Good Morning Jacob...

Letter to my Son

Sunday, 16 June

Rush Job

I hope that you and I will one day again be able to take walks together.  Much of the energy I place into my projects is with this goal in mind.  I use the hands given me to do with as best I can.  There is a reason for everything we do.  We don’t have to know what that reason is for this to be so.  A coyote bays at the moon without considering why.  What need is there for him to know?  He may not even realize he’s a coyote.  It doesn't matter.  He is as life prescribes. 

Once again I draw pictures.  It’s one of those ventures where I don’t know what it is I am looking for except that I will know it when I see it.  That seems to be the rule of this game.  Do you find your instincts can appear counter-intuitive to what it is you are trying to do?  We can attempt the seemingly obvious yet find it as maddeningly elusive as writing our name while viewing the results in a mirror.  Doing what we think we ought to be doing only sends us in the opposite direction of where it is we want to be.  I find myself in life time and again stubbornly insisting on making the wrong approach.  What simple trick of the mind have I overlooked? 

It would be an easy conclusion to make that I have so far failed in what it is I have tried to do.  Failure here is a term incorrectly applied.  It is too definitive and simple an answer to be useful.  Trying to visualize the peeled-back layers of one’s own human mind is not like a round of horseshoes.  I can be far from my mark and still find the results interesting.  In some things it is better to make the most from an inadvertent gesture.  A God-awful choice has its own revelation.  The hunch I want myself to believe in is that the path to personal success is by way of making a series of right disastrous choices.  I’m stuck with myself.  Ugly ducklings don’t always turn into swans.  I’m sixty-four and my use of color and form still reminds me of goulash found in an alley behind the restaurant.  It seems evident by now that I wasn’t put on Earth to make roast duck.  I’m here to convince you that corn and green beans in tomato sauce is ravishing.

The challenges we choose for ourselves go a long way towards defining who it is we truly are.  The clothes we wear are largely influenced by the fashion of the time.  Our pick in career may be a muddled mix of motivations that includes mundane matters of money and opportunity.  Certainly our choice of a spouse suggests something significant about us, though, I suspect biology and timing play a bigger role than we would like to think.  No, if you want to know who it is we really are then look at the rock we volunteer to endlessly roll uphill.  I once knew a man many years ago that had a rare genetic defect.  Each finger of his hands was one knuckle short.  Despite his resulting limited agility and lack of reach his burning desire was to play the piano well.  He did.  The result was not a repertoire of familiar show tunes.  His style suggested the rapid course that water takes down a steep mountain stream.  His was an approach to the keyboard you would hear nowhere else.  It was music of a strange sort, but it was music. 

There is always something odd to be found in the character we each display.  We may try to hide it from view because our particular quirk appears so ridiculous, so indefensible to our own mind.  Sure, someone that doesn't know us well may have a good laugh at our expense but they haven’t had the time to sample the savory blend of seasonings that make up our seven course personality.  And yes, not everyone is going to take to us, no matter what.  We don’t all appreciate almond slivers in rice… or whatever it is that makes your particular psychological concoction uniquely you. 

I make pictures, though I never figured out how to draw.  I love drawing though learning about it never interested me.  I just put my shoulder into the rock, hope for the best, and start trudging uphill. 

Love,

          Dad

Good Morning Jessicca...

Letter to my Daughter
Sunday, 7 April

Jessicca's Holiday Visit

They are shutting down CERN until 2015 for repairs.  The LHC, Large Hadron Collider, is the largest and most powerful of the world’s particle accelerators.  The Higgs boson, the subatomic particle believed responsible for holding matter together, was first isolated and identified through research at CERN.  It is thought to be one of a category that includes possibly up to six different subatomic particles responsible for the formation of physical matter and the phenomenon of gravity.  The LHC is providing the most extraordinary clues to the nature of existence itself and the technology needed to provide this information has to be invented as it is employed.  Consequently equipment sometimes doesn’t work as intended.  The LHC has been operating at half its intended power because of problems in its radical design.  The facility is being shut down to rectify these issues.  Once it returns online two years from now it should have the power to further break apart subatomic matter in an effort to further determine the nature of physical existence. 

Over our heads, circling the earth, a two billion dollar experiment on the International Space Station may have detected the first tangible evidence of what is called dark matter.  The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, AMS, is a particle physics machine designed to provide scientists some indication as to the nature of this mysterious matter that makes up nearly 27% of the known universe.  Another force in the universe is termed dark energy and it accounts for over 68% of the mass/energy density of the Universe.  That means we can detect with our scientific equipment only about 5% of what is known to be physical reality.  We know something of the effect these unidentified forces have on the shape and movement of galaxies but we have yet to discover what it is they are.  It is like Mendel seeing the evidence of inherited traits in peas but not having any knowledge of molecular DNA.  It is now apparent to scientists that the Periodic Table of atoms is, in fact, only the tip of the iceberg. 

The AMS particle device took 18 years to develop.  For many of the people working on this experiment that represents a good portion of one’s career.  Watching it launch on the tip of a rocket makes for an excruciating case of nerves.  A single malfunction and years of dedication are destroyed in an instant.  It has happened before.  If the venture accomplishes its mission a very small piece of information will be added to our scientific knowledge.  Human knowledge, civilization itself, is built in small increments by individuals committed to working in a disciplined, pain-staking fashion.  Society always reflects the efforts of many lives, of individual sacrifice and ingenuity.  The best of our efforts as people, you and I, is what drives humanity forward.  Some of us work daily with test tubes, others work on cars.  Some of us gather information from books.  Some of us are fascinated by the people around us and find what it is we need to know by communicating directly with others.  Some people find meaning in paint or through expression in the written word.  Others of us are motivated to just live fully through what it is we experience in our daily lives.  We pass on to others who it is we are through the display of our character, the theater of our example as one life well-lived. 

Life isn't a carefree drive down a pleasant highway.  Were it otherwise what value would there be for having strong character traits such as humility, determination and acts of selfless devotion?  Simply enjoying ourselves is all the reward we might ever need in a life free from want.  Can one born into such a situation be considered lucky?  I doubt it.  People sheltered from adversity and handed most everything their heart desires still find ways to complicate their lives to the point of misery.  We learn from example that endless self-indulgence is a stifling bore.  We do poorly when we fail to exercise our brain, our muscles and our humanity.  The exclamation points of our lives are best served infrequently.  It’s a fact!  It gets tedious!  Nothing is special!  How hopeless it seems to always have what you want!  It drives you crazy!  You quickly see what I mean!  Help!