World of Magic - Exploration #32

With me I have a seashell that is hot to the touch, it has been blessed by a dragon. I'm assuming the dragon must have had a huge thing for seashells in order to have taken the time to bless seashell. It is hot to the point where it takes two oven mitts over my right hand to be able to touch the shell.

I'm not quite sure how it made its venture away from the dragon's hoard, but I don't think it's very hard to return it to the dragon. I once made the mistake of touching it with my bare hand and a strange logo materialized from where my skin cells had incinerated. The image was only there for a brief moment, which is why I don't have a picture to show you, but from the glimpse I got it looked like two snakes winding around each other and a small image of a hawk's silhouette placed just between the snakes' mouths.
The shell is definitely interesting. It holds fire abilities even though a seashell is traditionally viewed as a symbol of water. Speaking of water, how did it even make its way to South Dakota? Was the dragon traveling and taking as much of its horde with it as it could possibly carry and then this one happened to fall out?

Exploration #32

I hold in my hand a blank sheet of printer paper. 

I look and I see an ocean of images that rush past the microscope that is the blank paper. As cliche as it may be, a blank page is an imaginary canvas that inspires some people to create brilliant works of art. I see a distance shot of Edmond Dantes standing alone on the isle of Monte Cristo. I see a modernized and characterized Poseidon with a blue over jacket and captains hat. And so much more is possible with a single sheet of paper and utensil. The paper, in a way, brings to life the mental picture that floats in the mind.  

To Look or Not to Look?

The Question

What would happen if all of sudden you could see right through the facade of everyone and everything? Would you feel empathy and relate to some of what you saw? Would you shun other aspects of humanity less agreeable to your own perspective? What if at the same time that you saw through everyone and everything, they saw right back through you? Everyone would be naked (metaphorically speaking) and humanity would have to let it all hangout. If we lived in a world where secrets could not exists, would we all have to be 100% accountable for our actions? Would morality have a new compass and would liberty have a new meaning?

Early Transparency Model

In Peter Singer's Visible Man: Ethics in a World without Secrets, readers are introduced to the idea of the Panopticon as defined by Jeremy Bentham. The Panopticon being a large circular room ringed with smaller cellular rooms and having an elevated pedestal in the middle of it from which a watcher would stand. The idea being that the people in the cells would never know when they were being watched by the watcher because of a series of blinds and walls. Because they never know when someone is watching them, the people in the cells are pressured into acting in a more moral or agreeable way. The problem with this design it that the watcher is not held accountable and he is in no way pressured to act as morally or agreeably as the people in the cells.

Today's Transparency Conflict

After watching Erasing David and reading Singer's essay, it becomes easy to say that many modern governments and corporations have positioned themselves as watchers stationed at the center of their own Panopticons. What that means for the average person is that their lives are becoming more and more transparent and their governments are becoming less and less transparent or at least remaining only semi-transparent. As viewers are shown when watching Erasing David, the increasing amount of information that the average person leaves behind is becoming easier and easier for governments and corporations to collect and use as tools to invade the little privacy people have left. At the same time that our own privacy is shrinking, people like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are trying force more transparency from governments and corporations in order to shrink the privacy barrier at the cost of their own well-being.

Transparent Solution?

In order for any solution to the privacy problems of the new age to work, a level of respect and trust needs to be established between all parties. World peace would definitely help the current situation, but that seems more like a dream than anything right now. The fact is both governments and people alike have to stop doing things that make them feel like they need to hide their actions. The paranoia that a majority of the world carries around from worrying about who is going to attack them next creates a need be secretive. Until we can all trust each other and accept many of the qualities that make us different, we will hide in shame and live in paranoia. The idea of trust seem so simple in theory, but the reality of it appears to be more complicated. Maybe we could all get behind the idea of lets be good to each other, but dreams are pure things and reality can feel so dirty. 

Exploration #10

One Thing

Choose an every day object. This can be something you find on the street or something you have. Look at the top half of the object for fifteen minutes. Record everything you see there in detail. Then do the same for the top half. The longer you look the more you will see.

Object: My GameBoy Advance SP. This certainly isn't an every day object for present-day Mary, but 11-year-old Mary didn't go very many days without fiddling with it. I've opened it up, considering the "top half" as the half with the screen and the buttons, while the "bottom half" will be the flip side.

Top Half: First and foremost, it's black. I remember putting the scratch resistant screen protector over the screen, but I didn't secure it properly, so it has an air bubble in it. I wanted so badly to fix this, but I couldn't get the damn thing off! I try to pick at it now, but to no avail. That sucker's on there good. Upon further inspection, I notice that the screen protector has quite a few scratches on it. I find this kind of ironic. There are some sort of crumbs wedged beside the buttons. I can see my fingerprints on parts of the handheld device. I hadn't ever noticed this before, but there's a faded circular shape in the plastic around the speaker. I wonder if it makes that form because of the parts hidden underneath the surface? It's hard telling.

Bottom Half: The UPC is completely absent from the label. It must have rubbed off onto my hands gradually over time. I wonder if the ink could've poisoned me in some way. The game inside the slot is my favourite GameBoy game of all time: Pokemon Emerald. I took the sticker off of the cartridge, because my brother had a habit of selling my games. I knew the pawn shop in town wouldn't take it if it didn't have a label. Take that, Travis. There are a LOT of scratches on the plastic behind the screen. I don't know what I did to this thing, but it seems I was determined to beat it up. It still functions properly, at least. It kind of looks like something chewed on one of the corners... I certainly don't remember doing this, but I did have a bit of an oral fixation, so I wouldn't put it past my past self.

Conclusion: This machine was well-loved! Looking at it so intently brought back some memories that amused me. I was a little surprised to find some things that I hadn't noticed before, because I used to use this device so often. One would think I knew it like the back of my hand! ...then again, I'm not sure how well I do know the back of my hand.

Exploration #2

I'm bad at dates so I didn't include them in the list.

Experiences

1. Climbing up to Harney Peak 
1. Black Elk Wilderness area  
2. Basic Training 
1. Combat training
2. reception 
3. Fort Jackson South Carolina
3. New York Trip 
1. Empire State Building
2. Time's Square 
3. Wall street 
4. Broadway play Westside Story 
5. Charging Bull 
6. New York City
4. RSP training
1. PT 
2. Classes 
3. Exhaustion/fatigue 
4. Sioux Falls Armory
5. High School Graduation 
1. Success 
2. Family 
3. Rainy 
6. Baseball games
1. Outfield
2. excited 
3. Dell Rapids, SD 
7. Blackbelt Taekwondo Test 
1. Forms 
2. Board breaking
3. one steps 
4. sparring
5. nervous 
6. excited 
7. Sioux Falls 
8. First Taekwondo Class 
1. Watching
2. excitement 
3. particapting 
4. learning 
5. Dell Rapids, SD 
9. South Korea trip
1. local cuisine 
2. different culture
3. Seoul Tower 
4. Active Army 
5. off base experience 
6. Yongsan South Korea 
7. Seoul South Korea 
10.  A.I.T training
1. Military Job Training
2. PT 
3. Radio Training
4. Fort Gordon, Georgia 

Some of the places I have been to throughout the years.

Right Where You Are Sitting

Exploration #1

"Write ten things about where you are sitting right now that you hadn't noticed when you sat down. Use your senses. Do it quickly. Do not censor. Okay, begin."

Location: Home, Front Porch

1) The ancient paint on the inside of the door frame is cracking. While I've taken notice of this before, I've never noticed that beside there being many horizontal cracks, there are also three long vertical cracks in the paint running from the top of the door frame down to just below the half-way point.

2) The radiator to my left is poorly painted and ancient stains are beginning to show through.

3) The door between the porch and the main house is so worn that instead of having a sharp edge, it is now almost completely rounded below the doorknob.

4) The light coming through the front door is highlighting the dust that is hidden beneath the table next to the couch. A perfect square is visible where the floor gets swept and regular use as opposed to the floor space beneath the table.

5) There is a spot just above and to the right of the keyhole on the front door where there remains some clear tape that once covered the entire keyhole.

6) There is a water spot in one corner of one ceiling tile on the north end of the porch.

7)  Across the street, I can see a picnic table sitting in the park. The table is clearly not on level ground because the north-west corner of the table dips lower than the rest of the table.

8) The driveway is visible from where I am sitting and the grass next to the driveway is matted down where it has been driven over repeatedly.

9) I see a family portrait that was taken in the 1800's and brought to America from Czechoslovakia. It has a giant, heavy frame that is made of wood. Some of the wood has an intricate shell pattern but parts of that pattern have been worn or chipped off. One corner is almost completely missing.

10) Directly across from me I see a clock that regularly freezes and loses track of time. The face of the clock is shiny gold and the bottom, front of the clock has vertical scratches from where it once fell off the wall and fell behind my piano.

Found Faces

This is exploration #41 on page 111.

Our world is full of billions of faces. Every face is unique, some are creative, and some are imagined. It doesn’t matter how we see these faces, it’s just important to recognize and acknowledge every face we pass by, even if the face is from our imagination. It can spark mood improvement and creativity. Here is a collection of smiles around me:

This was a "gourmet cupcake" from Hy-Vee. Put aside the fact that it's a mouth-watering red velvet flavor, and notice that the combination of chocolate striped sticks, frosting, and red velvet crumbs created a faint face. See it?

Electrical outlets, who woulda thunk?

You can't really tell in this picture, but a friend made this yellow key chain with black smiley faces printed all over it.

I've had this pencil bag since kindergarten! And now it's in my dorm room.

This is a blanket I have that is of Noah's ark, so many animal faces are included. They look pretty content.

I have a couple Joe Boxer smiley shirts.

I was eating a couple peaches the other day, and temporarily placed then on the lid of a container. It's a big-eyed smiley!

My friends and I created this smiley out of European coins.

Near Yankton Trails in Sioux Falls, there is a smiley painted on the side of a culvert.

My friend and I made this huge cookie with chocolate chips forming a smiley face. It was a joy to consume.

Bored, a friend made a smiley face out of ketchup and mustard packets. Don't ask questions.

A rental van I was in had this on the ceiling in the back seat. It's a cubby hole and reading lights that creates a face!

Look around, smiles are everywhere, even if you're the only person in the room.