Steve Jobs - October 5, 2011

Apple changed my life,

thanks to the creative genius of Steve Jobs.

What a giant of a man! 

We mourn his premature passing.

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. Stay hungry. Stay foolish."

I remember my commutes across the bay in the late nineties, with billboards along 580 doing for once for me what they were designed to do - invoke a desire for the product they advertised. Those iBooks in their sleek design and their cute colors (purple my favorite, but the blue one was on sale refurbished) looked like something I might actually want to lay my eyes on, have near me and learn how to use. 

"I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. Humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list....That didn't look so good, but then someone at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of lomotion for a man on a bicycle and a man on a bicycle blew the condor away.

That's what a computer is to me: the computer is the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds."

I took to the Apple iBook like a Mermaid takes to water. Not a geek by any means I was able to learn, mostly by myself and would not be here without an Apple laptop, I am currently still only on my second iBook, now in it's 7th year of use.

"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them." 

This quote of Steve's sure rings true in my ears and supports my experience in my approach to bodywork. Clients would show up for one, usually superficial reason, relaxation, and leave often with an epiphany. They had no idea, about the state of their bodies, their true needs and wants! Steve Jobs differed in that he knew how to advertise his products. He knew how to create a desire for products we had no idea yet we wanted, much less needed. He also had inventions for sale that could be looked at, held, inspected, played and experimented with. Very different from my selling an experience that comes and then goes and gets forgotten, or at best stored as a cherished memory in some deep dark recesses of the brain.

"[Y]ou can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

Jobs had grown Apple into the world’s most valuable technology company through his scrupulous attention to detail and his ability to, in his own words, marry technology with liberal arts and humanities to “make our hearts sing.” Huffington Post

"... great things in business are never done by one person, they're done by a team of people."

Many blame Apple for manufacturing their products outside the US and depriving Americans of badly needed jobs. Laws may need changing in this respect, but to blame a company for choosing cheaper labor in areas of the world with lower living standards is excessively idealistic and unreasonable. What may constitute worker exploitation needs to be adjusted to each culture, but world wide basic standards ought to apply. Nobody wants to exploit child labor, yet some children are rather happy to be able to work. I started a paying job, illegally then in Switzerland at the age of 14, and loved it! Maybe a hefty import tax would solve the problem?

Steve Jobs died of complications of Pancreatic Cancer, diagnosed in 2004. He worked as CEO of Apple until 6 weeks prior to his passing. "Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being," Apple

President Barack Obama said Jobs was "among the greatest of American innovators -- brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it. "

 RIP Steve Jobs!

Synchronicity I

Synchronicity has been lacking in my life of late, of recent years. It used to play an important role. Here I want to reflect a bit on it's occurrences in my life. 

Synchronicity is a term coined by the Swiss Psychologist C. G. Jung and described as follow in Wikipedia: "Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events, that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance, that are observed to occur together in a meaningful manner."

Seems to me that after I started to doubt the meaning of synchronistic events they seemed no longer to occur. Meaning of course is what we assign and is not inherent, so is very personal.

Jung lived and worked in Zurich a few decades before my arrival, so that by the time I emerged in to adulthood the term synchronicity was well known and used, certainly in the social circles I chose. Dwuno, my mentor in my late teens had introduced me to the I-Ching, the Chinese oracle "... centered on the ideas of the dynamic balance of opposites, the evolution of events as a process, and acceptance of the inevitability of change." Ideas that made perfect sense to me then and now. A foundation that allowed me to embrace principles of Astrology in that same spirit of analogy rather then causality.

While Dwuno used sticks from stalks of plants (Schafgarbe) gathered at the proper, auspicious phase of the lunar cycle, I employed the simpler method of 3 Chinese copper (for it's conductivity) coins. I remember often feeling a sense of awe, and a sense of embracing life anew with reverence, and a strengthening of my belief in hidden forces at work that gave meaning to life in general and mine in particular. 

There was an incident where living communally with several guys I had mixed up our laundry to the hilarity of those involved, giving socks, maybe underwear, to one, not the other. Somehow the I Ching's response to my inquiry was profound, even though so many decades later I no longer can recall the specifics. My reading then enlightened me to some of my underlying, until then unconscious feelings.

In Amsterdam, a few years later, alone, in search of the New Age, a week had passed, I was at a loss, it was a beautiful full moon night as I returned early to the Youth Hostel. I threw an I-Ching, was stunned, slept and my world changed. Next morning for the first time I talked to others at the hostel. As I walked the rainy, dreary streets of Amsterdam again, the sun broke through. While I watched a lovely scene of many cats that enjoyed a brief, warm respite on a romantic looking houseboat, I was invited in, found a new home, a new friend, and a new beginning in this most interesting of cities, Amsterdam. Soon enough I was able to immerse myself in New Age practices like Astrology, Massage Therapy, Tai Chi, Encounter Groups, Vegetarian eating and free form dancing to name only a few. It was the mid-seventies. Times were rich, exciting and full of promise. I credit the I-Ching with my finding my way in to the new age communities of Amsterdam more expediently.

Before leaving Amsterdam again and that time for good, I connected with a Surinam black man, at least a decade older then I was then with a love of alternative theater  similar to mine (he may have had his own company, I no longer can recall with certainty.) We were not lovers, but seemed both to have the same experiences of thinking of one another as we might walk the neighborhood, only to almost immediately bump in to each other. This happened so often, it was uncanny. Probably if I had stayed on, rather then moved on, we might have become lovers, the attraction was powerful, the synchronicities amazing.

In Zuerich, one night as I meandered along the cobblestone streets of old town, I witnessed a gypsy guy playing flamenco style guitar. Suddenly he took off and left his case and cash behind, obviously afraid of the oncoming police. So I sat down next to his case and cash and eventually, after a good long while I was able to return those items to him and so another intense attraction ensued. One in which I could feel his stare on my back, while completely unaware of his proximity.

I did have a boyfriend in Amsterdam, a dutch boy with a wide grin, pink skin and big, today I would say schizoid, crazy eyes. Intensely concerned about his mental health there were times I could hear his thoughts in my head, before he spoke, eerie. In obeyance to the voice of his god, he did jump off a third story balcony. The lack of serious injury seemed to only confirm to his mind his belief in his higher power. He was institutionalized for a while. Sadly I lost touch with him, but often wonder if he is still alive - and well. His life was laced with synchronicity, stories that are not mine to tell.

But synchronistic events did not limit themselves to or with love objects. In Amsterdam I got myself in the middle of line of hitchhikers in need of reaching the place of destination for an exciting workshop I had signed myself on. I was dismayed at the long line of kids seeking a free ride, most to international destinations. Oddly though within moments a car stopped right in front of me, in the middle of that long line, at the outskirt of Amsterdam and I was offered a ride that deposed me right at the proper address in a little nearby village. Sure seemed to me that I was at the right place at the right time. Synchronicity at it's best; practical and very useful.

In New York I remember bending down to tie my shoe laces, only to avoid twice things falling from above, once water and something else (a rock?) the next time. Both times I was outside my lower east side apartment and one might argue a neighbor may not have liked me, although that had not  ever occurred to me then.

In Santa Fe oddly my new home would echo the one prior in Manhattan where I had lived on 717 East 5th Street while in Santa Fe my address was 717 Manhattan Ave. I was never sure about the meaning of this one, but always got a tickle from this fact.

I was working at a progressive psychiatric clinic outside Zurich, I was twenty. My girlfriend had gone to Israel on vacation.  I wondered if she had returned home, she was to bring me back a Bedouin dress chosen especially for me by my friend Shoshi in Israel. Uncharacteristic for me I lingered at lunch time, read the news paper and discovered an article on two Japanese girls that had drowned by accident in the lake the day before. It could not be? Yes, it did happen. My best friend and her sister had drowned by accident for real. I was able to give a tiny bit of comfort to the mother as I recounted her daughter's dreams in which she had repeatedly experienced the terror of drowning. We  had discussed those at great length in the early morning hours, maybe 4 months before the tragedy happened for real.  I had tried to mine the potential psychological meaning of those dreams with my friend, but was deeply humbled and humiliated by the actual true life event that unfolded within only a few months. The world lost a very beautiful, enormously talented, artistic, bright soul that day in my friend. Her sister had suffered from Down Syndrom and was living in a holistic minded community where she had learned more independence and ease of movement. On our very first encounter, Akiko had penetrated my eyes, when all of a sudden she jumped in to my arms, hugged me and kept looking, and looking and looking at, or rather inside of me, through my eyes. Surely this was a meeting of souls, totally non-verbal, but so powerful. I miss those two sisters, so unlike one another, but both having left a profound impression on me and many others no doubt.

Inside Sing-Sing prison one man found his long lost brother by the chance opening of a magazine where he discovered an article his brother had written of the two of them. I had the pleasure to help them reconnect.

Synchronicities surely have the capacity of enriching our lives. We all are familiar with those moments where we think of someone and the phone rings with them on the phone. Some of us dream, like my friend did of me, when in her dream she saw me in trouble, while in real life I was stranded on the side of the road with a blown engine as I considered calling my friend for help. Synchronicities can easily be dismissed as minor occurrences of chance, but sometimes they can change lives. In a funk with Higher Power I have dismissed and doubted their relevance. I am still feeling rebellious, or frustrated, or angry with God-dess, life, or the affairs of the world as they appear to my sensibilities. I do miss though those exhilarating moments of synchronicity as a relevant part of my life.

To be continued

New Orchid/New Moon/ New Beginnings

 Happy New Moon! Happy New Beginnings!

Today January 4th, 2:03 AM Mountain Standard time with the Sun and Moon both in 13 degrees Capricorn a new cycle begins and our new year starts in earnest. It is a great time to ring in the new,  for me here with setting my focus on my new Orchid. For us though better yet to renew our intentions and  reconsider our priorities. It is an especially propitious time to take a moment to calm down and intuit what may lie ahead. What may need tweaking or may be in need of a radical overhaul so we can become the person we may want to be. On the practical side today is an excellent day to change the batteries in your fire alarms, to change your water filters if you have not done so yet, to defrost the fridge, to declutter your closets.

Julian Assange - A Hero

Since late November, 3 weeks now, I have been following Wikileaks and Julian Assange, reading and listening mainly to the progressive point of view. I feel pressure to take a stand, to declare myself for or against, but I am having trouble doing so. Maybe it is not just a matter of being for or against, maybe life in general is more nuanced?  Good try, but won't fly! While usually I feel free to express myself in most ways, the threat of being viewed by the US (far reaching) powers as abetting in espionage (no matter how ridiculous the sound of it) as unworthy of employ (and I am not in a position not to care) or as a distriutor of stolen goods, is strangely unsettling to me, surprisingly so.

"This is what it looks like when power squirms. When the US government warns its employees to steer their eyes away from the WikiLeaks documents even though they're on every front page and news site. When Sweden and Interpol, possibly in response to US pressure, pursue trumped up charges against the WikiLeaks founder. When Mike Huckabee calls for alleged leaker Bradley Manning's execution, Sarah Palin says Assange should be "hunted down," and Congressman Peter King (R-N.Y.) declares that WikiLeaks should be designated a terrorist organization." Mother Jones

WWII Germans could claim ignorance from a lack of information and I might add naivete along with a blind trust in a patriarchal system that made them stand by passive when those atrocities happened. In our current so called information age we have no longer such excuses available to us. The information is out and available to anyone looking, in great part thanks to the net. Preserve net neutrality! There comes a point one has to take a stand. So here I stand symbolically in solidarity with Julian Assange first and foremost and his organization Wikileaks!

Allegations of rape are very serious, but in the context used against Assange they are ludicrous and offensive to those real victims of violent sexual abuse. Come on, invoking a law that makes a case for rape of a man, naked, standing behind, who knows maybe rubbing up against a woman he had sex with earlier! Invoking broken condoms and unsafe sex as if they were felonies? What happened to the ability of adults negotiating the terms of sexual intercourse between them? Have you ever heard of a rape victim throwing a party for the perpetrator? To lock a man in to solitary confinement for 10 days, a man that voluntarily presented himself to the authorities and has not been presented with clear charges of a crime committed, is a stunning deed to say the very least. Check out Michael Moore's open letter to Sweden where he accuses Sweden of negligence in legal proceedings of rape charges, 9 out of 10 times, while at the same time Swedes have the highest per capita rape reports! (I live in the US state with the 2. highest per capita rape reports, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It may mean that victims actually bother to report to the authorities, an important step forward.) Rape charges are serious and very offensive, but as I have pointed out before (the cases against Al Gore and Roman Polanski) not all rapes are equal.

Women Against Rape, Katrin Axelsson:

"There is a long tradition of the use of rape and sexual assault for political agendas that have nothing to do with women's safety. In the south of the US, the lynching of black men was often justified on grounds that they had raped or even looked at a white woman. Women don't take kindly to our demand for safety being misused, while rape continues to be neglected at best or protected at worst."

There are rumors that Anna Ardin, 31, one of the complainants, might be a spy. Someone will have to make a movie out of this saga. Of course for Julian Assange these smear campaigns, as he seems to call them rightfully so, are anything but entertaining. He is now out on bail under electronic monitoring through ankle bracelets and has to report in daily.

Meanwhile like in court, plant seeds of unreasonable doubt, here on the messenger of those unwanted revelations and deter attention from what truly matters. Those leaks while at first mainly diplomatic fluff, embarrassing maybe, but lacking in seeming significance have though grown in importance and cover a wide array of countries and subject, and not all bad for the US either.

One cable falsely states that Michael Moore's movie Sicko was banned in Cuba, while in truth the movie was shown to a wide Cuban audience, yet the main media did not rectify those claims did not do their homework and that is exactly why we need Wikileaks. This phenomena is a sign of our times, of a troubled media and enough discontented ones that create a demand for such endeavors like Wikileaks. (As Assange told the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this year, "How is it that a team of five people has managed to release to the public more suppressed information, at that level, than the rest of the world press combined? It's disgraceful.") The more the merrier I say to the split of one former ally in to a similar organization that wants to act as a simple distributor of leaked info with no vetting of any kind. This will require for other media to not distort or suppress info of a sensitive nature. Time only will tell on how it will work, but the truth sooner or later will have to come out. I am for transparency, especially in the public and political domain.

So I change my mind, I redact my former statement, I take a stand, and declare Julian Assange a HERO. A hero because of his courage to oppose power and secrecy and his commitment to inform and  so uphold the fundamentals of a real democracy based on educated voters. With an IQ of a genius almost, he is no fool, he knows some of what he got himself in to, but he is a man of principle, willing to put his body on the line. So I stand among illustrious company in my public support of Julian Assange, runner-up for 2010 Person of the Year .

Joe Biden called Julian a "High Tech Terrorist" so I had to look up the word terrorist: "The word was originally applied to supporters of the Jacobins in the French Revolution, who advocated repression and violence in pursuit of the principles of democracy and equality." In this sense Julian certainly is not a terrorist. He offered the material for vetting to the US and to a few chosen main media outlets. He does not advocat violence and certainly is not big on repression be that information or his own sexuality for that matter as it seems (a lame attempt at humor.) Leaked information inspires terror only in those that have something to hide.

Astrologers world wide have been erecting and studying charts for Julian Assange in an attempt to gain insight. This is one of them, likely not perfect, but workable and fascinating. Accordingly Julian is living his Aquarian destiny: 

Another Hero Stepped Forward

Michael Moore with 2 others offered bail for Julian Assange. The court according to a Swiss newspaper source accepted, today Tuesday December 14th. The next court hearing is set for January 11th.

Michael Moore's sites seem unaccessible currently, let's hope because of the interest this news incited. But he makes his website available for Julian Assange's support, financial and other is my understanding.

I applaud the stepping forward of another hero, Michael Moore, who is taking again a courageous stance and will not be silenced and will not stop showing the public what matters.

BBC News:
"Mr Stephens said he had not been given any of his post - including legal letters - since being remanded in custody.
"He has absolutely no access to any electronic equipment, no access to the outside world, no access to outside media," he said.

 

The lawyer said the only correspondence his client had received was a note telling him that a copy of Time magazine sent to him had been destroyed because the cover bore his photograph."

What an effective way of silencing Assange, but not for long!

Update: Bail was granted and then challenged by Swedish prosecutors. They have 48 hours to present their objections. According to Swiss news 10 people participated in posting bail, but the court claims to need a week to process checks! Delaying tactics every which way one looks.

"It is not the rebels of the world who create the problems. 

It is the problems that create the rebels." -John T. Grubesic

Happy Harvest Full Moon!

This morning's loot: Flowers from the Community Garden and apples picked from the neighbor's tree, with express permission, as they have been overwhelmed with too much goodness. They are a bit over ripe and infested, but supposedly very good. 

By the afternoon a rainstorm had grown powerful enough to shatter my pretty boutquet and leave my tallest glass vase in pieces, so the flowers are in a holy mess now. But my new rain barrel that had been sitting there for weeks on empty is now overflowing. We need the moisture, the fall colors seemed to seriously suffer from our dry spell. 

So Happy Harvest Full Moon! The intensity of our weather seems to correlate perfectly with the current astrological symbolism (Moon, Jupiter, and Uranus in Pisces.) 

"Your glass-bottom boat that allows you to observe your own and the collective "sea life" is your higher mind--lower mind just rocks the boat! This Is how Astrologer Alan Oken puts it and he warns that relationship issues, often conflicts, are likely once the Moon moves in to it's fullness in Aries to oppose the Sun in Libra on the 23. tomorrow.

Meanwhile Astrologer Dana Gerhardt invites to a little moon magic and asks us to bath in this special Harvest Moon light and ask ourselves the question of what it is we might want to manifest in these coming 3 months. And then watch for the answers in what happens to the moon. If the light brightens we can take that as a resounding yes, if clouds are moving across we may reconsider. And according to Dana, we have always the choice to redo the whole exercise and start over as this powerful time is to last for at least 3 days. But what if no moon is visible as stormy weather reins?