Uncharacteristic

I don't usually blog about anything political here. Those are the kind of thoughts I like to keep to myself, partially because I don't find many people who agree with my political beliefs (I'm very much a moderate; I'm only an extremist when it comes to criminal punishment, and even then, only jestingly), and I don't like starting unnecessary arguments; political debates, in my experience, accomplish relatively little. You're either talking to a receptive person, or you're up against a brick wall, and the latter is more likely than the former. The converse is also true; few people go into a political conversation willing to be swayed.

Hearing that Saddam Hussein had been captured made for a curious moment, however. At first, I didn't believe it. I figured they were never going to catch him, just like they haven't managed to capture Bin Laden. Did the news make me happy? I suppose on some level it did. You'll excuse me for not weeping when his sons were slain, and for feeling no sympathy when their bullet and shrapnel-punctured corpses were shaved and displayed on TV. A bad end for bad people. May their souls dance over hot coals for all time.

But ultimately, this war, this capture, these deaths - I'm not certain that the administration's war on terror will really bring terror to an end. I don't think terror will *ever* end, so long as people hate each other, and I'm too cynical to believe that there will ever be a day that humans stop hating each other. We're like ants; our nature is to hoard material possessions and to slay one another in covetous fits of jealousy. Smeagol and Deagol fighting over the One Ring. One of us dies, and the other gets turned into a wretched thing cursed to forever hoard its corrupting treasure. Excuse me for saying this, but the only thing that's going to get human beings to stop hating each other is something ridiculous in the extreme, say, an alien invasion a la Independence Day, whereupon we can all agree that we hate someone else even more than we hate each other.

Out here in Berkeley, I get rather tired of hearing about the constant tensions between Israeli and Palestinian sympathizers having trouble being heard, and watching the issue dance like a hot potato between student groups and law school functions on campus. Their hatred for each other is intense, with missiles being fired in one direction and suicide bombs running toward discoes on the other; the American interference is unwelcome. "Butt out of our business and let us go on hating each other. Your super-powered meddling will not change how we feel about one another." I've lost track of the number of cease-fires those people have had over the past decade, and I remember a time earlier this year when a CNN poll reported the American public's jaded reaction to yet another peace accord in the Holy Land: 70% believed that the ceasefire wouldn't even last the month. One student at Berkeley, a staunch Palestinian supporter, tried to convert me to his side of the debate over lunch. I asked him if he would be willing to hand his family home over, forevermore with no strings attached, to whichever Native American tribe once ranged over the soil on which it was built. He didn't see the parallel.

Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein... they and people like them will rise to power and lead themselves and others to ruin in the name of their own hypocritical causes. Even if the administration manages to oust one from power, another will rise in the future, so long as anyone has any reason to resent any other person. None of this is surprising; the only tragic thing is that so many of the foot soldiers who die on either side of these conflicts often do so believing that they're doing the right thing.

I don't think everything's relative. There are clearly good people and bad people, and however you might want to dance around the fuzzy lines and the gray areas, I will never back down from the belief that the people who act on simple desires of selfishness and self-gratification at the great expense of others are the ones who are the most evil. Those are the people who contribute nothing to the world around them, only taking and never giving. They survive only at everyone else's sufferance, for without meek or unknowing victims, they would never find sustenance.

And as hopeless a picture as I may be painting on this blog entry, on this day of all days, it's exactly the reason why I think it's important never to give in to forces like that. The struggle may be an endless and inevitable one. But there are people who, despite their other flaws are still motivated by compassion and the will to defend the helpless from harm. If they give up the will to fight for themselves and to protect other people, the fight will be all over, and the cynics will have been proven right again.

They caught him, and that's good news. If nothing else, it's good news for Bush's election prospects (of which the less I have to say, the better). But the war on terror, necessary or unnecessary as it may be (for I do not truly know the answer to that), is just another escalation in the endless struggle between colonies of red and black ants. The answer to this kind of struggle seems to lie beyond the wisdom and ability of the people who hold all the power in this world. It certainly lies beyond mine.

M. Mellow was off the grid

I'm convalescing at home at the moment. That's overly dramatic, of course, but this second year of law school has been very busy, such that I've been writing and studying about 14 hours per day for the past two months, weekends included, and I had no energy left for blogging. Given my limited readership, I'm sure my absence has hardly meant anything but to a few people. (To those of you who it meant something to, you have my simultaneous thanks and apologies. I'm still alive, that's all I dare say for the moment.)

The semester started off unhappily enough, with loneliness and job-hunting taking their toll. As a coddled native Californian, I'm spoiled when it comes to the weather and thus don't transplant well to other climes; I didn't insist on finding an internship in the Bay Area, but that's the way the interview process turned out. The interviews themselves weren't horribly grueling... I've been through job interviews before, and a 20-minute interview, though it has its attendant difficulties, is nothing like a 6-hour technical interview replete with enough programming questions to suffice for an undergraduate computer science final. Nothing like a difficult economic climate to make for stressful job hunting. When the economy got sucked down the whirlpool at the end of shit creek, a lot of us engineering types just happened to be lashed to the bowsprit on the Nantucket Sleigh Ride to hell.

No bitterness in the end, though - the job search came and went, and I have an internship for the next summer. The first half of the semester - at least as far as mid-October, anyway - was defined mostly by having to put classwork to the side for the sake of the upcoming summer, and by running around for a couple of weeks on end jumping in and out of business suits for interviews and civvies for study. It was necessary, ultimately successful, and not a whole lot of fun. Plus, hearing about half of my friends announce wedding engagements wasn't doing anything for my mood. I'm not a selfish person, and I feel happy for all said friends, but when I'm handling 18-hour days at school wallowing in solitude and unappreciation, hearing about everyone else's happy relationships rubs a little unintentional salt into the wound. (Well, one friend broke up with her boyfriend and that was quite sad... she took it well enough, but it seems to be further proof of how hard law school can be on relationships. People either get married and stick it through, or break up. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground.) Well, no matter. Like I said - it was the first half of the semester, and it wasn't fun... but when that was over, I more or less dropped off the face of the earth in a struggle to get all my papers written. If I were any less a compulsive student, it would have been flat-out impossible for me.

I made a bunch of new friends in the second half of the semester, though (Mostly outside the law school), and felt like I had managed to reclaim some sort of life - and youth - for myself in the month and a half preceding finals. Those two months seemed about as long as an entire year, which scarcely surprises me given the raw number of hours I had to stay awake and working. But it was a fun year. I watched a lot of movies and listened to a lot of cantopop and jpop. I did a lot of writing, ate a lot of warm porridge, and drank a lot of tea. By the time finals rolled around, I was on top of my work and happier than I'd been in years. Someone had once asked me what it was like having Berkeley as an alma mater, and the best analogy I could come up with was that it was like having a horrible ex-girlfriend that you still loved anyway (not that I could speak from personal experience). It's nice to come back here, as a graduate student, and feel like I had found the home that I never found here as an undergraduate.

I've found a home. Things aren't so bad... no, not by a long shot :)

Section 2 of 4. Hurry now

The sword sweeps across and tucks, the trailing flag makes a rippling sound as the blade comes to rest along the length of my arm. I pause for a moment, extended in stance. What seems like three seconds of waiting is probably more like one... if we unconsciously keep time by heartbeats, that would explain it.


Niceties of motion - the tempo is something that takes a lot of work to learn. In the beginning, most wushu students do everything more or less at the same speed, even if they’re conscious about the need for varied timing. When you're just trying to remember the movements, it's hard to worry about too much else, but you still don't want to learn any bad habits. With more experience, most of us just start trying to do everything as fast as we can, which isn't exactly right either. The body may be a marvelous natural machine, but achieving speed is something you do after you understand body mechanics. I'm anything but an athlete... stuff like that takes me forever to learn. 10 years of training, and I know some people who've learned what I have in less than half the time. Other people take much longer... I seem to be just about in the middle.

It's natural to try, unconsciously or not, to cut corners in the movements in order to move from one motion to the next. It's counterproductive; if your center of gravity isn't in the right place, or if you haven't completed the full trajectory of the preparatory sweep, or taken the time to exhale at the right moment, you haven't built up enough energy and haven't gotten your body into the right position. Any speed you might have gained by cutting corners is outstripped; if you spend more time applying acceleration ultimately your velocity is higher. Crash courses and Cliff's Notes don't usually make PhD's or master theoreticians; sometimes, if you want something real, you really do have to put the time into it. It's strange and sad that the human psyche - or at least our social conditioning - seems to prefer convenience and expediency over substance and care. It's rather institutionalized... as a society we are addicted to speed. Once upon a time, a word processing document could take about 15 seconds to load - 10 seconds to load the processor and 5 to read the file. Nowadays, if a document doesn't flash onto the screen in less than 5 seconds, we get impatient. We are constantly feeding, and constantly inventing, around our addiction to speed.

The moment of silence transitions quietly into a coil and charge – there are four steps, accelerating gradually from a poised stance into a controlled run that culminates with a leap that fills your ears with the rush of wind. The metal rings from two flying stabs, both before and behind..

Don't get me wrong - speed's a good thing. Ultimately it means either more time, or more productivity. It's just that our craving for it is so fixated on the short term. Instant gratification. It's probably also why the retention rate in wushu is so poor - this stuff takes a long time to get good at. There's an urge to learn quickly, the faster the better - and the pressure of the clock is a real factor as well. It's hard not to feel rushed when you understand that there are few people over the age of 30 who can do this sport much at all.

It’s a choice. Not a very conscious one perhaps, but it seems we’re always racing the clock. Life is short, after all. Software’s a good example – nothing’s advanced so quickly in so short a time, but most products are replete with bugs. The people who code for NASA do things differently – since lives are on the line, they’re very professional, incredibly meticulous, and remind themselves daily that they need to have a different mindset from other corporate coders – they’re intense, they’re not young, and they wear suits to work. The faster, looser culture of the dot-com bubble may have dissipated somewhat, but I remember a time when programmers came to work toting inline skates and wearing shorts and sweatshirts, proud of their new-school hipness, eccentrically adorned cubicles, and their deconstruction of the perceived uptight, old-boys-club stodginess of stereotypical business culture. They were the rock stars of the new economy.

Version 1.0. Version 1.1. Version 1.11. Version 1.20. Version 2.0. The yearning for speed is made manifest in the rush of the software development cycle. The buglists for software products are incredible; a product may have thousands of bugs, but it gets rushed to market anyway. “We’ll fix it in the next release.” Sometimes it’s irresponsibility at work, but usually it’s not – it’s an artifact of our desire for speed. First-to-market often wins, so you can’t let your competition get ahead of you; if someone else gets to market and the consumer base gets acquainted with its product first, you lose, even if your product is better and more bug-free. It’s a lot of work to make up on a lost lead, because people like familiarity. You have to be much, much better than your competition to get them to change allegiance. Programmers cut corners because we wouldn’t have it any other way.

No, really, we wouldn’t. Gamers wait impatiently for the release of the next hot game or the next patch. Concerned shoppers want security holes plugged as quickly as possible. Antivirus software is an issue of urgency; “No, it can’t wait until after the weekend.” This industry – and our way of life, becoming more and more inextricably tied up with the Internet and the potential for instant access to the ever-growing sea of human knowledge – and instant accessibility of tangibles through the wonders of online shopping carts, UPS, and FedEx. The inconveniences along the way are dealt with on the fly and on the run, because things move fast and that’s the way we like it. I am of the last generation that will ever know about life before the Internet, back when phones still had cords and TV was the most interesting thing around.

I land and the world spins; I used to think about it, but I don’t now. My arms and sword whip in a circle and there is a moment of fear before I slide out into a forward split.

That’s a complex movement, actually. Thank goodness for myomer memory; there are so many pieces to the above movement but it only takes two or three seconds. That forward split at the end, though – that’s a killer. I started wushu at a rather late age (19, which is pretty old for wushu) and the little kids can do it just fine – it doesn’t hurt them at all and they just land in it like it’s nothing to them, but for me it’s not so easy. That’s always the way it is, though – someone’s always better, and someone’s always worse. I used to get treated like shit by most of my former classmates, but that was many years ago. They didn’t like my personality and my comparative inability at the sport was to them even more reason to dislike me. But I stayed, and I’ve given more back to the sport than any of them did. And a decade down the line, I’m still training. I can’t say the same for most of them. I’ve been honest with myself and I found my reasons for staying with it. That forward split is still hard, but a decade down the line, at least now I can do it.

You hold the split for show, but it’s also a chance to relax and catch your breath, as long as you don’t look like that’s why you stopped. Another one of those two-second pauses that feels like five. I’m back on my feet, slashes and footwork carrying me backwards and leading into a sword punch, a sword thrust, and a spin clear, the staccato rhythm of strikes a vivid contrast to the floor-clearing charge of only a few movements preceding.

Halfway through…

Comment

Heat makes for grumpy research assistants

We've just had something of a heat wave here in the Bay Area, and I'm not a fan of heat. It turned out to be a day spent in the library as well, and I'm none too fond of libraries, either. I have trouble concentrating in libraries... I'm one of those people who needs a certain quantity of ambient background noise in order to stay focused. (Well, to stay awake would probably be a fairer description of it.) I like studying in cafe's.

However, my job for the day included poring through the Omnibus Revision History of the 1976 Copyright Act, and the 17-volume series of bound transcripts, drafts, and comments has non-circulatory status here at the law school. Not being able to take out out of the law school, I just had to sit there and read it in the library's main reading room, which, like most of Boalt Hall, doesn't seem to have working air conditioning.

So I'm just sitting there, as happy as a mollusk at a clambake, perusing the Register's Report of 1961 (which is actually quite an amusing read at times. They do joke around a little, despite the seriousness of the business - they're human after all) and in some parts, it's like watching some of those old Cold War newsreels. There's a certain preoccupation with "commies" in general and "the Russians" in particular and how copyright law was stifling our scientific progress, etc. etc.

I'm making progress, despite a certain lack of comfort, when I hear the following addressed to me in an irritated monotone: " Could you keep the racket down, please?"

I look down. Well, well, looks like I've been turning pages. The acoustics in the reading room are less than ideal for a room in a library. There's a terrible echo in there, and you can literally hear someone turning pages a hundred feet away. If someone closes a book, coughs, pops the tab on a soda can, or clicks a pen, you're going to hear it, whether he tries to muffle it or not.

I look back up. I have no idea who the guy is, but he doesn't look like a law professor, or a lawyer for that matter. He might be a very old student with lots of body hair. Fact is, we get some strange characters in the law school with alarming frequency... but then, this is Berkeley after all, and oddballs come with the territory. As long as they're not surfing for porn on the library computers, we pretty much tolerate them.

I'm fairly irritated with this one, though, because he of all people has no cause to complain about my innocent page-turning. He had already released two rather sonorous farts in the past 15 minutes, which I did my best to ignore despite the room's reverberation and the stifling heat (which if anything, amplifies the effects of just about every kind of pollution, I'm sure). Look, dude, if you can hear me, I can most definitely hear you.

I shoot him that weapon-eye look (You know, the aforementioned "I'm going to go through you, and the guy behind you, and the guy behind him"), and go back to my reading, shoving the annoyance bubbling over in my psyche into a quieter corner of my mind. I was tempted to shell out 20 bucks and an hour of time just to photocopy the entire section I needed to read and run off to a cafe where I can read about the 1960's preoccupation with commies and copyrights over a tall, frosty glass of iced orange juice.

I ended the day with a cold shower, which felt absolutely wonderful. You know it's a hot day when a cold shower feels this good... in fact, it's still toasty in here, and I might take another one just to keep cool...

Home is where the heart is

I've done some traveling, but never for an extended period of time. The total number of days I've actually been outside California could probably be easily crammed into a single year with lots of room to spare. That said, I have several places right here in the Bay Area that I could call home. Home isn't where you spend most of your time - if that were true, a lot of people would be calling the workplace home, and for most of us, that place is anything but. Home is a place that welcomes you. There may be nothing deep about that, but then, happiness isn't always a deep thing. You could at times, have very deeply-seated philosophical foundations for a feeling of peace or contentment, and lots of people seem to go about seeking higher truths that will give them that feeling every day, all the time - religion, philosophy, yoga, etc.

I don't know much about that... but those blissfully naive moments of happiness that I'm talking about for today are those that neither arise from the Id nor derive from the Superego, and have nothing to do with a little devil or angel sitting on one's shoulder. I don't normally think about why I'm happy when I'm happy. I just am. Depression lends itself to self-analysis; depression is uncomfortable and unpleasant and makes one wonder why things have to be this way. Happiness doesn't lend itself to introspection nearly as readily; if you're happy, who cares why?

No thoughts necessary for the moment. Steam rises from a freshly poured cup of green tea. It's the second cup; as with most good (real) tea, the second brewing is better than the first; not as astringent, more flavor. This tea isn't sweetened; dessert is for later. The seat across from me is empty, attended only by a crumpled napkin and an empty teacup. A friend of mine was just sitting there. We'd been talking pleasantly for hours but it was time for her to hurry back; plane to catch back to Southern California. "Don't worry about the bill; I've got it this time."

I take a sip and lean back into the wicker chair, which creaks slightly. These chairs see a lot of use, and a few of them need repairing. It's all good - it's not going to collapse with me in it. I haven't seen this room very often in the past year, and it's nice to be here again. So many memories, and all crafted within a few years? I'm not sure. It might have been two. It might have been six, but that's all beside the point. Time is a poor measure of things. The two years I've spent working have so far been the fastest years of my life, because they were so repetitive. But a year spent in school seems to last much longer, mostly in a good way. I might have been coming to this place every day for a year, or only once every few months, but the only thing that's really different about some of these visits is the intensity of nostalgia that accompanies walking through the door. And after that, it's home. I wrote most of my law school applications here. I've often come here after work, to take tea and a nap. I read the first four Harry Potter books sitting at the table on the other side of the room. I've been brought here by friends, and I've brought friends here. I sometimes study for finals here, too. That collection of little books on the shelf - I've read them all. I know the menu inside and out. This place is a little like a bar for people who don't drink beer. Even if the analogy isn't a strong one, it's Cheers to me.

Here, I'm not so much a law student, a martial artist, an engineer, or an economist, as I am myself. If places could get up from a table and give hugs, this would be one of them.

Section 1 of 4. Things I think I've learned.

Hands down, sword at rest position in left. Deep breath. Relax, turn slightly right.

Who knew relaxing could be so much work? It is, but it isn't. However hokey and cliche'd the old yin-yang philosophy may seem, it's stayed around because it made sense. There's a lot of ridiculous mysticism that surrounds the martial arts, but this isn't part of it. It isn't Magic. It isn't Truth. It's just the way things are, without a hint of pretentiousness. In wushu, you relax so that you can generate power. It actually helps you move faster, not slower. It may seem counterintuitive at first, not to put every last ounce of strength into a strike or a stance, but there's a point of negative returns; tense muscle fibers create resistance and friction; your sword point, fist, or kick reaches the target faster when you're not fighting yourself. It's not a floppy, weak-limbed motion either, though - ideally, you don't shake at the end from a sudden stop; you know where the move starts, and where it ends. It should slide right into place, a metered motion. I don't know all the details, but part of it is pure efficiency; removing wasted movement. If you tense, and anticipate, your body becomes committed to a particular course of motion. Worse yet, the tension suffusing your body makes your center of gravity rigid and actually roots you to the spot; it's no wonder that motion afterwards becomes less than natural. Tensing up also telegraphs your next move... I think it's one of those things that, in a sparring match, your opponent could probably sense.

Eyes sharp right, as the right hand rises palm up. Snap left, right hand returns, sword presents, but still at left.
Pause, but stay fluid
Right-slap-kick-clear-both-arms-left-foot-back-drop:-cat-stance

Eyes and timing. Two things that really stand out when you're doing wushu. If the eyes are the window to the soul, they're a window into your own fears as well... vulnerability, timidity, strength, or resolve. The first time someone told me that your eyes are as much a weapon as your hands or your blade, I had trouble taking the comment seriously. I think I'm beginning to understand, though. It's kind of like basic street-smarts; thugs and crooks are lazy like most human beings. They prefer easier targets. If you look like you're going to be more trouble than you're worth - if you look like you have an escape route, if you look like you can run fast, if you look like you're not preoccupied, if you don't look like you'd be a deer in the headlights when they try to jump you, they'll wait for a more hapless target. They've got time; they don't have jobs. There's no rush. They're like tells in poker; and when you're doing your forms, there's some of that essence there too. It alters the perception of everything else you do. If you do your forms with unfocused eyes, the judges (and your peers) can tell. If you look at the ceiling all the time, you look like you're always trying to remember what move comes next. Ditto if you gaze at the floor. If there's no ferocity in your gaze, it makes you look like you're moving even slower - like you're not putting any effort into the routine, or worse, like you're half asleep. All the same, you also try not to sneer or look constipated... that's not too attractive either. The ideal is an aggressive, combative gaze that's not too overwrought; the feeling is not so much a frenzied I'm going to kill you!! so much as a forbidding yet calm, I'm going to go straight through you, and then the guy behind you, and then the guy behind him.

The timing's also harder to grasp than I would have guessed. This was true when I started, 10 years ago, and it was still true last year. So many nuances, so many details. When you read the form in a book, you can't see the timing. This is one of the reasons why learning martial arts may always be a tradition of master and student; without someone to watch, to constantly evaluate your improving performance, it's hard to know exactly where to vary the timing. If you do everything at full blast, and at the same speed, tension inevitably builds due to the nonstop exertion and accumulation of fatigue. The pauses give you a moment to refocus, to catch your breath, and to shed the excess tension so that you can maintain a good average speed throughout the form, rather than starting out with power and ending with exhaustion. The balance of relaxation and explosive speed, or exhalation and rest, is one of the things that seems to make for good wushu. Always that balance. That includes treating your body right when you're not practicing... if your body needs nutrition, go out and eat some good food. Make sure you get your vitamins. Get enough sleep. Don't work out to the point of self-destruction; if you need to rest or heal, then take the time out and do it. A day off from practice may feel like a delay; two months out due to an injury is much worse. Macho posturing doesn't pay when your body's health is on the line.

Remember to breathe
*slam* *leap* *land*
clear block, palm strike. Transfer sword to right hand, and flower behind.
Eyes return forward, left hand readies... slow rise, back, and then forward

I'm no expert... three years doing this form, and there are details in the above I learned just last week.
Hm. All of that motion, and only now does the sword make its way to the right hand.

Fastest part of the set. Forward step. Thrust. *Snap*
Turn, coil, swing left, right, coil, left, right, step right, arm-clearing flower, horizontal, reassert center stance, vertical flower, stand up, thrust skyward. *Snap*

Kids have the advantage in this part of the set. Come to think of it, kids have the advantage in all aspects of the sport, except possibly maturity. They have energy to spare, so the niceties of the whip-and-relax balance of motion are sometimes lost on them. They don't feel fatigue the way we do. It's still one of the most visually impressive parts of the set, though - especially to people who don't know wushu. All they see is an explosion of movement. Once, at a demonstration, I went into this part of the set and someone in the front row made some kind of surprised squeaking noise. I nearly lost my concentration at that...

clear stance, transfer sword to rest position, running start, jump-front-kick
retrieve sword, jump-inside-crescent kick
land, sword behind, left arm blocks skyward
stance rises, sword readied along right arm
flower, jump, turn, land, aggressive circle slash left and right, chamber and coil behind right shoulder
straightsword cloud flourish, return forward, slowly clearing block
Thrust forward *Snap* Relax Thrust left, open posture *Snap*

1st section done. Don't forget to breathe.

Hmm. Needs work...

Birthday Solitude

It's really quite easy to be alone in law school, if you want. Particularly if you don't drink and spend lots of time trying to keep up with the reading.

My birthday's this weekend, and although I'm not generally a fan of solitude... for the first time in a long time, I think I'd like to spend this one alone. I need a moment in time to pretend that I'm the only person in the world... or at least, to have a day entirely to myself.

I can't name a single person here at law school. (As in, "single") Every last person I know here is either married, has a fiancee, or a significant other. It's a wonderful thing, of course - but the one thing that's inescapable is that it seems, in every conversation that lasts more than a few minutes, matters concerning said spouse/fiancee/significant inevitably arises in conversation, almost without exception. I'm glad people are happy, I really am. And if they're having problems, I've always been willing to lend an ear.

It grates a little bit, though. I don't think people really understand that. I can tell them, and they can nod their heads and tell me they empathize, but not a single person I know here at the law school has ever quite grasped it.

"Oh, it's good to see how happy you are :) "
internally, demon says: just another reminder of how single >you've< been, eh? heh heh heh

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear you're having problems... do you want to talk about it?"
internally, demon says: oh, listen to them whine... they're just going to tell you how awful and how much trouble it is to have a significant other, oh woe is them...

"You haven't dated in 3 months, and being alone sucks? Yeah, I hear ya..." internally, demon says: oh, f*cking cry me a river and drown in it, will you? 3 months is nothing, try *never*, *forever*. Try being told that you were never good enough for anyone. Can't take a year alone? Try ten. Try more.

But it's the natural topic of conversation. It's so close to everyone's lives. Friends share their joys, their hopes, their dreams, their fears, their disappointments, their triumphs, their confusion... they share these things with me *because* we're friends. If I were a stranger, I would not be privy to these thoughts and musings. If I were a stranger, my reaction wouldn't matter. It is only because I am a friend that there is a wish, or a need, or desire for them to share various aspects of their lives with me. Sometimes they want feedback. Sometimes, they just want someone to listen. But I count it as one of my personal bits of damage that every mention of this particular topic stings me a little bit. Almost every substantive conversation with a friend, therefore, leads to a little prod with the pitchfork. It's not the friend's fault - it's the demon who's doing the digging. (Think I'm oversensitive? Try reopening a wound regularly over the course of 10 years. No one with even half a heart left would have skin thick enough to be pricked so and not bleed.)

I don't want to tell them this. It would drive a wedge into our friendships. It would lead to awkward silences, hesitation, and interest-kill in conversations. If they knew that they were causing me discomfort just by *talking* about it, they would perhaps not talk to me at all. And then I would be truly alone, moreso than now. If my friends had to tiptoe around my feelings every time we talked, we certainly wouldn't talk as much - and my companionship would lose a lot of value, I'm certain of that.

The patience to deal with this is part of the price of friendship. It's a price I pay regularly, the wages and toll of the deeper bonds that reach farther than casual camaraderie. On net, we all come out ahead. It's just that lately... it's come to a head, and I find that, for just this one birthday perhaps, I find myself with this strange feeling...

That which I've never wanted, that which I've hated, that which, for every day in the last ten years or more I've wished away with all my might... is what I want for my birthday.

Just for a day, to be alone.

Small Wishes

I wish a cup of hot chocolate really could cure everything. I wish life were that simple.

I wish that I had more time now, to spend with the people I love most.

I wish that I could have saved myself the experience of grade school.

I wish that I could feel safe again, warm again. To know in my heart of hearts that everything will be all right at the end of the day.

I wish life could be so accomodating, that life could be less cruel, period - for everyone, especially those whose lives put our most horrible nightmares to shame.

But it seems, if you're standing around waiting for life to be nice to you, you're wasting your time. Oh, it happens, for some people - but I don't think you can demand it. Being deserving or undeserving seems to have nothing to do with it. You can take the credit or the blame for a lot of things, but windfall is windfall. You can bemoan bad luck or quietly appreciate good fortune. Maybe someone, somewhere, is listening. And maybe the Universe doesn't have ears.

I wish I could believe otherwise.

"And yer out!"

The Supreme Court recently upheld California's Three-Strikes Law. (3 strikes and you're out - on one's third conviction for a felony and certain classes of 'serious misdemeanors,' there is a mandatory sentence for 25 years to life.) This has gotten most of my law school, including many of the professors, into a (mild) uproar, evinced mostly by indignation, disgust, and a certain amount of good-natured and not-so-good-natured derision of the Supreme Court.

I can't help but think that the reaction is, in some ways, a knee-jerk response. That's not to say that the intuition is incorrect - I tend to agree; the three-strikes-law is a crude and blunt instrument unworthy of the sanction of law. What disturbs me is that here, at one of the nation's top-ten law schools, that the opinions I've heard scarcely scratch the surface of any sort of analysis, impassioned or dispassionate; they're reactionary. And we're the people who're supposed to be thinking about this stuff.

The Three-Strikes Law entered codification here in California shortly after the trial of Richard Allen Davis, a disgusting and entirely morally defunct, beastly predator who had kidnapped and murdered Polly Klaas, whose age hadn't even reached the double digits at the time. Davis not only failed to show any remorse; he smiled and grinned on camera and gave liberal doses of the double-deuce to the television cameras, in full defiance of the stature of the legal system and in unwholesome spite towards the rise of public outrage. Any sentence short of death was probably too good for this animal, and enough of the state apparently agreed, to the point that they voted in the Three-Strikes Law in the heat of righteous passion. If I recall correctly, many people were quoted as suggesting that torture, perhaps, should be made legal again. How frighteningly like the Roman Mob we remain, in our modern and information-driven age.

But with the Supreme Court's ruling, not more than a week ago, all I hear now is outrage, that the Supreme Court would even dare to uphold a statute that is so clearly unconstitutional. The poster children of the inherent injustice of the three-strikes law: Gary Ewing, ill with AIDS, who was sentenced 25 to life for stealing three golf clubs from a country club, petty theft; and Leandro Andrade, sentenced to 50 years for stealing four videotapes.

Outrageous. Grossly Disproportionate. Unconscionable and flagrant disregard for the 8th Amendment's ban against 'cruel and unusual punishment.' Yes, indeed, 25 to life is cruel and unusual punishment for stealing three golf clubs, and 50 years is entirely out of proportion to the value of four stolen videotapes (well, assuming that they're four relatively ordinary videotapes.) These were the cases brought before the Supreme Court; as such, their outcomes have shocked and violated our sense of fair play, and our faith in the sanctity of our Constitutional rights. It's barely short of the ancient practice of punishing theft by amputation of the thief's hands. This is the angle much of the media seems to take on it, anyway.

Yes, this is ridiculous. But before we start grabbing torches and kindling for the great Witch Roast, let's think for a moment about our relationship to our courts, and especially the Supreme Court.

The judicial system is often criticized for yielding verdicts so narrow as to hardly clarify or define the law in any substantive way. Judges are painted as being too timid and too gutless to make wider, more sweeping verdicts based on the 'common sense' of the ordinary citizen, creating a morass of tiny rules circumscribing only tight sets of ridiculously specific fact patterns. In response, scholarship and judicial opinion alike often cite the need for 'Legislative Deference,' reminding anyone who'll listen of the fact that the Legislature makes the law, and the courts only purport to interpret it much of the time; that if the country wants change, it is up to the Vote and up to the State; it is not the purpose of the courts to make our laws, only to generate the common law as necessary to patch the gaps that riddle the words of our codes and statutes.

"Courts work on a 'molecular' scale; vast sweeping declarations of law are not the ambit of the judicial system."

"It is better to let ten guilty men go free than to wrongly convict one innocent man."

Standard maxims in legal scholarship. We prefer to err on the side of caution. The Supreme Court makes what appears to be a sweeping decision, however, and all of a sudden, our criticism of the courts' conservative habits vanishes and we demand the opposite of them. "Topple the Three-Strikes-Law! It's Unconstitutional!" Sure it is, but it's not wholly inconsistent with past rulings the court has made about the sovereignty of the state's ability to define crime. Patterson v. New York and Mullaney v. Wilbur discuss instances where the Supreme Court gives deference to State statutes. The State, after all, has much of the power to decide what constitutes a crime in its jurisdiction and what does not. (Look at Nevada for a moment, if you need an example.) California had decided - no, in a sense, many of us had decided - that the commission of three felonies in any shape, form, or combination was itself a crime punishable by 25 years to life. We made this rule: "3 crimes = a 4th, separate crime." We were within our rights... subject to 'obvious constitutional limitations,' of course. That's what Patterson said, anyway. The Court seems to be saying that there are some mistakes it won't fix for us - namely, those which are our job to fix for ourselves; how dare we impose our views on a Three-Strikes Law upon another state in the nation?

The problem with the Three-Strikes Law is not so much that the Supreme Court was wrong in letting us have our 'way,' even if it was a way chosen in a moment of justifiable outrage. The problem is that situations like the two outlined in the recent decision reveal it for what it is - too blunt an instrument. It lacks surgical precision. You can't use a broadsword to excise cancers and expect not out to cut out innocent flesh. One of the motivations behind the Three-Strikes Law is the fifty-yard rule: to deter illicit behavior by proscribing a circle of 'possibly bad' behavior around it wide enough to keep people from even taking the risk. Looking at it from the Richard Allen Davis view, the Three-Strikes Law is a fifty-yard rule. Looking at it from the Ewing and Andrade view, it's a 50-mile law, inflicting more harm on society than good. (Note, however, that even a 50 mile rule was not enough to keep these dimwits from doing that they did. That's one reason why the law is ineffective in many situations, wide proscriptions notwithstanding.) This is the dividing line that the rule fails to capture; it is a bad law because it punishes in excess, and violates the intuition behind the legal maxims listed above.

There is something behind the Three-Strikes Law that probably has the bearing of a good rule; that repeat offenders are bad human beings who need to be rehabilitated or contained lest they continue to wrongfully and maliciously assail, wound, and victimize the innocent members of society. The Three-Strikes Law was passed in part because the punishments for many felonies simply weren't serious enough; an offender knew what he was in for, knew the price he'd pay, and was apparently okay with it. The same old punishment simply didn't have any bite on a hardened criminal.

Even as relatively law-abiding citizens, most of us are familiar with the concept on a lighter scale and do not object to it; too many speeding tickets, and your license gets revoked. The first ticket is just a slap on the wrist. A second ticket carries a sterner warning, both from the DMV and your insurance company. Keep it up, and the state shakes its head and tells you that you shouldn't be on the road. We don't generally complain about that. We find it fair. It makes sense that a 'repeat offender' may need to be corralled for the moment, that the threat of a more weighty, permanent punishment is necessary to keep people more in line; what else would deter a chronic speeder who has all the money he needs to pay for the speeding tickets? What right does a road maniac have to endanger the rest of us on the highways simply because he's rich enough to pay for the privilege? The idea of ramping up the penalty doesn't seem so unreasonable.

But in many instances of criminal law, this principle is not applied. In Smallwood v. State, the accused was an HIV-positive ex-convict who knew about his status, who knew that AIDS is deadly, and who had been told that it was imperative that, if he were ever to engage in sexual intercourse, that he use a condom lest he infect his partners. This son of a bitch promptly went out and raped three separate women. His evil ass was dragged into court and he was charged with three counts of 2nd degree murder. He was acquitted of all three; the court determined that, not only was he merely motivated by the desire to rape, and not the desire to murder, but that even considering that he knowlingly raped these women knowing that there were a chance that he'd infect them - the likelihood in each case was not enough to uphold a conviction.

In other words, the murder counts were dismissed because, individually and separately, the probability of infection and subsequent death by AIDS was not significant enough.

We argued this one in class; if the chance of infection were 50%, infection was as likely as not. We took it that this meant: a 50% chance would generally not be enough to prove knowledge of murderous consequences beyond a reasonable doubt. I was particularly upset; the fact that he'd done this three times in a row raised the overall probability of infecting at least one of his victims to 87.5%. If it were me, I'd have convicted this guy of one count of 2nd degree murder or attempted murder, and even that's rounding down from the expected number of infections, 1.5. But because the court viewed each crime as separate, and not reflective upon or relevant to each other, it decided that none of these three incidents would amount to a conviction. It is for reasons such as this that I think that crimes should not be viewed in clean, padded rooms wholly separate from one another; they are all a part of the same person, as surely as Mother Teresa's saintliness is greater than any one individual act of kindness she performed in her life.

The Three-Strikes Law is heavy-handed, not even-handed. But the result in Smallwood is no less vile to me.

But how are we ever to come up with a better rule, if all we are ruled by is passion? Passion and thought, in equal parts. Justice must be devoid of neither.

Only Human

You might notice a recurring note in a lot of my entries... "only human." I end up using that as an excuse for a lot of things I see in life... I don't use it as an excuse for myself, because it's a flaccid copout for taking responsibility for one's own actions, motivations, and character. I end up using it for most other things, though, because anyone with a sense of humility knows how hard it is to rise above one's less noble emotions or impulses and put one's foot down in the name of principle. Understanding how difficult it is to reject expedient or short-sighted temptations makes it easier to excuse others for stumbling from time to time.

But there's also a much simpler side to being "only human." Not all of life is so metaphysical. I'm limping back to my room on injured legs, and as I head for the elevator, I see a pink sign taped to the elevator door:

"
Please do not use until
             VOMIT
has been cleaned up.

- maintenance
"

(the sign is repeated verbatim; 'vomit' really was in allcaps.)

Egh. Sometimes, it's gross being organic. I limped up the stairs.

High Impact

Friendships can get stale, especially when you feel taken for granted. Friendship is reciprocal; you understand the other's quirks and faults, and forgive them because it's so nice to feel appreciated, or to serve as a confidante, or just to share your free time in good company.

Friendship isn't selfless, though... I have thoughts on altruism and selflessness, but I'd have to say that friendship, by definition, is not selfless. Love perhaps is, depending on the person. But while friendships may contain many a selfless moment, their foundation is one built upon reciprocation. This does not mean that my conception of friendship is that of a selfish or self-serving relationship. Far from it. Reciprocal does not mean quid pro quo, or tit for tat. I do not keep score.

But a friendship decays when you feel taken for granted, when the other doesn't show understanding, or when there's little no affirmation on the other side that your presence in the other's life has any particular value. I have a lot of patience that way. Friends are still human; they have weak moments, they act thoughtlessly, they lose patience; these aren't really faults. Almost everyone is like that from time to time, and a good friendship is a durable one. Small things are recognized for what they are; individual instances of annoyance don't break a friendship. If they do, it's not a real friendship. Real friendships are not petty; they take a lot of investment, a lot of effort, and generate a lot of payback; small stuff is a drop in the bucket compared to the weight of the history, and if you throw away a valued friendship for petty reasons, you leave yourself the poorer for it.

Build up enough of that, though, and any friendship gets tested. I'm going to intentionally be vague and not discuss examples from my personal life at this point in time.

I can, however, analogize it somewhat to a problem I have with wushu practice . Last night, I went to practice at Hearst Gym in Berkeley - where I had started learning wushu. I've gotten older, it seems - the hardwood floor at Hearst Gym is easily two or three times as hard as almost any floor I've practiced on for a long time. The passage of time has rendered most of my early memories of training pain rather misty and vague, and I sit here typing and wondering whether or not it had always been like this. My left foot is bruised, my right hip is slightly messed up, and I did *nothing* different from what I do when I practice elsewhere. Soreness is one thing, but bruises and jarred joints are another.

I used to practice at Hearst all the time... it's where I started learning wushu in the first place, and I practiced there time and again years in the past. But while I usually complain about the people, today I'm just complaining about the floor. It hurts. Talk about high impact - the floor is ridiculously hard! It's obscene. It's a *bad* place to be doing anything athletic. Basketball, volleyball, martial arts - you name it, this floor is *not* for it; the hardwood is lined with cement harder than granite. Fond memories aside, I can't continue to practice there. I'm almost a decade older than when I started, and the gym is not forgiving. Several times in the past year, I have practiced there only to come away the next day with aching knees and bruised heels, and sometimes pulls and strains in my back or hip, things that do not happen when I practice elsewhere. Each and every time. I'm too old to sustain this kind of damage from a regular practice.

I think it's time to stop practicing there. I've been voicing my doubts to some of my fellow martial artists, but I think this last night decides it for me. My friendship with Hearst Gym has gone stale. Perhaps I will drop by from time to time - there are some things that I like, such as the stretching bars, and forms practice is usually ok. But no more basics and no more jumping... I can't take the pounding, and that means I can't go to practice and try to grit my teeth through the whole thing over and over again.

Demon Spawn

You can try to define true love any way you want, but chances are, the words are going to fall short of the true definition. You could attempt to write a Hugoesque treatise on it and still not manage to quite capture it. You could try to craft a terse, Gumpian morsel made of economized wit and poignancy, but fail to do justice to the flood of emotions love entails. If love were easy to quantify, perhaps people wouldn't need to write about it so much, and yet here it is, being written and spoken and blogged about ad infinitum.

Or perhaps not. How many people try to define it, after all? A lot of people write about it just because it's a big part of their lives. They need to write about it. They want to write about it. It's not about waxing metaphysical, or demonstrating wisdom or experience. It's just... being human, I guess.

It has been an evasive subject for me as well - though I realize that a lot of my entries to date have at least tangentially been on the topic. I skirt around the edges most of the time, quite frankly, because I don't have that much to write about. I can't talk about it as directly as a lot of other people do. My understanding of it arrives only in the smallest of hints. Like an elusive deer, it lopes away from me with ease, betwixt trees in a dark forest full of danger and threat, leaving me naught but scarce tracks to follow. I have doubled back and again on the same trails, often without knowing, led astray by a quest far too wily for me and my loud, clumsy footsteps.

But it doesn't seem fair. I've learned so little, but why should that matter so much? Certainly knowledge and understanding are no prerequisites; attraction asks neither wit nor wisdom. Maybe it's entirely glandular. Maybe there's no intellectual aspect to it at all. Maybe the better analogy is not that of the hunter, but of the hunted, stumbling through the forest thinking I have some idea of what I'm looking for, only to be easily tailed by that blasted cupid, being shot through the heart from behind, his cruel, barbed arrows dripping the venom of spite and the poison of pain, snagging in flesh. Every time, I've had to rip those damned arrows out, leaving torn, jagged, unsightly wounds, gushing blood that feeds the forest floor.

But it's cupid's fault, for being a horrible, sadistic little imp. My image of cupid is that of a bat-winged brat slightly older than the cherub that typically portrays him. His mouth is frozen in a rictus grin, baring yellowed and jagged teeth in a smile remniscent of the schoolyard bully who pulls whiskers off kittens and pours salt on snails. His skin is sallow and stretched taut over wiry muscles and protruding bones, marked by the anomalous and distended belly of starvation and disease. Horrible, tangled scrags of greasy hair bristle from his armpits. He is so foul that flies, attracted to his stink, buzz their last and drop dead upon touching the aura of his malice. He's not an angel, or a Greek child-god... he's a demon. A reject outcast. The Furies' irritating kid brother, who stalks the unaware and shoots them in the back like the cowardly, honorless assassin that he is.

And yet... it's not like that. I have enough friends who are so happy in their relationships... I'd never wish them any less than that. I suppose we truly are in Plato's cave. For them, cupid's shadow plays against the wall and shows them something beautiful, makes them smile and sigh. His shadow is a nightmare for me. I have to change where I am... I have to get out of this part of the cave.

What? Me Bitter?

So technically, it's Valentine's Day now. Never one of my favorites.

I know it's not really meant to be an evil or spiteful holiday, but I hope you'll all excuse me for holding the bitter perspective on it. Besides, I know I'm not alone. Women have expectations, men have obligations, and single people have neither, which is quite possibly worse than bearing either of the two other onerous burdens.

But I will end the tirade there. I have no doubt that the region in which I live is brimming over with people who could wax vitriolic about a holiday that appears, like so many other holidays, to have been usurped by business interests that seek to make a dirty buck off of all of our human hopes and dreams. So if I rant, I'll be adding nothing useful or insightful to the mix - I would just be another voice in a crowd of bitter folk, who will be spending today locked in their rooms trying to pretend this day doesn't exist, or sitting head bowed in the kitchen stuffing down quarts of ice cream, with a CD of sappy music shoved into the player and set on repeat.

I'll be at the florist's instead. I'm hoping that a moment of nobility - or failing that, martyrdom - awaits me there. I will be spending the afternoon helping my old friend handle business, counting and arranging bouquets, and rather than lock myself in my room spewing vicious hatred at the outside world, I'll be doing what I can to make the holiday a good one for those who have something to look forward to. I can see some of them already...

Frantic guys rushing in with a fistful of loose dollar bills, lacking any clue whatsoever about what flowers they ought to buy. Hand-holding couples on their way back from lunch, basking in a special day of happiness. Long-time lovers who never needed Valentine's Day to remember how dear they are to one another, who nonetheless find that a ribbon-wrapped bundle of red and pink would be a perfect way to share another moment. Partners separated by distance, treasuring a rare day spent in precious company. Freshman girls looking to buy bags of rose petals for decorating their dorm floor. Nervous suitors trying to find a glamorous floral accompaniment to over-rehearsed declarations of affection.

I may not have anyone, but I have never been one to seek my own happiness at the expense of someone else's. I could hate them all for having what I don't, but I shan't. Some of them deserve this day... happiness is never to be taken for granted, but interestingly, it's something you can promulgate whether or not you have any of your own... if you've enough strength to try.

Roses bearing petals of regal red, velvety to the touch... lighter pink roses, with crisper, thinner petals that float for blocks when cast to the wind. Bittersweet white ones that whisper, "Maybe... and maybe not." A bunch with long stems, meticulously pruned of thorns, makes for a display of tempered elegance and luxury without risk or pain. Nestled in a brittle cloud of white Babies' Breath, it passes to a tall, thoughtful-looking student who's been looking forward to this day all month. A small bunch of carnations, pretty but humble, go to the next one in line, who's been seeking a way to deliver the tacit signal that means to say, "I love you but we're just friends." And another, who spends ten full minutes looking at the buckets and bins looking for the biggest, most beautiful rose at the stand; the only one that could do justice to an offering upon bent knee. The next purchases a huge bunch of three dozen red roses, all dressed up, right in front of his sweetheart; she grasps it and draws in a breath of love's fragrance even before her boyfriend has passed the money to the ever-busy florist. I duck past the ever-growing line to retrieve more sheaves of flowers and a spool of ribbon to begin work on another series of pre-made bouquets, arranged in anticipation of those who need something beautiful but don't have the time or knowledge to pick out something on their own. I smile at the customers, whether they are calm, anxious, or too distracted to notice, and assemble these bouquets with the degree of care I would use if I were putting one together for my own imagined significant other.

By the day's end, I'll be asking how it's possible for me to hate these people. I can only hope to be one of them, somehow and some day. Meanwhile, this is how I'll get by. Happily, I won't exactly be alone, either - I'm looking forward to seeing at least one other good friend at the flower stand. Between the friendship and the flowers, this will be a day to enjoy, and not just endure. (You know who you are... many heartfelt thanks go to you :) )

Happy Valentine's Day.

Broken Friend

I noticed a small tear in my favorite broadsword. I guess it's time to retire it. Very sad.

Really, very sad - that sword has a lot of sentimental value to me, and it was a really good one, too. :(

It was light enough not to tire my arms. The point of balance was near to the grip, making a light sword feel like it weighed even less. And yet, the distribution of metal was just so, such that the far end of the blade wasn't too 'flippy' the way that wushu swords often are. It was reasonably static, the way you'd expect a much heavier blade to be. One complaint about wushu practice weapons is that they're so light that they're like tinfoil; you make noise just waving them around. Not this one; this one stayed quiet, but voiced a strong snap when your technique was proper. A perfect weapon to practice with; honest, balanced, and with a grip so perfect, it gave the weapon a very good sense of control. I didn't need to wrap the handle with tape or grip, file it down, or modify it in any way; the bare wood grip was quite sufficient. Three good qualities in a practice sword - you're generally lucky to even find one that has two of these at once.

Like most wushu practice blades, it was made of spring steel. (Literally, the same grade of steel that springs are made of. It's resilient, light, and can be plated with rust-proof chrome in order to eliminate the usual care that real swords require, but these same qualities make them relatively unsuitable for use as real weapons) When these blades wear out, they bend, warp or tear; they don't tend to actually break along the blade. If they do snap, it's always at the base of the blade where it joins the tang, because these swords are fairly cheap, usually stamped out of stock metal, not hand-ground or forged. These cost $25 to $35; they're not hundred-dollar wallhangers or even serviceable weapons in the traditional sense. So it's not like I'm losing a family heirloom or anything. These swords tend not to be made that well or with an eye to particular care. They're functional, cheap, and rather easy to replace.

But I've had it for seven years. That's a long time; they often don't last quite this long. More than that, it's the one I've had most of my years practicing; it's seen most of my days, I've learned almost all that I know of sword-work with it, and have carried it at almost all of my tournaments. And though the tear in the blade is not visually catastrophic, it certainly numbers its days. I would only be able to use it a few more times before the tear widens dangerously. Better to leave it on the wall and try to find a new one.

I know it must seem silly to get all sentimental about an old $25 practice blade, but one of my fellow martial artists understood completely. He likened it to the time that his favorite fighting stick finally snapped after years of use. He couldn't just toss it out with the garbage - it had seen him through as much of his training as my broadsword had seen me through mine. "I know exactly how you feel. It's a friend - you don't throw it away." That old fighting stick is taped together and hangs along his wall, beside his more serviceable weapons.

He's entirely right. It's a friend. They're not the Shards of Narsil or anything - no one's going to fix it for me, even if it was feasible to do so, but I can't bring myself to throw it away.

I've cobbled together a replacement, combining a spare sword blade with a halfway decent grip that fits it, and I'll need to find a few flags to tape to the handle, as is the general practice in wushu. The balance is decent, the handle needs some wrap - but it's rather heavy. It's also pretty flippy at the tip.

It's not the same at all, but I'll just have to get used to it.

Dude, use your head!

Dolphins aside, human beings are the creatures on this planet with the greatest capacity for intellectual thought. Just how much credit do we give ourselves for this? Probably a bit too much. After all, people do relentlessly stupid things all the time. It's part of the human condition. The blessings of intelligence and brilliance are no proof against folly; even such gifted people commit idiotic acts with frightening regularity. Such things are the stuff of casebooks; you know someone's case is in trouble when the Supreme Court quotes the Plaintiff's own psych evaluation: "Moron, low grade." (Galloway v. United States)

And yet, clearly extraordinary things are possible. How else to explain lightning calculations, idiot savants, Mozart, Einstein, Hawking or Hugo? Even without resorting to tales of the paranormal, the clod of gray matter that sits in the skull is capable of contributing to truly marvelous things.

But of the billions of minds on the planet, how many venture into territory such as that? It's been estimated that, on average, only about 10% of a person's brain ever really gets used. Maybe the human brain evolved to be so relatively huge so that some of it would be utilized, even if only by accident.

Of course, we don't all end up using the same 10%. Some of us are better at some things than others; it's no call to be elitist, really; we're all dullards in at least one way. We have to make allowances for each other. But how much is too much?

The question smells elitist; it's an admission of inequality in a world where we pretend to be equal. The same truth which can set you free, can also be used to oppress. Yet, it's certainly possible to set the bar too low; there are some instances where even a little thought wouldn't be too much to ask.

For instance, this question was posed on the California Driver's Exam: "Four cars arrive at a four-way stop, at the same time. Who has the right of way? A) The car driving North B) The car driving East C) the one on the right D) no one."

The answer was C). Clearly, the message here is not to think; the letter of the law is always right, no matter how inappropriate, absurd, or inapplicable in the given situation. I was incensed.

To paraphrase the words of one Supreme Court Justice (though out of context): it is difficult to imagine a system more likely to inspire cynicism and contempt.

Dry Tears

I cried, but didn't today. There's a political cartoon out there, with a happy little dog behind the terminal. The text: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

On the Internet, you can hide behind emoticons. I smiled today when I wasn't smiling. I laughed without mirth, and felt false joy.

It wasn't dishonest or malicious, either; it was my better self typing away in the window, the one that displays compassion and empathy when my real self feels longing or pain. The ideal person, who has limitless strength, or seeming wisdom. The self that knows better. A much better person than the one who's actually behind the keyboard. The one who can always be there for a friend and never needs anything himself. The one who can't be hurt. Not anymore.

So tempting, to be able to hide behind the distance and the letters of the text. Over the internet, nobody knows when the rear of your throat tightens and prickles and aches like you've just swallowed a quart of vinegar. When your shoulders tense and move forward, and that spot in your sternum feels like it's going to implode. Or when the corners of your eyes pinch, either to hold back tears or to squeeze them out of your lids. Not unless you tell them.

Felt the shiver and the strain, the trembling and the tension, but no tears. And it's just as well.

It's much better to be happy, but this sensation is part of being human. I hope never to forget what this feels like.