Gadget envy

Found out about the PalmOne LifeDrive the other day. Very nice! However, WiFi hotspots are still sparse enough that I'd miss connecting using my cell plan on my Treo.

And, to be honest, even though I don't use voice all that much, I really can't see having 2 devices when 1 smart phone should do.

Interestingly, the LifeDrive uses PalmOS 5.4 (Garnet) rather than PalmOS 6.1 (Cobalt)

I've been thinking lately about the Treo series. It's been a little while now that Treo 650 has been out, though the GSM version is more recent.

What I'd really like is a Treo with gigs of storage and Wifi ... alternatively, a LifeDrive with telephony

Oh ... and a high-speed internet connection that follows me around wherever I go. =D

Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind?

... all we needed to know, we learned from pop music??

Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind by The Lovin' Spoonful (1966)

Did you ever have to make up your mind
Pick up on one and leave the other behind
It's not often easy and not often kind
Did you ever have to make up your mind

Did you ever have to finally decide
Say yes to one and let the other one ride
There's so many changes and tears you must hide
Did you ever have to finally decide

Sometimes there's one with big blue eyes, cute as a bunny
With hair down to here, and plenty of money
And just when you think she's that one in the world
You heart gets stolen by some mousey little girl

And then you know you'd better make up your mind...
Say yes to one and let the other one ride
There's so many changes and tears you must hide
Did you ever have to finally decide

Sometimes you really dig a girl the moment you kiss her
And then you get distracted by her older sister
When in walks her father and takes you a line
And says, "You better go home, son, and make up your mind"

And then you bet you'd better finally decide...
Say yes to one and let the other one ride
There's so many changes and tears you must hide
Did you ever have to finally decide

Como un ave de cristal

Another great song by Los Kjarkas:

Ave de Cristal

No se acaba el mundo cuando un amor se va
no se acaba el mundo y no se derrumbará

Si fue verdadero tras sus huellas volverá
si no fue sincero otro lo reemplazará

No hay lluvia en el alma que no acabe con un sol
ni se limpia el cielo cuando deja de llover

Y es el corazón como un ave de cristal
que es tan frágil de romper
tan difícil de entender

Y es el corazón como el destino tan cruel
tan difícil de torcer
y tan fácil de perder

Es el amor ... es el amor

And, you know, it's true. The world doesn't end. People do come back or you move on, even though, in the midst of it, it's impossible to believe.

Blow away blow away blow away

From George Harrison of course...

Sky cleared up, day turned to bright
Closing both eyes now the head filled with light
Hard to remember what a state I was in
Instant amnesia
Yang to the Yin

Amazing how, in an instant, suddenly the world is right, as though it had never been out of balance, and how the cares that had burdened you are barely a memory.

"Destinatario incierto" por Isabelina

"las palabras se acaban, nos basamos en solo miradas,
suceptibles a señales casi nulas, como estática entre nuestras manos.
se funden a causa del silencio entre nosotros."

Read the rest...

And in the end ...

"And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make" they say.

This was said to me, I believe, to be a comfort, and maybe it's true that, for all the love I felt, just as much was felt in return.

But, that only increases my sense of loss -- as though it were wished of me, and came true: "Ojalá que te mueras que todo tu mundo se quede vacio" -- even though, I know that it is "for myself that I cry".

Love and Support

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

--Mark Twain

Trust no one?

I have made mistakes in the past, but I thought I had learned ... learned a lot.

I wanted another chance ... just one more chance to prove that this time, I could avoid those mistakes. Just one more chance to show that I really did learn those things. How to trust. How to be honest.

Well, I learned. I passed the test. I didn't make any mistakes. But it didn't matter -- I lost anyway.

Does it have to be?

You know, it used to be like that. It used to be the only way, it seemed, that things could turn out. Maybe it still is, but I don't believe it anymore. Now, I believe it's like that only when you forget to be friends first, last, and in spite of everything.

It's only love when it's about the other person. If it's about you, you are not feeling love.

==============================

Carly Simon: "That's The Way I Always Heard It Should Be"

My father sits at night with no lights on
His cigarette glows in the dark.
The living room is still;
I walk by, no remark.
I tiptoe past the master bedroom where
My mother reads her magazines.
I hear her call sweet dreams,
But I forgot how to dream.

But you say it's time we moved in together
And raised a family of our own, you and me -
Well, that's the way I've always heard it should be:
You want to marry me, we'll marry.

My friends from college they're all married now;
They have their houses and their lawns.
They have their silent noons,
Tearful nights, angry dawns.
Their children hate them for the things they're not;
They hate themselves for what they are-
And yet they drink, they laugh,
Close the wound, hide the scar.

But you say it's time we moved in together
And raised a family of our own, you and me -
Well, that's the way I've always heard it should be:
You want to marry me, we'll marry.

You say we can keep our love alive
Babe - all I know is what I see -
The couples cling and claw
And drown in love's debris.
You say we'll soar like two birds through the clouds,
But soon you'll cage me on your shelf -
I'll never learn to be just me first
By myself.

Well O.K., it's time we moved in together
And raised a family of our own, you and me -
Well, that's the way I've always heard it should be,
You want to marry me, we'll marry,
We'll marry.

Take a ch-ch-ch-chance

Little child, little child
Little child won't you dance with me
I'm so sad and lonely
Baby take a chance with me

Sometimes, you DO get another chance

Ding Dong Ding Dong

Happy New Year! .... ¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

... Now, I didn't make this ... These fireworks are courtesy of Anton
and downloadable from FlashKit

That Thing

Down at the bottom of Smitten's post:

Being single doesn't bother you so much, but on nights like this you miss That Thing. The guy who would say, 'To hell with your job, you're too good for that stuff.' And, 'Hey, asshole, leave my girlfriend alone.' And, 'Go to bed. I'll get you a glass of water.' Yeah, that stuff. Miss that.

Yeah, that says it all.

"Unbreakable" or, What is a hero? And what is evil?

I watched "Unbreakable" recently. Very interesting movie.

David (the Bruce Willis character) is approaching a turning point in his life, although he might not be aware of anything other than his vague discontent. His marriage hasn't been good for a while and he's trying to find a job that will entail his moving out of the house. He may be fine in his current job, but we get the sense that there is something lacking there.

Or, maybe it's just that we sense that, for him, something more general is lacking in his life... and as a result, he has distanced himself from his wife, and has contemplated change that will take him away. Which would also take him away from his son, who seems to be suffering in the coldness of the household. He has night fears which takes him to his father's or his mother's (separate) rooms. At a crucial point, when David desperately needs to get his son's attention, it is the threat of David leaving the family to move to New York that finally causes the son to break.

The movie is an exploration of superheros in comic books, and it's generally considered to be a movie to watch on different levels. But the exploration is generally seen as an exploration of the archetype of hero, the definition of superhero that comics offer.

I think there is a more human level to it than this.

I would say, David is not a superhero in the comic book sense. We might even say he is not a superhero at all, and not even a hero in the archetypal sense.

Rather, he is just a person... just a good person. If he does heroic things, those are only the things that any good person would do, given an opportunity and the resources needed to succeed.

It is those around him who make him a "hero"... that is, who define him as "hero" for themselves, who define him as "hero" because of their own needs. That he steps up to this need and performs in a heroic fashion is David doing what he is able to do on behalf of those people.

Elijah (the Samuel L. Jackson character) needs a superhero to give sense and meaning to his life. His machinations eventually allow him to turn David into the superhero Elijah needs.

Joseph (David's son) needs his dad to be a hero. The movie doesn't allow us to see a slose relationship between him and his mother. It's between the lines that we can see that, for him, the house is an empty place. His dad might be slipping away. He's growing up but still has a boy inside him too. He needs a hero, for himself. He needs to be able to see his dad as a hero, and not as a sad man who has grown distant and may soon be physically distant as well.

Does the fact that Elijah created the hero that David became make David less a hero? Is it any less true that he's a hero if it's his son that is the one that believes it?

We see Elijah as the villian, and in the comic book sense he is. In the human sense he is too -- he acts selfishly, his selfish acts cause harm to others.

But Elijah, in his own twisted way, was acting out of his needs. David responded ... acted the hero Elijah wanted him to be, and then removed Elijah from a position where his need would continue to harm others.

===========

I started out writing this thinking I would write about heros. How we all can be heros, how our acts of goodness and love can make each of us heros in the eyes of someone.

But I'm not sure that's what I'm writing about anymore.

It's the illusions I don't understand. Elijah's and Joseph's illusions that David was a hero. He WASN'T what they thought. He was skilled, he was lucky, but he was just a guy.

When is it that the illusion can become real? When you walk away from fatal accidents?

But David DID do heroic things, and by acting heroically, was a hero for two people.

If Joseph had shot the gun, proving that someting COULD hurt David, that David had some vulnerability, would all illusions have been shattered? Would that negate the heroic acts that David did and was capable of?

I need to know this, because my own illusions are so easily shattered.

Mictlancihuatl

She is the wife of Mictlantecuhtli, and together they preside over the Land of the Dead, Mictlan, in Aztec mythology.

Interestingly, not much seems to be written about either of them, and even less about Mictlancihuatl. On the other hand, maybe it's not so surprising. Thanks to our Christian background, our culture has particular ideas about what death and a "Land of the Dead" might be all about. A God and Goddess of Death, from the point of view of our culture, would have to be demons, or even the devil -- in any case, not something good.

This association, combined with "All Saints Day" / "Halloween" / "Día de los muertos", leads people to believe that Mictlantecuhtli and Mictlancihuatl would have to be figures to fear. Take, for example, this guy, who would assume that Mictlancihuatl would cause him harm -- I suppose to lure him into her realm of Mictlan.

To me, all this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of both death and goddess-ness.

Death is just another passage in the cycle of life. Just because it is painful for those who have not yet died doesn't mean it has to be painful for the one who is experiencing that passage and who is going to or who has reached that other state -- the state of being that is post-physical life.

Besides, if it is painful for those who have not yet died, that is because they are being selfish -- they are thinking of their own loss -- the loss of love, the loss of material resources the person would have brought to them, the loss of shared experiences with the one who has died.

If the iconography of death is "gruesome", that is because we, firmly stuck in our physical existence, feel repulsed by what happens to the physical body when it dies -- when the spirit of life no longer inhabits that physical form.

Consider also "goddess-ness".

Goddesses are representations of the feminine, the female. We are accustomed to representations of some aspects of the feminine: life-giving, nurturing, caring, comforting (the "mother"); sweet, beautiful, innocent (the "virgin"); wise (the "crone"). The fact that western imagery of the crone involves an ugly, old woman hints to us that there is something else going on that has been hidden.

What has been hidden, or perhaps what had been combined by Christianity with the concept of the wise woman, is the role of the feminine in aspects of life AFTER life has ended.

And that role is the one of Mictlancihuatl.

Imagine:

• a wise woman who nurtures you into your new existence post-physical life, instead of an ugly woman who lures you to your death
• a woman who cries on your behalf to ease your shock of moving out of your comfortable physical existence
• a woman who lovingly watches over you as you continue your existence in your new "life"

In other words: take the aspects and characteristics of the feminine, and apply them to the stage of life that comes after a person's body has died.

To me, that is the nature of Mictlancihuatl.


==============

Also, consider again the image of Mictlancihuatl above...

On first look, it might appear that she is devouring the person we can see in her mouth. But, there is another way to view this.

Notice his leg, outside her mouth. Consider: he is not being devoured... he is emerging from her mouth. Consider: she is not devouring him, she is giving birth to him.

In this view, she is assisting his emergence into his new life. That he is emerging from her mouth and not her womb is emblematic of his emergence not into his physical life (which results from emerging from her womb) but into his post-physical life (which results from his emerging from her "other end", so to speak).

Primer Acto

Escuchado muchas cosas, desde que nací
Personas que preguntan de que lado yo crecí
Aquellos que me dicen que el color de mi bandera
no está en el corazón sino adentro de la cartera

Escuchado a mis hermanos criticar mi condición,
porque hablo dos idiomas, más ingles que el español
porque piensan que no siento el dolor de mi nación,
porque piensen que a este lado no nos brilla igual el sol

Escuchado mil personas que me dicen que jamás
tendré corazón hispano porque soy de por acá
Porque tuve que venirme hace mucho tiempo ya,
a buscar en estas tierras un poco de libertad

Escuchado tantas cosas que prefiero ya ignorar,
porque patria no es un sitio es tu forma de luchar
Y aunque sigan criticando, no les voy a contestar
porque la mejor palabra es la que puedes callar.....

shhhhhhhhh


Shhh! - A.B. Quintanilla y Los Kumbia Kings

Best dream / worst nightmare

Someone's husband died recently. He was 56. They'd been married for 7 years ... he was the love of her life, having finally found each other after all those years ... finally enjoying life, a life together, with plans for both the times just coming up and for growing old together.

He fell asleep on the couch. She noticed he didn't come to bed, but didn't check, never dreaming that anything was wrong.

She woke up the next morning and found him. They say he had a heart attack. She says his eyes were black.

How horrible.

And how egotistical of me to think of this, but, you know, it could be me. If I found someone today, in 7 years it could be me.

My ultimate dream becoming my worst nightmare.

How .... ?

How Can You Mend a Broken Heart

I can think of younger days when living for my life
Was everything a man could want to do.
I could never see tomorrow, but I was never told about the sorrow.

And how can you mend a broken heart?
How can you stop the rain from falling down?
How can you stop the sun from shining?
What makes the world go round?
How can you mend a this broken man?
How can a loser ever win?
Please help me mend my broken heart and let me live again.

I can still feel the breeze that rustles through the trees
And misty memories of days gone by
We could never see tomorrow, noone said a word about the sorrow.

And how can you mend a broken heart?
How can you stop the rain from falling down?
How can you stop the sun from shining?
What makes the world go round?
How can you mend this broken man?
How can a loser ever win?
Please help me mend my broken heart and let me live again.

There's a place

Phil Collins, Both Sides, 1993

There's a Place for Us

'...There's a place for us, somewhere a time and a place.'

So here we are together
just you and me
sitting side by side
don't know why
with time just racing by
but I don't want to go

Well I don't know much about it
'cos all I am is what you see
in front of you
there's no more
feels so close and yet so far
but I don't want to go

Here I am, take my hand
here I am, please take my hand

I'd like to sit here with you if that's alright
if you don't mind I could sit and stare all night
sit here waiting for you to hold me tight

It's sad but I know it's true
you see I know you well
you'd only laugh at me
and that would hurt me so
just look at me here
you've got me pleading with you
but i don't want to go

'Cos you know that I love you so
yes you know that I love you so

Here. I will be here love
for you love, I will always be here love

If you look real close
you'll see my heart is on my sleeve
and it'll be here waiting
waiting for you, waiting for me
someone once said that if you truly, truly believe
you can make things happen
make things appear to be all that they seem
tell me do you believe?

We'll find a hideaway
together we'll find a way
somewhere, somehow, we'll find some way
there must be somewhere
there must be someplace
we can find somewhere
where they don't know my face
believe me we can find it
yes we can find it
somewhere, there's a place for us
somewhere, a time and a place for us
somewhere

But other times

But then you find out that what you want and what you need are stuck off in some alternative universe... close enough so you feel their existence, but not close enough to touch, not close enough to be part of your real world.

Sometimes

You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well you might find
You get what you need