The only thing I know for sure is that all the philosophers were wrong. Death is not pleasant nor something to not be feared, death is cold. Dante was right by setting the 9th circle of hell in ice because torment is not burning eternally it is being gnawed by frost’s relentless bite.

The slow thawing was when I regained conciousness. Not some half-assed pediatric conciousness but Jungian conciousness, acute awareness and wisdom. The reverberations of life permeated my body as waves of sensation crawled across my frame. It was like being stabbed over every inch of my body.

As I began my slow journey outward I began to sense more and more. My eyes adjusted to light as if they had been hibernating and needed to relearn how to see. My body began to shiver from the cold as my feeling bagan to return. Torents of sound richotcheted around my brain like bullets colliding isnide of my skull.

It took a few minutes to relize I was not alone. I truly think that for a few minutes I beleived I was the only man alive, blissful minutes. The men who stood around me were tall, but I had no great claim to perception of height because when I looked across the room I saw a drinking glass stand seven feet tall.

“His irises are uneven and they keep unfocusing,” one of the doctors said. But to my untrained ears it sounded like a hoard of racoons clawing through trash,

My sight remained tinged for a few minutes but soon my senses began to dull. The heightened state of conciousness, however, did not leave me.

It was days before I could remember why I had gone into the cryochamber. Peices of the complex puzzle of life formed in my mind and slowly conected. The yound boy who would one day become Adolf Hitler. My mother who carried me a few years to early so that I would have to serve in one of the biggest blood bathes known to man. The mother of a future German soldier who would throw a hand grenade near me in such a precise location that only a few shards hit my frontal lobe leaving me wounded but not dead. The years of trying to find expieremental surgeries to remove the shards and finally my retreat to the cryochamber.

If even one of those peices had been altered slightly, it would have changed my future and subsiquently made a blemish in the overall history of mankind.

I was under constant surveilance, as if I were in the Soviet Union and not the United States of America, in the facility.

I was given a small room, which resembled a hotel with plad curtains and a TV. The TV I was given was like I remmebered: small, boxy and black and white. They told me a lot had changed but if the TV were a symbol for how much things have changed then not much seemed to have shifted. This beleif was soon destroyed as I eyed the mini fridge (that is what I was told it was called.) The shelves were decked with food that I did not recognize.

As I was inspecting my room for clues of what the future meant for me, a doctor entered my room.

“I assume that knocking is a foreign concept in 2019,” I said sarcastically to the doctor. His only response was a shameless chuckle which infuriated me.

“I do apologize for that, but I am very eager to be talking to you. There are only a handful of people who have been frozen for as long as you have and survived.”

“Please get to the point of why you are here I wish to sleep,” I said with a hint of distaste.

“Yes of course. We have given you scheduled times that you may leave with an assistant so that you may begin to familiarze yourself with the world,” the doctor said.

“If this TV is any indication of what this world has become then I will not have to familiarize myself with much,” I responded.

“Oh. That is not what televisions look like now. We have tried to decorate your room in a manner which fit your time period. Televisions are very large now.” My superiority wavered at this. Up until this point I hadn’t thought much about the advancments of human technology because I had beleived it hadn’t advanced too much.

“Well I guess we will see how I can handle it,” I say incredulously, “Now please leave.”

The doctor swiftly got up and drifted out the door.

The first thing I noticed, when I left the facility, was that cars had advanced so that they looked like sharp wasps instead of fluid worms. They moved faster and vibrant colors splashed across each one. Even the dull greys and browns were glossy and colorful.

The second thing I noticed, as we drove into the suburbs of New Jeresey, was the ammount of people. I was told that we were still leagues away from any actual city, but swarms of people choked the streets. They were all different colors, mixing together like choclate powder in milk. Like ants, they all flowed from there dwellings and recreation centers clogging the world.

We eneded at a park in New Jeresy outside of all city limits. The grass had seemed to dull in the years since I had seen it. The clouds were darker as if they had been pumped with gasoline (I later figured out that was the case).

I envisioned my world, my life in the fold of this gargantuan monster of planet. I was enveloped in the claustrophobic feelings which were created from the sheer ammount of people I had seen.

The park itself seemed so uncomfortably unsanitary that I retreated back to the car. The trees were the only thing which hadn’t changed all too much. They stood like sentinals of time unhindered by its flow.

It reminded of a story I had been told when I was young. It went a little like this, “One day a strong storm swept across a forrest leveling many trees. As one of the trees fell, it landed next to a little fern which had not fallen. The tree, while laying there, asked the fern ‘how is it that I have fallen and you have not?’ The fern responded, ’Dear friend, the wind is proud, for this reason we ferns bow to it whereas you trees stand steadfast. You would not have fallen if you had shown humility.”

I found myself seeing the planet in the same way. The advancments made by human kind were just the steadfast stubborness of the tree and one day soon, I am convicned, we will follow that fate.

Motivation is something many people lack. Writers are no different.

We all get that self doubt that demotivates us. We ask ourselves: What if no one likes it? What if I have no readers? What if it never gets published? What if... What if... What if...

But... What if someone loves it? What if you have one reader? What if you publish it?

Are you going to give up on writing just because someone has two readers and you only have one? No! You're excited about that one measley reader! And that one reader makes all the difference. That one reader can share your work with their friend who ends up liking it. And then they share your work and boom! You have 3! And those 3 share your writing. And soon you have 6. Those 6 share your writing and now you have 12. Then 24. The 48. Then whatever 48*2 is.

That's how every author starts out.

You'll get bad reviews too... That's okay.

Did you know Charles Dickens cried face down in the dirt after a bad review. He was an author. He has several books that are classics. So go cry over the bad review and then rise, standing taller than ever before.

Your pen is your weapon and you are to wield it. And when someone says you shouldn't, put them in your book and kill them off however you see fit.

You are your own worst critique.

If that doesn't motivate you, look at Stephanie Meyer. She published Twilight so confidently and even said "The God of writing has sent me to show people how to write." Twilight exploded! So many people flocked to it and it was huge! And yet, so many people hated it too. Even I, hated it. I still do but I respect Stephanie Meyer for her confidence in it and for her success. She still writes after that. For example, she has a book called The Host. I began reading it but I never finished it.

If she can write a whole series so confidently and get so much love and hate for it, you can write period.

You got this. You got this. You got this. You got this.

I’ve seen Delhi, London, Sussex,

Been to Monte Cristo, Wessex,

I have seen the places of our time.

Cape Town was a great adventure,

I had fun in Fez and Denver,

And, of course, I’ll also say that Paris was sublime.

But of all these pretty places

There is not one that compares

To the love which I am always thinking of.

It always makes me blue, when I am away from you, so

From Timbuktu to Kathmandu,

I only long for you.

Russia just will always thrill ya’

See, from Moscow and to Vilna.

Lutzen and Nordlingen simply

Always have me singin.’

Odessa, well that’s just a mess a’

Space and place

Just like Dominga.

Though, I must admit, they’re very fine.

Cincinnati’s a malady,

Had fun in West Minster Abbey.

I walked throughout Harlem just like

I did in Jerusalem.

Ypres, Verdun, and old Bavaria

Are cold and bright and still great areas.

Los Angels may be pretty,

And it’s still a sprawling city.

But of all these pretty places

There is not one that compares

To the love which I am always thinking of.

It always makes me blue, when I am away from you, so

From Timbuktu to Kathmandu,

I only long for you.

I cannot describe Lake Eerie,

It was just too drab and dreary.

Sicily went swiftly from my mind.

Even then from Palermo and to Rio de Janeiro

Never have I felt so very fine.

Lima makes we wanna’ scream-a.’

Venice is a wondrous presence.

Dublin, is a picture to my eye.

I was not bored in Alatay,

In Dubai I would gladly stay,

Smiled wide at Asuncion,

The capital of Paraguay.

Hasankeyf and then Cambrai:

Places to have a splendid day.

Navarre was so very far,

And Rome just feels like home.

But of all these pretty places

There is not one that compares

To the love which I am always thinking of.

It always makes me blue, when I am away from you, so

From Timbuktu to Kathmandu,

I only long for you.

Madrid’s air brings anyone forth.

Who can claim they’ve crossed Khartoum North?

Laughter is so ever still

In the Republic’s Brazzaville.

I once went from Bohemia

Way down into the Crimea;

I couldn’t tell you how I laughed in Prague!

And from Niamey to Saxony

There’s an air of splendor on me.

I always wish for more

Time in Bangkok and Singapore.

And I’ve always found old Warsaw so pretty.

Tokyo makes you say “oh,

Just what a place to be,” and

The city of New York just feels so free!

But of all these pretty places

There is not one that compares

To the love which I am always thinking of.

It always makes me blue, when I am away from you, so

From Timbuktu to Kathmandu,

I only long for you.

Mumbai is a far cry,

Let me tell you, from Jaipur,

But both are places

Just so neat and pure.

I’d really like to live in Hue,

And Pailin’s nice, I’m telling you,

And let us never forget good old

Hanover.

Swingin’ into Berlin

Sure beats walking into Llorin,

Yet to Marrakesh they don’t even compare.

The Vatican has much history,

Yet I still prefer Kansas City,

And, of course,

My fond regards to

Tangier.

But of all these pretty places

There is not one that compares

To the love which I am always thinking of.

It always makes me blue, when I am away from you, so

From Timbuktu to Kathmandu,

I only long for you.

From the costal sites of Bombay,

To the deserts of Mojave,

I will happily tip my hat.

Though it’s often cold in Espoo,

It’s a pretty city, mind you.

Vilnius is stupendous.

Bruges is rather huge.

The heights are dizzying at Machu Picchu.

Santiago, Chile,

When I visit, makes me silly.

And I always want to party in Lombardy.

Everything seems jovial

When strolling through old Istanbul.

And the seas’s winds over Gwadar are so fine.

Fairfax is a pretty place, Niagara is a tourist place,

And Toronto is just across the line.

But of all these pretty places

There is not one that compares

To the love which I am always thinking of.

It always makes me blue, when I am away from you, so

From Timbuktu to Kathmandu,

I only long for you.

Yes, from Timbuktu to Kathmandu,

I only long for you!

#song

#music

#poetry

#geography

My parents worked (and still do) with many different businesses and corporations to better-improve the interaction between staff and faculty, employees and employers, workers and technology…That sort of stuff. That was how they became aquatinted with an individual who worked at the zoo local to our state.

As an act of kindness, this individual allowed us the opportunity to enter the penguin enclosure one day. Of course, I was probably six or seven at the time, so I had no idea what was going on when some random man walked up to my family and led us through a series of backrooms near the enclosure.

I followed the rest of my family ignorantly and curiously, thinking it quite neat that I was finally seeing the undecorated concrete hallways behind the doors with the “EMPLOYEES ONLY” signs on them. I felt like I was some sort of VIP, that I got to go back through those musty and dirty hallways. We passed through a series of doorways, and, at two points, the loose plastic drapes that hang from the ceiling to keep the warm air of the outside hallways from seeping into the enclosure. I was already having the time of my life back there, so, needless to say, I was surprised when the man led us through another door and there were penguins inside!

Me and my family piled into the enclosure (which was rather interesting, and while the enclosure was quite big, much of it was nothing but cold water). In that moment, as I stood on the floor of the enclosure that was designed to look like ice, I was overcome with a slight sense of terror at being so close to at least a dozen or more penguins.

The penguins, of course, were not expecting so many “invaders,” and began to waddle contently away. As the man who had led us in there began trying to usher some of the penguins toward us, I found greater interest at looking out through the glass at the people on the outside of the enclosure. Seeing all those people clustered around the glass, looking inside at us, made me feel all the more important.

My air of superiority faded, however, when the man finally managed to get behind one of the penguins and by doing so ushered it slightly in our direction. Well, now I was beginning to panic. I can recall grabbing my mother’s legs for protection (I know that penguins are fairly small, but back then, I was no taller than them, really).

What didn’t help my nervousness was the man explaining that the penguin closest to us, and another one a few feet away from it, were recent “mates.” The female, he said, grew mildly hostile when the zookeepers got too close to the male. Unfortunately for us, the male was actually quite content with humans, and when he began to waddle toward the man, the female nipped at him with her beak. So there went any chance of me going near those things.

While I was hugging my mother’s legs in fear, my younger brother clumsily walked up to the male penguin and poked it gently in the side. The female nipped at him, and he retreated to our parents as well (but at least he was brave enough, or ignorant enough, to touch it. I say this because all creatures seemed dangerous to us as little kids).

Before we left the enclosure, my parents tried to convince me to pet a penguin, at least once. They said that I would regret it if I did not, but I was firmly content on not getting near those things - I did not need to lose any fingers.

So here I am today, still wishing that I had pet that penguin. I’ve casually walked within only a few dozen meters of black-bears in the wilderness, will happily pick up a snake or jellyfish, and have been less than a foot away from an alligator (I nearly fell into the water next to it, as well. That would have been unfortunate). Yet, for some reason, I simply was not able to brave myself up against a penguin…It’s probably a good thing that that’s one of my greatest regrets from childhood.

Color does not exist outside the brain. That much we know. This is because electrons, which are colorless and are much of the composition of atoms, reflect light at different frequencies (based on the number of electrons present in an element or material), and these wavelengths of light can be interpreted by the mind (this is also how spectroscopy is possible: the science of looking at a planetary body with a special telescope and decoding its elemental composition). The brain, then, identifies specific wavelengths by attributing to them a specific color, and these colors vary by specimen (this is why humans cannot see much of the color spectrum compared to some animals, and yet we can see vast amounts of it compared to other animals). In short, scientifically speaking, in reality, all objects are shades of grey, and color is a fabrication of our minds based on the wavelengths of light we interpret (you probably have figured out by now that I find sensory psychology quite interesting).

Now, I can already see the arguments forming against me, so I'll say this: wavelengths in light beams are recorded by photoreceptors in our eyes, which then take the form of nueral impulses and are transducted so that these wavelengths can be interpreted by the brain. The neural impulses we precieve as "light." That is why color does not exist in the real, physical world, and we instead create color in our minds.

So we have established that color, according to science, does not exist in reality (thus why colorblindness exists). But we still perceive color, and that is because our brains, and the brains of nearly every organism with a brain, uses color to identify objects. This raises the question: do all people and life forms see color the same way, or do we differ on what we perceive as color? Of course, humans can see a much wider range of colors than felines or dogs, and similar differences in perceptions of the color spectrum are apparent throughout the animal kingdom. What I am asking is: is red to one person the same as red to another person, or to a dog?

If you are confused thus far, just bear with me - I will explain it all as best I can. Essentially, scientists still argue over whether what one individual sees and what another individual sees they both perceive as being the same color. For instance, what I see as red, you may see as blue, but both of us call it “red,” because that is the way we were taught. Unfortunately, there is still no way to know if we see color the same, because the names we have been attributing to colors cannot be compared with anyone else’s perception of color (as that would involve literally looking at the world through someone else’s eyes).

Imagine that you are looking at a painting: green hills, blue sky, white clouds…But I may see a totally different scene. Perhaps the hills, though both you and me call them “green,” look like how you see blue through my eyes. Or perhaps the clouds would look like purple through my eyes, if you could only see the painting through my vision and with my brian. I am so fascinated by this prospect, and I do hope to be alive when we finally uncover the answer.

Of course, some perceptions we can immediately categorize as different, so to speak. For instance, those who have been blind since birth (as in, those who have never seen even a tiny tinge of color) will not see color at all. They will not see black or darkness, as there would be no color they have ever perceived to compare it with. They will see nothing at all. If this is hard to imagine, I did hear these helpful little analogies: close one eye, and focus on something with the other eye. You do not see the darkness in the closed eye when you do this. Another one states: “if you want to know what a completely blind person sees, how much can you see with your elbow?”

Then there is the topic of darkness. Color cannot be perceived in darkness (or, at least it is much harder to perceive), because of the composition of the photoreceptors of our eyes. Our eyes contain rods (which are sensitive to dim light but not color) and cones (which are sensitive to color but not dim light). In darkness, we have a tremendously difficult time perceiving color because our eyes utilize the rods, which cannot detect color. Therefore, there is a difference in color perception in dark versus in well-illuminated environments, when light exists that can reflect off of objects.

Now, back to the original question: do we see color in the same way? To tell you the truth, I have often shifted my opinions on this. My initial opinion was: “no, what evidence is there to support that?” A world in which green hills are red hills and blue skies are yellow skies would look terrifying to anyone…Except to those who already see what one person sees as “green” red and what one person sees as “blue” yellow. It would look chaotic and surreal to someone else, but completely normal to the person who has been living with it for their whole life. In this sense, the sky is still “blue,” but what I call blue, you may see as orange, and what you call blue, I may see as purple (pretty neat, isn’t it?).

Of course, there are some color combinations that we are (theoretically) unable to perceive. This is known as the “Opponent Processing Theory,” or the theory that there are some color combinations that one will never see. For example, can you think of something that is reddish-green, or yellowish-blue? I can’t. According to this theory, these colors will never exist blended together in a way that we can discern both of them at the same time. So how does this contribute to our question? It means that, perhaps, there may be a chance that we interpret colors in a similar manner (but not necessarily the same way). This is, of course, largely theoretical.

After my “we do not see color the same way” phase had passed, I moved on to the exact opposite one: “color,” I stated, “must be discerned in a universal context.” My reasoning was this: if we see color differently, then why would animals of a particular species camouflage themselves? For truly, it would seem that a polar bear with white fur could hide well in the icy white polar regions, but if that polar bear was orange to someone else, then there would be contrast, and the camouflage would not be beneficial.

I was in this phase for but a short time, because I soon realized that even if one person saw the polar bear as orange, it would still be well camouflaged, as the snowy background would also be orange to them. (Yet, the color would still be called “white” unversally)! So, it would appear that there are no inconsistencies to either side of this argument. Both possibilities - those of everyone and everything that can perceive color seeing it the same way versus seeing it differently - are equally valid, because there is no evidence in support or against either side (so far).

Once again, I am completely neutral on this topic. I find this so fascinating. We do know, at least: color does not really exist, completely blind people do not see any form of color (even darkness), and I tend to write about subjects that are probably not important to the world for way too long. But for now, I do not know if what we call “orange” I see as green, and you see as pink. But regardless, we both call it “orange.”

#nonfiction

#philosophy

#science

#psychology

#streamofthought

#biology