A crazy thought occurred to me: if Clinton, Obama, and Edwards can throw their egos in the trash, and instead of being adversarial in the primary, negotiate a concession and vice-presidential cabinet for one of them, they can then put their time and money to work on destroying the Republicans.

Clinton/Obama? Obama/Edwards? Clinton/Edwards? Obama/Clinton (egos in the trashbin, remember)? Any of those tickets could rocket Democratic power into the stratosphere for several elections to come, I think. Obama talks a good talk about direct negotiations with Iran, for example, and yet apparently he can't pick up the phone and ask Clinton "what do I have to give you in order to be your vice-president (because you *know* that if I'm on your ticket, we're going to be *in* the White House, no if ands or buts), and if I am you Vice President, how much real power will you give me?"

I know I'm breaking with reality here, and that this will never happen, but on the other hand, I'd like to think Clinton is a far easier bargaining partner for Obama than Iran would be?

In One City: A Declaration of Interdependance (kindof a Meditation 101, for the iPod generation), Ethan Nichtern confesses: Sometimes I have to mindfully watch myself fall into the damaging rut of a particular habit around twenty million times before I begin to not crash into it so easily. That's a potent demonstration of free will, if you ask me. Making a decision between soda A or soda B might be the working of free will, or of random chance, or of ribonucleic pre-destiny. Who knows? But if one can watch a habit that's so ingrained that one continually falls prey to it despite wanting desperately to change, and over the course of so many failiures that any reasonable empiricist would declare defeat, notice an inkling of change, well that my friend, is the power of will prevailing over habit, destiny, or hard-wiring.

There are many ways in which I fail to change myself. Reminding myself of them just might make a difference on the twenty-millionth iteration:

1. I'd rather sit at a bench as a pipette-monkey, potentially helping a lab learn something new, than be a code-jockey
2. I'd rather clean droppings out of the Baboon exhibit at the zoo (that's a reference to David Brin's Earth by the way), in the company of (and with access to) vets, wildlife biologists, conservationists, scientists, and general students and lovers of The Creation, than be a pipette-monkey.
3. Meditation is a powerful agent of both change and acceptance for me. It is demonstrably, for me, The Answer. I hardly ever practice it with the zeal that I apply to physical training like skating or martial arts though. That's bass-ackward.
4. Mind matters most.
5. connecting with others is deeply important to me. I find it easiest to connect through writing. So why the fuck am I not making my writing more important in my life than just leaving behind a trail of throw-away blog postings?
6. much more to come

After several translations, it still makes sense:

Mind proceeds all phenomena,
Mind matters most,
Everything is mind made.


If within an impure mind,
You speak or act,
Suffering follows you,
As the cartwheel follows,
The foot of the draft animal.

If with a pure mind,
You speak or act,
Then happiness follows you,
As a shadow that never departs.

- First words of Dhammapada

When I read that as a kid it sounded frightening: "follow moral authority, or karma will punish you". When I read it as a college student, it sounded simplistic: "don't drink, don't fuck, don't masturbate, or else. Or else what? Or else some force that doesn't exist will punish you using mechanisms that are physically impossible and for reasons that are psychologically suspect". I hadn't discovered meditation yet. As a meditor, it reads like "Just observe: your possibilities are far far beyond anything you can concieve, and so keep watch on your own limitations, moment to moment, welcoming them with love, till they fucking dissolve. Momentarilly. Or perhaps not at all, this time. Just Observe".