Maná

I discovered a new band I like from the radio. Even though the voice takes getting used to... their lyrics are so poetic. They're perfect if you're in the mood for a good love song.




i guess there's a much better version of the song here...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZOkyUV3ki0&feature=player_embedded

Love and labor again.

Just finished yet another boring amazing classic american literature book; The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
They always seem to be incredibly boring, and all the same. But the style is truely amazing when you really delve into the stories. They just tell stories of lives of normal average people, and turn them into crazy amazing.... i dunno how to explain.
Anyway, this one was really interesting with the symbolism and ideas. The way she would maybe spare 3 words to describe something that will be incredibly important in the story. So small that you almost miss it.

I really loved how simple she portrayed things. So simple and so complicated.

aaahhh
so i just wrote all of these examples but now I am replacing it with this sentence because I realized I can't give spoilers!

But the best part was the end. Because this book is all about this thing that I've been writing about a lot on here... and elsewhere.. just the latest idea I've been into. This whole thing about what it is we actually do in life. We just love and labor. We work so hard all our lives just to survive until we die. People in the US, with our health care system, will graduate from college in industrial chemistry and then go work as a plumber simply because he has asthma and the plumbing company has health insurance.
Besides that.... we love. There's all these different kinds, and we cant explain them all. We can... okay, chemicals, brain lighting up, whatever... We still cant explain exactly why it happens, why those chemicals make this happen. We still can explain what it is. It just is.

Honestly human love and labor, however misguided and in whatever form, are the only things that give meaning to life.
I happen to personally put love at the top. I don't know why, but I love love and I hate love, and love just controls the universe, why not put it on the top. It's almost as if it's god to me. I believe in it and follow it blindly by pure faith. It makes decisions for me in my life. It has no physical form.
i know... i'm a little crazy.

Reminder #17

Warning: This may be an elephant dismount.

Four eyed monsters

I'm really annoyed by cute (or ugly) couples these days.

This 50-something year old and his trying-to-be-hott blondie 40 year old date sitting on the same side of the table whispering and giggling in each others ears, holding their martini's high, he's got his pinky-ringed fingers sliding up and down her shoulder.
UCK!!

In between classes, the young handsome guy takes the long route to his next class in order to run into her to steal a quick (and more often, not so quick) kiss, as if they're the only two people on the planet and not a single judging eye is turned on them.

UGH!

It's raining. Warm at first, so they go twirl around in it until it starts to turn cold. Oh no! He puts her arms around her to keep her warm and she puts hers around him under his jacket. Oh no! It's time for her to leave, but she'll freeze to death! He takes his jacket off and wraps it around her and sends her on her way while he huddles to himself and watches her until she goes out of sight.
Ewwwwwwwwwwwww

Impulsively holding hands, they think no one notices.
Impulsively tucking fly away hairs behind her hair, they think no one notices.
Taking turns lightly, playfully kicking each other's feet under the table, still, think no one notices.
ew ew ew ew.

I'm saying... "hey. Hey! HEY! I'm talking to you!!" while he's got that dazed, distracted, madly in love look in his eye watching the love of his life giggle while sitting across from him.

Yuck!
Ok. I should stop now.


"They have four eyes, two mouths, and eight limbs that wrap around themselves in narcissisitic adoration. It's disgusting. I cant help but envy them."
--Four eyed monsters

Concentration rather than Multi-tasking.

Concentration -- why bother?

Concentration is worth building because it is a foundational skill; it supports almost everything else one might do. In that way it's like intelligence. In fact, definitions of intelligence often include concentration as a component. Anecdotes about famous achievers of history suggest that one thing they shared was a phenomenal ability to get fully immersed in … something.
Michelangelo spent two years on his back, two feet from the ceiling, painting the Sistine Chapel. I myself would have spent most of that time idly wondering whether to have pizza that night or soup.
In fact, according to the stories, only the pope could break the great artist's concentration. He kept coming in to ask, "How's it going?" Finally Michelangelo "accidentally" dropped a hammer that landed too close for comfort, and the pope stayed away after that.

The proof
In one experiment, people were taught certain basic meditation techniques and then asked to meditate while hooked up to machines that scanned what their brains were doing. In people who attained a deep, meditative state, it turned out, the area of the brain known to be associated with attention became active while other areas -- those associated with emotion, for example, or with processing external stimuli -- went dormant.

Researchers then hooked brain-scanning equipment to two groups of test subjects: seasoned meditators with thousands of hours of experience and novices. With each group, when the meditators seemed to be fully immersed, the researchers set off various distractions nearby -- a blaring TV, a crying baby, a gunshot, stuff like that.

In the novices, each event triggered brain waves that spread to other parts of their brains and did not die away for a long time. In the experienced meditators, each event set off a brief burst of brain activity in one limited area and then the brain went back to its former state: In short, the input was noticed, registered and set aside.

That looks like dead-bang proof that meditation enhances a person's underlying ability to concentrate. Of course it's also true that meditation classically aims to detach meditators from the world and get them concentrating essentially on nothing. I, personally, would rather concentrate on something. I don't want to detach from the world, I want to stay in it and get something done. I don't know of any definitive proof that the power of concentration developed by meditation can be applied, for example, to flying a plane through a thunderstorm.

But the broader point seems indisputable: Concentration is a skill. If it isn't used, it can atrophy; if it isn't trained, it fails to develop past a certain point. But by the same token, with the proper training and practice, it can be developed to a level of fearsome intensity.

Preferably, this begins in childhood (which is where parents and other elders come in) but it's never too late. Adults with normal powers of concentration can strengthen those powers with simple exercises such as the following:

• Count backward from 100 slowly and steadily.

• Count backward from 100 by threes.

• Simply look at an object for a set period -- say, 15 minutes.

• Building on the previous exercise, remove the object and picture it for that same period.

And if the buzz of distracting thoughts grows intolerable, stop what you're doing, make a list of everything on your mind at that moment, choose one thing to focus on, and then schedule a time to deal with all the rest. Giving your anxieties appointments, I find, tends to make them stop petitioning for attention now.
In short, I stand with those Zen masters who, when asked how they achieved enlightenment, answered, "When I walk, I just walk. When I eat, I just eat."

---Concentration is the Key -Tamim Ansary