KODA

If I were to make a kit for the rest of my life
In a day
Something for every moment, through each breath
Something that would protect me from losing myself
To guide me through moments of fear, sadness, and ecstacy

I wonder what I would put inside this package
Simple things perhaps, which at moments I know I’ll need
Like bandaids, rubber bands, and papers and pencils
A note with some writing on it, saying “don’t take yourself too seriously”

Colors, emotions, and nuances might fade with time
So I will have to pack them up into words, drawings, and music
Music that reminds me what passion feels like

I wonder what my kit would look like
It could be a metal box with a lid
Or a piece of paper
A brown paper bag, or an investor’s suitcase
Something to hold all my wildest dreams, and most solemn plans
To take anywhere and everywhere

Or maybe
It would be a tiny seed
A great truth, a burning flame
That when planted will grow and expand and change shapes
As I do

Never forget

As this moment passes

We will grow old.
We will lose hope.
We will have to ask for forgiveness.

We will find ourselves in our parents’ shoes.
And someday in our grandparents’ shoes.
And we will wonder
If we did the right thing.

Yet never forget

This moment of possibility:
Never forget
That we have two eyes, two legs to stand on.
Never forget
That this moment is ours to create.

We could change the future and make history
This time to never forget
The living hopes and dreams that shaped today.

And to never forget
That life goes around in circles
This is our turn.

Tonight I read an article off reddit by alluringly titled: Common Benign Dog Tumor May Actually Be Ancient, Immortal Dog Turned into Virus. After reading the article completely, I am stunned… what a concept, cancer cells mutating and propagating into a communicable disease of their own! The real clincher is that the article suggests that this “transmissible tumor” has distinctly different DNA from its host body, which is proposed to have originated from a single dog or wolf several centuries ago! Do check out this article, because it is truly fascinating. This is a concept in biology I had neither heard nor concieved of before.

However, possibly even more interesting was Wikipedia’s page (linked in the article) on HeLa cells. According to Wikipedia, this is an “immortal cell line (it does not age) used in medical research and a proposed new single cell species […] derived from cervical cancer cells taken from Henrietta Lacks, who died from her cancer in 1951.”

I love hiding secrets in things
Just for the thought that someday
Someone special
Might care enough to find them

Here’s a fun little game I’ve been playing today. You might remember Flash Earth, a flash interface to the satellite imagery available through Google and Windows Live Local. While nifty, the one great limitation of this application is the almost complete lack of labels and location input in the interface. But this provides the perfect challenge for a game.

Take this app and find your home on Earth, from the completely zoomed out position, using only the imagery as your guide. Can you find it? Try to think of landmarks, find your city, and follow the streets. Pretend you’ve been abducted by aliens and are now trying to show them where to drop you off. Because heavens, you never know when such a skill could come in handy.

Now zoom out again and find the Empire State Building. The Great Pyramids of Egypt. The Eiffel Tower. Your old school.

Tomorrow I shall wake up one year older. Well, one year older by the arbitrary count of 365 days, but one year older still.

To me this will mark the achievement of another checkpoint in my life, but at the same time also another step finished in it. I find this very exciting. There’s still so much I want to experience, to discover, to do… and so much that I’m immensely grateful and proud of for having experienced.

Time to go sleep, to be able to make tomorrow an amazing day!

It takes so much effort simply to face oneself.

A few minutes ago I was sitting down, munching some granola and flipping through some camera ads laying on the table. I was mulling over some dissapointment from the events that had transpired over the past hour. But then, I had a realization. A realization of how seemingly separate events happened to bring me to experiences I couldn’t have possibly planned for. I have to chuckle at how these events and my intentions have shaped my experience today!

Today I was to meet some friends to hang out and have fun; we’d been doing this for a few weeks and I was really looking forward to it. I was very much anticipating seeing one friend, whom I had missed after her performance the night before. She is the one who originally invited me to these afternoons. I had packed a CD in my pocket I thought she might like hearing. The quickest route to the place where we’ve met is a walk up a few hills, and so I set out walking, making my way to meet my friends.

Lately I’ve begun recognizing my assumption that everything I look at, everything I perceive, has a backside that I can’t see. A side that is hidden from me because of my current perspective.

I see books on tables nearby, realize that the side facing down is completely hidden from my view. While in my mind I percieve things in this room as objects, and my mind can fill their forms in, what I am really viewing is a but 2D shadow of their existence. Just “the tip of the iceberg,” with far more of the surface hidden from my vantage point.

Yet, even as I move around and view the room from another angle, this backside is still there, and there is just as much unseen to me as there was before. And there always will be. It is like this backside of non-perception is dependent upon my very context of perception: I move, and it moves with me. The backside of things is a natural antithesis to the frontside that is accessible to my vision.

This little poem sprang into my mind one night a few years ago, just out of the blue. Just three words, three orders, and reversed. But is it more than just wordplay? I continue to ponder what it means… and how it can have meaning.