Reference: "Brain Wave Diary" (10/07/00)

The nature of reality

I mostly categorize streaming, live, sensory input like sight, smell, touch, and sound as "normal", "unusual" or "miraculous". I suppose other folks may not be much different and I suppose we don't pay this subjective judgment of our surroundings a lot of conscience attention – most of the time. Most of the time, feedback from surroundings comes back normal and warrants little attention.

In our elevator at work there is a small video terminal enticing us to watch as we drone between floors, the hook is a continuous feed of weather reports, news headlines, stock market results and miscellaneous trivia facts and more. The kicker is product and services advertising happening in the lower pane of the split video screen. Now we all obediently take inordinate care to stare with absolute interest at the video screen, a marvelous way to avoid actual human contact with strangers in a confined space, another "modern" day social issue solved. Anything that stifles direct inter sheep interaction must be a good thing and certainly "selling" at every sliver of opportunity is – is it not?

The other day, one of the screaming news bulletins said, "Man leaps from Empire State building and dies", or words to that effect. A lady next to me commented, "That would be news if he lived". As we all shuffled from the elevator two things struck me as unusual. The lady had dared make an unsolicited public comment and her comment was absolutely true. I think I might have been the only flock member to note her comment, perhaps not. Anyway, non-conformist lady, wherever you are, thank you, for you inspired this piece.

I can imagine, since "they" have such little time to captivate our undivided attention during a brief elevator ride, that a lot of strategy is employed in selecting the sensory bites used to hook our cooperation and later, our cash. Content, duration and presentation is probably a well-honed science. In a back room somewhere, (I imagine), is a highly qualified knot of specialists adept at sheep conditioning, who pore for hours to come up with a few seconds worth of peek and poke.

(Poke is a computer term whereby a program pokes a byte of information into a memory address. Peek is a term used to look at or retrieve the poked byte later. Programming seems to be a very appropriate term for this elevator video sheep baiting, not only is the assembling of the video a form of video device programming but so is the output – poking into us).

The word, "Dies" captivates attention and is unusual. The word, "Lives", bores and is normal.

Perspective is everything when reality is the topic. Life and living is a miracle. Life and living is normal.

I spotted a weed the other day, it was in the very center of several acres of sun baked black asphalt, a miracle of life persistence, somehow it had burrowed and forced an exit point from under man's best progress, or is that transgression?

Somehow this trivial sight gave me a sudden welling of hope for future and a glimmer of some yet undefined understanding. I have included "weed" in my peek and poke show and hope you like it. I managed to use the word "Die" so you are bound to look.

Attention Shoppers…Tah Dah… Weed is BURIED by man and does not DIE!

"Whatever you pursue gains credibility... even undeserving things."