Hackneyed

Here lies the symmetry of a clear landscape.
Nothing skips a beat-
The sun, the maple leaves blush in bliss
Of newly wedded cheeks.
Wind does not stir or ruffle.
Here grass grows green over rippling dunes
Tumbling into the blue sky,
Saturated with saccharine sweetness of an unblemished
Set of teeth curved in pearl smiles.
Balanced effortlessly on toes like a dancer,
Gliding like a puff of cloud, under the umbrella
Of shady canopies.

Not a chord or a strand of hair hangs loose
Eschewed elsewhere.
The world, the silly old helium balloon, hangs
By an elastic super-string bouncing
Back and forth from its origin like an echo.

How one wishes to add a layer of imperfection, to smudge,
To add an extra dimension of disturbance
To the stasis mannequin poses.
Move the centerpiece by an inch or so,
Or to let loose the Devil
And break the monotony of this picture perfect concoction
That euthanizes its observer.

And then, whatever happens to love?

What is the "natural" ending of a work of art?
How to close something whose premise, whose founding conceit is that,( like life,) it doesn't end?
The Russian short story writer Chekhov was known for his "negative endings". His stories frustrate our sense by refusing to end: Chekhov would successful keep his readers hooked on to every word and sufficiently involved with the twists and turns in the plot, after all that he would just close by saying "And then it began to rain." By then you are dying to know what happens next.
The other day I watched the movie called Before Sunset, the sequel to Before Sunrise (1995), in which two characters, Jesse and Celine, meet on a train to Vienna and decide to spend a night roaming around in the streets and talking.Next morning they part with a promise to meet in the same station after six months. Which, they never do, due to circumstantial reasons. The sequel starts off when Jesse writes a book about the time they spent together and comes to Paris and meet Celine again. Now starts a different story of characters who have growth up but haven’t grown out of each other. The sequel has a wistful, improvisatory feel that does indeed feel lifelike, and feels true to the fragile happiness of the two characters.
It is one of those endings that reformulate everything that has gone before, giving it a final power it had not possessed before. This is rare in art, surely; unsuccessful endings are the norm. You could say, as a rule, that the novel, for instance, is a form that doesn't want to end, and that generally contorts itself into unnatural closure.
How often we feel of long novels especially, that their last 50 or so pages are mechanical and overwrought, that the rhythm of the book is speeding up as it reaches its end. As if the writer just wanted to end it in the 10000 words in the last 10 pages.
Even great novels have disappointing endings, like War and Peace and The Portrait of a Lady, in which the novelist seems to admit to us that, having attempted to make his novel almost continuous with life, he cannot really wrench it away from that continuity by bringing it to a close.
“Art is never finished, only abandoned.” says the great painter Van Gogh.
Of course, the basic conundrum that attends any organic process is that in one's beginning is one's ending: the entire length of a novel or symphony can be said to be a kind of drawn-out ending. It is, as if, in the beginning tells you how it is going to end, almost like the character’s fates are predestined by the author. And yet, sometimes, they don’t end. As if, their lives continue, even though the words end. You squirm, you brood, you wish, you hope that some form of conclusive finale happens down the line. And in other times, you feel that end was so tragic that it drives you nuts.
This dilemma is more apparent in music than in writing, perhaps, because the final chord, the resolution, of a piece of music generally sounds so banal, so static, so formulaically harmonious. One often feels, especially in Classical music or Ballads, that the composer resents having to shuffle the music toward its finale.
Mozart, Wagner, Schubert wittily plays around with its audience - it seems to be about to end again and again, only to take off for another round of complication and development. Beethoven's last piano sonatas are fascinating in part because the structure is that of theme and enormously elaborate variation; and Beethoven's variations are so fertile, so ingenious, so chromatic that they seem potentially infinite, a statement of limitlessness.
And yet, we value things more because there is a finite quality about them. If stories went on and on and on, sequel after sequel, our interest would surely wan.
Sometimes things that have a physical boundary spill into that surplus space in our mind and reaches into the far distances of our senses. In other words, things that linger and stay on like a perfume’s subtle fragrance.
Beautiful paintings do not end too, they seem to pop out of the canvas and swim in the air in front of us. Even Picasso’s cubism jumps out of its boxes and takes shapes in our minds. For Van Gogh’s self portrait speaks out loud. Monet’s colors over-power.
“A picture speaks a thousand words.” Remember that photograph of an Afghan woman with striking green eyes on the covers of National Geographic magazine that held the world breathless.
Perfect endings, whether of the open to interpretations kind, or of the positive and closed kind, are rare and to be cherished. One of the most beautiful lines must occur in the last; be it “Tomorrow is another day.” (GWTW) or “The bird with the thorn in its chest, it follows an immutable law; it is driven by it knows not what to impale itself, and die singing”(Thorn Birds).
For that is what we want to say at the close of every novel. “But now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.” says Arthur Golden in Memoirs of Geisha.
Dali has finished his painting; and Woolf has now finished her open and fluid novel, which we, as readers, have helped to "re-paint" or “re-furnish”.
In this, we have all indeed had our vision.

Muse and Music

Well, I'm a little behind the times, but I just happened to discover the band Muse. I came across this song called Apocalypse Please on youtube by Muse. I can't stop listening to it!
It's so beautiful, so eerie.
Muse is an English band more towards the progressive or alternative rock genre. Much like the other New Prog rock bands like Doves, Oceansize, Pure Reason Revolution etc Muse has a lot of heavy metal rock. Some say Muse sounds like other rock bands (Nirvana and Radiohead), but I felt that their way of singing is pretty unique.
I specially like the names of their albums and songs. Much of their lyrics are inspired from Theoretical Physics and Hyperspace.
Those who love rock, Muse is really good.

Bangs, crunches, shrieks, and whimpers

Philosophers rate the end of the world (humans) in these four corny words - Bangs, Crunches, Shrieks, and Whimpers which would be the following possible disasters -
The Bangs are - Deliberate misuse of nanotechnology, Nuclear holocaust, We're living in a simulation and it gets shut down (all our lifes are like a computer programme that might shut down, the story of Eragon is roughly based on this), Badly programmed superintelligence, Genetically engineered biological agent, Accidental misuse of nanotechnology ("gray goo"), Something unforeseen, Physics disasters, Runaway global warming, Asteroid or comet impact. The Crunches are - Resource depletion or ecological destruction, Misguided world government decides to stop technological progress, "Dysgenic" pressures, Technological arrest.
The Shrieks are - Take-over by AI, Repressive totalitarian global regime The Whimpers are - Our potential or even our core values are eroded by evolutionary development, Killed by an extraterrestrial civilization.
For further information read this
Recently, I watched this new movie called " I am legend". Once again Hollywood has banked on one such possible scenario - scientific miracle cure for cancer that created Frankenstein. People who had cancer were treated with mutated measles virus to turn into blood-drinking vampirical zombies( instead of having measles or cancer or any other form of deadly disease). Only Will Smith is the last man on earth who lives with his dog in the middle of New York city now populated with Zombies and his favorite pass time is driving sports cars around the deserted Manhattan streets and hunting deers during the day. Pretty cool, until at night he has to hide from his terrible Zombie neighbors ( which thanks to Computer graphics looks scarier and ghost-like).
Well, Hollywood has almost turned to every possible alley in order to make a blockbuster potboiler, namely, the great climate change in Day After Tomorrow, asteroid collision in Armageddon so on and so forth.
And this makes me wonder how real are the threats of extinction ? But is the fate of mankind destined to be doomed? Is there no way to avoid the catastrophe?
Scientists say there isn't. The end is inevitable. This does not mean that extinction is going to happen in my lifetime, probably not till the next century at the least, but Big Demise is a certainity not a probability.
Reading this made me a little sad, not because of the knowledge that my
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchild is going to die, but because of what man has achieved so far will be useless if Mankind's final fate is extinction.
Look at the wonderful engineering and architectural marvels around you - the Pantheon, the Pyramids, the Colosseum, the Great Wall, beautiful bridges, stalwart monuments, - all for nothing?
Or the great scientific marvels and cures - all goes down the drain.
Or even the great human brain and mind - which is analytical yet capable of feeling compassionate, capable of loving, capable of remembering its credits - will everything eventually die out.
I mean, dinosaurs aren't really majestic except in Jurassic Park. (How many of us really like reptiles?)
Is there a way we could avoid doomsday?
Well, some scientists, notable physicists say there is a fair chance. (which I am afraid means a 50-50 chance, but still a chance).
Theoretical physicists like Michio Kaku, Stephen Hawkins states that our civilization has a chance. Technological innovation is unavoidable, awareness about global-warming can slow down its process but cannot stop it.
Could one way could be finding an alternative home / colony in another planet - mars, moon etc?
We are rocketing towards a global change. In the next hundred years - all scientific minds are going to be put together to harness the energy of the earth. The Kardashev scale classifies civilizations as to how technological advanced they are.
Type I civilization is a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available on a single planet. Type II civilization is a a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available from a single star. Type III civilization is a a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available from a single galaxy.
On this scale, our civilization is a Type 0. We still don't know what is going on inside the earth. Or how and why climatic changes occur let alone being able to control them. And we are going to reach Type I status in the next 100yrs, or less we face the dire straits. Culturally, globalization and global organizations like United Nations and WHO evidences of a beginning of a Type I civilisation. The world is now experiencing the birth pangs of a global economy and a global civilization - Internet being one of its forebearers. Today, the world is better connected through satellites, Internet other communication devices. With the rise in globalization comes the rise in terrorism.
“Modern society is a bicycle, with economic growth being the forward momentum that keeps the wheels spinning. As long as the wheels of a bicycle are spinning rapidly, it is a very stable vehicle indeed. But, when the wheels stop - even as the result of economic stagnation, rather than a downturn or a depression - political democracy, individual liberty, and social tolerance are then greatly at risk even in countries where the absolute level of material prosperity remains high....” says Friedman.
In other words, our strength lies in unity. If we are not pulled apart by our own vested interests we can prove to be the ultimate conqueror. The main reason to be careful when you walk up a flight of stairs is not that you might slip and have to retrace one step, but rather that the first slip might cause a second slip, and so on until you fall dozens of steps and break your neck. So one small thing can trigger a chain of events that might eventually destroy everything. Choas explains the scenario as the "Butterfly Effect" that is the propensity of a system to be sensitive to initial conditions.Such systems over time become unpredictable,this idea gave rise to the notion of a butterfly flapping it's wings in one area of the world,causing a tornado or some such weather event to occur in another remote area of the world.
We have to overcome these many milestones before we reach the Type I status, so honeymoon on the moon becomes a reality and the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" attains a literal meaning.
NASA scientists are pretty optimistic about space travel. Well, sounds like science fiction and not science just as travelling in air did before the Wright brothers discovered airplane.
But of course, as one delves deeper into science one realizes that everything is an educated guesswork - we can never be sure of anything, and 100% full proof prediction is impossible when the margin of error is pretty large solely because there are so many things we do not know.
There can be no case of murder without a body, and all claims of looking into the crystal ball of science and predicting the future leaves us with more doubts and questions. Like the mythical Holy Grail - quest of science shall never end, it shall only take us from one clue to another. And yet this journey is remarkable - right from the Stone ages, till now and beyond that.
It is perhaps interesting to know what fate befalls us in the future but it is equally interesting to know how we progress by leaps and bounds towards that great unknown spiralling maze that we so often call "humanity" or "life" or "civilization".
This is the journey of man. Fortunately,like the cockroaches, we, humans are blessed with a tough exoskeleton. I have great faith in two of the greatest boons of mankind - one is human brain and another is human heart.
In face of any great catastrophic calamity, these two gifts of Man shall finally save us. Some of us shall finally make it through the doomsday, if not all.
I'd conclude by saying that we started with a bang, but let us not end with a whimper.

Doomsday Argument

Once in a Leap Year

Another chance.............................

to live life.

to think back.

to make things right.

to look forward to the future.

Stars are moving again. The Planets are realigning their arrangements. Take a leap now to the indeterminate future.

"Again we are deluded and infer
that somehow we are younger than we were."
Happy New Year