I just plucked a splinter from the forefinger of my writing hand. It has been a nuisance for a few days, but when I sit down to write, to press the pen was irritating. So I heated the needle and tweezer, raised the skin, and plucked the sliver of wood underneath the bright lamp in my otherwise dark apartment. It's an oddly satisfying task. And it is a learned task, taught to me by my mother. Do people of other cultures have other techniques?
I have recently encountered a few words that are worth noting. Four of them are Japanese and speak to the beauty of haiku. I learned of them in Loori's article "Have a Cup of Tea":
The other word is avyakata, a Buddhist term, in Pali, for "unanswerable" (best left "undeclared") questions. While various strands of Buddhism vary in their philosophical preoccupations, it is a delight that there is a concept (and Sutra) for guarding against becoming distracted, or distraught, with metaphysical questions. Randi's editorial in the latest Skeptic (12:1) ridicules Sylvia Browne's "Animals on the Other Side." Her psychic powers permit her to allay children's concerns that their pets won't accompany them in heaven. Animals are on the other side, though she has yet to see any insects. While horribly irresponsible, if not fraudulent, Browne's answers speaks to questions we've all asked. Yet, with the notion of avyakata I can pull back and realize time is lost on such questions of things that can't be known and ultimately distract me from the here and now.
Sometimes sitting with my dictionary, paging through the words, I'm in the zone: finding my words in a turn or two. I think back to my class on search algorithms: I'm better than binary.
The Kitzmiller V. Dover decision in Pennsylvania was good news for the end of the year — though it is also sad and somewhat creepy that such a decision was even required. After reading Finding Darwin's God my sense of the the creationists' position is that they use God to fill in the gaps, to impose meaning on the seeming confusion of our place in this world. To advance a natural understanding of that world is then to threaten the very purpose of their God. While a literalist will argue that man was shaped in the likeness of God, to me, their God was shaped from the boundaries of our understanding. They are idolaters of ignorance.
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