24/metadata.json b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2021-02-24/metadata.json @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +{ + "cover": "dwrz_20110710_2.jpg", + "date": "2021-02-24T00:00:00Z", + "published": true, + "title": "Pack Weight" +} diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2022-07-08/2022-07-08.html b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2022-07-08/2022-07-08.html @@ -0,0 +1,200 @@ +<p> + 2022年07月08日我和梅根去远足和露营。 + 那天中午我们离开了罗斯福岛；梅根开车带我们到熊山附近，小径开始的地方。 + 由于交通拥挤，我们花了两个小时左右才到那里。 + 我们在小径起点停了车，之后我们开始远足。 +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220708T140451.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220708T140451.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + 我们走了蓝色的小径，叫“Timp Torne”小径。 + 一开始树木非常茂盛，路平坦，但很快小径就开始爬升了。 + 其实，我们发现这条小径有点难：它非常崎岖，天气也炎热潮湿。 + 而前一天，我也骑了自行车，而梅根跑步跑了四英里。 +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220708T140954.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220708T140954.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + 尽管如此，小径很美：地形非常多样化，提供了许多景点。 + 我们也发现野生蓝莓，它们小但很好吃！ +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220708T143253.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220708T143253.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220708T155402.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220708T155402.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220708T152720.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220708T152720.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + 30分钟远足后，我们到达了一个洞穴，我从没见过像这样的洞穴，很有意思。 + 里面很凉爽，有一只小青蛙。 +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220708T144058.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220708T144058.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + 我们又远足了一段路，停下来休息，吃梅根最喜欢的<a href="https://schmackarys.com/" target="_blank">饼干</a>，最后我们到达了一个山叫“The Timp”（手鼓山，332米高）。 + 那里有三个方向的美丽景观。 +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220708T164202.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220708T164202.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220708T164948.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220708T164948.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + 向南你可以看到哈德逊河和远处的纽约市。 + 向西你可以看到“Harriman”州立公园的绿色的山，西山和西山的庇护所。 + 向北你可以看到哈德逊河，熊山，熊山桥，熊山火塔。 +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220708T165027.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220708T165027.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220708T164504.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220708T164504.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220708T170351.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220708T170351.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> 其实，我们觉得地方如此美，我们想在那里搭帐篷。 + 然而，停下来太早了，所以休息一会儿以后，我们继续向西山走。 +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220708T173250.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220708T173250.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220708T173854.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220708T173854.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220708T174511.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220708T174511.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + 我们到达了西山（382米高）汗流浃背，但很开心。 +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220708T174928.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220708T174928.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + 我们休息一会儿，之后做晚饭。 + 我们吃白豆炖羽衣甘蓝，和用余烬烤的玉米棒。 + 我也吃了一些野生桑葚。 + 不幸，空气有点雾霾，所以我们看不到远处的纽约市。 +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220708T184434.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220708T184434.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220708T195728.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220708T195728.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220708T203146.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220708T203146.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + 过了一会儿，另一个徒步旅行者到达，他有一把小吉他，告诉我们他是个初学者。 + 尽管如此，听他弹吉他很好听。 +</p> + +<video controls> + <source src="/static/media/dwrz_20220709T004952.mp4" type="video/mp4"> + Your browser does not support video. +</video> + +<p> + 晚上9点30分我们在庇护所睡觉。 + 我很累，所以我睡了两个小时。 + 但梅根没睡着。她看到了一些大蜘蛛；庇护所里也又热又湿，还有很多蚊子。 + 当我在晚上11:30起床时，她让我在庇护所搭帐篷。 + 我这样做了，所以剩下的问题只有热度和湿度。 + 那时，听到音乐开始播放。 + 那天晚上是宰牲节，我觉得附近一定有庆祝活动，一直演奏到凌晨四点。 + 总的来说，我们睡得不好。 +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220709T052624.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220709T052624.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + 幸好，第二天天气更好，很凉快。 + 空气更清新了，所以我们可以看到远处的纽约市－玻璃建筑反射着日出。 +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220709T073636.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220709T073636.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + 我们收拾了营地，然后吃早餐；我们吃了梅根做的柠檬罂粟松饼。 +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220709T075543.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220709T075543.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220709T083912.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220709T083912.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220709T084124.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220709T084124.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + 然后，我们远足到手鼓山，然后回到起点。 + 沿着小径，我们吃了很多野蓝莓，谈论生活和我们看到的东西，欣赏另一个方向的景观。 +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220709T085846.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220709T085846.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220709T095929.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220709T095929.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220709T100508.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220709T100508.jpg"> +</a> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220709T100530.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220709T100530.jpg"> +</a> + +<p> + 在梅根的车上，我们喝水吃芒果干。回家的路上没有交通拥挤，行程顺利结束。 +</p> + +<a href="/static/media/1920/dwrz_20220709T111114.jpg" > + <img class="img-center" src="/static/media/720/dwrz_20220709T111114.jpg"> +</a> diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2022-07-08/metadata.json b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2022-07-08/metadata.json @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +{ + "cover": "dwrz_20220708T170351.jpg", + "date": "2022-07-08T00:00:00Z", + "published": true, + "title": "远足到西山" +} diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2022-10-01/2022-10-01.html b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2022-10-01/2022-10-01.html @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +<!-- src="/static/media/720/maze.png" --> +<p> + Use the arrow keys to move <span class="purple">Theseus</span>. + <br> + Your goal is to reach the <span class="green">exit</span> -- or to survive as + long as possible. + <br> + Avoid the <span class="red">Minotaur</span>, which is hunting you. + <br> + Press the spacebar to reveal the <span class="blue">solution</span>. + <br> +</p> +<canvas id="maze" height="640" width="640"></canvas> +<p> + <span id="game-over"></span> +</p> +<script type="module"> + import Maze from '/static/js/minotaur/maze.js'; + import Game from '/static/js/minotaur/game.js'; + + // Set the canvas to be 100% the width of its container. + const canvas = document.getElementById('maze'); + canvas.style.width ='100%'; + + // Create a new maze and game. + const maze = new Maze({ canvas, side: 24 }); + const game = new Game({ document, maze }); + + // Run the game. + game.run(); +</script> diff --git a/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2022-10-01/metadata.json b/cmd/web/site/entry/static/2022-10-01/metadata.json @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +{ + "cover": "maze.png", + "date": "2022-10-01T00:00:00Z", + "published": true, + "title": "Minotaur" +}