Monday, June 28, 2004

The worst information architecture is to make myself search for something when I know exactly where I'd expect to find it. I so expected myself to put my reference shelf to the left of my desk, within easy reach, that I reached back without even really looking to grab my dictionary tonight. But I'd tricked me, and I sat there puzzled at why I had my media studies shelf on that level, and then social history and architecture the shelf below. I actually wondered if I'd somehow not unpacked my reference volumes, or that someone had reorganized my library. I'm still incredibly puzzled as to why I put my reference books on the other side of the room. As if to force my brain to come up with made up answers for questions I obviously don't know. It is testament to both the value of the Web, I guess, that for well over 18 months now, I have not had ocassion to reach for my Websters Collegiate Dictionary, with its seemingly limitlessly diminishing number of words I am still able to understand, but I couldn't verify that I could actually use subtley as an adverb. Seems that I could, but I couldn't get the spelling right enough to get anything other than subtlety out of the spell check, and thought I might have the same problem on dictionary.com - although turns out that it would have lead me right where I was looking. Subtly. No "e" - although that seems the way the Brits might spell it, pronouncing three syllables rather than two. Amalgam I always want to spell almalgamam - as if my mixture is extra spicy. 11:55:40 PM

It just dawned on me that the amalgam personalities of the avatar or shaman, such as the Christ, or, on a lesser level, Carlos Castenada's Don Juan, or Dan Millman's sensei, are representative of the fluidity over time and space of the creative meme. That that voice in the wilderness, calling us home, calling us towards a more peaceable world, loves us still, transcendent of being, a meme for the ageless struggle in the void. I see no problem, with our brains the way we're wired today, with giving a semantics to that reality. What I have a problem with is making that language of inquiry a language of absolutes, a language of exclusivity. Perhaps one of our first major steps in our evolution will be the recognition that we're all just asking after the unknown, and that the questioning itself, regardless of what we name it, is faith itself. 11:30:27 PM