Author: RTNM

A Few Thoughts on Creating Lineups for NASCAR DFS

I play NASCAR DFS (daily fantasy sports) on FanDuel and DraftKings.  I don’t have a gambling jones, I started playing because I was attracted to the mathematics underlying the lineup selection process.  On DraftKings, you are tasked with picking 6 drivers per lineup; on FanDuel, it is 5.  This post is not about how to pick the right drivers to make lots of money.  I want to talk about how many possible lineups there are for an individual player to choose from.  For now, we will ignore the limitations imposed by salary caps on each site.

Back in the old days, The NASCAR Cup Series had a field of 43 cars.  There were usually more cars than that trying to qualify.  The slower entrants, not fast enough to make the field, got sent home with nary a handshake.  So, let’s say that we need a single lineup of 6 drivers for DraftKings.  Any guesses as to the number of unique lineups we have to choose from?  Go ahead…take your time.

Did you come up with 6,096,454?  Unbelievable, isn’t it?  There are over 6 million possible unique lineups to choose from.  This problem, and problems like it, are known as “n choose k” problems.  Of course, there is a handy and elegant formula for us to use.

In this instance, n =  the total population to choose from and k = the number you are interested in selecting.  In our example n=43 and k=6.

Note: If you are not familiar with (!), that means factorial.  For example,

Get the idea?  For example, if you have 6 books (6!), there are 720 different ways to arrange them on a shelf.  What about 9 books? 9! = 362,880.  Astonishing, isn’t it?

Now we can talk about present-day NASCAR.  Recently, the fields have been at around 38 cars.  The high cost of participation and lack of sponsorship has led to the folding of many race teams.  Now our equation (38 choose 6) gives a still ridiculous answer of 2,760,681 possible lineups.  Good grief, that is still way beyond manageable.

Luckily, any competent DFS player can eliminate a bunch of drivers right at the start of their selection process.  There are cars referred to as backmarkers, these cars are too slow to compete.  It is very difficult for them to move forward through the field.  They tend to be the product of small, underfunded teams.  These cars ride around in the back of the pack, hoping to stay out of trouble as they cruise around the track in the hopes of a substantive paycheck.  For argument’s sake, let’s say there around 8 of those cars.

Now we are at n=30 and k=6.  30 choose 6 gives an answer of 593,775.  That is still a number way beyond what any human being could hope to tame.

What if you have a process whereby you can eliminate drivers based on any number of other factors?  Serious DFS players do this as a matter of course.  Imagine that you can whittle down your field of possibilities to 25 cars.  Now we have n=25 and k=6.  25 choose 6 = 177,100…still an outrageously large number.

There are more things to consider.  A person creating a DFS lineup just can’t pick any 5 or 6 drivers they want.  Each driver costs a certain amount, and there is a salary cap.  For our combinatorics problem, this creates some interesting issues, some easily solvable and others not.  As you will see, things get a lot more complicated when salary restraints are included in the equation.

On Draftkings, it is usually easy to split the cars into 3 different groups.  Let’s say that group 1 has 8 cars, of which you wish to choose 2 for each lineup you want to create.  8 choose 2 gives an answer of 28 different combinations.  Next would be a group of around 22 cars, of which 4 would be chosen.  22 choose 4 = 7315.  Now we have a total of 7343.  In practice, this number will be much larger due to the fact that it would be difficult to fit lineups under the salary cap using only those cars.  It is probable that some of the backmarkers would have to be included in the pool of eligible cars to create viable lineups.

On FanDuel, the salary cap restrictions are not nearly as severe.  If we go with all 38 cars in our pool, we get 38 choose 5, which equals 501,942.  If we use other methods to whittle the possible cars down to 30, we get 30 choose 5, which equals 142,506.

As of today, the most lineups one can enter in one contest is 150.  That is 150 out of possibilities ranging from the high thousands to the millions.  Obviously, the processes, mathematical and otherwise, that players employ to construct lineups are of utmost importance.  It is impossible to try to cover all bases, the math simply won’t allow it.

 

 

 

Give Me Some Space Redux!

On 12/12/19, I posted an essay about spaces after sentences called Give Me Some Space! The other day I saw that there was a significant development in the story.  After reading about Microsoft’s decision to unilaterally “settle” the debate, I decided to update my original post.

If you use Microsoft Word, and nearly everyone does, you are about to be told how many spaces to put after a sentence.  If you only hit your spacebar once, you will happily move on to the next sentence.  If you have the gall (unmitigated or otherwise) to tap twice, Word will flag the extra space with that little red squiggle, letting you know that you have made a horrible mistake.

In recent years I have heard people talk about the power that Word has to tell its users what is and is not proper grammar.  You know what I am talking about.  Word constantly makes recommendations about grammar and spelling.  While the spelling suggestions are helpful and appreciated, what is to be said about how Word views grammar?  Every time Word tells a user that their grammar is lacking, the writer is given the “proper” way to fix it.  That is a lot of power put in the hands of programmers who may or may not be relying on sources with the best of bona fides.

Microsoft’s unilateral decision to make one space after a sentence the only correct way to proceed is a bit strange.  Why would they feel the need to chime in at all?  If they insist upon imposing their will when it comes to the use of a spacebar, you can imagine what they might be doing with their grammar algorithms.

My point is that Word is so widely used that the recommendations the program makes are bound to be accepted.  That is a lot of power for one subset of a single company to have.  Language will change based on what the people who code the program think.  Of course, I know they have advisors who are experts in language and grammar but should that group have this much power to mold the future of the written word?

As for me, I do not have an editor, so I use Grammarly.  I am glad I have it.  It points out things I might have missed, and it is always ready to tell me where commas or synonyms are needed.  It is a terrific program.  That said, I wish everyone would be mindful of what these programs are doing.  There is more than one way to write a sentence, and multiple iterations can be as acceptable as any other.

Below is my original post.  The issue of how many spaces to put after a sentence is an interesting one for old-timers who started typing long before computers were widely available.  If you didn’t read it in December, take a look at it now.  As for me, I have to dig into my Word settings, I know there must be a way to make the program leave me alone after I type my preferred two spaces.

*****

It is very difficult for old people to change their ways.
Buford Lister (personal communication)

A few years ago, I got an email from a friend of mine.  As I was reading it, I began to become irritated, then I became agitated, and then…well, I didn’t throw my computer monitor out the window, but I thought about it.  Why?  Was the content of the message that annoying and frustrating?  No, not at all.  I can’t even remember what the email was about.  What I do remember is that the author only put one space after each sentence, and I found that visual to be compact and quite disturbing.  Welcome to my world, a universe unto itself where the spacing between sentences is far more critical than the content of the text itself.

I am 57 years old, which means I grew up with typewriters; back in the day, personal computers were nothing more than a figment of somebody else’s imagination. I learned to type on an old mechanical device.  You had to push down hard on the keys to get them to strike with enough force to make an impression. Also, and this is the crucial point, everyone was taught to put two spaces between sentences.  That was how it was done, no questions asked.

Typewriters use monospaced fonts, which means that every character is given the same amount of space on the page.  An “I” and an “m” get the same area even though the “I” certainly doesn’t need or deserve it.  The use of monospacing led to a consensus that hitting the spacebar twice after a sentence was required to make it easier for the reader to see the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next.

We all know what happened, right?  Computers came along, and word processing programs started using proportional fonts, the type of fonts where an “I” gets less space on the screen, and the page, than an “m” or some other broader letter gets.  Before any of us knew what was happening, people were only hitting the spacebar once, dogs and cats were living together, and the ghost of Shakespeare was seen floating through English departments throughout college campuses worldwide.

The people who argue for one space after sentences hate, and I mean hate, to see two spaces being used anywhere.  They complain about rivers of white flowing through a passage of text.  It somehow offends them that there are still people walking the earth who prefer the two space method.   Sadly for them, I am a proud “Two-Spacer,” and I fully intend to die that way.  Hey, all you “One-Spacers,” do your worst, I am fully prepared for the onslaught.  Present the evidence in favor of your position, of which there is none.  Then sit back and behold the science supporting my position.

There was a study recently done; yes, you heard that right.  People take this stuff so seriously that someone is trying to further their academic career at a university somewhere by addressing this pressing issue.  The author of the study found that using two spaces after a sentence does increase reading speed as well as comprehension.  Take that!  Of course, the opponents say that the research must be flawed, how else could the wrong conclusion be reached.  So it goes…

I recently read a blog post somewhere about an older woman who was asking for advice about this issue.  She explained that she was too old to change, but she didn’t want her readers to think that her text was written by some sort of modern-day keyboard wielding buffoon.  So, what to do?  The reply was genius, shocking coming from a One-Spacer.  The One-Spacer said that the woman should type as she always does.  Keep right on tapping that spacebar twice, continue to do it out of habit, no worries.  When the document is complete, all she has to do is perform a search and replace.  Search for the two spaces and replace them with one space.  In one fell swoop, her document would then be acceptable for polite and sophisticated company the world over.  Not bad, right?

It is surprising (or maybe it isn’t) how worked up people get over this issue.  Lots of professional writers, as well as English professors and random commentators, take firm stances.  Their opinions are strong and unwavering.  While I much prefer two spaces, I am not going to take out a loan, purchase a tank, and go to war over it.  As for some of the others, I think they have already met with their credit unions.

Now for the big reveal, I have secretly left a trail of intrigue in this short essay.  I am conducting my own little, non-scientific study. I put two spaces after some of the sentences, and others got one space treatment.  Did you even notice?  Are you offended at this travesty?  My guess is no one noticed, but I bet you do in the future.  Once that genie escapes, they cannot be shoved back in the bottle.  Oh boy, I just used the word “they” to refer to a singular genie.  Not a bad segue to a future essay that I am finishing up now.  More on that soon enough.

 

Notes:  The article about spacing is entitled Are Two Spaces Better Than One? The Effect of Spacing Following Periods and Commas During Reading.  Rebecca Johnson, an associate professor at Skidmore College, led the team that conducted this outrageous and groundbreaking research.  Three cheers and a tiger for her and her colleagues, they are doing the world a service by putting those distrustful keyboard jockeys in their proper place.

 

Wouldn’t it be Wonderful?

In April 1989, some people thought we were on the cusp of a worldwide revolution.  Energy was about to become free for anyone who wanted it.  Third world countries were going to be able to build and power infrastructure at virtually no cost.  Pollution was going to disappear.  Even nuclear power plants were about to be shuttered.

During that time, I was at Harvard working on a graduate degree in Archaeology.  The local newspapers were busy covering the announcement from Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann that they had produced a nuclear reaction at room temperature.  If true, that meant that the world was about to radically change.  Imagine free energy with no resultant pollution.  Too good to be true, right?

The reason some serious people took pause is that Fleischmann was one of the world’s leading electrochemists.  He was an outstanding scientist, one to be taken seriously.  For most, though, the possibility of cold fusion was not in the realm of probability, or even possibility.

The story of how and why the experiments of Pons and Fleischmann became such big news is to be found in pure human greed.  Fleischmann wanted to publish the results from their experiments in an obscure journal.  The University of Utah, where Pons was employed as a chemistry professor, wanted to make sure all patents (and all the resultant money) found their way into the University of Utah’s coffers, where it obviously belonged.  Think of how they could upgrade their sports facilities if they got a cut every time a light bulb was clicked on or an HVAC unit was engaged.

The leaders at Utah got wind of what was happening with Pons’ research and jumped the gun by holding a press conference to announce that the world was about to change.  Energy was going to become free, the world was to be powered, and poverty was to end, due to the brilliance of the administrators at The University of Utah.  After all, they were the ones who had the foresight to hire Pons in the first place.

As I sat in my little basement apartment outside of Cambridge, I read, day after day, about cold fusion and the implications such a power source had for humanity.  Of course, most of the reports were highly dubious of Pons and Fleischmann’s claims.  That is until I started to hear whispers around campus that others had also created nuclear reactions at room temperature.

First, I heard that a group from Texas A&M had done it; they had created excess heat from a tabletop experiment.  The press release did not state the exact nature of the Pons & Fleischmann experiment, but scientists the world over were able to infer how they must have done it.  Shortly after the A&M results, a team from Georgia Tech had also replicated the results.  The Harvard campus was buzzing, especially among the nonscientists.  Everyone knew that if this were true, if nuclear reactions could be produced and sustained at room temperature, then everything about the daily lives of people throughout the world was about to radically change.

A few days later, I heard unsubstantiated claims that a group next door at MIT had also created a room temperature nuclear reaction.  Was this true?  I don’t know.  But it was an indication of the times.  People were talking about this, there was a lot of excitement in the air…until there wasn’t.

It didn’t take long for both A&M and Georgia Tech to retract their results.  Within weeks all the excitement dissipated, and hard reality took its rightful place.  Cold Fusion is, and always was, a pipe dream.

During this time, I was sitting in class when a student asked the professor what he thought about the cold fusion story.  The professor said that he was talking to lots of experts in the field, and they all reacted negatively.  They said it couldn’t be true.  He paused and then told the class that he spoke to one of his colleagues on campus, a Nobel Laureate, who told him that cold fusion was highly unlikely but if the laws of physics did allow for it: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful?”

Unlike belief in ghosts, wood nymphs, or angels, cold fusion requires immediate proof or people are going to jump off the bandwagon. Cold fusion is in bad shape, but it is not dead yet.  The Navy has a team working on it, and there are others scattered throughout the world who are still looking into it.  Why?  Those anomalous results that were popping up in 1989 are still being observed in experiments being conducted today.  The nature of those results remains a mystery.  Of course, if those results were consistently replicable, our world would be a much different place.  Unfortunately, the Laws of Physics don’t care about what we might want or need.  They are steadfast and unbreakable, just like belief in angels.

 

Random Thoughts from a Nonlinear Mind: Volume 2: The Athena Chapters,
Chapter Five:
Random Pulses of Bliss

 

Buford Lister lives in a one-dimensional world.  His universe is a straight line, a simple number line; everyone, by necessity, lives somewhere on the line.  There is nowhere else to go, nowhere else to be.  Consequently, all one needs to find someone else (or any location) on the line is a single piece of information.

He called Keira, a woman he had just met the previous evening, and invited her out to lunch.  “Sure, Buford Lister.  I would love to meet you for lunch.  Where do you want to meet?”  Buford Lister thought for a few seconds before saying, “Meet me at 7.6, I am leaving right now.”

*****

Are you keeping up with the results from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)?  Do you even have any idea what it is?  Perhaps even more importantly, do you have any clue as to why I am starting yet another essay about Athena off with a discussion about a particle accelerator and the mini black holes that it just might create?  I didn’t think so.  Well, let’s get right to it and see if we can’t shed a little light on these dark mysteries.

The LHC is a massive particle accelerator located at CERN, a facility near Geneva, Switzerland.  About 100 countries are involved in this enormous project.  Because the facility employs about 10,000 scientists and engineers, it is the ultimate expression of big science writ large.  It probably won’t surprise you to learn that the LHC is the most complex piece of equipment human beings have ever created; yes, even more complicated than the Space Shuttle.

This machine takes beams of protons or lead ions and accelerates them to 99.9999991% the speed of light.  Why?  Simply so the beams can be smashed together to create particles that we mere mortals have never seen; particles that would have been present during the creation of the universe.  In effect, we (meaning humanity) are trying to replicate the conditions present right after the Big Bang.  That is so very cool. As you might imagine, there are all kinds of things we can learn by doing that.

You might have heard of the Higgs Boson (aka The Higgs), also unfortunately known as the God Particle.  Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman gave it that unfortunate nickname in a ploy to sell more copies of his fantastic book; a tome surprisingly called The God Particle.  Lederman has joked that he wanted to call the book The Goddamn Particle, but the publisher wouldn’t have it.  Anyway, the search for the Higgs Boson is a primary reason this machine was built.  The Higgs is the theoretical construct that gives rise to the field that gives particles their individual masses.  Think of a field the same way you think of temperature in a room; there is a value associated with any point you can pick.  As the particles pass through this proposed field, they encounter resistance.  Visualize the difference in how a marble passes through a glass of water as opposed to a glass of honey.  It is this proposed Higgs Field that theoretically gives the particles all their different masses; some pass through water, and others take the honey route.  The big problem is that we have no idea if this field exists.  And if it exists, we have no idea what it is.  As always, there is plenty of speculation.

Speaking of things that may or may not exist, let’s move on to Dark Matter and Dark Energy.  Would it surprise you to know that stuff comprised of atoms, including you and me, make up only about 5% of the universe?  We have no idea what the rest of the stuff is, but we call it Dark Matter and Dark Energy.  We know Dark Matter is there because of the gravitational fields it creates, but it does not interact with light, so we are having a hard time figuring out its true nature.  We know Dark Energy is there because the universe is still expanding from the Big Bang.  It really should have slowed down by now, but it hasn’t; in fact, the acceleration is increasing.  That strange situation is due to Dark Energy.  Hopefully, the LHC will give us a hand here, too.

*****

One day Buford Lister decided that being a point on a number line wasn’t very interesting.  He was having the type of existential crisis that only a point on a number line could have.  He gathered up many of the other points and said, “This is ridiculous, let’s take the ends of our number line and connect them to make what I call a circle!  Can you all even begin to imagine how that will change our lives?  Let your imaginations run wild and join me.  I say we do it.  Let the word ring out to all the points on the number line.  I swear we will form a circle!”

After lots of time and a tremendous amount of work, the points were able to take the ends of the number line and connect them.  They now had their circle.  Celebrations were planned even though the points felt a little ambivalent about the festivities.  Even Buford Lister admitted that he thought they would get something more out of all their work.  He was heard to tell Keira, “I surely thought I would feel different living on a circle instead of on a line, but I feel the same.”  Keira took a deep breath as she thought about the best way to break it to Buford Lister that a circle is also a one-dimensional object.  “Sweetheart,” she said, “a circle is the same as a straight number line.  You still need only one piece of information to determine the position of any point.  I’ll prove it to you, meet me at my place later tonight.  I now live at 36.84 degrees.”  The only thing that could be heard (and you had to listen really close) was a subtle “oh crap” coming out of the tiny mouth of the little point that was Buford Lister.

*****

There is one other intriguing area that the good people at the LHC are exploring, and that is the possible existence of extra dimensions.  Wow, how cool is that?  Go ahead and try to picture what a sixth or seventh spatial dimension might be.  All I can say is good luck.  Our puny three-dimensional brains have little chance of imagining what those extra dimensions might be like.

As a master of the obvious, I can confidently say that we live in a world with three spatial dimensions.  We can go up and down, back and forth, and side to side.  We can always call time the fourth dimension, which creates no problem for me.  The big issue is that contemporary theoretical physics (think Superstring Theory) suggests that there are many more dimensions other than the ones we can see.  I want you to think about where those extra dimensions might be.  Can you picture them?  The three I mentioned account for all of our freedom of movement, so where do we go from there?  I am open to suggestions, any and all.

There is a neat, short little book called Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions that can give us all some insight into our dimension dilemma.  It was written in 1884 by Edwin Abbott.  The characters in the book live in only two dimensions.  You can imagine what happens when a three-dimensional sphere visits.  Think about what the geometric shapes living in two dimensions would see.  Perhaps you have concluded that they would see a line as the sphere started to pass through their universe.  The line would get longer and longer until it started to shrink.  That might very well be what they would see.  I am mentioning this because it gives some sort of point of reference for us to begin a discussion of extra dimensions.  Surely, it is not going to help very much, but it is better than nothing.  At least it starts us thinking about dimensions in a bit of a different way.

I think about these dimensions a lot.  Historically, there are a couple of ways I rely on to try to amuse myself.  Actually, there are lots of ways, but I want to talk about two specific examples here.  One thing I do is I try to think about all the stuff that happened before I was born.  I have to admit that I have come up with nothing.  I have not been able to extract a single memory.  It has been 13.7 billion years from the Big Bang until now.  That is an awfully long time, and I am a bit disappointed I have no recollection of any of it.  The really bad news is that the universe seemed to do just fine without me.  If I were to give that some thought I might just get a little depressed.

The other thing I do is I try to imagine what all these other dimensions might be like.  I have made a little progress in this area, no really, I have.  I know what a four-dimensional cube looks like.  All kidding aside, I really do!  Head on over to Google and check out tesseracts.  You can also find them under hypercubes; they go by both names.  They might be the coolest thing I have ever seen.  There are strict mathematical rules that make the tesseract the proper analog to the cube just as the cube is related to the lesser dimensional square.  I have gone through the math, and it all makes perfect sense.

Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus), a 1954 painting by Salvador Dalí, shows the crucified Jesus hanging from an unfolded tesseract, technically called a net.  It is fascinating; it clearly takes us to a different place if we begin thinking about the possibilities presented by more than the three dimensions we are used to.  The best way I have found to think about it is that a tesseract is a four-dimensional representation in three-dimensional space just as a cube drawn on a sheet of paper is a three-dimensional object represented in two-dimensional space.

Why do physicists think that there might be more than the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time that we are so familiar with?  One big reason is gravity.  Gravity is exceptionally weak, much weaker than all the other fundamental forces of nature.  Try this, take a small magnet, and see how easily you can lift a paper clip even though the gravitational force of the entire earth is working on keeping that tiny object on the tabletop.  That is truly extraordinary.  It is simply a contest of strength; the earth versus one small magnet, and it is no contest, the magnet wins every time.

It is the weakness of gravity that gives rise to the possibility of extra dimensions in our universe.  The string theorists claim we have 10 or 11 of them, not just the three we live in.  I am the first person to admit that is mind-bending, but the mathematics doesn’t mind those extra dimensions at all.  The equations just keep plugging away.

You know those mini black holes I mentioned earlier.  Well, guess what?  If we happen to create them, then that is going to suggest that these extra dimensions might actually exist.  Gravity is so very weak in our world, and one theory suggests this is so because it exists in all those other dimensions, and just a little bit leaks through to our normal three-dimensional world.  For mini black holes to be created, it would take some of that extra-dimensional gravity; there is simply not enough gravity in our three-dimensional world to allow that to happen.  The gravity from the extra dimensions could create mini black holes.  If we create them, then that is a clue that maybe those extra dimensions exist on something other than a physicist’s notepad.

So, who is rooting hardest for mini black holes to show up at the LHC?  Probably no one more than the famous physicist Stephen Hawking, the scientist that Homer Simpson refers to as “that wheelchair guy.”  Did you realize that Hawking has not been awarded a Nobel Prize?  His best chance at an elusive Nobel is the creation of mini black holes at the LHC.  It is that confirmation (for various technical reasons) that will get him the prize, that is, if he lives long enough for the committee to award it to him.

*****

Life was moving along nicely for the people of the circle.  Points were living full lives and,  for the most part, enjoying themselves.  That is until Buford Lister started creating another stink.  He was big enough to admit that he had erred by suggesting that the other points take the line and form it into a circle.  “I made a mistake; I should have thought more about my proposal.  If I would have listened to Keira, we wouldn’t be in this mess.  I sincerely apologize to everyone.  Now that I am older and wiser, I would like to suggest that we undo our circle and place a 90-degree bend in the middle of our line.  Keira and I have talked it over, and we are sure this will create another dimension for all of us to enjoy.  We both have no idea what it would look like or feel like, but I am convinced it is the right thing to do.  I know most of us are content living out our lives as we have, but I know there is so much more out there for us.”

There were lively public debates and serious private conferences.  You can only imagine what went on there.  Finally, the spirit of exploration won out, the circle was dismantled, and a ninety-degree bend was placed in the number line.   No one could have possibly imagined what was to happen next.  Yes, a plane was created, and every point got to live in two- dimensional space.   An X and a Y coordinate were now required to find another point.  For many years the points lived in ecstasy.  Buford Lister and Keira were hailed as heroes; schools were named after them, and Keira was asked to assume the Presidency of Plane Land.  She refused the honor; she enjoyed her life with Buford Lister too much to give it up and move into the arena of politics.  They settled into a wonderful life at X=5, Y=4, a location considered by many to be prime real estate.   She and Buford Lister were deliriously happy…for a time.

*****

I know a young man named Phil.  There are a couple of reasons why I include him in this essay.  He asked me an extremely interesting question not long ago, and my reaction conjured up all sorts of thoughts and emotions.  Also, his innocent query inspired me to tell him a story I have never told anyone before.  Now I will tell it to all of you.

Phil was on Christmas break from school when I ran into him at a local restaurant.  Now that he is away at college, he has a better appreciation for what getting an education is all about.  He knows how much time I spent in school, so he had lots to talk to me about.

He causally asked me “So, what are you still doing here?”  His question really was, “So, what the hell happened?  Weren’t you meant for something bigger and better than what you are doing?  Why are you here, in this depressing, dying town? ”  That is what he was really asking.  I took a long, deep breath before I answered him because he is one of the few people I have ever known who have the insight (and guts) necessary to ask me such a question.

He has been reading my essays, so I decided to answer his question in a way I knew he would understand.  I simply told him that I never met my “Athena” when I was younger.  I never met the woman I needed to meet.  I was never inspired; I was never introduced to the woman who would help me transcend the mundane day to day existence that we all struggle against.  I wanted to tell him that the single most difficult thing any person can do in this world is to live an inspired life when they have no inspiration.  I decided he didn’t need to hear that so I just told him that the most important thing for him was the only thing I couldn’t help him with.  I can easily help him refine his intuition and nudge and poke him toward a path that will make him examine his own life through a more critical lens, but I am at a total loss when it comes to helping him find his own “Athena,” his own source of inspiration.  It was then that I told him the story I am going to tell you.

When I was very young, a hell of a lot younger than I am now, I was having a conversation with one of my professors.  I can’t remember exactly how or why, but the conversation made its way around to Nobel Prizes.  He was talking about how an anthropologist could possibly win one, and he said it would have to be in the biological sub-discipline because that could potentially get a person one in medicine.  I mentioned that Jean-Paul Sartre was the only person to turn one down.  He didn’t know this, and he got extremely agitated.  He couldn’t understand why anyone would do that.  I defended Sartre (as if he needed my help) because I thought he had good reasons for doing what he did.  It was then that the professor sat me down and gave me a long talk on why I was never to do that, on why I was never to turn down such an honor.

My point here is that there were people who expected big things out of me.  I certainly include myself in that category.  So, what happened?  That is so easy.  Like I said before, I never found the wind beneath my wings.  I had forgotten entirely, but I now remember when I was about 20, another professor told me that what I needed more than anything was the love of a “good woman.”

Author’s Note:  When you get a degree from Harvard University, you are expected to go out into the “real world” and make a difference.  In my experience, almost everyone I met while I was there had plans to make a major contribution to humanity.  They felt it was a responsibility, a sort of cosmic obligation.  I also feel that way.  I write a lot under various pen names, and that is where my contribution is being made.  There is a novel that I am struggling to finish, that novel, if I am correct, will represent my significant gift to humanity.  My guess is everyone will have to wait until I am long gone to know the details.  I prefer to run silent and deep.

*****

One day, out of nowhere, a man showed up at Keira and Buford’s house.  He had with him a notebook full of equations and drawings.  “Hello, my name is Trey, may I come in?”  Greetings were made all around, and then it happened, Buford and Keira were introduced to an idea so radical that they remained speechless for quite some time.

In Trey’s notebook, a notebook consisting only of one long, flat page, they saw the theory, the convincing possibility that there might be more than two dimensions.  They looked at a cube, an actual cube drawn on the flat surface that was Trey’s notebook.  “You know, I am convinced that there is something more than a back and forth and a side to side,” said Trey.  “The math works; it makes perfect sense.  More than that, look at my drawing.  I call it a “square connected to a square.”  I know it is real; I just know that these things really do exist.”  Buford Lister, temporarily stunned, was finally, after some time, able to say something.  He looked at Keira and then said, “If it is true, how are we supposed to experience it?  I don’t see any way that we can go any other direction other than the X and Y that we move in now.  What exactly is this supposed to be?  Even if Trey is correct, I don’t see how it matters.  Keira, do you agree? “   Keira said nothing; she was in a deep think; a very, very deep think.

*****

I wrote in a previous essay that I was thinking of getting on with my study of Mozart.  Well, I have been doing just that.  I have ordered a bunch of video courses, bought a couple of books, and downloaded a cache of music.  The first video course I watched, Great Masters: Mozart – His Life and Music from The Teaching Company, is stellar.  Taught by Robert Greenberg, the course is very, very good.  It was the perfect place to start.

Mozart was clearly a genius, but like most everyone else, he had his unproductive periods.  This, coupled with the fact that he died so young, makes one yearn for all the unwritten music he left behind.  Greenberg mentioned an extraordinarily prolific period late in Mozart’s life that appeared to come out of the ether.  Nothing, nothing, nothing, and then (seemingly out of nowhere) an unexpected explosion.  What do you think the question was that Greenberg rhetorically posed to the class?  His dramatic pause was followed by something like this,  “So, who, besides his wife, was he running around with?”

The implication is clear; inspiration requires well, inspiration, and where is the best place to find it?  I think we all know the answer to that question.  If Mozart was suddenly creating the best work of his life, the inspiration had to come from somewhere, and the only logical place for that, for him at least, was from a woman.  I found myself laughing while I was watching that lecture.  So I guess it is not a big secret then.  People need inspiration, and there is one basic way to find it.

I offer up the following as an explanation for how and why these essays came to be.  Clearly, I have experienced an explosion of creativity since I met Athena.  The evidence is to be found on each of these pages, pages that surely never would have existed if I hadn’t decided to see that fateful rock show last summer.  That is truly astounding.  If I had met her years ago and if things were very different, I can only imagine what might have happened.  Hell, I imagine what might happen now if she would only talk to me.  It simply warps my mind.  I have only seen her once, and here I am, almost ten months later, still finding all the inspiration in the world from her.

*****

Keira finally spoke.  “He is right, Trey is right.”  She was excited.  “Buford, my dear, open your eyes.  Open them!  The third dimension is there; we just never looked for it.  It is all around us.  If I concentrate really hard, I get glimpses, tiny glimpses of it.  I can feel it; it is there!  I had spent so much time doing the math.  It never occurred to me to draw it, to see it.  I was approaching the problem the wrong way; I needed to be working visually, not mathematically.  After seeing what Trey did on paper, I am getting little pulses of “up.”  I can feel “up,” random, ethereal pulses of “up.”  It is the most incredible thing that has ever happened to me.”

As month after month went by Buford Lister became more and more worried, he knew that Keira was going to risk harm to herself by trying to find this extra dimension.  He had a bad feeling in his stomach as he gazed at her.  He knew it was already too late to try to convince her that she should just relax and think about all the bad things that might happen if she set out on an exploration of a mysterious dimension that might not even exist.  And, even worse, what if it did exist and she was able to find it?  There is no guarantee that it would be a warm, welcoming place.  It might be dangerous; it might not be a good place for a point, especially a point that Buford Lister loved so much.

One day Buford Lister, still stunned and nervous,  glanced at Keira’s notebook and saw lots and lots of math.  At the very bottom of the jumbled mess, he saw this:  a² + b² +c² = d².  He took a long pause.  His intuition, his higher self, told him, “She is a genius; you are the luckiest point alive.”  He looked at the equation for a long, long time.

“Buford Lister, my love, look up.  Up was always there; it’s just that no one ever bothered to look.  I know there is an “up,” I know it.”  Buford Lister tried his best to look “up,” but he couldn’t do it.  He strained and thought and concentrated like he never had before…and nothing.  Keira finally lit up, “I have an idea.”

*****

I am still running, I just got back from a 75-minute run, and I feel great.  My knees feel fine, and I am clearly back in shape.  I am even throwing around the possibility of another marathon in the not too distant future.

I had my yearly check-up with my doctor a couple of weeks ago.  He is also a runner, and he knows better than anyone that I really shouldn’t be able to run anymore.  He is one of the doctors who, in the past, looked at the MRI’s of my knees and then shook his head and whistled.  He asked me how the running was going, and I told him everything was fine, better than fine.  I told him I wasn’t having any problems at all.  He said that I need not question a miracle; I just need to keep running.  That is exactly what he said, and that is precisely what I heard.  I wanted to tell him my working theory on why my knees are bending again, but I just shut up and told him that I am not questioning my good fortune one bit.  If I would have told him that a chick said “I’m Athena” and that my knees immediately stopped hurting, he might have done a bit of a double-take and given me a referral, a very specific referral to a highly specialized type of doctor.

I have included this story because he used the word miracle to describe the situation with my knees.  I am not so sure I believe in miracles, but I do find it highly unusual that I was able to start running the day after I met Athena.  There are many things I find highly unusual about all this, and that is what I want to talk about next.

I have written about what I call my vibe voice.  I really have no idea what it is, but I know people who have definite opinions on the matter.  For reasons that are way too long and complicated to mention in this essay, I know many people who are very religious, highly spiritual, and even psychic.  They call the vibe voice Spirit; there is no question in their minds that the voice I hear is the same one that comes to them when they pray or meditate.  The psychics tell a very similar tale.  They talk about Spirit Guides and Angels and a whole host of other conduits that allow them to communicate with the spirit world.  I still haven’t quite figured out why such entities would want to bother with a guy like me, a totally agnostic dude trained in the sciences.  Besides, my little vibe voice is more than a bit of a smart-ass.  Remember the Avatar line from a previous essay?  I was telling the little voice to shut the hell up because I was trying to talk to Athena.  “I get it; I get it, Avatar, OK, sheesh!“  Who knows?  As usual, I am at a complete loss.

I mention my vibe voice because I heard from it again.  It was a month or so ago.  It is not like I walk around hearing a little voice all day long, I can count on one hand the number of times in my life that this has happened.  I am pausing a little because the story that follows is nearly one I did not live to tell.

 *****

Keira convinced Buford Lister that all they needed to do was bend the plane just as they had with the number line.  “If we bend the plane, we will create another dimension, we will make an “up,” and I bet you we will also make an “anti-up.”  We will have a third dimension.  All we need to do is tug and pull on the ends.  I am sure it will work.”

It did work!  By bending and pulling the points of Plane Land became the inhabitants of Square Connected to Square Land.  It was a golden era.  Now, to find any other point required three pieces of information; an X, Y, and a Z coordinate.  Simply astonishing.  Buford Lister looked at Keira and wondered what he had ever done to deserve such a brilliant partner.  He was blissful.  The only thing he could think to say was, “Keira, you amaze me.  You are the most beautiful…”  He stopped because he knew she wasn’t listening to him; she was distracted.  She was in another deep think.

*****

I have always felt that the really important days are the ones that start like any other.  They are not wedding or graduation days; they are just normal days that quickly turn abnormal.  You are about to hear about such a day.

It was very cold and snowy; the weather was not inviting at all.  It wasn’t snowing a lot, but it was snowing enough.  I was out in the woods trying to find an old fence line.  Any normal person would walk along the path of least resistance, especially in heavy woods, but I couldn’t do that.  I had to walk along the property line because I needed to find the buried fence.  I came to a swamp, and I stepped in.  I was wearing hip boots because I knew that the swamp was there from a previous visit.

I was carrying a heavy bag of equipment on my left shoulder, and I was carrying a costly GPS unit with my right.  The GPS was attached to a pole 6.5’ tall.  I was using the pole to probe ahead while I was walking.  I wanted to make sure that the swamp didn’t suddenly drop off to a depth that I might find inconvenient.  At least, that was the plan.

One second I was walking through the swamp, and the next thing I knew, I was underwater.  If I can take a moment to give some unsolicited advice, I would not recommend that one go swimming in a swamp while it is cold enough to snow.  The initial shock of the cold water took all my energy, but I had a bigger problem.  My bag got hooked on something, and I couldn’t get to the surface.  Talk about inconvenience; it was not one of my happier moments.  I somehow managed to claw myself free, and I was able to get to the surface.  That is when my problems started to mount.

I took the pole and pushed it down to try to steady myself.  I was in deep water, and I didn’t need to go under again.  I struggled for a bit until I was able to get one of my feet on to a sunken log.  I used the log as a foothold to get myself over to another log that was sticking out of the water.  I was hanging on to the second log while I was trying to figure out what I was going to do.  I noticed a beaver lodge, and I was able to get over to it.  I tried to climb on to the lodge, but I wasn’t able to.  My hip boots were full of water, I was totally drenched, and all my energy was sapped.  That is when things went from bad to worse.

I, of course, was freezing.  That is until I wasn’t.  I was rapidly losing feeling in my limbs, and the only thing I could think to do was to scream for help.  I was so tired that I had trouble making the words come out.  It didn’t matter because there was no one around to hear me.

I took the pole, and I started probing around me to see if I could figure out how to get out of the swamp, and on to the other side, it wasn’t that far, but it was far enough.  I moved around in every possible direction, and the pole never hit bottom.  I put the pole and my bag on the beaver lodge as I stood in chest-deep water and contemplated my dilemma.  I had no idea what I was going to do.

I knew I was in deep, deep trouble.  I could barely feel my limbs, and I wasn’t cold anymore.  I figured I could stay at the lodge and let hypothermia slowly kill me, I could jump in the water and risk a heart attack from the shock, or I could simply drown.  It really, really sucked.  I knew there was a chance I was going to die.

I had heard people say that their life flashed before them when they had a near-death experience.  That didn’t happen to me, but some damn interesting things did happen while I was leaning up against that lodge.  I began to think about all the stuff I have half-finished, all the books and essays that are incomplete.  I didn’t think about anything I had done. I thought about all the stuff I hadn’t done.  And yeah, guess what?

I thought about what I was going to do if I got out of there.  I thought about how damn stupid it was to be making a bucket list, no The Bucket List, when I had no idea if I was going to be around in a half-hour, or even in five minutes.  And yeah, guess what?

I thought about how long I was going to float in the swamp until my body was discovered.  I knew it was going to be a long time before someone thought it was unusual that I hadn’t called or checked in.  I knew it would be days and days and days before my dad would ask my brother, “Have you talked to Ryan-Tyler?”  It is not unusual at all for me not to go into the office; I usually work at home.  In any event, there would be no one waiting for me that night, and that meant my lifeless body was going to have plenty of time to bloat.  I wondered how much it would bloat.  I wondered if they would find me floating face up or face down.  And yeah, guess what?

We are getting close to the point in my story where I had to make a decision.  I knew I didn’t have much time left, so I did the dumbest thing I could have done.  I knew I had to leave the temporary safety of the lodge and swim if I wanted to get out of there.  So, I took a deep breath, grabbed the heavy bag of equipment and the pole, and jumped in.  You read that right; I did everything I possibly could to ensure that I would have the best chance of sinking.  I wasn’t thinking clearly at all, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.  And yeah, guess what?

I got a little angry as I about to jump in.  I was angry that there would be no one who would miss me that night; I was angry that my life might end in a smelly swamp, I had always imagined I would go out in a blaze of glory somehow involving numerous Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders; I was angry that I was angry.  And yeah, guess what?

I was really disappointed about a lot of things as well.  I was angry that I was thinking about a woman I had met only once.  I was disappointed that I was never going to get to know her.  I found it absurd that my thoughts were all about her.  That is when the little vibe voice decided to intervene.  It said if I wanted to get out of that swamp, I had to promise not to give up on her; I had to promise not to give up on Athena.  Then it told me something else; it offered up a brief message that I find extraordinary.  The funny thing is I knew immediately what the vibe voice meant.  It said, “You have to make her say no.”

[I am exhausted…I am losing feeling in my limbs…I can’t feel my left leg… I am in deep, deep trouble…I don’t want to die like this…not like this, not like this…so much to do…so much to finish…I don’t want to drown here and now…not today.]

I needed to use all my energy to keep myself afloat, I was in dire straits, and the best that my universal vibe voice could come up with is “You have to make her say no.”  With that in mind, I pushed myself away from the lodge.

[You can make it…you can make it…push the pole down as hard as you can…find the bottom…push, push, push…you can make it…you can make it…just a little further…you can make it…come on…you can make it…you can make it…fight, fight, fight…not today…not  today…you can make it….reach…lunge…deep breath…damn it all…don’t give up…real deep breath…you have to goddamn fight if you want to go home.]

“Make her say no.”  Divinely inspired words of encouragement, the words I need to paint on the walls of my office.  “Make her say no.”  The motivation for finding the strength to live another day.  “Make her say no.”  Hope and optimism spring and dance, just like cosmically inspired words on a typed page.  “Make her say no.”

I made it to the other side of the swamp and somehow found the energy to climb on to dry land.  That was not an easy thing to do.  I immediately started walking in the wrong direction, but luckily I caught myself and turned around.  I still wasn’t home, but the worst was over.  I was a half-mile or so from my Honda, and the terrain was very rough.  Also, I had to cross the stupid swamp again to get back.  I found an easy place to cross and made my way back.  I was really worried about frostbite, so I stripped naked and covered myself with a county road map.  Somehow I thought wearing a map was better than standing outside in wet clothes.  Eventually, it dawned on me that I might be warmer in the car.  I turned the ignition key, and I blasted the heat as I waited for my brother to bring me some dry clothes.

Ironically, all I had in my Honda was an extra pair of socks.  I remember bringing them with me just in case I got my feet wet.  I am, if nothing else, a man with a plan.

*****

Keira worked very hard to get her vision down on paper.  Equation after equation, dead-end after frustrating dead end.  She knew that there had to be more than the three dimensions her senses showed her.  So many problems, though, things simply were not working out.

In addition to everything else, Keira was having a difficult time adjusting to her new life.  She was excited, yet scared, by the new dimensions and all the attention it brought her.  She even, at very dark moments, wished she had never met Buford Lister.  Her life would have been so much simpler, so much better, she thought, if there were no extra dimensions.   All those damn things have done is complicate other things, she thought.

Buford Lister studied Keira’s mathematical arguments and also became convinced that there must be more dimensions than what they could see.  “Just because we can’t see something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist” became the unofficial battle cry of the Square Connected to Square Science Institute.

*****

I called Boss and Olive, and we went out to eat, Mobe was bowling, so he missed out on a free dinner.  I told my tale, and we all had a few beers.  I was really happy to let them know what happened.  I was happy to be able to tell anyone anything.

I walked home from the restaurant, and things were as normal as can be, at least for a bit.  Then something remarkable started to happen to me, something that I have no explanation for, something that impacts my life every day.

Perhaps it is not such a surprise that I was thinking of Athena when I was in such a bad way.  She is the first human being I have ever met who I feel is on the same wavelength as me.  When I met her, I certainly wasn’t looking for someone like that; in fact, there is nothing that could have happened that would have surprised me more.  I guess, deep down, I knew it was possible to meet such a person, but I never thought it was possible for me.  Now that I give it some thought, I bet such meetings are the foundation of nearly every great story ever told.  Two people decide they are on the same wavelength, and then everyone else just stands back and watches them go.  So, what happens if only one person feels it?  Hmmm, I have no idea.

You know those warm fuzzy feelings that people get, especially when they meet someone new and they know something special is happening?  For reasons I can not comprehend, I am now getting something similar to those feelings on a constant basis.  The thing is, these warm feelings in the chest and butterflies in the stomach are not of an ordinary variety.  The warmth is of blast furnace quality, and the butterflies were, apparently, weaned on steroids.

I have felt these pulses on a consistent basis every single day since the swamp incident.  Yeah, there is some music that I listen to on my runs that intensifies the feelings, but they are there most of the time.  Also, that smile, the same one I have had for ten months, is growing larger.  It actually turns into a laugh now.

I am calling what is happening to me Random Pulses of Bliss.  Isn’t that the most remarkable thing you have ever heard?  I don’t understand it, and I don’t pretend to have any explanation.  I’ll just take my doctor’s advice and not question it.  Magically repaired knees and Random Pluses of Bliss; who knows, maybe they are an expression of the same phenomenon, maybe they originate from the same damn place. I have no idea; I will just go with it.  Even if I wanted things to change, I have no idea how I might go about doing that.

One guess is that these pulses are a little like gravity, weak in our universe but powerful in the dimensions that we can not see.  Maybe that is also where the vibe voice comes from.  Maybe dimension 7 or 8 is one of feeling, one of sensitivity and intuition.  I really don’t know, but I doubt there is an experiment that we can build, whatever the cost, that will give us any answers at all.  All I know is that my knees feel fine, and I have to come up with a playlist of my favorite music that will get me through 26.2 miles.  I can only begin to imagine how many of Athena’s songs will be on there.

As I sit here typing the pulses just keep coming.  It really is extraordinary.  I think the world might be a very different place if everyone would get these once in a while.  Perspectives and priorities might change, just a little, in the people hit with pulses like these.  It is nice to dream, isn’t it?

I just glanced out the window and noticed that the sun finally decided to make an appearance today.  I am going to try to stop laughing long enough to lace up my running shoes.

*****

One day Buford Lister looked over and said, “Keira, why must these extra dimensions be one of space?”  Keira gave this lots and lots of thought.  She tried and tried to get the mathematics to work using only the dimensions they could see, but she couldn’t do it.  Finally, in a last-ditch effort to try to understand what was going on, she let herself think of the extra dimensions as things like color, taste, and texture.  Conceptually, it worked just fine.   Mathematically, it was a very different story.

Keira decided to go for a run; she needed to clear her head.  As she got dressed, she thought back to her days in Plane Land and how no one could go for a run then.  Simply stated, there was no way to make the little rabbit hop around the great big tree.  Well, the bunny might be able to do that, but eventually, she needs to poke her head up, and no way was she ever doing that.   Consequently, there was no way to tie the laces of the running shoes; you can’t go up, over, and back under if those dimensions don’t exist.  The laces just dangled, and anyone who tried to run tripped continuously.

Keira started slowly on the beautiful running path that wove its way around the Science Institute.  She saw a figure in the distance.  Huh, she thought, another runner.  It was a bit unusual to see someone else on the path; it only happened occasionally.  Nearly everyone at the institute was into rock climbing.  They just couldn’t get enough of that newly discovered dimension known as “up.”

Keira ran up beside the other figure.  “Hi, I’m Keira,” she said.  It was nothing more than a simple snapshot of time, one that happened every day in Square Connected to Square Land.  Runners, rock climbers, artists, musicians, bakers, writers, and cowboys all lived out their lives the best they could.  Most days were like every other, but on rare occasions, the rules of physics, the equations of nature herself, were temporarily suspended for reasons unknown.  The theologians and the philosophers put a great deal of thought into why this happened, but their explanations satisfied no one.  As such, only the poets were consulted to explain what happened next.  The figure quickly glanced over and said: “Hi, I’m Ryan-Tyler.”

*****

I am at the close of another essay, and I find that I have to end this one as well with a letter.  Is this the last essay about Athena?  Who knows, maybe it is, and maybe there are fifty more to come.  Maybe I drop dead tomorrow, and maybe Athena and I are eating lunch together next week.  I have no idea.

Hi Athena,

I don’t have much to say, I really just wanted to say hi.  I do have a few more things I can add about my experience in the swamp, but those things are not for public consumption.  If you ever want to know, just ask me.

If you decide that we can go to lunch one day I do have a small request.  I know I am in no position to ask anything of you, but this is not that big a deal.  If, when we are eating, you see me reach into a pocket and pull out a small piece of paper, don’t bother to ask what it is.  If you see me take a pen and scratch off a line from the very top, you need not say a word.  Please, just smile back at me when I look up at you.

Ryan-Tyler

 

Why are you Looking at me that Way?

I have experienced some strange things during my nearly 58 years, and if I were to rank those experiences on some sort of Scale of the Bizarre, I would put Disjunctive Cognition near the top.  There is a very good chance you have also experienced this phenomenon even if you have never heard that specific phrase.

In 2001, a psychoanalyst named Mark Blechner published The Dream Frontier.  In this book, he documented case after case of people having two aspects of their cognition fail to match while they were dreaming.  This happens even though the dreamer knows that there is something wrong.  Try as they might, they can’t fix it.  What exactly is Blechner talking about?  I offer the following examples from my personal experience.

I have been posting chapters of the book I wrote about meeting Athena, the guitar player who made quite an impression on me.  I have already published six chapters about her and the fallout from meeting her.  I believe there are at least ten more to come.  This post is about a dream I had about her a couple of years after we met, this post is about my first encounter with Disjunctive Cognition.

In my dream, I was sitting in a large chair.  On my lap was an athletic African American woman with a fade haircut.  I instantly knew this woman was Athena, who, in real life, is an ultra-thin Caucasian woman with blonde hair.  Even though I knew it was Athena (I mean, I really knew it was her), I couldn’t change her appearance or get her to explain to me what was going on.  It was very, very strange.

Blechner states that my experience is commonplace among human beings in a dream state.  I certainly don’t remember ever experiencing anything like that before my dream about Athena.  For obvious reasons, I woke up very confused.  Since then, I have experienced Disjunctive Cognition in one other dream.

A few weeks ago, a young man appeared in one of my dreams.  He did not look like himself, he showed up in the guise of Justin Roiland, one of the creators of Rick and Morty, a TV show that I absolutely adore.  To complicate matters further, this young man took his own life in the recent past.  Why would I have a dream about him, especially when he was “disguised” as another person?  I have no idea.  I am left with speculation and a sense of unease.

Disjunctive Cognition is something I could probably do without.  Its strangeness is surpassed only by the disquiet I feel when experiencing it.  I don’t know what to make of it, I will simply add it to the long list of odd things I have experienced and move on.  As usual, the universe feels it is under no obligation to explain itself.

 

 

Medusa by The WRB Project

This post is slightly different than those that have come before, this one is in multimedia form.  I wrote, directed, shot, edited, and produced the following music video.  We did everything in one take with a budget of zero.

I am making a short film called Modern Day Medusas.  The music video has clips from the film.  In a future post, I will tell the story of how I became involved in The WRB Project, what it is that we are doing, and what we hope to accomplish.  I hope that you enjoy the video.  The music is all original, written and performed by The WRB Project.  I think you will like it, give it a listen.

Random Thoughts from a Nonlinear Mind: Volume 2: The Athena Chapters,
Chapter Four:
Hey There Athena

Preface

A Preface, seriously?  Do I really need to include a Preface in any essay, especially this one, or have I reached new heights when it comes to absurdity?  I will let out a little sigh as I tell you that I have to start this essay off with an open letter to Athena.  Why?  Well, something happened to me when I was about halfway done with this chapter, and it completely changed the texture of what I was writing.  In fact, it changed a whole bunch of things.  As I kept revising this essay, I found myself writing and rewriting what amounts to an introduction to the next essay.  It is my hope that all becomes clear at the end of Chapter 5.  I think the letter might help part a few clouds so here goes.

Hey There Athena,

How are you?  I find that I have to remind myself often that you don’t know me at all in spite of all that wavelength stuff I have written so much about.  So let me tell you this: I am one of those rare guys who actually listen, I am not one of those people who wait to talk.  I am sure that is the reason that I have so many young women as friends.  I just might be the only guy they know who does more than pretend to listen to them, at least that is the impression I get.  With that in mind, I really would like to know how you are doing.  If you ever want to talk, I guarantee I will listen.

Even though you didn’t ask, I need to tell you how I am getting along.  I am compelled to tell you about something that happened to me a few months ago; it was really crappy and relatively traumatic.  I had a very bad day, a very bad day indeed.  I nearly drown in a cold, smelly swamp.  You can’t imagine how much that sucked.  I can’t really put into words exactly what happened out there, but I certainly try in the next essay.  Apparently, as a result of what happened, I am supposed to make you say yes or no to my lunch date request.  (Huh, really, what is that all about?)  Boy, is that a long and interesting story.  I tell it in the next essay.

So, I am supposed to ask you to say yes or no to letting me buy you lunch.  Have you thought about it at all?  Have you made up your mind one way or the other, or are you too busy to even consider it?  Maybe you have thought about it, and you simply can’t make up your mind.  If that is the case, then I would like to offer up a suggestion.  I have found that the following technique is damn clever and, perhaps more importantly, it works very well.  All you have to do is take a coin and let heads equal yes, and tails mean no.  Take it and throw it way up in the air.  The great thing about this method is that it doesn’t matter how the coin lands.  You will find that you are rooting for either heads or tails while it is in the air, and there is your answer.  If you decide you want to do that, I would appreciate it very much if you let me know how that works out.

You know Athena, one thing keeps coming to mind, and I think it might be important to say a few words about it.  I’m sorry if these essays throw you off or if you find them disturbing in any way.  They sometimes disturb me, and I am the one writing them.  The big problem is that I have never been inspired like this before, and the words just keep coming.  The words combine to form sentences, and the sentences come together to make paragraphs, and …you get it.  Just think of this, things could be a hell of a lot worse.  Can you imagine the crap I would have been sending you if I fancied myself a poet?  Good grief.

I think you know exactly why I am writing chapter after chapter, don’t you Athena?  After I went home from the concert, I started doing some research about you and your band.  It quickly became clear to me that if I did nothing, I was never going to hear from you anyway.   In Chapter Seven, I go into greater detail about my decision to keep writing about the night we met and the fallout.  I realize I am taking a big risk, but my options are limited.  Besides, I have nothing to lose.

One other thing, lots of my friends have varying opinions on what I should do about you; some have really strong opinions.  I bet you can imagine what that is all about.  A fair number believe I have lost my mind, am totally wasting my time, or any combination thereof.  On the other hand, some of them tell me that I need to show up at some random show and tap you on the shoulder.  At least that way, I can get an answer to my lunch question.  I want you to know I will never, ever do that.  In fact, I think that is the worst damn idea I have ever heard.  If you and I ever see each other again, it will be at your request; I promise you that.

I wanted to let you know that an implicit theme of this essay is that I was writing it anticipating that I would never hear from you again, that you and I would have no interaction at all.  That is reasonable enough, isn’t it?  The next essay takes a different approach.  I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I see no reason not just to spill it.  Hell, I was near death in that damn swamp, and I was lucky to get out of there.  Trust me, that changes things.  The day after I met you I told Erin, my sister in law, that even if I never saw you again that meeting you was one of the most important things that has ever happened to me.  I knew that in the instant between the time it took you to say “I’m” and “Athena.“  After writing nonstop for nine months and running every day pain-free at the cemetery with all the geese, deer, and bunnies all, I can say is “true that.”

Ryan-Tyler

 

*****

 

I had no intention of ever writing another essay about the intriguing and mysterious Athena from Athens.  I really didn’t.  But then again, I never had any idea I would write even a single essay about her.  Prior to meeting her, I had never devoted an entire essay to a single person, be they alive or dead, famous or infamous, or anywhere in between.  It simply never occurred to me even though I am constantly studying fascinating people like Einstein and Darwin.  Things are getting “curiouser and curiouser,” aren’t they?

So, this is my fourth essay about her, and I guess I probably should give a bit of an update about what has happened.  Well, pretty much nothing.  Talk about your one-sided relationships (relationship?).  Good grief.  As it stands right now, the ratio of words written to Athena compared to the ones I get back stands at 3,000 to one.  My guess is that most of you are laughing your heads off, at least that is the reaction I get from many people when they ask me if I have heard from “that Athena woman.”  Well, the ratio is going to change after this essay, isn’t it?  There is nothing I can do about it; I am once again being compelled to write, so here I go.

You know what, though?  I did get some words back, she hasn’t totally blown me off, and I take that as a good thing.  Look at it this way: How many guys out there reading this essay have ever mustered up the courage to approach the most beautiful woman they have ever seen?  Out of those, how many actually got the woman to talk to them?  Sure, I am still trying to get her to go to lunch with me, but I am not out of ammunition quite yet.  Besides, the way I see it, I am way ahead of the hundreds of thousands (yes, I said hundreds of thousands) of guys who just stare at her and shrink back into themselves as they stand in a puddle of their own drool.  But then again, what the hell do I know?  Interestingly, I find that I am asking myself that question a lot lately.  My preliminary answer is, of course, “not much.”

I think I need to backtrack a bit and clarify that last paragraph.  Chapter 2 tells the story of why I introduced myself to her.  Initially, it had nothing to do with how beautiful I thought she was.  I was standing so far back from the stage that I couldn’t really get a good look at her anyway.  Besides, my reaction to her had absolutely nothing to do with how she looked or what she was wearing.  A quick review of Chapter 2 should convince anyone of that even though I apparently have not persuaded Athena that my aim is true and that my intentions are noble.

This brings me to an interesting point that relates to our present topic.  Occasionally people will want to introduce me to some unknown woman or another.  OK, maybe it happens more than occasionally.  The explanation for why I need to meet this person is always, and I mean always, the same.  “She is sooooooo cute; you just have to meet her.”  I have no idea how or why people get the impression that “cuteness” is at the top of my list when it comes to someone I might be interested in eating lunch with.  Never once have I been approached with an offer to meet someone because she is charming and interesting or creative and intelligent or because she has a giant spark that can light up a city block.  Not one time has that happened, and it should be apparent that I don’t think it ever will.  From a practical standpoint, such people are exceedingly rare, too rare to show up in any matchmaker scenario I can envision.  I offer the following up as evidence.  Can you guess how many of these extraordinary people I have met in my life?  Yep, a grand total of one.

The other thing about this situation that drives me crazy is that if I am in a mood to ask more about the proposed mystery woman (not likely), it quickly becomes apparent that the only reason we would make a good couple is because she is alone and so am I.  I am not kidding, that is the best that anyone has ever been able to come up with.  That gives a hint as to why I simply gave up a long, long time ago.

So, the next logical question is: Have I finally given up on Athena?  Eventually, any person would, right?  I heard nothing back from her after I sent Chapter 2, and I know most any reasonable person would call it a day.  I, though, am not “most people.”  Also, I don’t really know how reasonable I am; I have never thought much about it.

You know, when I wrote in the introduction to this book that all these essays simply represent an attempt to get Athena to go to lunch with me, I wasn’t joking.  I certainly haven’t given up on that even though I am not currently making any travel plans.  I haven’t been spending any time on Expedia, but here I am writing yet another essay about her.  And this isn’t going to be the last one.  The next chapter is about a dude (three guesses) who recently came very close to losing his life; the next chapter is about all the thoughts and images that flashed before the eyes of the dude as he struggled to stay afloat in very cold water; the next chapter is about accidents and coincidence and random chance and bucket lists; the next chapter is about a deep insight I had into what meeting Athena has meant to me.

Now that I give it some more thought, this essay isn’t really about her; it is more about my reaction to meeting her.  Chapter 4 is more about me.  This chapter is an essay about the vibes I got from her and the vibes I sometimes get from other people.  Yes, I think that makes more sense.  Of course, it is not lost on me that I am making a somewhat ridiculous distinction between the person and my reaction to meeting her.  That is OK because this essay is about my reaction to her, my reactions to a few people I have known in the past, and the reaction of a guy named Tom to a young lady named Delilah.

I suppose I could have cleaned up the introduction a little and brought it up to the standards of every English composition teacher out there, but I think I’ll just leave it as it is.  I find it more than a little difficult to form clear thesis statements when nothing is clear at all.  I think everyone will find that reasonable enough.  Besides, what could possibly be more appropriate than me, with my new found voice, finding my literary home in a genre of confusion.  Just think, one day Barnes & Noble might have a section called “Confused Literature & Essays.”  There might be a big picture of me right above the aisle, along with a link to my 15,000-word wiki page.  I can see the tag line now:  “You think you’re confused, check out this clown.”

I guess it is about time to get to it as I am already well into this chapter.  My story begins where most of my tales start.  Just picture me standing or sitting somewhere, minding my own damn business, and having a good old time.  That seems to be all the setup I ever need because, ultimately, that is how all the cool stuff happens to me.  Apparently, all I have to do is just sit around and wait.  A few days ago, that is exactly what I was doing.

Last Saturday, I was sitting on my couch, minding my own damn business when my friend Olive came over, and I gave him a guitar lesson.  Man, talk about the blind leading the blind.  I have got to be one of the worst guitar players ever to pick up the instrument, but Olive is even more hopeless than me.  I was showing him one of the guitar parts to Blister in the Sun.  We are going to get the boys together and do a cover of the song as soon as someone other than me learns to play it.  Even though we are not talking Mozart here, it might be a while.  If I were you, I wouldn’t camp out at Youtube waiting for the world premiere of The PF’s version (our band, a musical group that has never even practiced, let alone played out).  My guess is it is not coming to your computer screen any time soon.

While we were strumming, my TV screen started to freeze periodically.  Olive said that his TV had been doing the same thing, so I decided to flip through the channels to see if the problem was localized to that one station or if it was an issue with the cable service.  I happened to stop on VH1.  My oh my oh my, I just happened to stop on that channel while they were doing a show on the best songs of the 00s.  Not only that, but I happened by right when Hey There Delilah came on.  Things that make me go hmmmmmm.

I heard a story I had never heard before, and yet it was a story I know all too well.  A guy named Tom from a group called the Plain White T’s wrote that incredible song about a Columbia University undergrad named Delilah.  If I ever meet that dude, I am going to buy him a beer or 12.  Talk about your kindred spirits, my my my.  Once again, I find myself at a loss for words.  How many times has that happened in this volume?

If you have not heard that particular song, then I urge you to head on over to Youtube and have a listen.  Then I want you to think about why I am going to buy that guy some beers.  If the answer surprises you a fraction as much as it did me, you will still be astounded.

Have you given it some thought?  Yep, you got it; he met Delilah only once before he wrote one of the most beautiful songs you will ever hear.  Listen closely to the lyrics, and if you are not moved by how she moved him, then I will be disappointed.  If the song does not touch you, then my guess is that you must have a heart of stone or at least one impervious to emotion.  As for me, I am shocked every time I hear that song, and I wish I had known that story before I started writing all these “Athena” essays.  I don’t really know what might have changed, but I am sure the previous three essays would be very different.

So, why am I writing about this, and what is the point?  Does this essay have some kind of theme, or have I finally taken the big plunge off the deep end?  Will I find Tom down there, or did he finally just give up and move on from Delilah?  Is there anyone else down there, maybe even someone I know?  No, I haven’t taken that leap yet, maybe an unexplainable and blissful type of curiosity has gotten the better of me, and I have to stick around to see what might happen next—more on that later, and a lot more on that in the next chapter.

This essay, as I mentioned earlier, is about the way things just jump out at me on occasion.  I am talking about those strange and elusive vibes again.  Maybe I am a tad more sensitive than most people to these sorts of things.  I know my boy Tom is.  How many people have the capacity to be moved the way he was by a single meeting with a woman he didn’t even know?  My guess is not many.  Yeah, I know I fit into that category of guys that can make complete asses of themselves after meeting someone only one time, but I have little control over that.  Talk about stating the obvious, sheesh.  I really don’t expect my name to be mentioned when the nominees are called for induction into the Subtlety Hall of Fame.

So, I have pretty much accepted the fact that I am hopeless, and if you can bring yourself to agree, then we can move this story along.  If you remember back, I talked in a couple of the previous essays about my library, and I am sure you remember the special shelf.  I still can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that there are three CDs standing at attention front and center in that space.  Come on over, you will find them right in front of the Vonnegut and Gould books.  Once again, good grief.

One of the things that pops into my mind every once in a while is the ultimate fate of that fairly extensive library.  Sure, a lot of it now is found on my Kindle, but there are volumes numbering in the thousands that are made of paper.  I am going to insist that the books stay together, I really don’t want them split up even though I don’t think I am going to care much once I am gone.

I know that there is a high probability that eventually all those books are going to go to my niece or one of my nephews.  It will be handed down to whichever one of them wants it.  It will be entirely their choice.  The one who gets it will reveal themselves sooner or later.  I do have a guess, though, as to who the lucky winner will be.

My guess as to the recipient of my library speaks to another type of vibe detector that I apparently include in my repertoire.  It is funny, but there have been a handful of times in my life when the transcendent intelligence of a person has jumped out at me.  I have been proven right every single time.  Unlike my love life, my intuition has never failed me when it comes to the “genius” vibes I get from some people.  I find that most interesting—zero percent success rate in one area and 100 percent in the other.  Apparently, there are different types of intuition, and I somehow got in the wrong lines when that nonsense was being handed out.  Looking back, I think I might have been better served by having a more serviceable vibe detector when it comes to women than when it comes to discerning some random person’s intellectual ability.  Well, I clearly wasn’t given a choice in that matter, either.  Thinking back on what might have happened, I am pretty sure that in the staging area we wait in to be born, I got the lines mixed up and somehow got a double dose of charm and personality.  That must have been the line I got in instead of the intuition line.  Yes, that probably explains it.  I got routed back into the same line, the wrong line, at least twice.  Of course, the extra charm and personality hasn’t really amounted to much.   Talk about your “watch this” moments.

So, about these various vibe detectors I seem to have.  Here is a little story about how my other vibe detector works.  I had a professor at Harvard that I am still sure is a space alien.  He walked into the room, and his genius just jumped out at me.  He didn’t even need to say anything.  I instantly knew that he was operating on a level different from anyone I had ever met.  The course I took with him only solidified my initial impression.

I still vividly remember a question I asked him one day in class.  He smiled at me and then took off on the most brilliant intellectual display I have ever witnessed.  I felt like I was floating as the clock ticked on and on.  When he was done, he paused and said something to the effect of how much he liked teaching at Harvard because the students were so damn smart.  I think someone turned off the lights after that because I was beaming enough to light up the entire room.  After class, one guy actually came up and congratulated me.  Mind you, this guy came up to me and shook my hand for asking a question, not answering one.  Clearly, one of my finer moments.

The last time Harvard did a search for a president, I recommended the space alien for the job.  I thought he was exactly what the university needed.  My voice carries a lot of weight over there, so naturally, they hired an historian instead.  Oh well, I have heard that she is doing a fine job, but we need more science and math in this country.  My choice of a Christmas present for my niece Haley will shed a little more light on my disappointment in Harvard’s decision.

I bought Haley a pretty cool set of dinos for Christmas.  Of course, she is on a big princess kick.  All her other presents were Barbie, princess dolls, Tinkerbelle, fairies, and…you get the idea.  I bought her dinos because the world has enough princesses, we need more scientists.  My message to my beloved alma mater is similar.  We have enough historians; we have enough people looking backward; we need trailblazers, we need pioneers.  That is why we need a scientist to lead Harvard.  Maybe next time, eh?

So, that is enough about how my genius vibe mechanism works. I guess it is time now to take a look back at Chapter 2.  Everyone who read it said that it was the best thing I have ever written.  That is all fine and dandy, and, in fact, I think they are right.  The big problem for me is that every single person who read it seemed to miss the point entirely.  Originally, that essay was much longer than it ended up.  I had many more “watch this” examples in there, and it became apparent to me that I was way over the top when it came to making the point I wanted to make.  Can you guess what I am getting at?  Probably not, but I thought I would ask anyway.

Writers use language very specifically because it is pretty much all they have.  I used the word “stupid” twice in that essay, and I surely used it on purpose.  I did that to link the two “stupid” situations together.  I was simply trying to make a point that meeting the girl (isn’t it funny that I still can’t bring myself to say her name) when I was younger was a “watch this” moment, and I was certainly leaving open the possibility that meeting Athena was one, too.  I say that with certain caveats.  Even if I never see her again, I am thrilled I got to meet Athena.  It was the best thing that has happened to me in a long, long time (that is a bit of a white lie).  I was not kidding when I wrote that she is the only person I have ever met who I feel is on the same wavelength as me.  I feel more strongly about that now than I did when I met her.  In fact, I am as sure about that as I have ever been about anything.  Also, she reached her hand down my throat and pulled out my voice, and that alone is the greatest and most unexpected thing that has ever happened to me.  Wow, that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.  That is the proper and logical reaction, don’t you think?

Now that I have found my voice (thanks again, Athena!), I feel inspired and qualified to lead everyone on an interesting, and hopefully, illuminating journey.  So go ahead and get yourself ready for what scholars call a “deep think.”  Mathematicians are particularly famous for going on these expeditions.  While in a “deep think,” you are supposed to concentrate and follow the logic and implications of the argument very closely.  Get yourself comfortable, grab a diet coke or a beer, put on some Vivaldi or pop in a Steely Dan CD, and get ready for some mental exercise.  What I am now proposing is best thought of in general terms though I am positive most of the people reading this essay will have their own specific experiences to plugin.  My deep think is about Chapter 2, and those infamous “watch this” moments.  I am not sure I can explain what they are, but I can offer up some clues as to what I think is going on.

Let’s begin here.  Do you find it at all odd, from an evolutionary biology standpoint, that any person could have or even should have an instant connection to another?  This happens even though you have no idea if the other person is worthy of your time, let alone your adulation.  I have definite theories on how this can happen.  It starts with the simple assertion that evolution is never satisfied.  You might remember Pete Townshend’s song A Little is Enough (common sense’d tell me not to try and continue, but I’m after a piece of that diamond in you).  I am certainly not a “connoisseur of Champaign cognac,” set it in front of me, and I would have no idea if “the perfume nearly beats the taste.”   The only point I am trying to make is that for evolution, a little is never enough.  I have a favorite saying; I always like to remark that evolution has run amok.  There are many examples of this, and I will list a few here.

Have you ever heard of the extinct Irish Elk (Megaloceros giganteus)?  Talk about your giant antler displays, good grief.  Those guys took it to another level.  I am not so sure that there was anything practical about having antlers so big that you could barely hold your head up, but the ladies (at least the elk females) thought they were cool.

So, my argument is that if a little bit of antler is good, then a lot is even better.  If female Irish Elk are attracted to large antlers, then imagine what can happen if the display becomes gigantic.  As evolution, by means of the mechanism of natural selection, runs more and more amok, the antlers get bigger and bigger.

How about peacocks?  Those elaborate male displays are their way of saying, “Hey baby, check this out.”  Those ridiculous feathers are messages to the females that they are looking at a prime male specimen, someone they should be paying attention to.  And, you guessed it, if some feathers are good, then a giant display is even better.  If the peacocks with the most elaborate displays keep getting picked by the females, then the genes responsible for the expression of the displays get passed on with greater and greater frequency.  As evolution, or perhaps more properly natural selection, runs more and more amok, the displays get more and more ostentatious.

Hmmmmm, inspiration has just hit, and I have few ideas of my own, ideas that I needed decades ago when I was young enough for it to matter.  How could it be that these thoughts have escaped me in the past?   The next paragraph will give you a hint or two as to what is going through my mind right now.

Elaborate dances are some of my favorite examples of nature running amok.  All that nonsense is clearly about reproduction.  I have tried a bowerbird dance a few times, and my research shows, unequivocally, that those types of displays, while integral to the reproductive success of a given male bowerbird, do not work on human females.  I have a few funny stories about crash and burn scenarios involving a Bahamian beer called Kalik and a bunch of random grad students from a university that I can not recall.  Maybe I just don’t want to recall; I probably should just forget the whole thing.  In fact, I am not quite sure why I didn’t just delete this paragraph.

You can find lots of bowerbird dances on Youtube.  They are astonishing.  Watch a few of those videos, and it will start to become clear what I mean when I say what evolution has run amok.  Also, you will get a better idea of the impression I made on the female grad students who were forced to watch my performance.

The lives of living organisms are consumed with this type of behavior.  Reproduce or lose, that is the nature of life on this planet, even if a given individual is not consciously aware of it.  So, how about this?  Many evolutionary biologists are uncomfortable with the fact that same-sex relationships are commonplace across many different species.  How is this possible if the name of the game is getting your genes into the next generation?  In my estimation, it happens for the same reason that some human beings will have sexual relations with animals from a different species.  It is because evolution has run amok.  If a little is good, then a lot must be even better.  The urge to reproduce is good, so the urge to have sex, any kind of sex, is even better.

Those ridiculous and inexplicable instant connections between people fit into this type of category for me.  Obviously, people feeling connected is good for reproduction; it is necessary for the survival of the species.  In fact, it may well be the key to the development of culture.  Pair bonding surely played an important role in our evolutionary history, and early hominids could well have taken up with each other simply because they liked each other, they felt connected.  The bad thing is that evolution, as often is the case, has taken the concept to extremes.  It has, and continues to, run amok.

So, is this type of connection chemical, physical, simply nonsensical, or something else altogether?  I really don’t know, but I am well aware of those who claim it is spiritual.  I would like to say a few things about that now and, oddly enough, I need to start by explaining why it is I think humans have such big and powerful brains.  That will provide the foundation for my explanation of these type of extraordinary connections.

I think that the greatest example of natural selection running amok that I can think of is that of human intelligence.  Does it make a lot of sense that humans evolved mental capacity so great that we are capable of destroying the earth and all its inhabitants?  If the earth had a say, do you think it would have opted out of the “intelligence experiment?“  My guess is that decision would have been a “no brainer.”

If evolution had any type of an “unintended consequence” restraint mechanism, things like this would not have been allowed to happen.  As it stands, evolution has no ability to see into the future; it deals with living organisms in their present local environments.  Traits that better adapt an organism to its local environment are the ones that get selected for through differential reproduction rates.  Those specific traits have certainly been known to run amok.  Evolution sometimes gets an idea and runs with it; it picks a trajectory and goes full steam ahead.  Intelligence absolutely is one such trait, and I want to talk now about where I think all this brain power got its start.  As usual, I begin with a story.

Six or seven months ago, I was in the woods when I came across a couple people from a local natural history museum.  They were out cataloging the various rare species that are found on the land the museum just purchased.  We struck up a conversation, and it eventually led to one of the scientists telling the story of an amphibian that was present on the property.  He said he had been struggling for an explanation for the number of toes this species had; it wasn’t what he expected to find.  As I recall, this species had one more toe than all its other closely related cousins.  He asked me what I thought.  I told him that I thought that the variation that he was seeing was just an epiphenomenon, an unintended consequence of evolutionary processes that are far too complex and interactive to give even tangential consideration to structures that might or might not be adaptive.  He readily agreed with me.  Then I took out the big guns.  I told both of them that I think that human intelligence is merely an epiphenomenon of bipedalism.  The only reason we started to evolve bigger and more powerful brains is that we got up on two feet.  In other words, it was an accident, unintended and yet important.  He also agreed with that assessment.

So, what am I to say about the spiritual nature of instant and inexplicable connections between human beings?  I think there is a very good chance they are also epiphenomena.  A system where reproduction is paramount could easily lead to such unintended consequences as deep and powerful instant connections.  I really think it might be as simple as that.

I don’t want anyone to think that I am simply struggling to explain what happened to me when I met Athena.  Quite frankly, I don’t need an explanation, and I really don’t care for one.  I am not one that needs to intellectualize each and every single thing that happens to me.  I do think that random chance and probability play a much larger role in our lives than most of us would be comfortable admitting.  That might give a few more clues as to what I think might be going on.

It looks like I really don’t want (and certainly don’t need) an explanation about why I met Athena and what it might mean on some deep, fundamental level of human existence.  I’ll be perfectly fine knowing what I know, namely that I am still totally undone even though I have not seen her in nine months.  I find that extraordinary, don‘t you?  This whole situation is so outside of anything in my previous experience that I will just kick back and smile for a bit.  I don’t really see any other viable alternative.

I have to mention that any downside to these types of connections is not a reflection on Athena, Delilah, or any other person who gets caught up in a mess like this.  Not at all, they had nothing to do with any of this.  I think Delilah and Athena just happened to be standing there, same as Tom and I were.  Some things are just inexplicable, aren’t they?  If Delilah didn’t want to have anything to do with Tom and if Athena doesn’t want to even talk to me, then that is just the way it goes.  As I mentioned earlier, I am still really glad that I got to meet Athena, I truly am.  One meeting changed me in ways that I am still struggling to understand.  I actually feel comfortable enough to let all the readers in on a little secret, perhaps the worst kept secret in the history of the world, but a secret nonetheless.  I have a little “thing” for Athena; I think she is kind of cool.  I am not so sure that means anything, though.  It still doesn’t change the fact that I was not, at the specific moment I met her, given any choice as to how I was going to react to her.  Now I have all the choices in the world.  Vibes, feelings, and emotions are just that, nothing more.  I clearly will not let them define me, and they will not rule me.  Evolutionary processes have certainly run amok in my life, but I can easily hold my hand up and say that enough is enough.  I am doing my best to stay above the fray.

You know, I talk a big game, but I think if I only had one wish, I just might burn it to get her to have lunch with me.  What a surprise!  Sigh, as I mentioned earlier, I am totally hopeless, but it is my belief that admitting it might be my first step on the road to recovery.  I like to think that everyone is rooting for me.

As many of these essays are nothing more than informed opinion and unsolicited advice, I do have a suggestion for anyone who has found themselves in a situation similar to the one Tom and I found ourselves confronted with.  Maybe you have come face to face with someone and, if they spoke to you in a deep, fundamental way, immediately found yourself saying, “uh oh.”  If you can relate at all to the essays in this volume and you have a general idea of what I am talking about, then this next paragraph is just for you.  It offers up detailed instructions on what you can do about your dilemma.  As always, I am just trying to dig down deep and lend a helping hand.

It all starts with a unicorn ride.  Saddle him up (apparently only male unicorns can be ridden) and then take the beast down the winding Bunny Rabbit Trail to Gummi Bear Lake.  Once there, you can take a canoe up Fairy Dust Stream to Wood Nymph Forest.  Upon your arrival, a group of pixies will lead you directly to the complaint department.  After you open the gingerbread door, feel free to have at it.  As for me, before I met Athena, I was on a big Vivaldi kick.  I think it’s about time to switch out some CDs and get back to the Red Priest.  On second thought, maybe not.  I have a vague recollection of a conversation I had some months ago with an interesting woman I met in a dive bar.  We were talking about Baroque classical music, and we eventually made our way to the Classical Period and to Mozart and his sister, Nannerl.  Maybe I will get on with my Mozart studies.  I have intended to do that for a long, long time and now seems like the perfect opportunity.

I have decided to end this essay with another open letter.  Surprisingly, this one is not for Athena.  Quite frankly, I can’t think of one more thing to say to her (boy does that change in the next essay).  If our conversation is going any further, the onus is totally on her.  I am done for now (more big talk), I am sure I am not even going to send this essay to her, she is going to have to request it (I wrote that before I nearly drown, funny how things like that can change your mind).  This letter is addressed to a guy I have never met, the end of this essay consists of a letter to Tom of the Plain White T’s.

Tom,

We have never met, and yet we have walked along a highly unusual path together.  A strange and wonderful walk, for sure.  I don’t have a lot to say to you; I just wanted to introduce myself and tell you that your song about Delilah is superb.  It means a lot to me to hear you sing it.

I don’t know what you think now about what happened to you when you met Delilah.  It really doesn’t matter, does it?  You were moved in a way most humans will never experience.  As for me, I have a pretty good idea about what happened to you.  I guess that makes us kindred spirits, at least we have an unusual and interesting experience in common.

If we ever meet, I am going to buy you a beer or 12.  We don’t need to talk about Athena, Delilah, the meaning of life, or even the reasons why things might or might not happen.  I am not going to mention Kafka or talk about existential philosophy or any evolutionary inspired theories I might have to explain all this nonsense.  I think the only thing you and I can do is just kick back, crack open a beer, and take in the scenery.  Maybe, just maybe, if we look hard enough, and if our intuition is sharp enough, we both just might find someone in the room that jumps out at us.  Then again, maybe not.

I promise you this; if I hear a little voice say, “watch this,” as you get up to move in on a lovely young lady, I won’t say a word.  I’ll just sit there like a mute monkey on a banana boat and let you go.  I am asking you to do the same for me.  Like the kids of South Park, I have learned a few things these past nine months, and I have concluded that sometimes being part of a cosmic gag reel is far better than being passed over for the role.  At least that is my story, and you can bet your ass that I am sticking to it.

Ryan-Tyler

Sidd Finch, what can I say… you’ve never heard of him, have you?  What if I told you that the sports world stopped in its tracks in April 1985, and what if I told you it was because of The Mighty Sidd Finch.  Buckle up, this is one of my favorite stories.

Sidd Finch, Harvard dropout, wannabe Tibetan Monk, and master of the French Horn, got a 14-page layout in the April 1985 issue of Sports Illustrated. In 1985, Sports Illustrated was as good as it got.  Remember, this was a time of no internet.  Barely anyone had a PC, they were rare and costly.  News traveled slowly if it traveled at all.  And no one, I mean no one, got a 14-page layout in Sports Illustrated.  Except, of course, for Sidd Finch.

Finch wore a work boot on his right foot and nothing on the left, not even a sock.  He didn’t need to warm up to do his job, all he needed was a catcher brave enough to get behind the plate.  Sidd Finch, the mysterious orphan with an unbelievable back story, threw a baseball 168 mph.  That is not a typo. Tall and lanky, Finch used the discipline he acquired in his time in Tibet to master his mind and body.  He threw a baseball faster than scientists thought humanly possible, a lot faster.

When the issue featuring Finch was published, most people (nearly all) were startled and confused.  How was it possible that the New York Mets could keep Finch under wraps.  No one in the baseball community had ever heard of him.  No one, except for the Mets, had any scouting reports on him.  It was as if he materialized out of thin air.

At least two major league general managers (nameless to this day) called Peter Ueberroth, the baseball commissioner, to inquire about Finch.  How is this possible?  What is going on?  Did you know about this?  How did the Mets get this guy?  Is all this above board?

Newspaper editors were angry at the reporters they had covering the Mets.  They wanted to know how Sports Illustrated got this scoop.  How was it possible that reporters covering the team were not aware of this pitching phenom?  After all, those reporters were with the team every day, it was their job to report on stories like this.  How could they have dropped the ball?  How is it that George Plimpton from Sports Illustrated waltzes in and gets a big story that was right under your noses the entire time? Unbelievable.

Well, the whole thing was unbelievable.  The Sidd Finch Saga is the greatest April Fools Day joke in the history of April or the history of jokes.  Joe Berton, shown below signing a tiny French Horn in 2015, was enlisted to be Sidd Finch.  The New York Mets were in on the gag, allowing a photographer to take pictures of Finch in a Mets uniform interacting with his “teammates.”

One day, I guess it was in the late 1980s or early 1990s, I was walking along the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, when a car passed me.  Believe me, I got a chuckle out of the bumper sticker prominently displayed near the license plate…”SIDD FINCH LIVES!”  That is a great bumper sticker if you are in on the joke. In early April, 1985, people were not in on the joke and they lost their minds.  In the April 8, 1985, issue of Sports Illustrated it was announced that Sidd Finch retired.  In the next issue, the hoax was revealed.  I remember when the story broke, it was great fun listening to people speculate on how many championships the Mets were going to win with their Secret Weapon, The Mighty Sidd Finch.  As for me, I never trust anything published on April 1st.

Random Thoughts from a Nonlinear Mind: Volume 2: The Athena Chapters,
Chapter Three:
Siskel & Ebert and Top 10 Lists about This & That and Such & Such: A Short Essay with a Relatively Long Title about a few of my Favorite Things

 

In their Best of 1985 show, Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert rated the top 10 movies of the year just as they did every year from 1982 to 1999.  Their show was popular mainly due to their complicated relationship; I got the impression they simultaneously needed, loved, and loathed each other; there certainly was always a lot of tension between them.  I watched because I knew even though it was unlikely to happen, there was a chance a brawl could break out over a subtitled Danish film featuring partial frontal nudity that no one in the viewing audience was ever likely to see.

The most interesting, and most important, movie of 1985 was Shoah, and I must say that this essay has nothing to do with the actual film or its content.  I would never feel qualified or comfortable writing about something as serious as The Holocaust.  This essay is about Ebert’s reaction to the film and why he didn’t include it in his top 10 movies of the year.

Siskel had Shoah as his number one movie of 1985, while Ebert left it off his list entirely.  I remember Siskel being indignant as Ebert told him why he left it off.  Ebert said that Shoah was, in many respects, the sole reason for film to exist.  Shoah transcended any other movie, it went beyond the medium itself, and consequently, it belonged in another category entirely.  I remember thinking that was very cool, the idea that a movie could be so important and poignant that it shouldn’t, or couldn’t, be categorized as a simple movie at all; a movie so powerful that you can not possibly do it justice by comparing it to other mortal efforts; a movie that produced such a profound and visceral response, that coaxed such deep emotion, that language itself becomes insufficient to describe it.

Some 26 years later, here I am in Ohio, writing an essay partly inspired by a movie I have never seen.  That does not surprise me one bit, when considered in the general context of what the last few months have been like, that is the most normal thing that has happened to me.

For reasons that will become clear by the end of this essay, I have been thinking about some of my favorite things, especially musical things.  This line of thought is what made this Siskel & Ebert story flash into my mind while I was running.

Lately, wherever I go, I have been asking people; usually the servers in the restaurants I eat at, to list their top 5 or 10 favorite songs, bands, or CDs.  It is interesting how hard this is for most people.  The young ladies who say they are big music fans hem and haw and struggle to come up with anything at all.  For me, that is when the fun begins.  I tell them they are poseurs, and then they really get agitated.  “I am not a poseur!”  “Well then, tell me your favorite band.  How about a song?  Give me one in the top 10.  Give me one in the top 500.  Tell me the name of any song you like.”  “Geez Ryan-Tyler, eat your food, and I’ll think about it.“  “I’m not hungry anymore; I’ll just sit here with my arms crossed and wait until you can name a single song that you don’t think sucks.“  It is a lot of fun; a good time is had by all.

My buddy Olive, one of my oldest “fiends” (see Postscript), has so far been the only person who has been able to answer any of these questions.  He came up with Dark Side of the Moon for his album.  He stumbled on the others, and that is fine because, so far, his response is the only answer anyone has been able to give me.

As for me, I love Arctic Monkeys, the British band.  Their first two CDs were killer.  I sometimes tell women I meet that I am Brian from Brianstorm, but their vacant stares lead me to believe they have no idea who Arctic Monkeys are.  I don’t even want to think about the other possible reasons for those looks.  Inspired by another of their songs, I also have been known to tell a woman or two that “I bet you look good on the dance floor.”  Same response, nothing.  Part of the problem is that I have never said that in a place that actually has a dance floor.  Maybe, just like Elan Sleazebaggano, the guy in Star Wars that wanted to sell Obi-Wan death-sticks, I need to go home and rethink my life.  Certainly, at the very least, I need a new plan of attack.  Looking back, I have no idea what made me think strangers were going to fall for that.

I was supremely disappointed with the third CD, Humbug.  I felt that Alex Turner, the creative force behind the band, was trying to morph himself into the second coming of Jim Morrison.  There is nothing wrong with that; I understand fully that any artist must follow their muse; my problem was that I wanted the first Alex Turner, not another Jim Morrison.

The fourth CD, Suck it and See, was released recently.  I am usually a guy that buys a new CD on the day it comes out, but I did not do that this time.  I waited for a few weeks.  Why?  Honestly, I was not ready to be disappointed again.  I don’t know why I wrote that, that is not an honest statement at all; I was distracted, I completely forgot that my favorite band had a CD coming out and anyone who has read the last two chapters knows precisely why.  My failing memory aside, I can say with complete honesty that I wanted a return to the faster pace of the first two efforts, and the few reviews I read indicated that that was not what I was going to get.  The reviewers were right, but what I got instead was a brilliant set of slower paced music that blows me away. I really like this CD, and I mean a lot.

There is one particular song on Suck it and See that immediately took my breath away.  A few times in my life, I have come across things I wish I had written.  The first time this happened was when I watched Slumdog Millionaire.  Halfway through, I said to myself, “damn, I wish I had written this.”  The second time it happened, I was watching the HBO adaptation of The Sunset Limited.  The writing is transcendent, Cormac McCarthy is a true master of his craft.  That not only is something I wish I had written, The Sunset Limited is something I should have written.

That strange feeling of missing out on something important has only happened one other time, and now I am talking about a song.  I am not a songwriter, but when I heard Reckless Serenade, the eighth track on Suck It And See, it made me pause.  It instantly reminded me of someone (I know, I know, what a shocking development).  Rumor has it she is from Athens even though I am starting to suspect she comes from one of those elusive dimensions the string theory people are always referencing.  At this point, DNA tests and a certified birth certificate might be the only things that can convince me otherwise.

If I were a songwriter, and if I were much more talented than I think I am, I would have written Reckless Serenade instead of Chapter 1.  It only confirms what I have long believed, namely that Alex Turner is the most gifted lyricist working in modern music.

I find that these categories of favorite things are very fluid when it comes to me personally.  As I write this, I can say that Arctic Monkeys get the nod for the band, and that has been true for years now.  I am leaning toward Reckless Serenade for favorite song.  This is a very recent development; I first heard it a little over a month ago.  I am willing to put it there even though I am still in the infatuation stage.  As for CD, I still have to go with Steely Dan’s Aja.

These lists of favorites have been coming to mind lately because I have been running again.  When I was in my 20’s, I ran six marathons.  I have a picture somewhere of me in second place at the 17-mile mark of a relatively large marathon.  The only reason I mention that is because if I had more sense, I might have been able to stay there.  I ended up finishing 19th because of the cramp I caught shortly after the picture was taken.  The cramp had nothing to do with the six donuts I had eaten before the race; it had more to do with the additional six donuts I used to wash down the first six.  Not one of my more brilliant moves, and I still hear about it occasionally from my brother Terry.  “A dozen donuts, really…before a marathon, really?  What were you thinking?  That is the dumbest damn thing I have ever heard.”  I do not think I would have won the race, but I would have had a good chance to finish second.  Not that any of that matters now.  I do remember enjoying those donuts.

The fact that I am now able to run is, to me, a fantastic thing.   I have tried for years and years to get back out there, but my knees kept saying no.  When my doctor told me a few years ago that I needed a left knee replacement and that the right knee was in worse shape than the left one I pretty much thought it was over for me.  Recently, for reasons I do not understand, my knees are not barking, and I am up every morning, putting in the miles.  Consequently, I have been thinking hard about what music to load up for the runs.  I have been cataloging my favorite bands and songs and thinking about the order I want to hear them in.  I have always run with music and can’t imagine running without it.

I have been starting my runs with Arctic Monkeys.  That gets me through 40 or 45 minutes, and then I move to the real deal, the extraordinary music that gets me through the fatigue, the music that fires me up and makes me forget how tired I am.  Why don’t I listen to these transcendent songs from the beginning?  I tried that, and it didn’t work out too well for me.  I found myself running a 100-meter dash pace when my goal was 7 or 8 miles.  I am working on that, this morning I was able to start with the special music for a while, so things are looking up.

I think I pretty much have said all I need to say.  In a shocking turn of events (yeah, right!), I have to conclude this essay the same way I ended the first two Chapters.  Emerson once said that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and to that, I say “three cheers and a tiger for Emerson.“  I’ll give everyone one guess as to who shows up in the next line.

Hi once again Athena,

I am writing to inform you that the cover song I wrote about in Chapter 1, you know the one, the “supercharged meme,” has now been replaced as my favorite remake.  It didn’t stay there long did it?  As Kurt Vonnegut once said, “so it goes.”  Johnny Cash is once again in the first position with his version of Hurt.  Also, your band didn’t make any of my lists, and I am not willing to listen to any arguments to the contrary.  And don’t even get me started on music videos.  That video that led directly to the destruction of my favorite mp3 player is nowhere to be found on my list of top 10 sexiest videos of all time.  It’s not even close to the top 500.

I have never been one to clam up or shrink when the tough questions get asked, but in this particular instance, and for the first time in my life (I think), I am going to defer and let another person speak for me.  If you have any questions I would be happy to try to answer them, but we both know what you need to do, don’t we?  Shoot an e-mail to Roger Ebert, he can explain everything.

POSTSCRIPT:

For reasons that are beyond me, all H – E – DOUBLE TOOTHPICKS broke out after I wrote this essay.  Typically, when I am more or less satisfied with the most recent draft, I send it out to a half dozen or so people for comments.  This time they were not shy, nothing else I have ever written has generated this much response.

The first call I received was from my sister in law, Erin.  The conversation went something like this – blah, blah, blah, and that one part where you cross your arms and say nothing sounds just like you and blah, blah, blah.  Why didn’t you ask me who my favorite band is?  OK, who is your favorite band?  Well, I can’t remember their name but….

My brother Terry chimed in next.  Now, I typically read these things 40 or 50 times before I make PDF’s to e-mail.  The first thing out of Terry’s mouth was, “you know, there’s a typo in there.  So, Olive is one of your oldest “fiends,” eh?”  Only then did he tell me how much he liked the essay and how clever he thought it was.

My initial reaction was, “well, dammit.”  I checked the keyboard on my laptop, the computer I do most of my writing on, and I found that there is indeed a problem with the “r” key.  Sometimes it woks, and sometimes it doesn’t. (That one is on purpose.)

After talking to Terry, I went for a run, and inspiration hit me (it is so nice to be back out there).  I have decided, in a major executive decision, to leave the typo in.  Aside from being one of my oldest and dearest friends, Olive is absolutely one of my oldest “fiends.”  I am not even going to change the grammatical structure of the sentence, it is a little awkward, but I think it is pretty damn funny as it stands.

Next up is The Lovely Mara, she wrote me back with a substantial list of her favorites.  She was quick to mention that everything on her lists came right off the top of her head.  From Death Cab for Cutie to the Grateful Dead, she nailed it.  She mentioned that some people might be hesitant to talk about their favorite music because it is a personal issue, and they might worry about being judged.  My only judgment is that her choices fit her perfectly; she is a published poet with the soul of, well, a poet.

Scott found so much wrong that I don’t even know where to start.  Most of it is minor grammatical stuff that is of little importance.  One thing, though, is major, and it illustrates the biggest problem I have when writing essays like these.  He thought the transitions between some of the topics were a little “stilted.”  Dude, you are preaching to the choir.  The ideas for the general themes are easy; the execution is what is hard.

Stephen Jay Gould, the greatest scientific essayist who ever lived, wrote about these transitions.  He wondered aloud how the musical term segue became co-opted for use as a general term for smooth change in any topic.  The word segue is Italian for “it follows,”  the implication being that there is a logical structure to the author’s argument.   Let me tell you; it is a difficult thing to do; I constantly run the risk of being redundant, obscure, or both.  I sometimes just want to write the word SEGUE in big block letters and move on to the next topic.

I just went to my special bookshelf to find the Gould essay about segues.  I had to move 3 CDs to get to his books; you have no idea how much that makes me smile.   My first guess was right on; I nabbed my worn-out copy of Bully for Brontosaurus and immediately found what I was looking for.  On pages 98 to 106 in an essay called “The Dinosaur Rip-off,” I found my answer.  The term moved from classical music to radio, and that is an easy transition to understand; many people working in early radio had musical training, so the term was common knowledge, and its use was commonplace.  Then the story gets interesting.  Apparently, Johnny Carson used the term quite a bit on The Tonight Show, and that is how it found its way into popular culture.  Who knew?  Not me, and I have read that entire book at least a dozen times.  It is an intriguing story, but knowing the history of segues still doesn’t help me create smoother transitions.

I am about done, and I am going for a run.  There is a good chance an idea or two will pop into my head about new essay topics.  As for transitions, I think I need to bury my head into a book or two to learn more about how the masters do it.  I am sure it is more of a mechanical than an inspirational issue, and I certainly have work to do.  Of course, it also has occurred to me that Scott might just be full of crap.

A Few Choice Words

The other day, Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) went on television to put the smackdown on young people who are not practicing social distancing.  She made the point that “asymmetric” people are spreaders of COVID-19, the virus that is doing so much damage worldwide.  It is clear she meant to say “asymptomatic.”  She made a reasonable mistake, she simply misspoke.  There isn’t much of a story there.

I am banging on my keyboard because Sen. McSally’s misstep reminded me of something that happened a few years ago.  It is one thing to misplace one word with another when speaking; it is quite another when the mistake is made in print.  Consider this:

In June of 2015, the East Oregonian, an otherwise fine newspaper, published THAT headline about ambidextrous pitcher Pat Venditte.  I saw it then, and I am still laughing about it now.  I am glad the editors were overworked on that day.

I don’t have a lot more to say about this other than I never thought I would encounter an amphibious human, let alone one who is a major league pitcher.  As for Venditte, the last I heard, he lost a tough outing.  He was outdueled, outclassed, and outpitched by Aquaman.