Still no fix…but here is what I have been unable to easily post thus far…
February 27, 2025
Exploring one’s creativity can be immensely rewarding, but unless it is accompanied by the ability to adequately express it physically—through writing, sculpture, art, dance, music, and so on — the exploration can be enormously frustrating. The argument against that assertion seems always to involve the meaning, or relevance of, “adequately.” Some obviously creative people insist that neither the ingenuity of creative efforts nor the quality of their products are relevant; that only the expression of creativity matters. That may be true to some extent, but if one’s ability to translate creative ideas into satisfying expressions is lacking, the joy of creativity cannot be fully realized. Someone who conceives of a compelling idea for a story, but who cannot tell it, may experience the reward of inventiveness, but not the delight of sharing it in a way that fully reveals the imaginativeness of the idea. In my view, to truly appreciate and enjoy one’s own creativity, a person must both conceive ideas and be capable of expressing them in forms that enable others to “see” the idea in ways that mirror the person who conceives them. In my mind’s eye, I may envision an extraordinarily creative piece of sculpture—something truly unique—but if the product of my efforts to physically create it looks nothing like my vision, my creative effort is incomplete…inadequate.
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I have not been to Santa Fe, New Mexico in several years, but I suspect I would like it just as much today as I have every other time I have visited. On a couple of occasions, I stayed in very nice, historic hotels: La Fonda on the Plaza and the Hotel St. Francis. Though they were nice, I was just as happy when I stayed in 1940s-style adobe motor courts. One of those old motels was unique in that it had several very well preserved original glass-block walls separating the bathroom from the bedroom and the wall tiles in the bathroom were shiny black ceramic subway-style tiles. During one of the trips, I bought a pocket-knife at a little shop on the plaza. It was a stainless-steel stockman 3-blade knife with a turquoise inlaid handle. Though I have long since lost the knife, I remember how much I liked it. I kept that knife (and others since) with me almost all the time, in my jeans’ watch pocket. It took me a while to finally learn that my knives tended to fall out of that little pocket; I’ve lost several knives over the years, including most recently another stockman 3-blade knife, a Case. The reason I am thinking about Santa Fe this morning is that I read that Gene Hackman, his wife, and their dog recently were found dead in their home in or near Santa Fe. A woman with whom I used to work recently retired and moved with her husband to Santa Fe, where they had a townhome built. The photos she posts on Facebook remind me how beautiful the city is; the look and feel of Santa Fe is unique. Unfortunately, my experience driving through Colorado a couple of years ago revealed that I cannot tolerate such altitudes any longer. Mi novia insisted that I be taken to the hospital by ambulance after I fainted in the motel room the night before and mumbled incoherently the remainder of the night. The hospital staff diagnosed my problem as altitude sickness. They advised us to get to lower altitudes as quickly as we could.
February 26, 2025
My efforts to have my blog admin repaired have thus far been for naught. This morning, I was able to post a short explanation…using my phone after disabling my WiFi… but it’s too tedious to try to post real, thoughtful (or deviant and thoughtless) concepts. So, for now, this will have to do.
Speaking of my “phone:” That term is an anachronism, a relic of a brief but extremely consequential fragment of time. It seems the best we have been able to do to modernize what we call the original device is to “update” the single word to a mindless phrase: “smart phone.” Our failure to more creatively adjust our language in response to change is a sign, I am afraid, of unimaginative cultural dementia. Calling it something clunky and cumbersome—like “sight, sound, and information pipe” (call it a SSIP)—would be more appropriate, I think. However, as I give the matter more thought, I have to acknowledge that “information” might be misleading; “disinformation” or “propaganda” might be more accurate. Yet those words all suggest limits that do not necessarily exist with the devices in use today. We might call the devices something simpler, yet considerably broader and more descriptive; maybe “tether” better describes the functions they perform. They tether us to one another. They tether us to information (and disinformation) resources. They can behave like audio/visual tethers that allow us to eavesdrop, spy on, stalk, and otherwise surreptitiously infringe on the privacy of people and places. And there is so much more. They are computers. They are simple calculators. They take photographs. They record voices. They record and play back music. They listen to birds and identify their calls. They transmit questions and commands. They translate languages. They can be used to facilitate social uprisings. In many respects, they duplicate the capabilities of their users. They can replace and, in many cases. replace the capabilities of their users. And, perhaps, not just the capabilities…but the users themselves. They sow chaos, but in gentle ways almost impossible to detect until the damage is done.
Like the original telephones before them—and like radios and televisions and computers and automobiles and airplanes and incandescent lighting and thousands of other evolutionary and revolutionary advancements, “smart phones” by whatever names you call them will become obsolete in due course. Their functions will be either absorbed by something else or will become anachronistic and descriptions of their once-vital duties left to museums to explain. Artificial intelligence (AI) is, at the moment, the “next new thing” to invade our lives. Perhaps AI will be the first iteration of a full replacement for all our functions. When the abilities of chips and machines have far eclipsed humans’ capabilities, perhaps humanity will finally have become its own anachronism. Someday, someone or something may watch the last useful human take the last breath, a crucial step in repeating the processes that will lead to the last act of whoever or whatever replaces us.
February 24, 2025
The phrase, “Think outside the box,” is trite; speaking the words is a waste of air. Thinking of those words dulls the mind, the way sandpaper erases the cutting edge of a surgically sharp steel knife. Creativity does not necessarily involve replacing tried and true answers to old problems with new and novel approaches. Instead, creativity may flourish simply by redefining old problems—treating them as solutions to questions that have yet to be posed. Wheat, for example, often is viewed as a solution to hunger; but what if, instead, we considered hunger to be a solution to an overabundance of wheat? How would our behaviors change in response to that alternative way of defining problems and solutions? The “box” establishes artificial parameters that may need to be taken down to allow answers to flow into the limited space it once defined; the answers are not “outside” the box…they exist in the creative merger between confinement and freedom.
Once again, I do not have access to my blog, nor to administrative control over its content. Consequently, I am forced to exercise my fingers by engaging with Microsoft Words, rather than with WordPress. The principal difference between the two is that WordPress allows me to share the fruit of my fingers with the wider world, where Microsoft Word imposes far stricter limits on access to the ideas I attempt to document. My ideas can be too flexible; they can look and feel like chaotic pieces of burning and melting rubber whose fleeting shape can never be replicated. Just as their shapes cannot be recovered, neither can their purposes be firmly defined nor captured. Their unstable forms are forever changing; never are they what never were…for long.
February 23, 2025
When I attempted to gain administrative access to my blog this morning, I was denied access. I could not view the site, either; access was denied again. After a few feeble, uninformed efforts to identify and correct the problem, I gave up. Something is obviously amiss with my site—or with the host site—that I cannot control. Later today, perhaps, when I have more patience and more energy, I will contact the host company for assistance. I should have done this long ago, but procrastination interfered with my intentions. Now, I feel powerless to express my thoughts to the wider world…that is, a very small number of intentional or accidental visitors. As I sit here, in this powerless state, I realize the world is continuing to function as it otherwise would. My inability to blog has no appreciable impact on anyone…except me. Even its impact on me is questionable. I make this out to be more important to me than it really is. Or do I? Perhaps blogging is my one crucial outlet. Without it, I may not be capable of rational thought. Or, perhaps, I may not be capable of rational thought with or without having the ability to blog. I am stuck in a place in which I cannot function, but where my functionality, or lack thereof, is irrelevant. Here, in this infinite limbo, I cannot move in any direction: not forward, not backward, not in any other direction in which there is even the tiniest shred of the possibility of escape. This perpetual state of waiting for eternity to end is increasingly maddening and all-consuming. The overwhelming sense of claustrophobic rage and fear has no limits; it grows exponentially with each passing second…as if time could pass in this never-ending state of smothering loss that multiplies itself a thousand times over with every imaginary moment that grows a million shades darker with each blink of my eyes.
Glancing through the top of the windows in my study, I see the sky adjusting its colors. From bright blue to faded white, the invisible cosmos transforms itself while I watch. At night, I see faint pinpoints of light, but when the sun’s power overwhelms the darkness, those microscopic dots vanish. In reality, they are not microscopic dots; they are enormous fireballs—a thousand times larger than the sun and millions of degrees hotter—that could incinerate our galaxy if they moved just a celestial inch closer. But I do not worry about that. Because beneath the clouds I see flocks of birds whose tail feathers are as long as time is shallow. Their brilliant cobalt blue and incandescent white feathers stand out against limitless space, making me wonder whether negative space defines positive space or whether the reverse is true. Or, is it possible that space is neutral? Is the granite figure remaining, after a mountain has been carved away, the object of our attention, or is it the missing stone that causes us to stare in wonder at the emptiness that once was solid rock?
