A Day in the Life of Chaos

  One of my favorite films is a forgotten movie called Sneakers with Robert Redford and Ben Kingsley.  It is a bit of a guilty pleasure but Kingsley plays a man bent on changing the world so that all government secrets are revealed.  He planned to accomplish his devious act utilizing a piece of hardware Kingsley developed through his company Setec Astronomy which is an anagram for "too many secrets."  The plan was amazingly prescient considering the notorious Julius Assange of Wikileaks who has been obtaining classified government documents and leaking them to the press and general public.  It seems like with computers dominating our lives almost nothing is private anymore.  We lay a digital trail everywhere we go.  For myself I have just come to grips with the fact that I will never run for Congress.  On second thought knowing what I do about many of those in Congress perhaps I should. The other day while dining on Mexican food I lent my son my cellular telepho

Malgosia... A long lost friend returns I have spent a lot of time and effort in my life looking for traces of my past lost in the fog of passing years.  I don't know why I do it, most people are just content to let it go.  Still, I suppose my personal philosophy that we are the compendium of our experiences has had something to do with it.  I think that every challenge, sadness and joy that life has thrown at us makes us who we are as a person.  I think in some ways I am constantly undergoing a state of personal re-evaluation as I look back and trace the scattered lines of my mind in an attempt to find sense and consistency that likely doesn't exist.  While this may be true, it doesn't stop me from trying. I think I also harbor the hope that in some ways those that have been formative or developmental in some way have felt the same about me.  That the feeling was mutual.  Sometimes I have peered behind the curtain of the past simply to say goodbye in a way I never di

Over the holidays as my father and I worked diligently to rewire a number of things in my son's 1973 Karmann Ghia and during the process I became intimately acquainted with the most disturbing example of wiring I have yet to witness.  Wires that go nowhere and some that vanish into hollow cavities like snakes disappearing into the black of night left me with nightmares of smoke and acrid burnt electrical smell.  Fuses popped with disturbing regularity as I followed each wire like a prospector seeking a vein of gold.  Somewhere within the tangled jumble of dubious connections and occasional curse words I started to assume a philosophical approach and wonder if in fact the tangled mess before me was in reality a metaphor for life. I love the metaphor.  It is an art most cultures of the world understand but in our own it is sorely misunderstood and sadly underutilized.  I think I came to appreciate the metaphor the most when I was a college student and engaged in the study of Easte

As a modern Renaissance man I like to equate my life to the Renaissance.   My forties are not just growing older, they are a re-awakening.  An attempt to accomplish things I failed at earlier in life.  This can include languages like Spanish, French and German.  A certifiable attempt to discover artistic ability of which I have little.  Yet each of these is intellectually cerebral.  I also count among my failings mechanical ability.  Mechanical ability is much more than just dirty hands, it is the ability to problem solve. The other day my son watched me repair something and he told me he was afraid.  "Why are you afraid?"  I asked.  I half expected him to recount some occurrence involving a bully or a deeply introspective fear. "How will I know how to do these things?"  He asked, perplexed. I smiled and explained that as we grow into life we have two options.  The first is to pay people to do things for us.  That reality will either leave us bankrupt or at

There are times when I can remember being a child.  I close my eyes and a vivid vision comes to play dancing across the neurotransmitters that record the memories of life.  It can be in the form of a sense, a smell or a touch.  They are good visions, not sad ones.  Recollections of moments of happiness.  The kinds of memories that I dare not contemplate before I sleep because if I do, sleep will never find me. As Christmas rolls around once again I remember the days as if they were yesterday.  My father is unquestionably one of the most talented people I have ever known.  Christmas always seemed like an opportunity for him to put his talents to the test.  There were nights when I would lay in bed waiting for sleep to take me on Christmas Eve and I would hear strange sounds in the house.  I wasn't allowed to investigate so my mind and imagination would just capture my sensibilities. I can remember one Christmas so vividly.  I must have been six, seven or maybe eight years

When I was in college trying to graduate on time I had a problem.  Somehow in four years of study I had managed to amass credit hours from four different institutions all in the pursuit of a Bachelors of Arts degree in History and Political Science.  Anyone who has submitted transcripts to an admissions office knows what an arduous task it is to gain credit acceptance for the most esoteric subjects that just don't seem to fit in a different curriculum.  When the vast collection of transcripts mailed from distant colleges arrive on the admission's officer desk, they sit like Caesar in a gladiator arena and judge everything you have done.  One by one they give thumbs up or thumbs down to the hours of course work you have dedicated a large portion of your life to and enormous sums of money. In my case I was fortunate to attend an expensive private university that while leaving me with mountains of debt proved to be quite accommodating.  My accumulated transcripts from Anchora