It's spring and my life is waking up. Just a few years ago, my life was extremely turbulent and my mind was an unpleasant place to be in. Everything was always in flux, but far from always in a good way.

This past year has been calmer, quieter, so stable it has bordered on a bit boring. But, it's been something I needed.

Now, things are beginning to pick up again. However, this time it's different. I can feel the motion of before, but things are clearer. This past year gives me a platform from which to launch from. It has been a place of stable mind and thought that has let me ground and center. The loops are still there in the background, but I know how to work them now. I am not afraid. My eyes are opening. I am awake.

The erythromycin makes my eyes feel worse than the conjunctivitis did.

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Haven't given much of an update lately on what I've been up to.

The weekend before last my sister, Madeline, and Christian came up to visit. I met them downtown on Saturday and my sister took me to get my first ever professional manicure. I had a lot of fun and Maddie is a joy. She is so huge, though! I'd swear she was 10 or 11 if I didn't know she was 7.

Last weekend, invalid_userid came down for the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows release. purpleglitter, invalid_userid waited in the long line in Harvard Square. Usually waiting in lines is boring, but with the crowd I had a great time. There were a couple profiteers who got in the front of the line and walked down it trying to sell their books for $50. I didn't see anyone buying, but I'm sure they found someone when they got near the end (which rumor had it was somewhere in Watertown). I was very excited to get merryperseis's register when I finally got my books, I had thought the odds of that rather slim.

zarthon took purpleglitter, invalid_userid and me out to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix the next day. Inevitably a lot of the book was left out, but I think enough critical stuff was missing that someone who hadn't read the books probably wouldn't be able to make much sense of it.

Sunday, we all went to the Museum of Science. The exhibits there have enough range to appeal to any level of scientific knowledge. We saw a demonstration of the still very functional original Van de Graaff generator built by Robert J. Van de Graaff in 1933, but my favorite part of the Museum of Science visit was the butterfly exhibit, where a large owl butterfly landed on my shoulder and sat there for a very long time just looking at me and occasionally stretching its wings. Looking into the butterfly's eyes made me regret all the nasty rhetoric I've spouted about exotherms.

Next weekend, our new landlord is coming to visit from California. She has not seen the building in over a year. I'm excited to meet her, she sounds awesome over the phone. She's trying to rent the unit next door, so if anyone is interested in a two-bedroom in Arlington, let me know.

At the end of next month, I will be heading down to see my sister in the Washington, D.C. area. My mom will be visiting there at the same time, so it should be a great trip.

Following the leak of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I'm going to start my off-line time today. I have a lot to do in preparing for invalid_userid's visit anyway, so I shouldn't be spending much time online anyway.

I should note that while I won't be reading anything from online for the next few days (email, comments (due to possible trolls), wikipedia, or my friends list), I may still post using Semagic does not risk seeing spoilers. I guess "very limited internet use" is more accurate than "off-line".

Last week, purpleglitter and I found that the landlord at her old place had murdered a nest of starlings, ripping apart the nest and throwing the babies down to the ground like they were worthless. Just getting their down in, eyes never opened. They never saw the sun. We buried them in the back.

Today, the tree cutters came to the back yard here. Supposedly just to cut the branches overhanging the neighbor's, they instead cut main branches which may have had one or two subbranches overhanging the neighbor's yard, but most of which were not over the fence at all. Renting, I have no real control over any of this.

I don't understand the reason people need heavily nitrogenated death-yards. "Kill everything but grass. A dandelion! Kill it! Kill it! No flowers here! Nature is just weeds. Throw on more chemicals on... pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer... everything! It surely won't run off anywhere. Must have that perfect patch of stale green nothing, because lord knows if anything wild and free grows it'll be anarchy! Nature is ugly and must be controlled, but oh yeah, save the rain forests — nature is only ugly if it's where I can see it."

One of the neighborhood cats...

The conjunctivitis turned out not to be conjunctivitis. I had something in my eye that was irritating it, making it look and feel like I had conjunctivitis. I'm glad I don't and I guess that is the danger of self-diagnosis.

I just talked to another nurse who works with my primary care nurse and was told that I should wait until tomorrow to see if it gets worse and confirm that it isn't just some other sort of eye irritation. If it turns out to be conjunctivitis they'll send in a script to Walgreens. I won't actually need an appointment at all.

I believe I have conjunctivitis. purpleglitter noted it last night. This morning I called and made an appointment with my primary care nurse. The soonest appointment I could get is Monday. It's not really that big of a deal, just want it taken care of.

Gliese 581c brings up the tidal lock issue: if Gliese 581c is tidally locked to Gliese 581 then one side of the planet would be scorched while the other would be frozen, rendering the planet uninhabitable for water-dependant life. Most of the planets detected so far (including Gliese 581c) have been only detected through indirect measurements of their mass, we no nothing of the structure of that mass. It is possible at least some of these are double planets. Though perhaps unlikely — if Gliese 581c is a double planet, both planets might be tidally lock to each other instead of the star similar to the situation in Asimov's Nemesis, allowing for liquid water and possibly water-dependant life.

The possibility of life on Gliese 581c brings up something that has been a bit of a minor mental obsession of mine: life that has evolved vision is likely to evolve vision keyed to the spectra of light it most often encounters. Life evolving around a red dwarf would not likely see the same spectra of light we see. Blue would be of little use and their visual range would probably be shifted into the infrared. Something printed red-on-white or blue-on-black in our eyes might simply look like a blank page to such a life form and their chosen inks may be only visible in the near-infrared and be invisible to us. Perceptual differences such as that would serve to further complicate communications with intelligent extraterrestrial life. It is easy to assume our perception of light and sound and smell and feel is the default, because within humanity we consider anything outside of that default a disorder. Our bias is sample bias, and other intelligent life in the universe is likely to perceive things in vastly different ways than we can even imagine.

I regularly look up at the sun. Directly. I've done so all my life. When I was in elementary school I was not as cautious and would actually stare. I've even directly observed an annular eclipse of the sun. Now, I just look for a few seconds at a time.

I do it simply to keep in touch with Sol, who brings us warmth and light and life. I talk to Sol, I have a relationship with Sol.

I'm not recommending that anyone go out and do this. There is definitely risk involved – Sol is enthralling and invites stares of awe. People do go blind sungazing, it may just be luck that I have not.

My eyesight has degraded over the years, though not too significantly – from 20/15 when I was a teenager to 20/20 now, and at least some of that is attributable to an increase in static (even with frame comparison compensation).

I've done salvia divinorum in the past. However, I'd only done 1X. Last night I tried 5X. Oh my, what a difference. The world ripped away in front of my eyes into interference patterns. Then diving down, I forgot everything. Complete dissolving of definition. No knowledge of the day to day world, no sense of self. I had to rebuild my perception of reality. Put everything back together. I had even lost the concept that everything was occurring in a three-dimensional locally-euclidean space, and couldn't figure out what kept me physically separate from anything. Even as I came out of the most intense part, everything kept warping together at the edges of my perception.

The strange putting together of things, defining of things, is the journey from the wholeness at the center. Without a sense of self, everything is one. There is no need for definition or distance. What is at the center is beyond definition. It is the All, the Ineffable. Words are boxes which cannot contain It. Even saying it is "beyond definition" misses the mark, as it is neither beyond or before.

I took the journey twice last night, the first time the speed of the journey panicked me on my return trip from There to Here. The second journey I was able to experience reconstruction from a much calmer place and was able to observe the experience more.

The salvia divinorum experience is not unlike experiences I've had in the past, however the pace at which salvia divinorum triggers these experiences is frighteningly fast: the most intense part is over in the first 5 minutes, and after 10 more it's completely worn off. The short duration along with the physical immobility during the deepest part may be why such a potent herb such as salvia has managed remained legal in most of the entheogenphobic United States (Missouri being the exception).

After the journey, I made a map...


We are waves emanating out from Unity. We perceive other waves as other selves.

At Unity we become all waves, all things. There is no self at Unity.

Between the everyday sphere of perception and Unity lies a domain where the waves are not united and a self still exists in some form, however the waves interfere with each other. This interference can show up in a variety of ways, including sensory phenomena (hallucinations, patterns, distortions, etc.) and/or disorganized thinking.

When viewing an autostereogram, focus of the eyes travels from normal focus to the adjusted focus where the 3D image is visible, the focus travels through an intermediate stage of visual clutter and interference. Traveling to Unity is like refocusing your eyes.

Yesterday, I went to therapy for the first time since July. During our talks, my therapist told me that I'm in the final stages of therapy. With that comes the question: "What now?".

It's a difficult question. Moving back into the productive workforce carries a good deal of it's own issues and getting in with a 6 year gap and outdated geek skill will present a challenge. I did really enjoy databases and if I do go back into tech I'd like to go back into designing them. There is something about databases that deeply appeals to me. I've done a small amount of data mining in the past, and that appeals to me even more than design. But, it would be easier to go back to design as that is where my experience really lies. It's been 6 years since I've done database des