I Will Love You

 I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. 

I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. 

I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. 

I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in a blurring, boring chalk. 

I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. 

I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. 

I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. 

I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. 

I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. 

I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. 

I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. 

I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. 

I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. 

I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. 

I will love you as the pesto loves the fetuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. 

I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. 

I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. 

I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. 

I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. 

I will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. 

I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. 

I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. 

I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of the people who talk too much. 

I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl.

I will love you as a taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock. 

I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. 

I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. 

I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. 

I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it. 

I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear daggerproof tunics, and as a daggerproof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home. 

I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. 

I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. 

I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. 

I will love you until every fire is extinguished and until every home is rebuilt form the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. 

I will love you until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. 

I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. 

I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. 

I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively. 

I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from skim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. 

I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. 

I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and no matter how I am discovered after what happens to me happens to me as I am discovering this. 

I will love you if you don’t marry me. 

I will love you if you marry someone else – your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry – and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. 

That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.

~Lemony Snicket

https://gatheringbooks.org/2011/02/14/a-loveletter-to-end-all-loveletters-lemony-snickets-the-beatrice-letters/

Lemony Snicket is the "writer" of the "A Series of Unfortunate Events" books.

Spinoza

 Baruch de Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher considered one of the great rationalists of 17th century philosophy, along with Descartes.

(Spinoza) : God would say:

Stop praying.

What I want you to do is go out into the world and enjoy your life. I want you to sing, have fun and enjoy everything I've made for you.

Stop going into those dark, cold temples that you built yourself and saying they are my house. My house is in the mountains, in the woods, rivers, lakes, beaches. That's where I live and there I express my love for you.

Stop blaming me for your miserable life; I never told you there was anything wrong with you or that you were a sinner, or that your sexuality was a bad thing. Sex is a gift I have given you and with which you can express your love, your ecstasy, your joy. So don't blame me for everything they made you believe.

Stop reading alleged sacred scriptures that have nothing to do with me. If you can't read me in a sunrise, in a landscape, in the look of your friends, in your son's eyes... ➤ you will find me in no book!

Stop asking me "will you tell me how to do my job?" Stop being so scared of me. I do not judge you or criticize you, nor get angry, or bothered. I am pure love.

Stop asking for forgiveness, there's nothing to forgive. If I made you... I filled you with passions, limitations, pleasures, feelings, needs, inconsistencies... free will. How can I blame you if you respond to something I put in you? How can I punish you for being the way you are, if I'm the one who made you? Do you think I could create a place to burn all my children who behave badly for the rest of eternity? What kind of god would do that?

Respect your peers and don't do what you don't want for yourself. All I ask is that you pay attention in your life, that alertness is your guide.

My beloved, this life is not a test, not a step on the way, not a rehearsal, nor a prelude to paradise. This life is the only thing here and now and it is all you need.

I have set you absolutely free, no prizes or punishments, no sins or virtues, no one carries a marker, no one keeps a record.

You are absolutely free to create in your life. Heaven or hell.

I can't tell you if there's anything after this life but I can give you a tip. Live as if there is not. As if this is your only chance to enjoy, to love, to exist.

So, if there's nothing after, then you will have enjoyed the opportunity I gave you. And if there is, rest assured that I won't ask if you behaved right or wrong, I'll ask. Did you like it? Did you have fun? What did you enjoy the most? What did you learn?...

Stop believing in me; believing is assuming, guessing, imagining. I don't want you to believe in me, I want you to believe in you. I want you to feel me in you when you kiss your beloved, when you tuck in your little girl, when you caress your dog, when you bathe in the sea.

Stop praising me, what kind of egomaniac God do you think I am?

I'm bored being praised. I'm tired of being thanked. Feeling grateful? Prove it by taking care of yourself, your health, your relationships, the world. Express your joy! That's the way to praise me.

Stop complicating things and repeating as a parakeet what you've been taught about me.

What do you need more miracles for? So many explanations?

The only thing for sure is that you are here, that you are alive, that this world is full of wonders.

- Spinoza

Stupid Cable

So Friday morning, I noticed that my console into Amazon was slow. I did a couple of speed tests and found my upload speed was horrible, somewhere around 10kbps. Almost unusable.

Called the cable company, after 20m and talking with the agent. Hangup. Great. Have to start over with someone new. 

Decided to try the "chat" feature. Couldn't make it work. Tried it in Microsoft's Edge browser instead of Chrome. Worked awesome. Worked with an agent for some more time. Eventually, I'm standing in the corner where the cable modem is, he wants me to reboot everything, including my computer. OK, but I'll lose the chat. He makes me reboot anyway.

So after everything restarts, chat is now off for the day. I have to call again.

Get a hold of an agent. Same song and dance. I get annoyed and don't want to do that. He remotely reboots modem. Says speed from his end is fine. I ask what kind of test he's running because depending on the path, you can get a false success. He doesn't understand, I've gone off script.

Finally set up an appointment for a tech. I want to make sure I cancel because when someone else complains or some other test is run, a piece of their equipment will reboot and everything will be fine. "That isn't what happens." Yeah, sure. I work in IT. I know how it works.

Decide to check up on my modem. It reached End of Life two years ago. It is probably still fine, but if that is the case, the cable company will still blame it. Get Ellie to order me a new one. *cough* expensive. (My kids have prime. I don't.)

We suffer with crappy internet all weekend. My kids, used to gaming, are all kinds of ticked off.

Sunday morning. 9am. Internet is gone. Not just slow. Gone. Great. New modem is scheduled to arrive at 11am. Amazing. 

10:45. Internet is back on. Full speed. F'ing thing happened just like I expected. They rebooted their equipment and it is fine now.

11am. New modem arrives. Now have a debate on if I need this expensive modem just so I can stay where I'm at. Tracy convinces me to replace our old modem.

9am Monday, replace the modem.

Technology sucks. Especially when you understand it.

Also, next time they try to convince you that a rented modem is better than your own, they lie. They control the entire thing and it is their protocol. They do all the updates and configuration.

A Weird Way I Learn

 I watch train videos. I mean, like cameras set up in the cab of trains and record the train's going down the track. I really have no reason to do such a thing but I do see some interesting things. I think it calms me in a way. I mean, in my cube at work I had three monitors and one of them was running a train video off Youtube, unless I needed it for coding purposes. I would get the random person walk by and notice it and ask me what it was. (Hmmm, maybe I used it for a conversation starter too.) Back in 2019, I was riding the rails across Russia, doing the whole Trans-Siberian Railroad. Dang, I learned a lot from that. Anyway, this is another story.

So lately, I've been riding the railroad in Southern France. I don't know why that struck me as interesting but there I was, noticing what that part of that country was like. It was gorgeous. So anyway, I'm tooling around and if I see anything interesting, I go to maps and see if I can find it. In the early part of the video of this particular train ride, I noticed water along the side of the tracks. I figured it was a canal of some sort, as I've done plenty of bike rides along canals here in Illinois. I didn't think too much of it. It didn't even spike interest for me to look it up on the map or even the history. 

BTW, later in that train ride it goes on the high-speed rail section to Paris. 320 kph! That is impressive. I also looked up the TVG network and how they connect to cities, as at that speed, you don't go through city centers. Dang impressive what they did there.

Anyway, along comes a couple videos from The Tim Traveler. I love this guy. ,He seeks out strange little facts about places and I enjoy his work. This time, he talked about a canal, in Southern France. Hey, I've seen one of those. This was about a canal that had a large number of locks in an area and a guy wanting to see if he could make that an easier transition. 

Here it is on Google Maps.

While it took me a bit to understand what this was, I was also fascinated that the canal that I saw in the train video was part of a system that connected the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. Fascinating, I didn't know anything like that existed. I don't think it is in use now, but wow, 

A little while later, he posted another one of these beasts.

Here that one is on Google Maps.

I think it is kind of ingenious. Making a moving canal to take boats up a slope. And the second video explains it better. 

I learned a lot about France by paying attention to some online people and checking things out on a map. I don't think I'll ever get there in my lifetime, but I do feel smarter by watching these things.

Some more weirdness:

The Great and Spacious Building

"Let go of what you know and honor what exists." 
--David Bazan

In the religion of my youth-middle age, there's a parable, story, or tale about a vision that involves a large building. In it are people that are mocking those that have chosen a particular path in life. In this case, it is laughing at those that chose to follow Jesus.

26 And I also cast my eyes round about, and beheld, on the other side of the river of water, a great and spacious building; and it stood as it were in the air, high above the earth.

27 And it was filled with people, both old and young, both male and female; and their manner of dress was exceedingly fine; and they were in the attitude of mocking and pointing their fingers towards those who had come at and were partaking of the fruit.

28 And after they had tasted of the fruit they were ashamed, because of those that were scoffing at them; and they fell away into forbidden paths and were lost.

 I mention this because I found that these verses had exerted a good deal of control over my search for, if I can call it this, reality. I didn't want to feel shame over my beliefs or how I had chosen to live my life. But here's the rub. I learn by reading, asking questions and being convinced of particular stances. One of the greatest thing people can do is ask, "Why?" I had come to the point of asking "Why?", not only of those that were educating me on my chosen beliefs, but also to swim across that river of water and ask of those in the building, "Why?"

I think a lot can be learned by questioning your own beliefs. You can also ask those you know, love and respect in other things, why they hold different views about life, love, family, etc. I asked those that were knowledgeable in diverse things, "Why are you laughing at those over there, eating?". I asked that metaphorically, of course. They had their reasons. They also asked me to test things out. Their attitude wasn't of mocking. Most had been there and had struggled with the same things I did. Now, maybe their paths were different but they also were once believers. At some point, they just couldn't anymore. They wanted something that was real, concrete, consistent.

I just mention this because, while the imagery is good, the premise is flawed. There are some things that people believe that are ridiculous. Christians can ridicule Hindus. Muslims can ridicule Christians. Lutherans of the Right-side Synod ridicule Lutherans of the Left-side Synod. We all spend our time in the Great and Spacious Building. 

I want to honor, for the current time, that which is real. I want evidence and proof and something I can grasp with mind and body. For now, that is what my brain needs. I lived with faith for many decades. I just grew tired and needed firm ground beneath me. I have no need to mock. While from this perch, I might not fully understand what took me so long to get here, but I'm here now. No reason to point at others and laugh. I appreciate and respect most people on this planet, but beliefs are open for discussion.

It is a good thing to ask, "Why?"