Version 5

unflat my life

It's sunday night. Driving back from church, I did a little detour to downtown trying to see Moneo's church and Prix's school in Bunker Hill area. My GPS was suddenly dead and I got lost. But I kept driving west from there and saw LA neighborhood zones at night that are very vibrant, raw, but pretty nevertheless. I saw El Salvadorean groceries, Guatemalan cafes, Latin discos, 24 hours hamburger stands, neon signs of Korean churches, restaurants, Japanese fastfood and finally, ended up at the posh Beverly Hills. What a show. I parked on a street with many little shops and cafes (Beverly Blvd?), took a little walk and bought a delicious looking cakecup from Crumbs. I though I would eat in the car. And guess what, got flat tire, blurb, blurb, blurb, blurb.... and I said "s***" :) Hahaha. Gone was the message today about letting God dwell in my heart, can't even stay in my mouth, not always smelling good...

I thank my brother everytime I get a flat tire. He taught me once many years ago and has been super useful skill ever since. Especially if you are a teenager living in Jakarta driving around past midnight and getting a flat tire. At least in my hyped-up paranoia perception, you would be dead meat on the street... actually more like a steak (medium well).

I came back home, washed my dirty hands and mouth. As usual, in my world (inside my 1300cc jelly meat), everything has to mean or be something, hahaha, including this one. Flat tire is the most uncomfortable annoyance. It shocks and angers you. But you will quickly get up and try to fix it at soon as possible no matter how messy it is. When it's done, you are relieved and can't believe how easy it is, and most importantly be able to get going, and appreciate the comfort of moving again. Well that's my state of feeling(s) now. I am cranking up the heavy object and know pretty soon I will get going. Then I will be able to sing Ray Charles' Unchain My Heart tune and replace with ooohh, unflat my life... please set me free...

Uumhh my coconut cup cake is really gooooood. I think they have it NY too, Crumbs bakeshop.

mental matter

Two things in life that always fascinated me every time in the most elemental way are brain and airplane. I wanted to think it out a little here. On brain, I always imagine that our feelings and emotions are not as fleeting as we thought or as used in literature and pop culture. Feelings and emotions are a type of material substance. Maybe they are like hormones. But for now, I want to believe they are different although they have some similarities. They are like liquids in stored in neuron jars in our brain. My unscientific proof of this is that when we sleep, the neuron jars that contain our feelings and emotions get poured out and mixed together. And like mixed paints, they create new combinations of feelings and emotions and as the result also creates these bizarre realities we know of as dreams.

Last week, I listened to Jonah Lehrer, a science journalist, on Fresh Air on his new book, How We Decide. The most interesting part was the second halves of the interview when Terry asked him questions about the role of dopamine, a type of neuron transmitter, in our decision making process. From that I gained additional insights into the working of this substance in our brain. Dopamine is not just responsible for creating sensation of joy in drugs or sex and a Parkinson’s drug. It is crucial in driving our emotion. When it’s excreted out, it activates our emotion, as opposed to our rational, to think and make decision quickly. It’s good at finding patterns that will maximize our reward. It’s also a switch that turns on and off our motivation. One example he brought up was the role of dopamine in gambling addiction. The gambling apparatus with it’s signals and random pattern of sequences has successfully hijacked our dopamine to keep coming in our neuron, to keep searching for a pattern, that will never exist, for a reward. Interesting, hah. Maybe dopamine is the guy I am looking for my theory on mental matter mentioned above.

Quite interestingly, Walter Benjamin also mentioned about this attempt we have to de-abstract the concept of mind and memory, although only passingly, in one of his writings, Berlin Chronicle. First he uses memory as an example. It should be thought about in a more active role in our daily biological operation. He said, “Language shows clearly that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theater.” How so, one would ask. “It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lie interred. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging.” Benjamin thinks that memory is matter and should be used likewise too. “This confers the tone and bearing of genuine reminiscences. He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil.” He then further illustrates his thinking with the earth and dirt metaphor. “For the matter itself is only a deposit, a stratum, which yields only to the most meticulous examination what constitutes the real treasure hidden within the earth; the images, severed from all earlier associations, that stand – like precious fragments or torsos in a collector’s gallery – in the prosaic rooms of our later understanding.”

the end that is the beginning

Feb 20 was the last episode of Late Night with Conan. It was a great experience watching him, a truly outstanding person. I watched in from the internet with a small screen and a dark NBC website background. The frame became so important with his figure moving across, in and out of the traditional TV frame. That's what Conan's specialty, I believe. He knew what the TV "frame" was, an inherently 2D phenomena, and turned it into a 1D entity and crawling on it like MC Eshcer's ant. I like Will Ferrel, crazy. White stripe, always theatrical, beautiful. Andy Richter, not sure about him, but funny. And finally, I love the ending tributes he gave too. Good stuff.