felis-saurus

If you could bring back one dinosaur, which one would it be?

I don’t know much about dinosaurs, but if they really did exist, and if the ones we have been made to be familiar with were of those, I would most definitely want a brontosaurus for my own.

Let me digress a tad and clarify my opening statement. I am not a scientist, but I do have an inquisitive mind. I do think the world is what we believe it is, what we’ve been told it is, and what we’ve been shown in pictures and museums. But what we consider to be factual is a matter of faith. Faith in our history tellers. Faith in what we see in pictures and videos and learn from big brains in big auditoriums for a fee comparable to a mortgage. Faith in science. Who knows, maybe Copernicus really was right. Or maybe we live in a shoebox with little holes cut in the top, like I thought when I was a kid. I believe the math works out. But gosh, the math is vastly different for different scales. Life -size things act differently than the things too tiny to see. The basis of our reality is what we see and touch, etc., in the now. And even that must be taken on faith.

To begin to understand my perspective, you must consider that I practically live in my head. I have two degrees in physics, and yet I take much of what I know on faith. In an odd sort of way, I have been trained to approach everything with a clean slate and consider that alternative possibilities to the standards that have been set could very well exist. The best explanations win until others come along to replace or modify them.

A brontosaurus was, from what I have been told, a vegetarian, gentle giant. I would provide land and trees for him (or her), and he (or she) and I would be friends.

Kinda like a chill cat. But on a larger scale.

I’d like that.

life update for the aether

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? The summer slipped by so fast with all my medical escapades and whatnot. Kinda sucked, actually, but I did get a bit of warm sunshine. One-hundred degrees is the new warm in Texas, in case you didn’t know.

I spent the past week immersed in physics conversations with like-minded physics folks. I did a lot of walking and ate a lot of food that was really bad for me. It was a nice getaway, and I learned a lot. Met new people. Made friends. Geeked out at the University of Texas in Austin with other geeks. Super fun.

And I go back to work on Wednesday. I’d honestly rather be holding deep discourse with peers than planning for school, but I gotta remember the good parts that come with being a teacher. Just today I got an email from a student from last year asking for a recommendation letter. He reminded me that I did a decent job. That was helpful, as was the refresher last week, given my months-long bout with self-doubt. Gotta let that stuff go already. It’s gonna be okay.

Anyway, T-minus 20. In the meantime, I think I’ll go for a pedicure tomorrow and take a nap in the massage chair at the nail salon. Take a walk. You know. Pretend It’s still June for a couple of days.

But July is nice, too.

Zah fewtchah

is out of reach.

When it gets here, it changes to later. Just after the now. Always after the now.

It’s plans we make and that others make for us. It’s expectations and anticipation. It’s the unknown, and if we are honest with ourselves, it’s the source of our fear.

We are never living our future but what transpired from the past. And there are so many variables at play, most of which we are never aware of, which is why plans usually fall through, disappointment is often inevitable, and why things are rarely as bad as we thought they would be.

We adapt and improvise, find the good, step up, and conquer. The future is an image, and the past is a lesson learned. The now is where we action happens. The now is the preparation for the next now and the battle against, or for, what currently is.

Fear is most often a choice. We can’t control what will be. We can, however, embrace where we find ourselves.

. . . . . . .

I am currently terrified of reaping the consequences of inadequacy. And maybe failure and humiliation will in fact come to pass. I will prepare myself for the worst. I will be proactive. That is my plan—my endeavor for the immediate future—to alleviate my current fear.

In the meantime, I will toss my cares aside. The now is all that matters. And what I do now is a choice.

. . . . . . .

I am a beast. If not by way of actual competence unacknowledged then by the ability to push through. I’m pretty decent at dealing with humility after a lifetime of experience. There is more to my life than what I fear, and there is more to my life than past sorrows. I have a choice to bring either one into my present, and I choose not to. I choose peace.