The Rough Guide to a Better World

Here's an interesting publication: The Rough Guide to a Better World. Download a copy and check it out. It's a straightforward report and information resource on development work around the world.

Fighting nature

I just spent a few days at a house at a SoCal golf/country club during which I took some walks around the immaculately groomed premises. I had really mixed feelings. On the one hand, I appreciated the vast variety of plant and tree species-- willows posed next to oaks, miniature agapanthas entwined with sage, and seas of oregano teeming with bumble bees despite the late date. But I also felt an underlying repulsion at the total artifice of the place. It is an essential denial of nature to grow and trim acres of flawless grass in the middle of the desert. Those trees would never grow in the same place, nor would so many types of plant coexist in perfect beds aligned by the fairways. A full battalion of gardeners arrives every day to beat back the normal growth of nature in a battle of Shakespearean character.

It seemed a waste. And once seen in this light, it also seemed grotesque, almost a perversion of nature to fight it in that way.

But before I became too inflated on self-righteousness, I had to remember that we all beat back nature every day. The morning shower erases a natural buildup of oil and sweat accumulated during the previous day. Shaving removes normal hair growth. Deodorant and perfume sustain our unnatural cleanliness. And are manicured nails any less phony than manicured putting greens?

We are in constant dialogue with entropy. Even eating is (at base level) simply a response to the reminder that the engine needs food and without it we won't have the energy to keep beating back entropy.

Still, my yard doesn't resemble a country club.

Recipes: It's all jazz

As a musician, I have never played jazz, but in the kitchen... oh yeah. I can never just follow recipes. Often, I don't quite have one of the ingredients -- say, I might have powdered sugar but not granulated -- or maybe I don't have the kind of pan it calls for. No sweat. With a couple decades of cooking experience under my belt, I have at least some sense of how to wing these variations.

Besides, sometimes the recipe is in conflict with what is actually happening. It says "Cook 30 minutes until brown on all sides," but I can see with my own eyes that it is not anywhere near brown after 20 minutes. So I can choose: raise the temperature, or keep it the same but go well beyond 30 minutes. The best choice depends on what else is going on-- say, if lengthier cooking will dry it out too much.

Not that it always works. Some dishes are testaments to the precision needed in following the directions. Stray a bit and you pay. Over time, I've learned a little bit about which modifications are fatal or at least drastic, but there's always more to learn!

Recipes are nothing but guidelines. How can they be? They really bear little resemblance to the food that supposedly results from them. In fact, the dish includes some interaction from the cook.

The reason Aunt Millie's brownies never taste the same when you make them is very simple-- you made them, not Aunt Millie. They must be different. A trumpet solo by Wynton Marsalis is not going to sound identical to one by Dave Brubeck, even if they play the same notes.

For Thanksgiving dinner, I made chocolate cinnamon meringue. Perhaps not so traditional, but folks appreciate having a light option for dessert. And it came out darned good, if I do say so myself. Even though I only had dark brown sugar instead of light brown, used extra large eggs instead of large ones, and made the mini chocolate chips myself by slightly grinding frozen regular-sized chips. Oh, and I increased the chips slightly because I didn't include nuts as the recipe called for.

Trees and time

For Thanksgiving, I drove down to my cousin's house, who lives near my old office. Hadn't been there for a year, so it was nice to see that old neighborhood again. It looked basically the same, but I kept thinking something was different.... something... something.

Then I realized: the trees were taller and bushier. I would never have noticed seeing it every day like I used to at work, but after a year that change was distinct. It's a simple observation, but it felt satisfying and relaxing.

What we see in a scene depends on so many things, including the time interval since we saw it last. Probably the same is true with people.

Meow mix

Do cats sound different in Japan? No, but they do sound different if you are a native Japanese speaker. To English speakers, a cat says "meow," but the Japanese equivalent is "nyaa." Korean dogs say "wang-wang" and Spanish sheep say "meeee."

Check out these and many more: Sounds of the World's Animals

Apparently the language we speak has a profound effect on what we hear when our ears encounter a certain set of frequencies, ie a sound. Both the vowels and the consonants differ-- m's for n's, au's for aaah's.

Note that certain sounds are related, though. It is pretty common for some interpretations to have a "k" sound where others have a "g" (for example, on the frog page-- the English "ribbit" is an odd exception). Another frequent set is "m" and "b" (for example, on the sheep page). This reminds me of Japanese! These sounds are precisely the ones that are linked by sets of diacritical marks on the Japanese phonemes. I always thought it was odd that "m" with the diacritical marks was pronounced as a "b", but it seems that something fundamental really is going on there.

Back to the animal sounds, I remember the moment when I realized that my cat truly cannot understand what I say to him. I was in Japan, and there was a cat in the hotel lobby that I was petting and coaxing into a rough purr. A Japanese child approached and cooed to the cat as people do with animals.... in Japanese. My first thought was, "Of course the cat won't respond to that-- it's Japanese! I can barely understand that!" That's when I realized that English can't be any easier on the feline brain :-).

What does your pet say?

Peace and Patriotism

While out shopping, I saw some people on a corner waving huge peace flags and holding signs. They said things like "Bush Lied about WMD" and "Bring Them Home NOW." It was an interesting mix of people-- spreading from age 40 to 70 or so, men and women.

So I stopped to talk. The guy who organized it had lost a brother in Vietnam. He pulled out a picture showing his mother and brother in front of a Christmas tree a few days before he shipped out, and the last time they saw him alive. This guy saw a clear similarity between the two wars. He pointed out how low troop morale is in Iraq, which matches the pointless and seemingly hopeless nature of the engagement.

He offered me a bumper sticker that says "Peace is Patriotic" and shows part of an American flag with the stars replaced by doves. I accepted it, but had to think about his notion that the word "patriotic" should be reclaimed by people who want to be proud of their country because it is doing honorable things like working for peace.

I fully respect his point. But in the end, I just couldn't live with the word "Patriotic." I trimmed it off, so the sticker simply has the flag and says "Peace." Works for me.

(In a lighter moment, I realized that I could trim it to say "Peace is A Riot," but decided that was typical Kim humor that no one else would get. That happens to me a lot, and thankfully I am starting to be able to recognize such instances ahead of time.)

What's wrong with "Patriotic"? It implies a sense of country. For me, that sense is weakening over time. I feel kinship at various times with various groups of humans, from fellow meditators, to athletes, to family, to scientists, and sometimes simply to all of us homo sapiens. But I can find little reason to draw the boundary where the physical border of the US lies. Makes no sense to my brain.

And peace is just such a nicer thing anyway.

Feeling Dictionary

I was contacted recently by the author of an interesting webpage: The Feeling Dictionary.

He has carefully catalogued what is, for him, actually happening when he experiences certain feelings. He accepts his feelings as they are, without judging them, but also without necessarily acting on them. That is true freedom in the realm of feeling.

I suspect each person has some individual variation in how they would catalogue their feelings (I know I feel some differences in my own psyche compared to his). But the overall point is worth considering: It is healthy to investigate feelings really carefully in order to separate the actual experience from the beliefs and coercions offered by society, religion, culture, etc.

In other words, make sure you are feeling your own feelings, not someone else's.

(And by the way, isn't that front-page artwork really neat?)

Sensory Overload

I was just at a place in San Francisco called Teatro Zin Zanni, a dinner theater. The show takes place in multiple acts, between which multiple dinner courses are served. A small troupe of actors sings, dances, and performs cirque-like feats. (I've never seen someone so talented with cherry tomatoes, for instance...). Anyway, the whole experience is designed to be over-the-top: more fantabulous, exotic, delicious, and generally huge than you dreamed possible.

Although I laughed at some parts and enjoyed seeing the acrobatics, I was also aware of quite a bit of discomfort. It was, quite frankly, too much. The food was wonderful, but I couldn't focus on it because there was always some singing or action going on while we were eating. The acts were fun to watch, but hard to fully enjoy while eating. Five courses of food was simply too much for me to eat; I would never order an appetizer, soup, salad, a main course, and dessert in a restaurant.

If one sensory experience is good, having several good ones at once is not necessarily better. Arguably, it is worse. Simplicity and purity of experience are so much more satisfying than sensory overload.

For the same reason I didn't enjoy Teatro Zin Zanni, I didn't especially enjoy the movie Fantasia. I saw the version that came out in the mid-80's with a bunch of college friends. They exited the theater babbling with excitement about how great it was. But I felt overwhelmed and uncomfortable. Great music had been ruined by combining it with cartoon images. The distraction of having a visual experience along with an auditory one-- both of equal complexity-- detracted from both.

Like wearing plaid with stripes, both in bold colors... some things were just meant to exist by themselves.

Cats See Different Stuff

Anyone who thinks they can look around a room and see everything that's present needs to observe a cat. My cat Skyler was asleep on my lap when a gnat drifted by and started hovering around the table lamp. He actually woke up and began staring at it intently! It's like he had radar going even while asleep. Other times, he will stare with interest at what appears to be nothing. I can't see a darn thing, but he's tracking some image all over the room.

There is certainly much more to the world than we see. I wonder how a cat experiences the world with its set of sensory equipment. Look at those whiskers and forward-pointing ears-- it's like having a full sensor array stuck on your face. Their noses are surely sharper than human noses, but it's not quite like a dog. Cat noses have smaller nasal passages, which seems to indicate less reliance on scent than on hearing and whisker touch.

I'd be fascinated to experience what I look/sound/smell like to my cat.

The Power of Mind

For complex reasons, I had an MRI of my brain yesterday. I had it done "with and without contrast," which means they pull you out halfway through and inject a dye that interacts with the field and changes the image. For equally complex reasons, I have difficulty with injections because my body overreacts to the insult-- the injection site can hurt literally for days or even a couple weeks, pretty painfully at the beginning.

I am a meditator. I decided to put it to practical use.

After the injection, when I could feel my mind paying attention to the place, I focused all my mental energy on the left side of my body (since the injection was on the right). I felt my attention wanting to pull over to the right and feel that forearm, but I forced it to stay on the left with a continuous act of concentration. Eventually, my body only felt solid on the left side. I stayed that way for the second 30 minutes of the MRI.

And just doing that-- not latching onto the pain for half an hour-- helped tremendously! I have almost no pain there today. It's as if distracting my mind for a little while prevented the habit of feeling pain there from forming.

I'm not saying that's the only reason. I know from experience that the skill of the nurse matters a lot too-- some really jam the needle in there, while others can slip it in gently. This one seemed gentle and competent, but still, I'm convinced that the meditation helped.

Now the really interesting question is... will my mental focusing on the left show up on the film? :-)

Carob

You know what? I like carob.

Carob's worst moment was the day someone decided it could be marketed as a "chocolate substitute." Once that was the standard, no one could just taste carob anymore-- they had Hershey, Lindt, or Scharffenberger on their mind clouding the actual experience of carob.

If you're expecting chocolate, carob must be a disappointment. Just as an apple would be a huge disappointment if you were expecting to taste cherry. Or steak would be disappointing if you thought it was chicken (it's one of the few things that doesn't taste like chicken!).

But carob has its own character. I find it smoother than chocolate, with a "rounder" taste and a richness like that of nuts. (The richness of chocolate reminds me more of the richness of cream.) Carob blends surprisingly well with pumpkin flavors. And carob chips stay pretty soft even when chilled, so they're easy to eat in puddings or on ice cream.

Give carob a try sometime again. And set yourself the challenging task of not thinking about chocolate as you taste it.

Bowled Over

I saw one of the most stunning rainbows I have ever seen on the way home from work today.

• It was a full semicircle, bright and bold all the way around
  
• The main bow was double (shading from red outside to purple inside, and then another red-to-purple band began)
  
• There was a second, paler bow outside the main one, separated by a gap
  

I was trying to gawk as I sped along the rain-slick freeway. I was concentrated-- like I get when focusing on a fine-motor task like threading a needle-- just so I could maximize my gawk time while still driving (relatively) safely. So gorgeous! Like a fairy paint stripe across the world, or a momentary error in letting light through from some other dimension.

We imagine rainbows being far away because of course we can't literally get the pot of gold. But near the horizon, the rainbow actually passes in front of the buildings and other objects. It is an effect in the air, after all. It can't be blocked by a building.

Most of all, I love the fact that everyone sees a different rainbow. The effect occurs at a particular viewing angle, which must be different for every person just because they are standing in a slightly different place. So when we gaze together at the rainbow, it is not a single thing "out there," it is more as if it is a different thing "in here" for each of us.

And at the aesthetic level, that is true of any experience.

I mentioned this experience to a friend, who commented that rainbows are wonderful because they give people an excuse to smile and chat. Normally we pass each other on the street with our eyes down, barely noticing each other. But it is perfectly socially acceptable to point out a rainbow to a total stranger, saying, "Look at that! Isn't it neat!?"

Rainbows seem to serve no purpose but to be beautiful and make people smile and communicate.

Spam subject lines

I have to admit that the designers of spam subject lines are quite clever. Sure, I can ignore the ones that say "big dick ssssyujm" and "URGENT BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY". But often, when I scan over them in my Inbox, I do notice that-- just for a split second-- my attention is caught by the subject.

It might be "Quick question" or "Hey there"-- subject lines I use myself on occasion. Or "Order information #221". I have an outstanding online order at many times, so I have to flick my eyes over to the sender to see if it's actually from the company.

And then there are ones that aim at the emotions. "Call the doctor," for instance (before I realize that no one sends email asking someone else to call the doctor). Or "I tried calling but couldn't get through." Or "This can help with the pain."

And there are practical ones too, like "Need to cancel for Sunday" or "Your appointment is on Tuesday." Again, there is a momentary movement of the mind.

The writers of these things really know something about psychology. Even though I can logically stop myself from paying any heed to the spam, my mind lurches every time. And that makes spam deletion an actual activity, a mental energy drain because my attention is constantly leaping at things and getting pulling back, like handling a hyperactive dog on a leash.

Autumn in California

Easter-coasters who disdain California's lack of a "real" fall have perhaps not experienced the full autumn here. In my area, there is a stunning variety of trees, some of which turn the traditional yellow and red (or even purple!) and others of which stay green. Look up from the right vantage point, and you might behold golden gingko leaves, crimson and orange liquid amber leaves, and the evergreen bough of a pine tree, all in front of a clear blue sky.

There is a row of liquid ambers along my street. Curiously, about half are cranberry-red right now, and threatening to drop their leaves, while the others are still green and bushy, just tinged with purple near the tops. Some difference in temperament, I suppose.

Autumn here is an extended affair. It begins with a subtle shift in light quality in late August. The burning sun of Labor Day is already singing the leaf tips. The temperature usually stays high through September, but the trees aren't fooled; the precocious ones rush into their last set of foliage, while the nostalgic ones begrudge only a small darkening of the lush summer green. The inevitable first rains arrive in October, alternating with the crisp, sunny warmth that lightens my heart at this favorite time of year.

The morning light is decidedly gray by Halloween, and the sunny days can only be be called pale. Nearly all the trees have trended into the ROY half of ROY G. BIV, and some are even casting off their burdens, the evidence scattered on the sidewalk below. Mild rains come and go, but without strong winds. This means the process of dropping leaves will continue well into December, or even January. And of course, some trees choose not to do it at all. We celebrate individuality here.

I have stood in awe of multicolored forests in New England. And I revel in the drawn-out, languidly exuberant process of change on this coast, too.

The Key

Standing at my door in the dark, I tried every key on my keychain, but none would work even though one was surely my housekey! I even tried them both ways. Frustrated, I went out to the streetlight to locate the right one. When I went back and tried it in the dark, the door clicked open right away.

Presumably, the only difference was the knowledge that I had the right key.

It reminds me of cases where professors have put unsolved research problems on exams. Every now and then, a bright student will solve one. In this case, they are unburdened by the "knowledge" that the problem is hard or possibly insoluble.

Birth

And so it begins.