This is the mix I was telling you about…

My new mix is dropping tomorrow, Tuesday. That’s the lingo the cool kids use, isn’t it? Ha ha, what a bunch of maroons.

Anyway, this is as close to an existential compilation one can get without making something absolutely absurd. It is supposed to make you think, hopefully that effect won’t be lost if you listen to it as background music. That said, I recommend headphones for true enjoyment of the sonic marvelousness some of these songs harbor.

If you normally get one from me, you have nothing to fear, one should be reaching your house momentarily, otherwise, let me know you are interested in a comment and I’ll email you for your address.

Asteroid Field

An asteroid field on my car window. The likelihood of collisions are given by the cross sections. When you look at one up close, you see a tiny upside-down replica of your own world:

Superimpose

su·per·im·pose — v. place or lay (one thing) over another, typically so they are both still evident

A take home midterm was assigned Tuesday morning in my detector class. I was not present because of my bearish tendency to hibernate in the winter. And, before I go on, let me point out that this is no excuse, nor do I need any, this is only a statement of events. I was not present to receive this test and my pitiful interpersonal skills assured the continued absence of my awareness of this midterm.

Thursday evening, while performing tests on the circuit board for a charged-coupled device (CCD), I asked my fellow lab mate if he went to class Tuesday, what we covered, etc. He thought for a while and said that I didn’t miss anything. I asked, “We didn’t get a homework or anything?” Again, he thought, then he remembered there was something. He searched his notebook, “Yes, here it is.” He produced a sheet of paper with four problems. I asked him when it was due, he said, “Tomorrow.” “Oh. That’s nice. It is a good thing I asked, no?” We agreed, it was a good thing I asked.

I couldn’t access a copy machine, so I asked him if I could take a picture of the assignment. I did and for the rest of the night I stared into my camera’s 2-inch LCD screen while working out the series of problems on CCD detectors; CCD detectors like the one in the camera I was now looking at. Ironic, but the irony escaped me as I frantically worked through the problems.

Nevertheless, the last problem concerned a notched CCD, which is simply a detector with an added doping profile in the substrate which creates another potential well within the regular CCD’s potential well. If none of that makes any sense to you, don’t worry about it, it will become clear momentarily. We were supposed to explain clearly what the notch does using the MOS physics we’d been studying. I say, nuts to that!

I made an analogy of a teenage summer house party sans pool and a teenage summer house party with a pool. I argued how despite the lack of preparedness, i.e. no bathing suits, if there was a pool, the party would inevitably move into the pool. Then, when the party is raided, party-goers are easily identified through their wet clothes. I thought it was funny, maybe I will be the only one:

And then… well, I finished the test with little difficulty.

And then… then I said something about how crazy I thought someone was. How I could see it in their eyes; those diaphanous eyes with the always hungry pupils devouring a seemingly endless stream of photons. They are portals… no they are portholes and you are the vessel that my homemade raft slowly floats past on this seemingly endless ocean voyage. You closed a few portholes today. Starboard side.

Call Her Nico

Nicolette Meyer writes amazing stuff.

I don’t remember when or how I came across her online poetry collection, This is Not a Love Song, but it awed me then so I added her feed to my reader. It was dormant for a period of time but now seems to be alive again. Or maybe that is just the nature of her production.

I really like this latest one, the sum of us is made up of tiny pieces, an excerpt, actually, the end of that poem:

You or I
will never escape
interconnectedness:
that sunlight on your face is
the same as mine.

I like to imagine those lines were spurred by the unusually sunny days we’ve had up till now. The kind of days that make you point into the sky and ask, What is all that blue stuff?

The empty skies at night are also a welcome change. The full moon casts blue light and it bounces up off the fresh coat of snow. The one time it snowed in South Texas with accumulation was in 1985. I was dragged out of bed with the promise of snow, a promise I had heard before but had yet to see fulfilled. I knew it was the middle of the night, but the light shining through the windows was so bright I begun to doubt. Outside the snow was everywhere, the moon was bright, and it’s light reached into the darkest corners. It was like dawn, but it was 2AM. That’s how it feels in Stockholm shortly after the summer solstice, at 2AM the prolonged twilight begins. If I lived there, I think I would grow sad for the night.

Electrosensitivity

I have to say, I am not completely surprised at this:

BBC News: Mobiles linked to disturbed sleep

I still appreciate my bouts with the unconscious sleep state. Some nights I really dislike the way it feels when I begin to lose awareness. Somehow, I’ve even managed to force myself back to consciousness, returning from the blankness that I cannot experience but who’s lingering effects I can feel and ponder. It is a black void from which nothing emerges, as such, I must merely be skirting the edge. I imagine this must be how it is to go peacefully in one’s sleep. The certainty that you will wake up tomorrow tucked in next to your dying body.

My attempts to soothe myself into a less dramatic sleep include playing my ukulele with my night mask on, so that I finger blindly across the fret board. I don’t strum; I pick individual strings and feel them vibrate and then here comes the vibrating air. I play all my own material through non-standard tunings that I cannot identify. It lends the songs a vaporous and fleeting aesthetic, like the black void. The same fingering on the next day may not yield the same song, so my songs retain anonymity while my muscles become amnesiacs, memoryless and confused.

I imagine that event, you and I bumping into each other on top of the Eiffel Tower causing each other to fall onto the city of lights. The lights stream past at warp speed competing with the lives flashing before our eyes. As life histories and the present strive for synchronization, the moments leading up to this moment slow down: the innocuous messages, the inane requests, the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, and my favorite words: anonymity, taciturn, laconic. It isn’t just the words, I’ll holler in a few moments, It isn’t just the words…