Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Right Now

Right now, somewhere out in soft wet dirt in England, one particular Mimivirus is infecting an individual Ameoba, thus replaying a scene that has occurred countless times during the Earth's several billion orbits around the sun.

Right now the sun is setting on Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the volcano strewn Kamchatka peninsula in eastern Russia. I'd imagine many of the residents are looking forward to spring. Are any of them in an existentialist mood as they settle in for the night? The colors of the sunset, perhaps, inspiring them for the moment to not take reality for granted, as it is so easy to do?


Right now, out in the cold waters of the northern Pacific, an individual blue whale is swimming alone in the darkening waters. I wonder what it's consciousness is like. Is it just a river of sensory input and emotions, forever living in the present moment, as some of the Buddhist monks attempt? How similar are it's sensory experiences and emotions to ours? Does it contemplate the past and plan for the future?

Right now a giant storm, the size of one of Earth's continents, is churning in the clouds of saturn. As exceedingly large as planet Earth is, with all of it's rich lifeforms, and the brains of six and a half billion people, each one an exceedingly complex structure, all of it is easily dwarfed in size by the majestic outer planets. While flying in a plane and looking out the window and using powers of ten one can almost get a feel for the size of the Earth, but the mind reels when faced with the colossal cold clouds of saturn.


Right now the entire universe exists.





Comments:
I don't know what made you think of
Petropavlovsk but I liked your thoughts (wish i could go there) and the Buddhist whales. Your blog provides great diversion during slow periods at work.
 
Hi, and thanks! I was looking around with the satellite option on google maps when I found the Kamchatka peninsula and I noticed that the southern end had lots of impressive volcanos (which are also a surreal purple color - perhaps the original image was in infrared and the conversion to make the vegetation green also gave the volcanos a peculiar color). That then lead to wikipedia...
 
I'm glad you're my brother because sometimes we daydream about the same things.
Although you say it better.
 
Hi Ben - you're too kind! Actually I think my writing could get a lot better - with a lot more practise. When I was young I assumed writing well was trivial, but it certainly isn't - at least not when you are writing about complex stuff that needs to be explained clearly. In particular I'm thinking about my new Observer Class Hypothesis paper that I've been writing very slowly over the course of many months. I'll agonize over the wording of a paragraph over and over, although I suppose a lot of that is in part myself trying to decide what the theory really is. And come to think of it I should really blog more - I think of cool things to blog about several times a week at least but usually don't get around to it. In fact I need to hurry up an do my March post... But yeah, anyways you should consider cutting your teeth on a blog or maybe arguing on plastic if you don't already do that sort of thing. You get a lot better at it with time...

And it is a rather grand universe isn't it? I think that at least once a day one should step back from the normal stream of consciousness chatter and concerns and really try to feel how great existence itself is.
 
Not Ben! It was me, Allison. I just leave it to my flickr site to be my blog. I have a myspace account too but I don't think my blogging is all that fantastic. My stuff is usually much more personal and not as open to other people's enjoyment. Looking forward to seeing you this weekend.
***ALLISON
p.s.-my flickr account is www.flickr.com/photos/allisongarrett if you want Puerto Rico pics.
 
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