rebirth

hearing your heart beat is an incredible thing.  and feeling it, even more so.

of course we take it for granted and learn to ignore it.  the average heart beats 72 times a minute.  so 4,329 times per hour, 103,680 times per day, and 37,843,200 times per year.

by exactly a year ago, i had been breathing for approximately 14,538,240 minutes so my heart had beat about 1,046,753,280 times, give or take the moments of my life that had my heart beating out of my chest or the times of deep meditation during which i'd managed to slow my heart.

i could probably revisit all the momentous occasions in my life based on my heartbeat.  almost all of those, racing.  the time i beat my personal mile time.  the time i fell in love.  every time i've had an incredible laugh.  the times i've jumped out of planes, jumped dunes on ATVs, bungee jumped, caught a great wave, flipped out of a raft, and on.

but for the first time in my life, i had an immensely unusual sensation.  i was stricken with typhoid and had severe bouts of diarrhea that started 15 hours before.  somewhere in those 15 hours, my life had hung by threads and i wouldn't have known or cared had i died.  by evening, i was sitting at dinner and slowly both my arms went completely numb.  i dozed off at the table a few times.  suddenly i had a strange sensation in my chest.  my heart was failing.

i had a strange premonition about the trip and i took out a million and a half in insurance.  somehow i made it back.  alive.  and the past year has been quite a ride and i've crossed off most of what remains on my bucket list.

and tomorrow is 24 more hours i should be grateful for to enjoy to my heart's content.

mirage

all day every day we are sold mirages.  empty value.

what's the last thing you purchased?  did it truly make you happy?

what value did you exactly receive for your money?  warmth?  fashion?  status?  respect?  intellectual property?  the fact that you employed 0.002% of an 11 year-old sweatshop worker?

what's something you bought 5 years ago?  do you still use it?  is macklemore right?

we are all eskimos buying ice.

are we all wasting time earning fabricated currencies, investing it in fabricated industries, all so we can constantly buy into fabricated idealities to further propagate this cycle?  sure we're creating more and more people which means we need to create more and more bullshit services to sell these people in order to create more money.

total global currency in circulation in 1990 was $1 trillion and by 2002, $2 trillion, and by 2008, $4 trillion.  so if the size of the global finance industry is $955 trillion, what is everyone really selling?  yes, this game of monopoly is getting bigger so we need more monopoly money because i can't buy a house with cheetos, but it's not like i wanted a monopoly house anyway.

clearly i'm an utilitarian rationalist.  if you need me, i'll be chopping wood while seeking enlightenment in a forest.

emotional escape velocity

escape velocity is equal to the square root of 2 times the gravitational constant times the mass divided by the radius.

my metaphysical corollary is the square root of thoughts times emotions all divided by time.

of course, time has a way of making you a prisoner of emotional gravity, so i do mean time spent moving forward rather than living in reverse.

future lawrence will say

'i told you so'

http://medcitynews.com/2012/12/prosthetic-arm-controlled-by-brainwaves-allows-quadraplegic-woman-to-feed-herself/

sound like anything i've been babbling about forever?

google glass

"But even he, the tech-obsessed gadget fiend, admits it’s difficult to wear. The first time he set foot outside the house with it on, he immediately stepped in dog shit because he wasn’t paying attention to the world outside the screen. And he adamantly refuses to wear it on public transportation for fear of being mugged.

- http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/09/google-glass-hands-on-review/#sBuABVEDEBspFCui.99 "

fence post

i've spent my entire life being compassionate.  and i can see myself slowly becoming a cynic.

i've tried to live by king's words that "a strong man must be militant as well as moderate. he must be a realist as well as an idealist."

each step i get closer to deciding that i'd rather become a ball of unstoppable fury, i stumble upon something like chandler's "if i couldn't ever be gentle, i wouldn't deserve to be alive."

but how far could i take this boat if i wasn't constantly worrying about its wake?

update: i think i've always been a ball of fury and worked hard to keep mr hyde at bay.  now i'm more curious what mr hyde can accomplish.

cannot wait for

google glasses, corneal implant edition