Neural Manifestations

I've always been sort of retrospective, a little obsessed with the past: mine, yours, the earth's, that dog's, this building's etc etc.  It may be unhealthy to cling to the past, but learning from it is paramount.  Everything we currently are is a compilation of everything we have been in the past.  You can consider that from an individual's perpsective:  you were a child who ate and grew and learned that fire burns and went on to develop interactions with other beings amd elements in the environment around you. Your present conciousness is a compilation of all of these experiences,  just as your biology is a compilation of all the genetic variations that preceded you, from your grandpa all the way back to the common ancestor we share with all chordates.  The information making up the present genetic "you" stretches even beyond that, back to the first chemical processing amino acids from which the metabolic processes that fuel all life on this earth were progenerated. 

This is all well and good, but it does absolutely nothing to explain what happens to me when a song or smell whisks me away to the past, and I am plunged into that part of my memory that keeps the brilliant details of the past alive.  I'm talking about when you remember something that you forgot that you forgot and it opens up like a jacobs ladder into ten fold additional memories.  How can I forget my keys, my homework, my coworkers' names and still remember the tiniest details of my first grade classroom, the sound of a long ago friend's voice or the way the light fell through the leaves? There are certain people that are so alive in my mind when my memory takes them out that they could be standing right next to me.  Except, it's them in the past - as a ten year old who continues to passively engage that ten year old layer of my brain.  Or you people who have died!  I still retain the lines of your smiles and each of your personal vocal inflections.  Even the way your bodies moved..WHY! ?

I don't think that I would beg you memories to go away.  While it sometimes alarms me, I can appreciate the preservation of detail and emotional ambience surrounding the subject....But do you have to come out at the most difficult times?  How can I watch a movie in my brain when I"m trying to navigate the highway at 80miles an hour or take a math test.  Thanks brain, for enabling me to be so haunted, after all these years.

10:40 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

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1:33 AM - 1 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment

Many Sparrows

I feel
like I
am living
someone else's life.
I am tied up in ribbons to a thousand different sparrows
All winging in a different direction.
Stretched as I am, even the wind catches me like a sail and has its say.
My anchor's rusted, buried somewhere in meadow, flowers disguising the x that marks its spot - it's broken chain yanks and snakes behind me, ringing with the clank of link on link as I tumble upward.
Towards God, I hope.

10:07 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

KNOW YOUR PLASTICS......Man’s indestructible toxic fruit
Current mood: sad

Look around you. Count the plastic.
So you got some left overs and a six pack? Normal Friday night? That polysterene (styrofoam) to-go box is being used to hold your left-over chicken wings for, what, a day? A week at the most? Two weeks if you're my dad? Then when the smell hits you, or the chicken is gone - whichever comes first - you chunk it. Released of service, duties fulfilled, the noble little container is now free to hang around or see the world...for the next _four_hundred_years_. What about that six pack of Tecate? After the two hours it takes you to slam all six of those aluminum cans, off they go to the dump / curb / wherever to wait out the next five decades. That's nothing compared to their plastic rings, which hang around eight times as long, and can become death snares for all sorts of animals. These estimated times are for plastic biodegredation in a marine environment; they last longer on land. I have read estimates as high as several thousand years in soil. Plastic breaks down, yes; but it can take hundreds of years longer than other man made materials because of the size and durability of its polymers. Some plastic polymer chains can be millions of molecules long. As they decay, their components and other chemicals (often carcinogens) that nature finds it hard to swallow are released into the surrounding areas. Many plastics act as sponges to other man made toxins, so that in areas where a variety of synthetic materials come into contact with each other {such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch} there appear these super concentrated collections of toxins. They enter the food chain and large concentrations can build up inside the system of predators: The animals eating the animals eating the animals that mistakenly eat the plastics.

This is the first installment of know your plastics.

MEET YOUR PLASTICS

Toxins, Endocrine Disruptors And Carcinogens That Migrate From The Molecules Of Different Plastic Containers To Their Contents

PET: Polyethylene Terephthalate
Used for: Soda Bottles, Water Bottles, Peanut Butter Jars, Cooking Oil Bottles
What migrates from plastic container to contents: Acetaldehyde - The chemical that causes hangovers. Side note: Not too incredibly scary - it's found naturally in coffee and ripe fruit. Resulting from the process of fermentation in bacteria / plants / yeast, Acetaldehyde that enters the body is converted into relatively harmless acetic acid.

HDPE: High-Density Polyethylene
Used for: Milk Jugs, Detergent bottles, Plastic Bags, Yogurt Cups
What migrates from plastic container to contents: Antioxidants,
BHT - Butylhydroxytoluene - This is a controversial form of antioxidant that has been banned from food production in Japan, Romania, Sweden and Australia because of its purported encouragement of some types of cancer. Interestingly enough, it also may curb the growth of different kinds of cancer cells.

Chimassorb 81 - Its ability to absorb UV light makes it useful to the industry for producing durable coating for products consumer product labels and packaging.

Irganix 1076, Irganox 1010, Irganox PS 800 - Polymers resistant to heat.

PVC: Polyvinyl Chloride
Used for: Water Bottles, Salad Dressing Bottles, Detergent Bottles, Cooking Oil Bottles, Shampoo Bottles, Mouth Wash Bottles, Meat Wrap, Also: Babies' Teething Rings, Pacifiers, Nipples and Toys (Barbie for example).

What migrates from plastic container to contents: Plasticizers (Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, Phthalates and the carcinogen, Diethyl Hexyphosphate)

LDPE: Low-Density Polyethylene
Used for: Produce Bags, Food Storage Containers

What migrates from plastic container to contents: Antioxidants, BHT, Chimassorb 81, Irganox PS 800, Irganix 1076, Irganox 1010

PP: Polypropylene
Used for: Bottle Caps, Drinking Straws

What migrates from plastic container to contents: BHT, Chimassorb 81, Irganox PS 800, Irganix 1076, Irganox 1010

PS: Polystyrene
Used for: Meat Trays, Foam Take-Out Food Containers & Cups, Foam Packing Materials

What migrates from plastic container to contents: Styrene (traces found in nearly everyone's body fat)

Other
Used for: Laminated Containers requiring properties of more than one type of resin

What migrates from plastic container to contents: Depends on plastics used. The label doesn't say.



Other Toxic Plastics:
Bisphenol A - a synthetic estrogen classified as an endocrine disruptor - causes birth defects in marine animals and one case study of Japanese women who repeatedly miscarried and were unable to have a successful birth.

Nonylphenol - Used to make PVC plastic flexible (plastic food wrap and various bags) - This is lethally toxic to marine life - an endocrine disruptor.

Deca BDE: Hair dryers, toaster, curling irons, cases for TV's, computers. Flame Retardants. These are known to hinder neurodevelopment and reproduction.

Thanks for reading.
Pass it on.


Next time:
More on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.



Information on chemicals came from:
C2p2online.com
Ecologycenter.org and
Wikipedia.com

10:16 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

two paragraphs of moping and then another installment of Places I’d Like to Go

Feeling ...off. Don't know what's gotten into me today. Like an angry little grasshopper chewed it's way into my brain and is making me act erratic, ADD, irritated and achingly restless. The cure is probably some extensive meditation under a waterfall in the rock islands of the Republic of Palau. That sounds great, but let's get real. I'm an American, living in Lewisville, Texas. It's like the dandruff of Dallas, and gas is pretty much at four a gallon. I"m not going anywhere. Closest thing I"m going to get to a real waterfall in this place besides sludge in the crap creek going down a hill, would be my shower. Sooo, I'll probably just seek the usual temporary ailment of alcohol and maybe music later this evening.



I still have a lot to unpack, I've gotten close to nothing done today, and that just makes me feel useless, which lately has been my default setting. I need to reach back there and tweak the dial up to "Productive," but I think it's located in that place on your back you can never seem to get to when you have an itch...


Anyway, as aforementioned - The Rock Islands of the Republic of Palau, the newest installment in The Places I'd Like to Visit Series:


"http://farm1.static.flickr.com/37/79786054_d329d0a958.jpg?v=0"















Anyway, I think you get the idea.
other pictures that I want to post are not getting posted because of some strange glitch with myspace, so I will just let it be with these three. Google/ you tube / flickr for more.







just feel that cool breeze slide across your face.......

3:45 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

ABDUCTED

So I never write poems anymore, aren’t you guys lucky.

Well, here’s something to add to your summer to do list:

http://www.stopabductions.com/

9:41 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Rain

Living stones crowd the sky, knocking into eachother, brawning their tawny gray feet against the expanse of land.

Rumbling....

Trembling themselves to pieces and succumbing to earth's pull, melting in ecstacy as they fall....fall....fall.

11:28 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

More Places I Want to Go....
Current mood: restless

The Tower on the Tor, Glastonbury England. 

..

..

The remains of St. Michaels Tower on the Tor, Glastonbury England.

Can't wait to go.

7:55 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Places I want to go

Salar De Uyuni Salt Flats in Bolivia

2:01 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

New Life Stats Blawggen-hiemen

Status update:

Single.    

Denton, Texas.

Kickin' apartmentational facility.

Philosophy class with Proffessor Ass Face.  

Still Ameristar.  Mmh.

Good, good, goood friends.  Thanks.

New vibes.  Cool.

For an exposition of any / all of the above points or others unmentioned, please stop reading and call me.

5:51 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment