The idea that somehow shifts the earth's magnetic field strength may be contributing to the kind of experiences I was mentioning in the last post seems at once both silly and yet intriguing. There is a subculture of people online who discuss this rather obsessively, with the basic thesis that every so often and periodic intervals on the scale of thousands of years, the earth's magnetic field undergoes a rather disruptive change, part of that being a temporary decrease in the field strength.
This barely scratches the surface of the topic, as I learned while exploring it several years back. Since then the idea has gone from niche-fringe to being less niche but still fringe.
One should note that the magnetic field of the earth is what keeps us (that is all life on earth) safe from solar activity. Next month is projected to be the peak of the eleven-year cycle of sunspots. Maybe I'll blame everything on that for the time being.
The last few days I have only an acceleration of a sensation of being adrift in time, in some liminal place, in an unfamiliar world. The world does not seem to make sense, I want to say. But what does such a statement mean. Did the world ever "make sense"? I can't claim that it ever did, yet somehow it has always made sense enough to navigate with a rational expectation of outcomes based on one's choices and behaviors. Lately I feel less of that. But what do I know. I'm barely following the news lately, not because I'm repulsed by events, but because it only adds to my disorientation.
If it was just me, I'd just assume I was going mad, but I know that many other people are feeling the same way. There is a sense of dread floating around, not just about the present moment, but about people's lives, especially among the young. This last part to me is the real kicker---that so many young people have expressed a feeling of hopelessness about their lives. As a young person, I never felt hopeless about my life, even in the midst of severe emotional pain. I always felt like the future would be better somehow, and that my problems were transitory. The world would go on, and I would find my place in it. I never felt anything like the way these young folk talk about their lives. Every aspect of life that marks the transition to adulthood feels broken---education, courtship, marriage, careers, housing.
Something is clearly way off. Everyone feels it in some way, I think. It feels as if so many things that used to tie us to the old world, which for all its faults felt relatively stable and predictable in the big picture, have been taken away that none of us can mentally absorb what is taking place and where we are going.
Is "Outside Over There" an example of a liminal space? I'm referring here not to the Sendak book Outside Over There, but to the place that is mentioned in the book, that Ida falls into. That's a question worth pondering.
The concept of liminal spaces emerged in video games where glitches or modifications to the imaginary world of the game allow one to pass through boundaries that one would not otherwise be able to cross, and one might get stuck in a half-baked place with just walls with no features, that auto-generate endlessly as one explores them, without any way back to the normal world of the game.
The lore of the internet contemplates these spaces as being reflective of a real experience on the spiritual plane, one we just happened to discover by video games (or artists and poets before them).
Of particular importance is the idea that any creature that one encounters in the liminal space is probably not your friend. This is typical in video games, and also in the dream I racounted. One traverses a liminal space in dread of encountering another being, I suppose. One finds comfort only the faces of familiar people, and even then one must be sure of their identity, which can be counterfeited.
Facets of this we see in Sendak's work. Ida is alone. She encounters other beings but they are non-human and less than benign. Her resolution is to find, and rescue, her lost baby sister, at which point they can both return from the liminal space, apparently by following a river, which is very interesting, because rivers are a good way to find one's way out of the woods when lost (not always foolproof becuase they might disappear into a cave or an impassible gorge).
Our---that was was the word of the day from Mr. Oliver's The Dictionary Story as I was about to head out the door for work this morning. The short definition indicated it was the best word to refer to sharing.
It felt both appropriate and highly comforting to have my eyes land on this. The night had given me troubled dreams before I awoke at 3 am, of being in what has come to be called liminal spaces. If you don't know what that means, it's a meme that has arisen in social media derived from gaming (video games that is).
There's a wikipedia article about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminal_space_(aesthetic). Underlining here is mine:
In Internet aesthetics, liminal spaces are empty or abandoned places that appear eerie, forlorn, and often surreal. Liminal spaces are commonly places of transition, pertaining to the concept of liminality.
Research from the Journal of Environmental Psychology has indicated that liminal spaces may appear eerie or strange because they fall into an uncanny valley of architecture and physical places.An article from Pulse: The Journal of Science and Culture has attributed this eeriness to familiar places lacking their usually observed context. A pillar of liminal spaces is the absence of living things, particularly other people,with the implication that the viewer is alone; this lack of presence is characteristic of spaces that are "liminal in a temporal way, that occupy a space between use and disuse, past and present, transitioning from one identity to another."
The aesthetic gained popularity in 2019 after a post on 4chan depicting a liminal space called the Backrooms went viral. Since then, liminal space images have been posted across the internet, including on Reddit, Twitter, and TikTok.
My liminal space in dreams is usually a concrete stairwell, perhaps leading to parking garage. Last night it was a large industrial facility with concrete hallways and many doors. It feels similar the Backrooms, described in the passage above. Something else was there, something perhaps malevolent, and I was fearful of it, but it my dreams I sought to yell at it, unseen around the corners of hallways, as one would confront a bear in the woods.
The vividness of the dream left my somewhat dazed, perhaps. It took me longer than normal to wake up. I sat on the porch for almost forty minutes before I bothered to make coffee. Even driving into campus just now, my mind felt slow.
Our---the cooperative experience of an activity with another person. The feeling it engenders is the opposite of the liminal space, which is experienced as a frightening solitary experience. Even before I knew about this concept, I understood it through dreams, where I would be with other people, or another person, and they would disappear and I would be alone, wondering how to reconnect to other people, or find someone who I lost. Something about that feels fundamental to my experience of life.
The idea that there is an our to the experience of America, as I mentioned, is something that now feels elusive, as I mentioned in a previous. Perhaps some interesting thoughts will emerge today, as the day wears on, and the fog of the liminal spaces clears from my mind.
Right before I left for work today, I went out the patio to tidy up. On the little round table are stacked all my books, under the shade of the rice paper screen. I rearranged the stack so it looked more stable. At the last minute, I noticed my copy of the The Dictionary Story by Oliver Jeffers. I flipped over the front cover, thinking to myself, "what's the word of today?" and amidst the dictionary entries inside the front cover my eyes land on explain. I read the definition, which I did not commit to memory so I can type it here, but here is space for it later when I get home:
[placeholder definition of explain in The Dictionary Story].
Or if you own a copy, just fill it in there on your own.
Monday morning. Another work week ahead. I'm about to drive into Tempe and park in my usual spot. Every day that passes lately I feel something akin to a great grinding of gears of the machine of civilization and history, as if everything is in the midst of a giant shift, a tectonic evolution of all of society, not just in America, but around the world. I have two modes lately---one where I focus on this, and one where I ignore it. I try to live mostly in the latter because it would drive me mad to constantly focusing on the former. I can't keep them both in my head at once.
Even the politics of the moment, and the events of the drama of war and conflict, seem like small details that pass. Why focus on them? Something huge and bigger is underway. Some people see it and talk about it. I feel mostly like a helpless actor moving along with the crowd. Aren't all of us that way? No sense in having anxiety about it. There is no stopping it. If I can keep my wits about me, then I will be of help to others.
For much of my life, I saw my own life in terms of being cast as a character in the story of America. America was idea that was a story, a narrative, one that had been going for centuries, and to be born into it when I was, in the mid 1960s, was to enter that story and be a part of it---the building, the struggle, the evolution of something ongoing and continuous, that everyone knew existed, and everyone found some sort of place within it.
It hit me a couple days ago that I no longer feel like that. I no longer feel as if my life is part of the story of America. What does my life mean in terms of that story? I don't know what America means now, so how I can play a part of it?
It used to be so clear, that no matter what happened, the story of America would go on. Certainly the government of the United States will go on for the time being. It is part of fallen era that we see America in terms of its government, which is just a superficial structure on a nation. What is the "American nation" now? What is the "American people"? Is it anyone who happens to be here? But what is that in terms of continuity. Does the past get a vote?
It's been hard to write about anything here lately. Somehow I lost the bead of thought I had going, I suppose. But it is more than that. I feel profoundly disoriented in a way. Maybe it's the heat partly, but the days come and go with a strange sameness that feels anything but normal.
The news. It's the news. Of course it's the news. But it isn't the news. Not like we would say in the old days. Oh, did you read the news today? Can you believe it? My mind is abuzz with it all! I lie awake at night thinking of it!
That was how news used to work, the normal times before. But it doesn't feel that way to me anymore. For one thing we know much of the news is a pageant meant to tell us a story. It has always been that way, perhaps, but in the old days the story was mostly coherent and made sense to us at each passing stage.
Now we are aware of the depth of the pageant, and that changes our perspective in a fundamental way. It's as if I don't know the ground rules of reality in the world anymore. I feel as if I am in a world that is unfamiliar to me, trying to make sense of it without outdate rules, as are we all. This means this. That means that.
So I go about my daily life, walking through a familiar, comfortable sameness while feeling utterly unable to frame my life within a larger story, because I don't know what that larger story is anymore. My greatest solace is knowing that I am not the only one feeling this. To know that others are feeling this kind of this makes me feel in league with them, in our giant disorientation.
Will the world settle back down into anything resembling what we used to call normal times? That is truly hard to tell, and I am the last person to make a guess. Most of my guesses about the future are very wrong.
Today was one of those days when I felt the oppression of living in the summer heat here in Arizona. It was Sunday, and I was restless. But there was no way to go for a walk of any length. In the afternoon I went outside, breaking my Sunday day of rest to take out the trash early. They would have collected it via the trash service at our day four hours later. I justified breaking the day of rest to do a physical chore on the grounds that someone else would have to do it later.
It was a heavy bag. As I walked down the outdoor hallway to the stairs, I felt the stirring of the air. It had that feeling of a furnace blast. Later I would learn that the temperature had peaked at 114. So we had the "eleven handle" on the temperature at last, a little later than usual this time of year.
That explains how, while using the fan this morning while reading on the porch, the electric fan had felt like it was blowing a bar-b-cue grill fire in my face.
I took the bag down to the dumpsters which are in a small concrete pen the walls of which are as high as the dumpsters. There are two dumpsters, one for recycling and one for normal trash. Without thinking, I slung the heavy trash bag into the dumpster for recycling, and only realized my mistake a few seconds later. I'm more used to using that one, heaving the box of empty San Pelegrino bottles we get from Costco. Mineral water is very tasty in the summer, but I try to drink normal tap water with ice as much as possible.
In this case, my muscle reflex took over to sling the trash bag into the recycling. I looked at it in the dumpster. There was already a bunch of crap in there. I am not above climbing into the dumpster to retrieve something I have thrown in their by mistake, or immediately regretted it. But I past the point where I could do that without a step ladder of some kind. I would have to do that in the blazing sun of 114 degrees. Nope. I will have to let the trash bag stay in the recycling. Rationally I know that recycling is mostly bullshit anyway, and other people do this all the time, people being people.Nevertheless there is a desire in me to play by the rules as much as possible, whenever I can, so that if I need the grace to bend them or break them, I will be aided by cosmic fate when I do so, having not squandered it on idiocy.
Moral of the story is to have waited for the trash butler in the evening. That is their job. It is I who have the rule about the day of rest and should have obeyed it. But the truth is that I just couldn't stand the heavy trash container anymore and wanted it out of the house, but I was impatient to wait until evening. Maybe I wanted an excuse to go out in the heat and stretch my legs. That's why it takes self discipline for rules like no physical chores on the day that celebrates "the Eighth Day of Creation."
The AI lab in the engineering building where I work most days on the ASU campus was dead today. For the first couple hours, I was the only person in there. Finally someone else, a graduate student, came in around 10. I stayed for another hour before deciding to head home.
I decided on a whim to check out a place I'd found in Tempe while exploring near campus the week box. It was an eatery of some kind, called the Chuckbox, and it looked to be an ancient relic of early times set amidst the more modern 21st century architecture of Tempe, just across University Boulevard from campus. I recognized immediately it must be a landmark familiar to generations of ASU students. Given that so little of old Tempe survives--even things that would have been there in the 1990s---I resolved to visit it, and today seemed like the perfect day. Even though it was exactly in the opposite direction to where I park, I thought it would be no big deal to walk up and have an early lunch on my way home.
Campus was empty as I walked through it going north instead of south as usual. Among the few people I saw were two students on the lawn in front of Old Main, in gym workout clothes practicing a cheerleading routine. The muscular young man was throwing a blond girl with a pony tail into the air and catching her. It was picture perfect, so classically collegiate, although they looked to be broiling in the sun.
The Chuckbox was only a couple hundred yards from there, across the street from the the campus First United Methodist Church on the north side of University. I came upon the back door, out on the parking lot, which had neon signs like a beer joint, including the Cardinal mascot of the local NFL franchise. It looked like a real dive. I went around to the front and it looked exactly the back. Very weathered and classic look. I pulled open the door, and to my surprise found it very crowded. Almost all the tables were taken. There a modest line to order. One placed one's order with a young man at the start of a cafeteria style line along the back. I listened as the two girls in front of me ordered, so I could do so without being too awkward.
The ancient flattop grill was right next to where one ordered. One could see the classic mishapen patties frying there. It reminded me of a similar place in Austin near the UT campus, where students had ordered hamburgers for generations. I felt at home. I ordered the "Big One" and the suggestion of the young man I got cheese and said cheddar just to speed things along. He took the top of a hamburger bun and stuck two cellophane frill toothpicks into it of different colors which I discerned indicated the type and number of patties, as well as the type of cheese. There were already several such buns in progress.
I took out my credit card, but the guy ignored me. Then I saw that the young women who had ordered before me were standing by the grill, a little on the far side of it. I saw the sign saying "wait here for your order". So I did. It took only a few moments for the one of the guys tending the grill (there were three of them) to flip the patties onto a bun in a disposable container and place them in reach by the grill, announcing the type of burger. The young women picked up their to-go orders and headed down towards the place where you picked up the sides one ordered. I had ordered onion rings, because I have always loved onion rings since I was a kid, and this place felt comfortable that way, as it would have existed even when I was a boy.
Shortly my burger was place on a plate on a tray, as I had chosen to dine-in. Then I went down and saw my onion rings in a metal slot under heat lamps. Thankfully the order was smaller than I feared it might be---just the right size for one person for lunch and not a huge basket. I also picked up a coke from the fountain.
Then I walked up to the guy at the register, and only then do I notice the sign which says in big white letters "CASH ONLY" and explained that it helped speed up the process. It hit me that I 'd seen the cash only sign several times, even on my way in, and it hadn't registered on me!
Uh, oh, I thought. I hope I have enough. The total came to seventeen dollars and seventy-five cents. I put down my tray and dug into my wallet. I saw my folded cash in my wallet. I explained my situation to the guy at the counter, saying I had totally spaced on noticing the sign and that I hoped I had enough. He said there was a cash machine by the door.
I took it out my cash and counted it quickly. Two fives and six ones. I was almost two dollars short. I told him that, and that I would be willing to go to the cash machine and get the rest, but he just waved it off in a nonchalant way and told me make up for it next time. I offered to put the drink back, but he waved it off. I handed him what I had---sixteen bucks and left with my tray to find a seat. I was both relieved and humiliated. It seemed unlikely I would enjoy the meal.
As I ate my burger, which was as tasty as I hoped, and sitting among the people at the other tables, I reflected how for me, in such situations, it always seems to work out that I have just enough to cover the unexpected shortfall. Somehow I get granted that grace, over and over in my life. This was a strange exception, but I tried to think it was for a reason. If only I hadn't taken that fountain drink at the end! At least I would have a reason to come back, to make up the money I'd shorted them.
Then it hit me that I had seen a one dollar bill loose lately, one that I had received but had left out of my wallet, and that had even gone through the wash. I had it in my backpack at one point. So I dug into my backpack but no such luck. Then I just tried my left front pocket, and I felt cash in there. I pulled out two one dollar bills, as if it were a magic trick.
Without wasting a second, I sprung up and hurried back to the register. I handed the guy the two one dollar bills in triumph. Now I could enjoy my meal. The onion rings were great too. Just the right crunchiness.
I took these shots before entering. Notice the prominent red and white sign in the second video.
Here's one of the grill I snuck while waiting for my order.
The rains kept going all night. I was sure they would clear out, but the tropical storm that was generating all this kept churning, wherever it is in the ocean, and sending moisture up over us to fall on us. The first recorded rain in Phoenix on June 1 since 1914. That one hundred and eleven years since it rained on this date. And did it rain. By the evening, there were puddles--many of them.
In the middle of the night when I woke, as I often do, I heard the rain outside. It is a vertical rain, the water falling straight from the rooftops onto the pavement. There was little rain on the windows, as there was almost no wind. My rice paper screen stood all night long on the patio, and the books behind it were dry (I thought about this in the middle of the night and got up to check).
As I write this here, the sky is getting light and yet the rain is still falling on the pavement, like the sound of a frying skillet, popping and crackling. It is delicious. It could end at any moment and never return, and this rain will become legendary. Such are the things I savor.
On the way down to the park, I was greeted by this horrible sight. This is the second fallen saguaro I have seen along this street in the last six month, the previous one being toppled in the median a little behind where this photo was taken. My initial thought why could't it be those wretched teddy bear chollas that visible down by the yellow pedestrian walk sign, right where you're supposed to cross (but will get possibly killed if you cross there). The chollas are a public menace were planted by some sadist right where one's hand might collide with them while walking on the sidewalk. Seriously, I would vaporize those if I could and hunt down the person who had the brilliant idea to put them where people and animals walk. But this is just my sadness talking about this fallen saguaro.
As I write this is, it is raining. It is raining enough that I can hear the splashing of water dropping from the tiles roofs of the buildings of the complex, falling onto the asphalt pavement.
The skies had been grey all day since first daylight. Overnight we had gotten a dusting of water, but it was the kind that dries on your car leaving a layer of filthy residue. After breakfast I heard thunder and hoped for real rain, but it seems elusive, teasing us all day with the possiblity.
The air felt muggy as well, which made for uncomfortable feeling of suspension. An hour ago, in mid afternoon, I decided to go out walking in the park. As I crossed the street I could see to the south many dark clouds, but from their position they would not come our way. I decided to inspect my former little hiding spot, the ironwood, where it rises beside the sandy bottom. Since the development of the park, the sandy bottom no longer becomes a stream when it rains so it is losing its character over time. The pink blossoms have fallen off the ironwood by now. I used to bring my three-legged stool and sit beside it, but now I would feel on display, visible from all sides, including the nearby area that is being used for the staging of the construction on the rest of the undeveloped desert. The pieces of my old habitat remain but it has lost its character as a retreat.
I then walked around the pond to the shelter. There was not a soul in the park beside me. I sat on one of the picnic tables looking out towards the south and the dark clouds. As I sat there I got lost in my thoughts until I felt a cool rush of wind coming into my face. The temperature droppped and it no longer felt muggy. As I waited, I began to feel raindrops on my face as well. It was glorious. The sprinkling was just enough to be comfortable. I sat on the table and took a wind bath, feeling the droplets and not minding getting wet.
But I didn't really get wet, and my skin and my clothes dried as quickly as the drops landed on them. It was like a bit of perfection to feel the wind and the droplets, and to be sitting there in an empty park. I probably stayed over forty five minutes, doing nothing else than enjoying the wind and the droplets and the dark clouds.Then I walked back to the street entrance of the park, feeling my back almost getting damp from the rain.
,,, according to FOX 10 Phoenix, Phoenix is experiencing rain on June 1st, 2025, which is the first time it has rained on this date since 1914. This rare event is due to moisture from Tropical Storm Alvin.The previous time Phoenix received measurable rainfall on June 1st was on June 1st, 1914, when 0.02 inches of rain were recorded.
One key insight I've gotten from this notetaking project with quantum field theory is a confirmation of a hunch that using mulitiple textual sources is key. I have at least half a dozen top-flight monographs on QFT that I've been collecting over the years in anticipating of trying this out. Yes it does work. One key trick was to go to the preface of each book and begin reading until one hits a basic description of the subject of the book, which might include a definition of the terms, including the subject itself, e.g. "what is quantum field theory, and why do we study it?"
Having multiple such sources, one can read all of them simultaneously, at these these key sections like the preface. Somehow doing this allows one's mind to more easily build a standalone understanding of the subject in one's one mind. With ChatGPT, you have another such source, which can connect all the sources together, by asking about certain passages in these books. That's what I've found, at least.
Even if they say virtually the same thing (which they don't), just having the subtle variations of syntax from one author's expression to another forces the mind to develop an understanding that accommodates both variations. One has space of interpretation, not fixed to a particular wording. This is necessary for an understanding, when you put things in your own words eventually. For now you have to rely on someone else's but having multiple sources is like having multiple legs of a table.
