The image of fiction

Harsh truth being the realm of just that, reality, why should I search for it in fiction as well? I do not desire to be taught that life is hard and harsh as I gather age to me as a stone gather moss as it rolls farther and faster down the mountain. Truth is the realm of the young, those who wish to learn of life and what it may hold. The young may bear it up and brandish it about as swords. As youth fades this truth that once cut so finely and passionately is not dulled, rather youth is no longer there to heal the cuts that truth made.
It is for that reason that I hide myself away in the realm of fiction, which is merely a beautiful image of reality, without its wounds. I look for the admirable, the lovely, the turn of phrase or the look that I will not see in life. For the irony and the wonder is so rare and precious in the realm of reality that it must be captured and examined in works of fiction so that all or any may encounter it. The news is more reality than one can want, and it is encountered everywhere. It does not seek out the beauty of life however, so no balance can come from it. Rather it seeks out the heart-wrenching, the sad, the despicable and the frightening. In all there is I suppose a stark and terrible beauty, but it is not what I would wish to cuddle up to, to wrap my thoughts and desires around as I console myself at the end of yet another day.
And so I console myself with pretty images and wonderful lies about who I might be and roads that I never followed that have vast and gorgeous treasures at the end of them. I release the part of me that is all day tied down and held back waiting to emerge in thought or word or action. I let the stories bombard me, given exotic locals and interesting people. Looking for in those dreams some meaning or prize that I can keep in my secret treasure trove of an imagination. A turn of phrase or habit or wonderful thought that is mine and mine alone. Some beauty that I can keep for me, to convince myself that it is, in the end, worth all the rest of it.

Bye Bye Happiness

Hammy joined his brother yesterday, Wednesday.

Bye Bye Love

Boomer passed away on Friday. He will be missed.

The Easter Season

Though I didn't post on it at the time, I had a fun time prior to Easter day. I got to attend Passover Sedar with a labmate and Friday with coloring easter eggs. Just wanted to put up some happy day pictures while I'm lost in work. I have no Sedar pics without people, my requirement for this blog. So here are some colored eggs.

Fuzzy Wuzzy

I'm trying to keep up a good pace to get all my work done. Somedays I feel like I'm running in place. The semester is nearing its end and I feel like I have soooo much left to work on. I caught a pic of this ant trying to lift a part of a leaf, though it's small to us, he was having quite the time with it.

Home Sweet Home

I miss Nebraska, some days more than others. Does the video have to show only the rural portions of the state though?

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7266970

Dreamy days

Today is a beautiful day. Like so many are in Tucson. It makes it extremely hard to focus on work. So far, I've managed to play around and avoid work. This is not practically speaking a good thing. I have a test in kinetics on Wednesday. I need to do well on this. There is a month, actually less, left of classes before the end of the semester. I'm running low on time to finish all of the things I need to do. I need a magic spell or charm that will make me focus. That will make me work. No dice so far.

Everyone Dies of Something

I know this is a morbid topic to start out on. The reason I bring it up is that last night I was watching the movie Grand Illusion. It's a French film, one of the first prisoner of war escape films, and in it they discuss the diseases that different classes die from. Gout and cancer are the deaths of the upper class. That was the early 20th century. Now I would bet that it would be diabetes and cancer. One should note though, as medicine has improved and progressed so has the increase in cases of cancer.
Some people argue it is because there is an increase in the types and amounts of carcinogens that people come into contact with. And that probably has some impact on the numbers, but I think what most people forget is that you have to die from something. If it isn't smallpox, the plague, tb or one of many other diseases it will eventually come from somewhere else. And that is where cancer comes in. I'm not saying that people struck down in mid-life from cancer isn't unfortunate and that children having cancer isn't tragic, but life is by its definition is a terminal condition (sci-fi aside).
Eventually given the billions upon trillions of DNA replications that occur in ones lifetime (and I'm not quoting any particular number so I'm still probablyunderestimating) something will go awry. And even given all that the probability that something goes wrong and results in a malignant result is relatively low. However, it only has to happen once in a way that your body (or modern medicine) can't repair for it to be fatal.
There isn't a lesson to be learned from this thought process or any summary statement to put it all into a nice, neat, coherent thought. That's Life.

I <3 Pandas!

In deference to the CADIE blog that google put up today I thought I would post a picture drawn last semester during my thermo class. I was such the bestest student. If you are unaware of the google CADIE blog http://cadiesingularity.blogspot.com/ should be your next click. Happy April Fool's day. I too <3 Pandas!