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

It would grow limbs, branches and leaves-
Permutations and tiny variations of every path across time
And a trunk anchored into the deepest wholes and creations
And it would breathe the air just like I do
Whereas I exhale carbon dioxide, it would take it in
It’s height would make the sky seem taller

And that would be enough
For any moment
For any dream
I can open up my kit
And find what I need.

Once I had built my kit
My kit in a day
Then
I would throw it away
Because then I wouldn’t need it anymore.

I’ve had these things with me all along.

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.

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.”

HeLa are considered “immortal”: they do not die of old age and can divide an unlimited number of times as long as basic cell survival conditions are met (i.e. being maintained and sustained in a suitable environment). There are many strains of HeLa cells as they continue to evolve by being grown in cell cultures, but all HeLa cells are derived from the same tumour cells removed from Lacks. It has been estimated that the total mass of HeLa cells today far exceeds that of the rest of Henrietta Lacks’ body.

I find simply the ideas and implications of such a biological occurrance really startling. How would you like to be survived by the cancer cells that killed you? This is really food for thought, and while I don’t have much opinion about it at the moment, I’m sure many people could have a field day with all the idealogical, moral, and political ideas involved. Perhaps they already have. Yet, for now, I will simply share something new I learned about today.

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.

Isn’t is amazing how we live on a world so big, yet at other times it seems so small? To me it is strangely gratifying to be able to say “This is where I am.” while knowing that I found it for myself. It is a puzzle and a philosophical experiement. In all of human history, this capacity and freedom is unprecedented. We are able to experience and enjoy how big our world is on such a practical level. Even though modern mapping systems make it so easy to locate a point of interest, to me it is profound and so gratifying to zoom in and find myself. Can you?

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!

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.

I arrived 15 minutes late, my friends nowhere to be found. I walked around the the area twice, but nobody was there. I ended up waiting 20 minutes, but then walking home tired and dissapointed. I had missed my friend twice! On the way home, my mind wandered to philosophy studies from school: why it was that I was experiencing these moments now, what the meaning of it all was. I figured there must be a reason I brought myself here today! When I got home, I called my friend on the phone to see if she was somehow around, or if I had missed her entirely. She was there. It turned out after talking to her that she spent the day home sick, and had forgotten to tell me.

Well darn, that was dissapointing! It was really too bad that I hadn’t seen my friend. So there I was, sitting at the table looking at expensive cameras, when it came to me. If I had left earlier and met her friends, I would have discovered that she was not there today. If perhaps I had found them while walking around and stayed, I never would have had thought to call her. Somehow, fate was such that I took the one path that lead to us getting in touch.

Life can just be magic some times.

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.

While this should seem a very simple and commonplace rule of existence, the more I think about it, the more I find it rather disturbing. If I am sitting still, looking at my world around me, and from my perspective canot determine if these objects really do have a backside, methaphorically, what other parts of my world are going unseen? Further, this aspect of concentrating upon the backside of things makes me uncomfortable. In my mind, I feel the temptation to view things as “inside-out,” to try and envision the backside while I am readily viewing the frontside. Isn’t it kind of futile to be placing my emphasis on the part that I accept to be impossible for me to see?

I can look at my laptop screen, percieve the fact that the screen has a backside that is currently facing away from me. I see it in my mind, the “Dell” logo circle and the silver finish. But this backside is one that from my current vantage point I cannot see. So why do I assume it exists? Now I test it, I reach out and touch the back of the screen, run my fingers across the surface. But internally my mind reels! Where is the connection between this sensation of what I am feeling, and this surface that I cannot see but know is there? Yet now that I am looking for a visual contact to what I am feeling, I am forced to realize that it simply is not there! I am touching something that currently does not exist in my perception.

Until now, as an artist and as an existing human, what I have concentrated upon is what is being seen, what is presented to the viewer, but never what is naturally obscured from them. For me, “seeing is believing:” if I can see something, I can reasonably accept its existence as being there. But now, when thinking about it, I challenge my vision; I doubt its importance and validity. I begin to feel like I am seeing without percieving: I am blind. Oh, how strange it is to contemplate that which I cannot see!

Is there now?
Now there is.
Now is there?

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.