Had a blast last evening.
Too hung over to talk much about it.
Managed to get two awesome people to hook up with each other.
Have to work today and I am way too tired to do it so I will need to nap, but I am satisfied with the day already.
Chris
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Busy Life
I am right now feeling pretty drained from a long, intense conversation with Ceci. We met at a coffee shop, we went over problems we were having on a professional level, and we thought about ways to address them. For 3 hours, we spoke at very deep levels and it was very healthy and gave me a lot of things to think about, but it also really took my energy away.
I was hoping to go to the Avalon with my dance partner, but she is busy dealing with a persistent ex-boyfriend. She is dating someone who sounds wonderful, so it isn't a situation where the ex has a chance but he isn't giving up easily (which I find admirable). She will have to put him down hard, and I think tonight it will happen. But I needed to just forget about the stresses in my life and dance, so in a selfish way I am totally bummed.
So because I am overwhelmed and tired, this post is going to be more self-centered than most of my posts, which is saying a lot.
This is my current schedule:
Dance three times a week.
Jiu Jitsu two to three times a week.
Soccer twice a week.
Run once or twice a week.
Personal workout (pushups and back exercises) once a week.
Pushing a product to release in the next few months (roughly 40-50 hours/week commitment).
Serious practice singing, 1 hour or more once a week-ish.
I don't have time to breathe. The problem is, each of these things are things that when I am done I always think "Man, I really love this".
There was a time in my life where I was playing a lot of video games but really not achieving anything else. At one point I made a commitment to stop playing video games and other distracting things and just work towards being places in life where I really want to be.
But how much can a person really absorb in a daily basis? What is a limit on focus and effectiveness? I know that I can't do very good computer science more than 6-8 hours in a day. I just loose the ability to focus very hard after a while. I have about 4 hours in the morning where I am extremely focused, and probably the other 2 to four are give and take.
But I don't find that doing other things significantly detracts from my work. I find that the combination of all these things allows me to handle situations I otherwise would have difficulty because I have so many other things I can focus on, and at least one of them is always a nice distraction from something.
You could argue that my life is indeed filled with distractions, and this isn't allowing me to deal with personal issues that I really need to deal with. But the simple fact is that I am someone who really likes to get things done. When I stop and smell the roses, as people like to put it, I sneeze and get bored. So in some ways, I don't give a shit that I am not dealing with personal issues. I have them, everyone does, and so be it.
I try to be open to whatever opportunities life gives me, and just go with the flow. The problem is that the opportunities you are given aren't always the opportunities you really want. The question is are they the opportunities you need?
I would like, at some level, to be in a relationship (if my previous posts didn't give you and idea how painfully badly I would like this). But I have had so many disappointments and upsetting situations regarding relationships that I really don't know how much effort I am willing to put into this.
It feels like I want that opportunity, but life isn't cooperating. So I am not complaining, I am just going with what is given.
I have noticed that in general you can't capitalize off an opportunity you aren't ready for. So sure, a percentage of success is luck. But there is a hell of a lot of preparation involved in being ready for that opportunity and being able to make something of it when it happens.
Muhammad Ali used to say: "The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights. ". I really like that quote as I believe it signifies a large portion of my life.
The question becomes how much effort have I put myself into w/r/t accepting a relationship? Is it worthwhile to assume that my lack of success in this area is a result of not doing the groundwork required to be able to capitalize on these situations when they occur? Perhaps it is in not being in a position to even get the opportunity in the first place? What exactly does putting yourself into a position of being ready for a relationship really mean, exactly? Does it mean working on empathetic communication styles? Does it mean ensuring you will be able be a resource and not a burden on the person you are with?
Anyway, that is just an observation. When it comes down to the details, I am not sure I want someone sleeping next to me at night. I enjoy sex, don't get me wrong, but I don't always enjoy having someone else in the bed at night. Perhaps I just think I want a relationship because that seems like a logical thing that will make me a little less lonely. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, however, and usually when I am in one I am not measurably more happen than when I am not. Only at the beginning, when I am still infatuated with the person am I really pumped.
How much of my loneliness comes from an inability to connect with lots of people? Perhaps I am attempting to mask my inability to connect with a lot of people by having one person I have a super connection with. Is this really the healthiest thing I could be worrying about, or could I perhaps worry about connecting with people in the general sense?
What exactly is the goal of all this? What does being healthy really mean for any one individual? Does it mean you are happy? Does it mean you are content?
I have noticed that I grow the most in life in general when I am the most unhappy. There is some significant part of adapting to new situation and learning things about yourself that involves just fundamentally being uncomfortable, if not unhappy. I would say that my strongest trait is my clear vision, but a close second is my ability to adapt and try out odd situations. But then, to fully utilize this second trait don't I need to continually put myself into tough situation where I am not going to be the happiest person in the world but I am definitely going to learn things and grow to be a greater person than I was?
I leave with you an observation, which seems appropriate considering the number of questions I listed. Rarely are the people who contribute most to society by my measures the happiest (or healthiest). So at some level, perhaps you need to weigh your ability to be ok with tough situations with your desire to contribute great things.
Chris
I was hoping to go to the Avalon with my dance partner, but she is busy dealing with a persistent ex-boyfriend. She is dating someone who sounds wonderful, so it isn't a situation where the ex has a chance but he isn't giving up easily (which I find admirable). She will have to put him down hard, and I think tonight it will happen. But I needed to just forget about the stresses in my life and dance, so in a selfish way I am totally bummed.
So because I am overwhelmed and tired, this post is going to be more self-centered than most of my posts, which is saying a lot.
This is my current schedule:
Dance three times a week.
Jiu Jitsu two to three times a week.
Soccer twice a week.
Run once or twice a week.
Personal workout (pushups and back exercises) once a week.
Pushing a product to release in the next few months (roughly 40-50 hours/week commitment).
Serious practice singing, 1 hour or more once a week-ish.
I don't have time to breathe. The problem is, each of these things are things that when I am done I always think "Man, I really love this".
There was a time in my life where I was playing a lot of video games but really not achieving anything else. At one point I made a commitment to stop playing video games and other distracting things and just work towards being places in life where I really want to be.
But how much can a person really absorb in a daily basis? What is a limit on focus and effectiveness? I know that I can't do very good computer science more than 6-8 hours in a day. I just loose the ability to focus very hard after a while. I have about 4 hours in the morning where I am extremely focused, and probably the other 2 to four are give and take.
But I don't find that doing other things significantly detracts from my work. I find that the combination of all these things allows me to handle situations I otherwise would have difficulty because I have so many other things I can focus on, and at least one of them is always a nice distraction from something.
You could argue that my life is indeed filled with distractions, and this isn't allowing me to deal with personal issues that I really need to deal with. But the simple fact is that I am someone who really likes to get things done. When I stop and smell the roses, as people like to put it, I sneeze and get bored. So in some ways, I don't give a shit that I am not dealing with personal issues. I have them, everyone does, and so be it.
I try to be open to whatever opportunities life gives me, and just go with the flow. The problem is that the opportunities you are given aren't always the opportunities you really want. The question is are they the opportunities you need?
I would like, at some level, to be in a relationship (if my previous posts didn't give you and idea how painfully badly I would like this). But I have had so many disappointments and upsetting situations regarding relationships that I really don't know how much effort I am willing to put into this.
It feels like I want that opportunity, but life isn't cooperating. So I am not complaining, I am just going with what is given.
I have noticed that in general you can't capitalize off an opportunity you aren't ready for. So sure, a percentage of success is luck. But there is a hell of a lot of preparation involved in being ready for that opportunity and being able to make something of it when it happens.
Muhammad Ali used to say: "The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights. ". I really like that quote as I believe it signifies a large portion of my life.
The question becomes how much effort have I put myself into w/r/t accepting a relationship? Is it worthwhile to assume that my lack of success in this area is a result of not doing the groundwork required to be able to capitalize on these situations when they occur? Perhaps it is in not being in a position to even get the opportunity in the first place? What exactly does putting yourself into a position of being ready for a relationship really mean, exactly? Does it mean working on empathetic communication styles? Does it mean ensuring you will be able be a resource and not a burden on the person you are with?
Anyway, that is just an observation. When it comes down to the details, I am not sure I want someone sleeping next to me at night. I enjoy sex, don't get me wrong, but I don't always enjoy having someone else in the bed at night. Perhaps I just think I want a relationship because that seems like a logical thing that will make me a little less lonely. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, however, and usually when I am in one I am not measurably more happen than when I am not. Only at the beginning, when I am still infatuated with the person am I really pumped.
How much of my loneliness comes from an inability to connect with lots of people? Perhaps I am attempting to mask my inability to connect with a lot of people by having one person I have a super connection with. Is this really the healthiest thing I could be worrying about, or could I perhaps worry about connecting with people in the general sense?
What exactly is the goal of all this? What does being healthy really mean for any one individual? Does it mean you are happy? Does it mean you are content?
I have noticed that I grow the most in life in general when I am the most unhappy. There is some significant part of adapting to new situation and learning things about yourself that involves just fundamentally being uncomfortable, if not unhappy. I would say that my strongest trait is my clear vision, but a close second is my ability to adapt and try out odd situations. But then, to fully utilize this second trait don't I need to continually put myself into tough situation where I am not going to be the happiest person in the world but I am definitely going to learn things and grow to be a greater person than I was?
I leave with you an observation, which seems appropriate considering the number of questions I listed. Rarely are the people who contribute most to society by my measures the happiest (or healthiest). So at some level, perhaps you need to weigh your ability to be ok with tough situations with your desire to contribute great things.
Chris
Monday, March 17, 2008
Graph-based Programming
So I was really out of it tonight. I did yoga today for the first time in a very long time in a super hot room. It felt amazing, but I was pretty zoned the rest of the day.
Anyway, I am trying to decide how to spend my time.
I love LISP, and more the idea of super sophisticated metaprogramming systems. I spent several hours yesterday and today looking over the iron python code, and I had a very interesting thought.
Python is by no means a complex language these days. Yet the python .net compiler is a seriously tough project to get into. It may be faster than CPython, but it is really tricky trying to figure out how things work. The craziest thing is how much random code there is in the compiler doing various things, a lot of it very very repetitive. Wouldn't a simpler language with more powerful metaprogramming abilities be capable of overwhelming a complex language with less sophisticated metaprogramming abilities?
Lets say you have a sophisticated problem X. The closer your language looks to X, the less work it is going to take to solve it. Couldn't a compiler be seen as a general solution to all problems that then has to be customized to the particular problem? Now you could add all the crazy complexity to the compiler to make X very easy to solve. Then your solutions probably would not generalize to making problem Y very easy to solve. This is fundamentally why a given language has a given advantage in a given problem domain.
But a programmable language should be capable of being used efficiently for any problem, because in a sense, you are building your own compiler just for that problem.
The point is that I could see removing 90% of the structure and complexity of Iron Python, replacing it with general high-level metaprogramming capabilities, and ending up with a simpler system. A great test would be to write an Iron Python compiler in super-meta-language Y and see how much shorter it is.
Anyway, implementing some sort of LISP on .net is something that I am seriously thinking about.
Next on the list of really interesting things to fuck with is writing a graph-based graphics manipulation program and writing a book about it. I know a ton about large scale editing applications that very few other people know. I don't know how generalizable this knowledge is to other fields, or how useful it would appear to other people.
But I have to believe that speaking clearly about the technical advantages of the entire system we have designed for editing applications should elicit quite a response in people who like 3d graphics, who do like graphs, or who just like to think about things that blow your mind a bit. Plus it is something I can write about with a high degree of confidence that what I am saying is at least feasible. And I didn't have to pay for the feasibility test myself (thanks Anark!).
So, I was really sitting there completely in my head in a dark room thinking about all the advantages of a graph based editing systems, and I started thinking about representing programs a graphs, and could I build a lisp compiler that had macros, but that also let you run code generically operating on the representing of the code as a graph before it is dumped to IL (CLR assembly code)?
What does a program look like in its graph state? It should look something like a callgraph. Along with this (or embedded in it), would be a graph of what datatypes are used in which functions (or perhaps just allocated). And the datatype graph (schema) described by the program. Also, there is the syntax tree which hooks into the callgraph.
Now merge this with the datatype graph created by reading an xml schema. You could have extend the pure language directly with the datatype graph you are working with. This would be a code generator of sorts; but it would be a much more general one because your base language is already completely graph based. Talk about the results fitting into the language. You could build systems like this that were technically indistinguishable other programs but still extended the programming language in absolutely crazy ways.
Anyway, it is interesting to think about programs and think about graphs made up of every possible piece of related information. It is also interesting to think about the possibilities of being able to, at compile time, to manipulate those graphs to a great degree. Why not run time?
Because I really don't know how far I could push .net during run time and still have things work. Can I dynamically generate classes? Where does the code go? Sometimes you need a dll to be saved to disk in order for things to work, I know that, but the Iron Python guys may have solved a lot of those issues. Plus, I haven't really figured out what it would mean if you had access to all this stuff, and compile time just feels a little more natural to me.
Why have we designed all this structure around systems that are fundamentally graph based to begin with? I am not saying that visually connecting lines is a good idea, I never really liked graphical programming techniques. What if you built a runtime system that was fundamentally made to run these graphs, just as the current systems are made to run assembly? Then you would have all the crazy expressivity of the graphs all the time. It could do all sorts of optimizations based on which edges were traversed more than other edges, which ones were never traversed, etc. It could really morph itself both to new demands and new problems. I guess I should take a compiler theory class and find out just how far you can really take this idea.
Chris
Anyway, I am trying to decide how to spend my time.
I love LISP, and more the idea of super sophisticated metaprogramming systems. I spent several hours yesterday and today looking over the iron python code, and I had a very interesting thought.
Python is by no means a complex language these days. Yet the python .net compiler is a seriously tough project to get into. It may be faster than CPython, but it is really tricky trying to figure out how things work. The craziest thing is how much random code there is in the compiler doing various things, a lot of it very very repetitive. Wouldn't a simpler language with more powerful metaprogramming abilities be capable of overwhelming a complex language with less sophisticated metaprogramming abilities?
Lets say you have a sophisticated problem X. The closer your language looks to X, the less work it is going to take to solve it. Couldn't a compiler be seen as a general solution to all problems that then has to be customized to the particular problem? Now you could add all the crazy complexity to the compiler to make X very easy to solve. Then your solutions probably would not generalize to making problem Y very easy to solve. This is fundamentally why a given language has a given advantage in a given problem domain.
But a programmable language should be capable of being used efficiently for any problem, because in a sense, you are building your own compiler just for that problem.
The point is that I could see removing 90% of the structure and complexity of Iron Python, replacing it with general high-level metaprogramming capabilities, and ending up with a simpler system. A great test would be to write an Iron Python compiler in super-meta-language Y and see how much shorter it is.
Anyway, implementing some sort of LISP on .net is something that I am seriously thinking about.
Next on the list of really interesting things to fuck with is writing a graph-based graphics manipulation program and writing a book about it. I know a ton about large scale editing applications that very few other people know. I don't know how generalizable this knowledge is to other fields, or how useful it would appear to other people.
But I have to believe that speaking clearly about the technical advantages of the entire system we have designed for editing applications should elicit quite a response in people who like 3d graphics, who do like graphs, or who just like to think about things that blow your mind a bit. Plus it is something I can write about with a high degree of confidence that what I am saying is at least feasible. And I didn't have to pay for the feasibility test myself (thanks Anark!).
So, I was really sitting there completely in my head in a dark room thinking about all the advantages of a graph based editing systems, and I started thinking about representing programs a graphs, and could I build a lisp compiler that had macros, but that also let you run code generically operating on the representing of the code as a graph before it is dumped to IL (CLR assembly code)?
What does a program look like in its graph state? It should look something like a callgraph. Along with this (or embedded in it), would be a graph of what datatypes are used in which functions (or perhaps just allocated). And the datatype graph (schema) described by the program. Also, there is the syntax tree which hooks into the callgraph.
Now merge this with the datatype graph created by reading an xml schema. You could have extend the pure language directly with the datatype graph you are working with. This would be a code generator of sorts; but it would be a much more general one because your base language is already completely graph based. Talk about the results fitting into the language. You could build systems like this that were technically indistinguishable other programs but still extended the programming language in absolutely crazy ways.
Anyway, it is interesting to think about programs and think about graphs made up of every possible piece of related information. It is also interesting to think about the possibilities of being able to, at compile time, to manipulate those graphs to a great degree. Why not run time?
Because I really don't know how far I could push .net during run time and still have things work. Can I dynamically generate classes? Where does the code go? Sometimes you need a dll to be saved to disk in order for things to work, I know that, but the Iron Python guys may have solved a lot of those issues. Plus, I haven't really figured out what it would mean if you had access to all this stuff, and compile time just feels a little more natural to me.
Why have we designed all this structure around systems that are fundamentally graph based to begin with? I am not saying that visually connecting lines is a good idea, I never really liked graphical programming techniques. What if you built a runtime system that was fundamentally made to run these graphs, just as the current systems are made to run assembly? Then you would have all the crazy expressivity of the graphs all the time. It could do all sorts of optimizations based on which edges were traversed more than other edges, which ones were never traversed, etc. It could really morph itself both to new demands and new problems. I guess I should take a compiler theory class and find out just how far you can really take this idea.
Chris
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Axiomizing .net
I have been thinking about what lisp would mean in terms of implementing it on a .net framework. Here are some conclusions:
The DLR (dynamic language runtime) provides four basic services (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Language_Runtime):
1. Dynamic type system.
2. Dynamic method dispatch.
3. Dynamic code generation.
4. Hosting API.
The power of lisp, above and beyond other languages (for me), comes from a only three things:
1. Syntactical Simplicity. Lists of lists. This enables levels of metaprogramming that would be impossible with a complex language.
2. Macros. The ability to extend the language in ways that do not look different than any other lisp code.
3. Minimal language specification. Given 6 keywords and macros, you can build all of common lisp. It really has axiomized computing down to the basic primitives required. Everything else is gravy.
I think an appropriate LISP implementation using the DLR would be the most minimal LISP API that exposes a self hosting compiler/environment (thus macros work) as well as access to all 4 DLR services.
I think it would be awesome if you had the most bare-minimum wrapper that included just enough to work and very raw access to everything else. Then people could build macros that extended the compiler with better support for .net paradigms.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I would write a system that built, layer upon layer, upon the lowest possible denominators. The fact that you can extend the compiler easily means that I, as the language implementor, should implement bare minimum full API access to the four services. I assume that everything else comes through those services, and the more I can expose them the better.
This would be a LISP for experts. In order to use the rawest version, you will need to have an excellent understanding of the CLR and DLR. It would make literally anything possible, however.
That is the theory, anyway. Implement the bare minimum that makes supporting the full .net system theoretically possible, and then thoroughly document the implementation and its implications. This LISP wouldn't be a common lisp implementation on .net. I would have lists, car, and cdr, but not much else. There is no need for hashes or vectors or anything like that, .net already has those.
It comes down to how do you do the least amount of work in order to gain all the important advantages of LISP along with the important advantages of the .net framework, the CLR and DLR. Absolutely no 'niceness' wrapping at the lowest level, just bare minimum axiomatic access to the base services.
Perhaps using the core system, writing a standard .net class takes 5 times the LOC that it does in C# because you have to explicitly specify all the assumptions the C# compiler uses. The key point is that if you have macros, it doesn't matter at all because clients can just write macros and such that make the same assumptions but the underlying language allows experimentation with very different assumptions.
Anyway, I don't know how closely the current .net LISP matches this paradigm. I will have to study iron [python|ruby] a bit to gain a good idea on what a good .net language implementation should look like, and then go over the existing LISP one(s).
Think of the power of axiomizing support for .net. It should be similar to the power of axiomizing computing just translated into a different domain. Perhaps there are crazy ways of defining properties that csharp doesn't allow. Perhaps there are class extensions and clever things you can do that you can't in any language but that aren't explicitly forbidded in the .net system; you just don't have low level enough access to use them.
The point is that because LISP enables endlessly powerful metaprogramming, language implementors should never make any assumptions whatsoever. They should write to the exact .net platform specification, and let macros upon macros simplify the low level description into useful abstractions.
Chris
The DLR (dynamic language runtime) provides four basic services (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Language_Runtime):
1. Dynamic type system.
2. Dynamic method dispatch.
3. Dynamic code generation.
4. Hosting API.
The power of lisp, above and beyond other languages (for me), comes from a only three things:
1. Syntactical Simplicity. Lists of lists. This enables levels of metaprogramming that would be impossible with a complex language.
2. Macros. The ability to extend the language in ways that do not look different than any other lisp code.
3. Minimal language specification. Given 6 keywords and macros, you can build all of common lisp. It really has axiomized computing down to the basic primitives required. Everything else is gravy.
I think an appropriate LISP implementation using the DLR would be the most minimal LISP API that exposes a self hosting compiler/environment (thus macros work) as well as access to all 4 DLR services.
I think it would be awesome if you had the most bare-minimum wrapper that included just enough to work and very raw access to everything else. Then people could build macros that extended the compiler with better support for .net paradigms.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I would write a system that built, layer upon layer, upon the lowest possible denominators. The fact that you can extend the compiler easily means that I, as the language implementor, should implement bare minimum full API access to the four services. I assume that everything else comes through those services, and the more I can expose them the better.
This would be a LISP for experts. In order to use the rawest version, you will need to have an excellent understanding of the CLR and DLR. It would make literally anything possible, however.
That is the theory, anyway. Implement the bare minimum that makes supporting the full .net system theoretically possible, and then thoroughly document the implementation and its implications. This LISP wouldn't be a common lisp implementation on .net. I would have lists, car, and cdr, but not much else. There is no need for hashes or vectors or anything like that, .net already has those.
It comes down to how do you do the least amount of work in order to gain all the important advantages of LISP along with the important advantages of the .net framework, the CLR and DLR. Absolutely no 'niceness' wrapping at the lowest level, just bare minimum axiomatic access to the base services.
Perhaps using the core system, writing a standard .net class takes 5 times the LOC that it does in C# because you have to explicitly specify all the assumptions the C# compiler uses. The key point is that if you have macros, it doesn't matter at all because clients can just write macros and such that make the same assumptions but the underlying language allows experimentation with very different assumptions.
Anyway, I don't know how closely the current .net LISP matches this paradigm. I will have to study iron [python|ruby] a bit to gain a good idea on what a good .net language implementation should look like, and then go over the existing LISP one(s).
Think of the power of axiomizing support for .net. It should be similar to the power of axiomizing computing just translated into a different domain. Perhaps there are crazy ways of defining properties that csharp doesn't allow. Perhaps there are class extensions and clever things you can do that you can't in any language but that aren't explicitly forbidded in the .net system; you just don't have low level enough access to use them.
The point is that because LISP enables endlessly powerful metaprogramming, language implementors should never make any assumptions whatsoever. They should write to the exact .net platform specification, and let macros upon macros simplify the low level description into useful abstractions.
Chris
Amazing nights
I just had one of the most amazing evenings I have ever had in my entire life.
There is a very shy, cute woman I know through Salsa. She started perhaps 5 months ago, and I had been caught by her almost since she started.
I remember sitting there with a buddy getting high quite a long time ago. We were watching some indie flick, and just talking about random stuff. I told him that I was very attracted to this beautiful woman, Katie. He said that she was a very classy girl and told me who he thought was pretty cute; I can't remember who he was talking about.
At that moment, while I was fairly stoned, I remember feeling trapped thinking about how much I really *really* was into this girl. I had never really spoken to her, but we had some really amazing dances. Every time I tried to speak to her I just couldn't say anything that made any sense. I remember distinctly my intense focus on her and the tight feeling in my chest regarding her.
The funny thing is that when I am high I am more sensitive than at any other time. Things hurt when I am high that do not hurt normally, and I am open to ideas and random things I would normally not be very open to. Thinking about her when I am in such a state is a sure road to disaster, clearly. I tried to distance myself from such thoughts later because I felt that being in such a state would destroy any chances I had of actually dating her.
Anyway, we danced a couple really hot evenings, and we were getting closer. Finally, at the end of one evening, I pulled her aside and said something to this effect:
"I feel that we are getting very close while dancing. I think there is more to this than a dance, and I want to take this relationship off the floor." She replied that she was interested in the same, but said that it was very important to her to take it slow. I respect that, and I asked for her number and that was it. We held hands for a short while, but there was no kissing or anything like that.
Well, fast forward two weeks and it is time for the Denver art walk. All the galleries are open, there are several artists I enjoy seeing, and there is plenty of wine for any occasion. Of course, when I want to spend a night looking at amazing pieces of art (and some not so amazing...) I am going to try to spend it with the most beautiful woman in the world, right?
And what an evening it was. We got down to Denver around 7, or 7:15. I don't remember much, other than that she really liked to spend time with various pieces. Once she started to focus on some artwork, she took it in and thought about it for a while.
Gradually, as the night wore on, we had more wine and looked at more and more art. The final place we went was an artist's workshop. I know the artist, I have followed him, and I really like his work. Katie, Kyle (the artist) and I spoke at length about his pieces and what it was like being an artist (how many prints did he sell, how much work did he do for commission, etc.).
All the while, I had this amazingly beautiful woman by my side checking things out. She is very shy. When I say very, I mean like so shy when I kiss her hand she blushes and looks down. When we dance, she won't look at me very much. Sometimes I have to sort of kneel down and get under her to catch her eye; she will then look at me for a bit, get a huge smile on her face, and then look away.
Another odd fact is that when I hold her close I cannot concentrate. I almost lost a pullover tonight, because I put it down to dance with her and then I didn't remember it for about 10 minutes. We had to wander back and find it again. I noticed this during salsa; when I just pull her body next to mine it feels like I cannot breathe and like I can breathe for the first time in my life all at the same time. I then loose track of the music, rhythm, and everything else all at the same time.
Finally we went back to her apartment and watched a documentary on children of prostitutes in Bombay. It was very moving and I loved it. Plus I had the most beautiful woman in the world in my arms during the documentary.
It was an amazing evening. We kissed for the first time. What else can I say?
Chris
There is a very shy, cute woman I know through Salsa. She started perhaps 5 months ago, and I had been caught by her almost since she started.
I remember sitting there with a buddy getting high quite a long time ago. We were watching some indie flick, and just talking about random stuff. I told him that I was very attracted to this beautiful woman, Katie. He said that she was a very classy girl and told me who he thought was pretty cute; I can't remember who he was talking about.
At that moment, while I was fairly stoned, I remember feeling trapped thinking about how much I really *really* was into this girl. I had never really spoken to her, but we had some really amazing dances. Every time I tried to speak to her I just couldn't say anything that made any sense. I remember distinctly my intense focus on her and the tight feeling in my chest regarding her.
The funny thing is that when I am high I am more sensitive than at any other time. Things hurt when I am high that do not hurt normally, and I am open to ideas and random things I would normally not be very open to. Thinking about her when I am in such a state is a sure road to disaster, clearly. I tried to distance myself from such thoughts later because I felt that being in such a state would destroy any chances I had of actually dating her.
Anyway, we danced a couple really hot evenings, and we were getting closer. Finally, at the end of one evening, I pulled her aside and said something to this effect:
"I feel that we are getting very close while dancing. I think there is more to this than a dance, and I want to take this relationship off the floor." She replied that she was interested in the same, but said that it was very important to her to take it slow. I respect that, and I asked for her number and that was it. We held hands for a short while, but there was no kissing or anything like that.
Well, fast forward two weeks and it is time for the Denver art walk. All the galleries are open, there are several artists I enjoy seeing, and there is plenty of wine for any occasion. Of course, when I want to spend a night looking at amazing pieces of art (and some not so amazing...) I am going to try to spend it with the most beautiful woman in the world, right?
And what an evening it was. We got down to Denver around 7, or 7:15. I don't remember much, other than that she really liked to spend time with various pieces. Once she started to focus on some artwork, she took it in and thought about it for a while.
Gradually, as the night wore on, we had more wine and looked at more and more art. The final place we went was an artist's workshop. I know the artist, I have followed him, and I really like his work. Katie, Kyle (the artist) and I spoke at length about his pieces and what it was like being an artist (how many prints did he sell, how much work did he do for commission, etc.).
All the while, I had this amazingly beautiful woman by my side checking things out. She is very shy. When I say very, I mean like so shy when I kiss her hand she blushes and looks down. When we dance, she won't look at me very much. Sometimes I have to sort of kneel down and get under her to catch her eye; she will then look at me for a bit, get a huge smile on her face, and then look away.
Another odd fact is that when I hold her close I cannot concentrate. I almost lost a pullover tonight, because I put it down to dance with her and then I didn't remember it for about 10 minutes. We had to wander back and find it again. I noticed this during salsa; when I just pull her body next to mine it feels like I cannot breathe and like I can breathe for the first time in my life all at the same time. I then loose track of the music, rhythm, and everything else all at the same time.
Finally we went back to her apartment and watched a documentary on children of prostitutes in Bombay. It was very moving and I loved it. Plus I had the most beautiful woman in the world in my arms during the documentary.
It was an amazing evening. We kissed for the first time. What else can I say?
Chris
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Final Exam
The book. Written by Pauline W. Chen.
I picked up this book in an airport. I am not sure which one, perhaps Narida. I didn't have the energy to read it while in flight.
Lack of energy can be a wonderful thing. It means that instead of reading a book that has provoked a million questions and a lot of difficult emotions on a aircraft, half delirious, I gave this book an honest read.
I picked it up because I have always wondered how my father dealt with some of the more serious things in his life.
Dad is a pathologist. Pathology stands for "study of disease", taken literally. He ran the pathology lab at Anderson Hospital in Troy, Illinois for many, many years. I understand intellectually what he did but I do not really understand what he did.
What I do know is that he is utterly unafraid of dealing with incredibly difficult situations involving life and death. It may seem minor, but if he has to put a family pet to sleep, he will do it gently but without tears nor much visible remorse (although you can tell things upset him).
I recently went to a funeral of a very good friend of his. This man, I will call him Jim, was also a pathologist. Jim and Dad had been close friends (Jim and his wife are my God-parents). Jim spent his life doing forensic pathology, investigating child homicides and dealing with the absolutely darkest things a man can deal with.
Jim got a particularly virulent form of bone cancer and died a very, very painful death. I think the thing that troubled my father the most was that his profession could do nothing for one of his best friends; dad never spoke of this to me.
I remember the funeral, and walking around talking to my dad and the family members of the deceased. Dad was not noticeably upset; we spoke about family members who were buried near and the existing family. His face was very drawn during the service, but very few other things were noticeable.
The family handled this event with a grace that I will remember until my death. They had expected this for a while, so I guess they were prepared but they were clearly in pain but yet they could speak about their pain and were honestly amazing people to be around during this time. I don't know any other way to describe it.
Anyway, to get to the point, I have never been quite able to come to terms with death. I have no idea how to handle it gracefully. It scares, disgusts, and repulses me quite a bit. I volunteered for an AIDS non-profit hoping to learn some really hardcore lessons about the subject but all I learned was that AIDS was very treatable at this point and the people who the nonprofit helped had millions of other problems as well as AIDS. I learned that even with a terminal disease, the most important thing in life is life. But that is another story.
I do not understand how my father can deal with death. Doctors have the, uh, __benefit__ of knowing their friends are dying and knowing why, how, and given our current technology the chances of life. How do they handle this?
I had toyed with the idea of medicine for a while. I never forgave people who sued my father for silly reasons. Not all the law suites were stupid, certainly, in 30 years of practice any mortal will make a mistake. Not many of them (for the record, 1), but so did my father. But we got sued many, many times a year. Because of this, I felt that I would never put myself in a position to save someone's life only to have them turn around a sue me for one reason or another.
I hadn't considered the difficulty of dealing with death although now it seems clear to me that it would have presented one of the largest barriers.
It is clear, through the course of the book, that Dr. Chen has an amazingly difficult time dealing with death. She is afraid of it just as the rest of us. But unlike the rest of us she has to get up every day and ask terminal patients if they have prepared for death.
I intend to give the book to my father, and ask him to read. After he has read it I will begin asking him questions about dealing with death and how closely his experience mirrors Dr. Chen's experience.
I said "I intend" because I do not know if I will have the courage to do it. Because just as I am afraid of death, I am afraid of dealing with emotional subjects with my father.
Chris
I picked up this book in an airport. I am not sure which one, perhaps Narida. I didn't have the energy to read it while in flight.
Lack of energy can be a wonderful thing. It means that instead of reading a book that has provoked a million questions and a lot of difficult emotions on a aircraft, half delirious, I gave this book an honest read.
I picked it up because I have always wondered how my father dealt with some of the more serious things in his life.
Dad is a pathologist. Pathology stands for "study of disease", taken literally. He ran the pathology lab at Anderson Hospital in Troy, Illinois for many, many years. I understand intellectually what he did but I do not really understand what he did.
What I do know is that he is utterly unafraid of dealing with incredibly difficult situations involving life and death. It may seem minor, but if he has to put a family pet to sleep, he will do it gently but without tears nor much visible remorse (although you can tell things upset him).
I recently went to a funeral of a very good friend of his. This man, I will call him Jim, was also a pathologist. Jim and Dad had been close friends (Jim and his wife are my God-parents). Jim spent his life doing forensic pathology, investigating child homicides and dealing with the absolutely darkest things a man can deal with.
Jim got a particularly virulent form of bone cancer and died a very, very painful death. I think the thing that troubled my father the most was that his profession could do nothing for one of his best friends; dad never spoke of this to me.
I remember the funeral, and walking around talking to my dad and the family members of the deceased. Dad was not noticeably upset; we spoke about family members who were buried near and the existing family. His face was very drawn during the service, but very few other things were noticeable.
The family handled this event with a grace that I will remember until my death. They had expected this for a while, so I guess they were prepared but they were clearly in pain but yet they could speak about their pain and were honestly amazing people to be around during this time. I don't know any other way to describe it.
Anyway, to get to the point, I have never been quite able to come to terms with death. I have no idea how to handle it gracefully. It scares, disgusts, and repulses me quite a bit. I volunteered for an AIDS non-profit hoping to learn some really hardcore lessons about the subject but all I learned was that AIDS was very treatable at this point and the people who the nonprofit helped had millions of other problems as well as AIDS. I learned that even with a terminal disease, the most important thing in life is life. But that is another story.
I do not understand how my father can deal with death. Doctors have the, uh, __benefit__ of knowing their friends are dying and knowing why, how, and given our current technology the chances of life. How do they handle this?
I had toyed with the idea of medicine for a while. I never forgave people who sued my father for silly reasons. Not all the law suites were stupid, certainly, in 30 years of practice any mortal will make a mistake. Not many of them (for the record, 1), but so did my father. But we got sued many, many times a year. Because of this, I felt that I would never put myself in a position to save someone's life only to have them turn around a sue me for one reason or another.
I hadn't considered the difficulty of dealing with death although now it seems clear to me that it would have presented one of the largest barriers.
It is clear, through the course of the book, that Dr. Chen has an amazingly difficult time dealing with death. She is afraid of it just as the rest of us. But unlike the rest of us she has to get up every day and ask terminal patients if they have prepared for death.
I intend to give the book to my father, and ask him to read. After he has read it I will begin asking him questions about dealing with death and how closely his experience mirrors Dr. Chen's experience.
I said "I intend" because I do not know if I will have the courage to do it. Because just as I am afraid of death, I am afraid of dealing with emotional subjects with my father.
Chris
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)