Eyes Meet

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Although the category of “least concern” for extinction is applied to the pileated woodpecker, they are nevertheless astonishing birds.  I’ve seen them a number of times and their large size can be breath-taking.  Their bright red crests make them hard to miss, but many people rarely see them.  I’ve noted before how our rotting wooden fence attracts carpenter bees, and therefore woodpeckers.  Two years ago when I went outside to investigate a tapping—or was it a rapping?—I startled a pileated woodpecker on our fence and for a moment the two of us looked each other directly in the eye.  I saw a dinosaur in that bird.  What really stuck with me, though, was the connection between two beings who look into each other’s pupils.  Scientists tend to tell us that we’re all nothing but atoms, but looking into any other creature’s eyes belies that.

Not my backyard, and not a good enough zoom lens…

When I’m out jogging I find that you can get fairly close to an animal if you don’t look it directly in the eye.  When you make eye contact they take off.  Scientists will use the ultimate fudge factor of “instinct” to explain this, but I think there’s more than that going on.  If you doubt this, I have an experiment for you.  Find someone you love and/or trust completely.  Sit and intentionally stare into each other’s pupils.  See how long your can hold that gaze.  It’s difficult.  We keep our secrets in our heads and we try to avoid eye contact with those with whom we’re not entirely comfortable.  Even with those we love it’s tricky.  We even have the phrase “eye contact.”  Think about that.  When we really look into another’s eyes, what is really going on?  Is there any way to know?  

We have all experienced the sensation of being stared at.  It’s very real, despite what scientists tell us.  In many cultures it’s understood to be rude to stare at someone.  We are a profoundly visual species.  We don’t ascribe the same intimacy to being listened to, for example (except at certain private times).  We fairly easily shut out many sounds on a regular basis.  Even though we’re social creatures, tasting, smelling, and touching others isn’t a normal part of the day for many of us.  But we sure know when somebody looks at us unduly.  And other creatures respond in similar ways.  The other day I jogged very near a deer—almost close enough to touch—because its head was hidden behind a low branch full of leaves.  We couldn’t see each other’s eyes and therefore it was unafraid.  I still remember that woodpecker’s dinosaur eyes, and it flew off immediately after our eyes met.

Humanity Wrought

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“What hath God wrought?”  So the first telegraph message read.  There was a wonderment and fear of technology in 1844.  Although at today’s rate of change, to us tech seemed to crawl back then, but it was changing rapidly.  What strikes me as I think about AI is that we’ve lost our humility.  “What hath humans wrought?” is the new motto, and one that presumes it can only be good.  How easily we forget Thoreau, even as we valorize him.  He feared that machines would end humanity, and in a way they have.  Fearing that trains would mean that schedules would be determined by clocks rather than human lives, he understood something that we’re still missing.  He feared trains would make humans in their own image.  And so they did.  We live by a 9-2-5 schedule, no matter how dehumanizing.

“What hath God wrought?”  With confident, angry atheists telling us there is no god, and that there is nothing more amazing than human intellect, we now see what we’ve wrought.  Many people object to AI.  They don’t want their power centers in their neighborhoods.  They don’t want the cost of electricity to rise just so Silicon Valley technocrats can get richer.  They know that as wildfires burn American cities, huge amounts of water are required for running data centers.  Even Three Mile Island is being restarted to help supply the electrical power they require.  Protest as loudly as you can, it will not stop them.  God is no longer in the equation.  God has left the building.  This is the age of humanity.  No, a very small segment of humanity.  A segment that thinks it’s god.

Technology is good if it serves to make our situation better.  AI is now starting, according to the New York Times, to both lie and cheat.  It is made in the image of humans, so of course it does.  Look at the White House and try to protest.  No longer does the imago dei hold any meaning.   We no longer aspire to that image of God in which we once could see reflected in our better natures.  No; we can so we do.  Even as Frankenstein keeps lumbering back to the screen, and new versions roll off the presses, we simply don’t get the message.  We have no time to stop and glance—no, stare—out over Walden Pond for hours at a time.  We must work so that our fellow humans can be put out of work.  What hath humanity wrought?

Movie Memory

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Memory is a funny thing.  And selective.  For a recent project I was going back over some movies I’d watched over the last few years and was amazed at how many I could barely recollect.  Others had stayed with me, some intensely.  Something in our brains makes them decide that this ninety minutes is worth storage space while that ninety minutes is not.  I’m not sure what it is.  It could be that when we discuss “good movies”—those that are well made—that we have encountered something qualitatively superior.  Even if we can’t say precisely how, we know that others have  also found them memorable.  Admittedly, I often watch movies to prevent myself from falling asleep on weekend afternoons, after the chores have been done.  Even so, some seen at that hour are fresh in my mind, after years, while others I saw a couple months ago left barely a scratch.

Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash

Movies shape our views of reality.  The evidence is all around us.  I remember when Reagan was president (the beginning of an unfortunate spiral for the Republican Party), he used to cite things from movies as reality.  And it wasn’t just his senility.  We all do it.  Movies are impactful.  They’re more than entertainment.  We couldn’t afford to go to movies much when I was young.  I can remember, however, some scenes that influenced my perceptions of all kinds of things, from snakes to how scary dogs can be.  (My cynophobia likely goes back to a movie that included a segment called “The Tinderbox.”)  As a society we treat movies as if they aren’t such a big deal.  What an Odyssey!  It’s more than money.  Just ask anyone who’s quoted Ezekiel 25.17 (including current government officials).

I’ve never been too certain about reality itself.  I like to keep an open mind regarding what’s possible.  Science deals with measurable phenomena.  Even psychology is considered a “soft science” because it has to do with that squishy area of human consciousness.  I’ve said it before: our brains evolved to help us survive, not to determine what is objectively real.  We see movies and they get added to the evidence base against which we draw all kinds of inferences.  So, looking through the movies I watched over even the past year, why have some simply fallen out?  Sometimes the title gives me no clue.  I have to read my own blog post about them to recall what they were about.  If I’m remembering correctly, that is.

Inspiring Ideas

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Human minds are strange.  For instance, they often experience their best ideas when it’s difficult to write them down.  Or consider that our best work often comes just as time is running out, as if the added pressure is what produces these diamonds of thought.  Or yet again, the problem that resolved  itself just as your body’s dropping off to sleep and you’re too tired to write it down.  These kinds of things aren’t isolated incidents.  They happen all the time.  I was thinking about this because I found a broken shower memo board in the attic.  My wife gave this to me as a gift at Nashotah House.  I used to complain about having my best ideas while in the shower.  The internet and easy electronics may have existed, but they weren’t part of everyday life yet.  Besides, I prefer to write things down.  This plastic board could be mounted in the shower and had a waterproof “pen” that could work while wet.

Since minds are strange, after a while the best ideas stopped coming in the shower.  There was a way of recording them, so they shifted to other times.  These days they’re likely to come while I’m jogging.  I’m not inclined to stop and try to find some voice recording app on my phone, if I remember to take it, and I don’t jog with my pen and notebook that I otherwise keep at hand.  Since the idea is endangered, it shows up.  Sometimes it gets written down when I get home—I do keep a small notebook just inside the door—other times I see a fox or an owl and ideas vanish.  With my strange sleep schedule, I’m not inclined to arouse myself while a great idea dawns just as the theta waves start.  Generally it’s gone by morning.

For those of us who write, losing ideas is more like losing teeth than losing a hair.  It’s something substantial with fewer replacements available.  For whatever reason, ideas seem to have learned to avoid the time I’m in the shower.  At Nashotah that was generally after my morning writing session and jog, while getting ready to go to morning chapel.  These days showers tend to come after a long day at work, relaxing me before sleep.  My mind is already tired by then.  These rare ideas are almost playful at being inopportune.  If they are captured, they can be written down.  But they have to be trapped first.  As if they have minds of their own.

Going Some Place?

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I recently had to drive to the Philadelphia Airport to drop off/pick up some folks.  Here in the Lehigh Valley I’m roughly an hour north of the city of brotherly love.  Like most sentient drivers, I’ve come to rely on GPS navigation.  Dropping off my parties turned into a nightmare of congestion.  The GPS solidly insisted that the turnpike, 476, was the “fastest” way.  One thing AI doesn’t understand is how people behave.  The flight required dropping off a couple hours before that known as “rush.”  476, once yet get near Philly has several pain points where traffic merges on from several ramps onto an already crawling stream of traffic.  That’s human behavior—never considering that the “longer time” route might actually be quicker.  Or at least a touch easier on the blood pressure.  Of these thousands and thousands of people, relatively few were going to the airport.  Once I got home from a journey that Al told me would be two-and-a-half hours, round trip (which was actually three-and-a-half), I began looking for alternate routes for pick up.

Pulling up the usual map app on my laptop, the only route shown was the turnpike, clearly not designed for this volume of traffic.  Not being native to Philadelphia, I don’t know my way around very well.  Then I began to lose trust in Al.  Interstate 95 also goes right by the airport.  I force-dragged the route over that way.  The estimate? Maybe fifteen minutes longer than the turnpike.  AI doesn’t understand that people who know the turnpike is a bad idea at this time of day will take it anyway.  It is the “fastest” way to where you’re going.  And who wants to waste time?

Me, I’d rather not shave off so many years of my life.  I’m not so foolish as to suppose I-95 would be much better, but with the “real-time” facts added in, it might very well save some time, and gray hairs, to go the somewhat longer, slower route.  Al didn’t even want to tell me that was an option.  Who could possibly want to go on at a slower pace, for mental health reasons?  Even en route it will try to reroute you back onto “the fastest” way that it clearly misunderstands.  I remember driving in Newark, Seattle, Boston, Chicago, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and, briefly, New York City.  Those who write algorithms are missing something basic.  Human psychology plays into this in a major way.  Al is not human nor does it “think.”  It calculates.  As for me, I calculate that the slower way may just be what the doctor ordered.

Forever Young

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It’s strange.  People my age (and younger) are retiring.  It’s strange because in my head I’m still a teenager.  The mirror lies to me when I glance at it.  I’m not a guy old enough to have colleagues I’ve known for thirty years retiring.  Not me.  This hit me kind of suddenly at work.  One of the things an editor has to do is arrange for peer reviews.  One of my usual sources for reviewers has been showing names I don’t recognize, as of late.  Look, I was never some super-professor, but I knew quite a few of those who worked in biblical studies.  The same names would come around year after year at conferences.  They would age, but I would not.  I was still the same guy, teaching at Nashotah House, publishing articles, chatting with friends.  Where have they gone?

I recently saw a survey to which some colleagues I know and trust had responded.  They listed themselves as “late career.”  How is that possible?  I still work 9-2-5 and likely will until I die.  Who are these young people taking their places at the table?  Our minds, it seems, are as Bob Dylan termed it, forever young.  We remember, however imperfectly, our younger selves as we discover our lives entangled in work and other complications, and our bodies aging.  Me, I’m still trying to get through each day, just like I was in college.  Just like I was in high school.  Awaiting some ill defined destination where I might be able to relax for a while.  Like I could when I was young.  Before capitalism got its hooks in me.  Before AI.

Consciousness is a strange thing.  Our thought processes are formed by early experiences in our lives and we spend most of the rest of our time on earth reacting to them.  Our brains evolved to help us survive.  We do this communally (which is why Trumpism, tearing communities apart, is so dangerous).  I couldn’t survive with my desk job if many people—most of them younger than me these days—didn’t contribute to this experiment we call society.  I sometimes see people born the same year that I was and think, “they’re old.”  Why doesn’t that apply to me?  It’s not that I want to feel old, but rather that I’m still looking for the things I was seeking as a young person.  Financial security, books, love and acceptance.  And trying to avoid tedious tasks—there do seem to be more and more of those as you age.  I’ll have to ask some people who are old if that’s true.

Things Lost

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Here’s an honest question, and if anyone can answer, please do. Why is it that software can’t keep track of the latest version of anything? Let me put some legs on that. I recently backed up my files to “the Cloud.” When I went to open one of them, the version that was backed up was several months old, not the one I’d worked on (and backed up) that very day.  I looked on my back-up hard drive, likewise backed up that day.  Both only showed files from several months ago.  This was for an app that doesn’t even have a “save” option because it saves automatically.  How can this happen?  I’m having trouble understanding.  Do I leave my files open too long?  (It takes quite some time to write a book.)

Then someone in my family used my laptop for a minute and closed my browser with all my tabs open.  No problem.  I went to “restore all tabs from last session.”  The tabs that appeared were over a month old.  No record anywhere of the tabs I’d kept open as reminders more recently.  What is it about software that makes this so very hard to do?  My laptop’s losing data like a sieve.  To make matters interesting, in a different context after all this, someone had moved and renamed a folder I’d created on a shared drive.  They didn’t bother telling me this, so to all appearances, the folder had been deleted.  I even did a windows search, and nothing showed up with the folder name at all.  I had to get IT involved.  While they were investigating someone finally (at my prompting) admitted that the file had been moved and renamed.  This, on top of my losing my own data at home was a lot for a single day.  (Of course, even bigger issues were about to show up that I had no idea were coming.  Expensive issues.)

Whatever my mental condition is (I don’t have an official label for it), I tend to get overwhelmed when I can’t find something.  My memory isn’t that of a thirty-year-old but I have excellent recall as to where I store important things (like my writing).  Not being able to find it drives me frantic.  I’m not wealthy and the only real asset I have is my mind and I write things down so that thoughts that mind has won’t get lost.  The Cloud seems pretty good at doing that for me.  I’m a believer in backing things up.  Data loss can be devastating.  I just wish I knew how to avoid it.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Things Seen

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I disagree with the critics on this one.  Things Heard & Seen is a remarkable horror film.  That’s not to say it’s without its flaws, but it is quite engrossing for the right kind of viewer.  It has elements of dark academia, as well as ghosts and a respectful treatment of Swedenborg.  And it takes place in the Hudson Valley (the headless horseman is even mentioned once).  The Bible appears both visually and is quoted.  In short, it encapsulates many of my personal interests.  And it’s not badly made.  There will be spoilers here, but it’s difficult to discuss religion and horror without them.  George Claire married Catherine because he got her pregnant.  He has, however, finished his doctorate and been offered a post at Saginaw College, in the Hudson Valley.  It quickly becomes clear that George is an entitled, self-centered liar (sounds familiar).

As the story unfolds, both Catherine and their daughter Franny see ghosts.  George dismisses them but even at the college the head of his department is a Swedenborgian and tells him not to dismiss the spiritual world.  George’s true character starts showing through.  He cheats on his wife.  He forged his letter of support from his Columbia doctoral advisor because his work was substandard.  When a fellow faculty member finds out, he runs her off the road, putting her into a coma.  He drowns his department head while boating on the Hudson because he also learned the truth.  He even claims to have painted pictures done by his brother.  In other words, he’s a real piece of work.  The ghosts aren’t able to save his wife when he murders her, but his colleague comes out of her coma and spills the beans.

In the end, George sails away into a Thomas Cole painting where a Swendenborgian ending overtakes him.  The use of Swedenborg adds an etherial element to the film, figuring thoughtfulness to what otherwise might be just another story about an unhinged academic.  The department head’s advice about seeing death in a Swedenborgian way was also strangely affecting.  In other words, this is thoughtful horror.  And once again it demonstrates that religion can be crucial to understanding what we really fear.  I suppose some critics dislike the unambiguous use of ghosts and the supernatural breaking into “reality,” but that seems to be precisely the point.  I only learned of this movie because Netflix recommended it, but they hit on several major themes in my work over the past several years.  I would watch this one again.

A Matter of Trust

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I used to write everything by hand.  We bought a used typewriter when I was in high school, and when I was in seminary I graduated to one of those strange devices that would print, like a typewriter, but had an LCD on the keyboard so that you could back up several characters before it printed.  This let you proofread while on the go.  I write a lot.  It may be a form of sickness, but I have hundreds of story ideas and little time to develop them.  Now I write on a computer but I’ve begun to lose trust.  It’s not just the whole AI debacle.  No, it’s that even with frequent backups, computers just lose things.  After having my hard drive wiped following a scam last year, I began work on some documents that I had to back up to the Cloud when the USB C ports on my laptop went bad.

After the repair was done I could download my files and pick up where I left off.  In theory.  I was working away on a new story and thought that I might be able to connect it to an earlier story I’d started.  Looking at the file, I remembered that the tale was much further along when I’d left off.  Where was it?  I looked on the Cloud version and it was the same as the one on my hard drive.  Then a larger project came along.  I went to start it again and discovered many, many pages missing.  Again, the Cloud shrugged its nebulus shoulders saying “I dunno…”. I pulled out my back-up disc.  (This was in April.)  I tried going back to January.  Same thing.  December.  Ditto.  Finally, my last backup in November had the full files.  Why these files didn’t backup to the Cloud, when done by a professional at the Apple Store, I can’t fathom.

What was especially disturbing is that one of the files (which I duplicated and put back on my hard drive, where they belong) showed that I’d completely reorganized things in a much clearer way.  After the laptop came home from the hospital, I’d forgotten (I’m not young and I’d been using a borrowed device for a few days).  I’d probably just picked up a story and, with my usual tunnel vision, began writing.  Not unrelatedly, I’ve been going through a spate of printing out any stories far enough along to warrant such treatment.  From what I’ve seen of the housekeeping on the Cloud, I’m glad I’ve been doing so.  I miss writing by hand.

Ordinary Buddhism

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Refresher courses are a good idea.  I learned bits of Buddhism from my undergraduate days as a student of religions on, but my specialization was in “western religions.”  Those outside the field often don’t understand how technical religions can be.  They require time to learn and learn about.  I picked up a bit more Buddhism when I taught world religions, but still not enough to make me a specialist.  As a religion editor I continue to learn more.  My wife and I read Noah Rasheta’s No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners together.  Buddhism is divided into two major branches with a third sizable one.  Many would dispute that it is a religion since it has many aspects of a philosophy instead.  Also, Buddhism is non-doctrinal—it’s a matter of outlook and what you do, not the specifics of what you believe.  This book is a handy introduction, or refresher course.

The concept of religion itself developed because of the exclusive truth claims that grew from the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam).  The declaration that other belief systems are wrong—each of these traditions grew amidst what we might consider folk religions today, labeled “paganism” as a way of disparaging them—led to the idea of what we believe being named “religion.”  (Yours, of course, is the right one.  Everyone believes that.)  Buddhism remained largely unknown in the western world until the age of exploration, and in America was not really widely studied until the 1890s.  As a way of looking at the world, it is older than classical Judaism, having begun in the sixth or fifth century before the Common Era.  It follows, in large part, the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, “the Buddha.”

Rasheta, the author of this book, is a secular Buddhist.  He makes the point that Buddhism doesn’t displace one’s current religion but can be practiced alongside it.  Being non-doctrinal it’s not a matter of which gods you believe in, if any.  It certainly isn’t about worshipping the Buddha.  A large part of it is mindfulness, and trying to avoid the traps that lead to suffering in human life.  This book is set up in a question-and-answer format and is a straightforward introduction to what Buddhism is and how to begin to apply it to your life, if that’s what you wish.  It’s difficult for those of us raised in the Christian tradition to get past the idea that the point of any religion is conversion.  It’s not.  Instead, Buddhism can be yet another tool to help deal with the suffering that life brings.  Is it a religion?  That’s a technical question.

Sleepy Thoughts

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It happens as you age.  Sleep patterns get disrupted.  This is normal and expected by all.  Except work.  That 9-2-5 has no sympathy for the sometimes days in a row when you awake looking forward only to going back to bed.  The day stretches out so long before you, many weary hours through which to slog, where younger employees wonder at your lack of energy.  A good night’s sleep is a gift.  One of the things I’ve observed about this is that poor sleep tends to occur in runs.  Overall, I don’t have much trouble sleeping.  I’m not in control of the quality of it, however.  And that’s what makes all the difference.  The mere handful of sick days won’t cover the inherent ageism of the few days off policy when poor sleep is the culprit.  In the non-profit world early retirement isn’t really an option, so lots of yawns it is.

It’s amazing how much we take youth for granted.  We could pull all-nighters in college and recover quickly.  Eight or nine hours hardly seemed like anything for work.  Then those hours begin to show their weight.  You have a vast gulf of meetings and self-starter projects stretching in front of you even until supper time, let alone the chance to redeem that previous night’s poor slumber.  I stopped caffeinating myself years ago.  I reasoned that I didn’t need chemical assistance to remain awake.  Was that self on coffee the same self as undrugged me?  And besides, you can save a lot of money by not buying coffee (which is now a luxury item).  So we pray to Morpheus and open our laptops.

The demand to be “on” for eight or nine hours a day, pretty much unbroken, for five successive days each week, wears a soul down.  And a body.  How I long to take a walk on a lovely spring day, only to be reminded that my lack of engagement online is noted.  I even receive work emails after 5 p.m. telling me something has to be done that night.  What I plan to do that night is sleep.  Make up for lost time.  Be human in an aging body.  The thirty-something that sent that email will understand.  Some day.  Age used to be equated with wisdom.  Now, it seems, it is considered lack of productivity.  It comes for everyone, if they survive that long.   No, I’m not ready for the ice floe just yet.  A good night’s sleep will set me straight.

Photo by No Revisions on Unsplash

Blog Reading

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I’ve been at this blog for about seventeen years now.  During those years of daily posts, WordPress still has trouble recognizing me.  I try not to take this personally, but when people I know (and follow) post on WordPress I don’t always get notifications.  When I want to comment on said posts, I have to sign in.  Sometimes twice.  All of which is to say that a recent post on a friend’s blog made me thoughtful.  I met Jeff Hora through my wife, so I’ve known about him for going on forty years now.  We’ve become friends in our own right, mostly online.  I want to reflect on one of Jeff’s recent posts, “Solid Ambiguity.”  Before I do, however, a brief lament.  I used to read a number of blogs daily, including that of the recently mentioned Dan McClellan.  I had a whole set of blog buddies.  Then blogs began to decline in popularity and, more to the point, I took uber-capitalist jobs in New York City, robbing me of time.  Now I only read them when I get email notices.

Okay, so solid ambiguity.  The basic idea is that we like to grasp onto the things we can count on.  Things that don’t change.  That’s the “solid” part.  At the same time we need to be aware that change is endemic to life.  In fact, the post mentions Buddhism.  Like Shakers, Buddhists have been part (long past) of my religious training.  I specialized in “western religions,” but I’ve recently been reflecting quite a lot on the fact that in East Asian thought, especially, change is the only thing that’s permanent.  I know I’ve posted about this before, but that was probably years ago as well.  We know that things constantly change.  In the few brief minutes it would take you to read this post, you have changed.  So has the world around you.

We want solidity most of the time.  A house we can reliably come back to.  People we love to always be there.  Keep the possessions we worked so hard to earn.  None of this is permanent.  We know that at some level.  For many of us it’s deeply troubling.  I’m no expert in Buddhism, but I do know that one of its basic tenets is not being attached to things as they are.  Life is full of ambiguity.  We don’t tend to like it, really, as Jeff points out.  But we do need to learn to live with it.  One of the changes with which I have to cope is the loss of time for reading friends’ blogs.  It’s good to be reminded that it is a rewarding experience when I finally do it.  Now, if only I had more time…

Eh Aye Jesus

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Have you ever wondered just how bizarre it can get?  At work I’ve been receiving push notifications for AI Jesus.  This is a software platform for exploring “the Bible,” “life questions,” and “guided reflection or therapy.”  No Jesus required.  Apparently tech has evolved to the point of addressing spiritual questions.  This is ironic since one thing AI simply doesn’t, and can’t, understand is religion.  Religion is not exactly a rational response to the world.  Often emotion is deeply, deeply involved.  Emotion is something AI knows nothing about.  I recently sat through a webinar promoting AI with the presenter listing problem after serious problem that AI poses.  The presenter optimistically saw no problem with continuing to use a flawed tool.  I would never advise crowdsourcing spiritual guidance.  Those of us who’ve spent lifetimes exploring it hesitate to put ourselves out there as experts.

The problem with AI is that we’re no longer being given a choice about it.  If you buy a new device, AI is there waiting for you.  If you do a web search, AI will offer the first answer, even if it’s often wrong.  Some of us with very human jobs are being told that we should be exploring how to use AI for efficiencies.  As if none of us were really doing a good job before.  I’m personally insulted.  What can AI know about how Jesus thought?  We have four gospels with sometimes contradictory sayings.  And it seems likely that the Gospel of Thomas has legitimate sayings as well.  Even so, that’s not enough data for an LLM (large language model, which is what generative AI tends to be).  They need massive amounts of information.

The human mind conjures its own image of Jesus.  Some think of a mild and meek shepherd of souls while others see a political firebrand with hopes of breaking the Roman hold on Judea.  Some think of Trump.  And everything in-between.   And how we think of Jesus informs the way that we interpret the sayings attributed to him.  I studied Bible in college for just this reason.  In seminary, aware of what textual criticism could do, I focused on the Hebrew Bible instead.  I grew up with the Doobie Brothers telling me that “Jesus is just alright with me.”  I’ve lived long enough to see a sitting president present himself as the parousia (look it up).  And now I’m being told that AI can subvert the carpenter from Galilee.  Just how strange can it get?

The tempter urges Jesus to use AI; image credit: Ary Scheffer, The Temptation of Christ (public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

Dreamers

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Dreams are strange things.  I’m talking literal dreams—what your mind comes up with when sleeping.  Some dreams come out remarkably clumsily, like they were made DIY instead of by a professional.  Not to brag, but most of my dreams feel like they have professional production values.  They’re hard to tell from waking reality except that the rules in the dream world are quite different.  I’ve always struggled with nightmares, but they’re well made.  The other night I had what seemed to me amateurish dreams.  Even in my sleep I remember thinking that they were low-budget.  Normally I dream better than that.  And I woke up not really feeling ready for work.  They should give you “bad dream days” to take off.  Bad dreams can really put you out of sorts and can distort your thinking until the next sleep period comes around.

Recently I was talking dreams with one of my brothers.  When you’re a kid you naturally talk about dreams with your siblings.  At least we did.  I hadn’t realized this brother kept a dream journal.  I’ve had other people recommend doing that.  Like many people I have trouble remembering my dreams.  Often I do for a few moments after waking, but I don’t put on a light for fear of waking my wife and also I have to dash to the restroom and after that they’re gone.  But impressions of those amateur dreams stayed with me for a while.  The feeling of disappointment.  That I could’ve had something better to see me through the night.

Some of the more quality dreams survive long enough to get written into my fiction that doesn’t get published.  Some people experiment with lucid dreaming, where you invoke your waking consciousness to interfere with the untethered unconscious.  Other dreams are pure, elated fantasy.  And we still really don’t understand them.  When asleep those thoughts are just as real as the more mundane ones that get you through the working day.  And they can influence, sometimes powerfully, how well you navigate that 9-2-5 world.  Ideally you spend as much time sleeping as you do working.  They should perhaps balance each other out.  In my experience anyway, neither is really predictable.  If I had it all to do over again, I sometimes think I’d have been a psychologist (really, it was the medical part that put me off) where I could study dreams.  At least then I wouldn’t have to worry about having bargain basement dreams, would I?  It’s a strange thought.

Intensity

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It was the biggest excuse for breaking up with me.  “You’re too intense.”  I lost track of the number of times college coeds told me that.  At the same time, the same adjective was whispered in awe when applied to professors in class.  You wanted intense professors, but not intense boyfriends.  Was “intense” bad or good?  I don’t deny being intense.  Some of us are just that way.  In personal relationships I’ve often managed to keep it under control.  It was one of the reasons, however, that I was such a good professor.  Students seem to have responded well, even if academia had no permanent home for me.  Thus, dark academia.  Which tends to be intense.  When I throw all my energy at something, it can become intense.  But it’s also true that I’m on the receiving end of it.  My mental mapping, especially in the fallow times, means that I must try to make sense of it all.

Some periods in life are intense.  I’m sure that’s true for everybody.  Or most people.  A concentration of events when time itself seems to have collapsed on top of you and you still have a 9-2-5 for five long days before you can start to deal with the residue.   So far, since the end of November many months ago, I’ve been in an intense zone.  So much is happening that I have trouble keeping up.  Unlike a dating relationship, I can’t beg off with intensity as an excuse.  A big part of it has been the calendar.  Thanksgiving fell late and January with its cold felt like it would last forever.  Both Trump and AI simmered in the background.  And, of course, 9-2-5.

Two major snowstorms were separated by only a few weeks.  As the second was tuning up, a death in the family.  The third in three years.  A novel was finished.  As was a nonfiction draft.  Two orders from Amazon went awry.  Who has time for returns?  Because of the storms, things became double-booked.  Preparations for the 2026 Lehigh Valley Book Festival.  With my expensive books.  I really didn’t think they’d select me as a participant, but was committed.  Or should be.  My wife’s 9-2-5 also hit an intense period.  We had to deal with two major household repairs simultaneously.  An unexpected auto repair.  I checked another website (No Kill Switch) to help define intensity.  What he has to say makes a lot of sense, but the question remains.  Is intensity good or bad?  It does seem to be the opposite of boredom, when you get time to deal with things, after work.