A Merry Old Sol

     To be fair, I've written about the sun on several occasions, and perhaps it is because of the cold winter pecking away at different parts of the country that one is so happy when this "near" star breaks through the clouds and allows us to feel a bit of its heat (as one of my earlier posts said, in quoting theoretical physicist Christophe Gelfard: If mankind could, one way or another, harvest all the energy the Sun radiates in one second, it would be enough to sustain the entire world's energy-needs for about half a billion years).  Two new satellites (one already there) will give us deeper insights into this life-giving source of power; but another question recently emerged and that was, why is our sun so round, as in perhaps the roundest star in our solar system (our own planet Earth is more of a slightly squashed shape).  Said the LRB blog, our sun is: ...too round; a rapidly rotating gaseous body should be flattened and yet our star is the most perfect sphere found in nature.  Add to that that the outer corona of the sun is much hotter than the atmosphere just below, as in several million degrees hotter, and scientists still don't know exactly why.

     Not so for those satellites.  The recent James Webb Space Telescope successfully parked at its million-mile mark orbit, and it needs cold, as in -370 degrees F cold (the additional radiator to deflect even more heat was successfully deployed just days ago).  But then, as Claudia Bosch recently told Bloomberg, "It's so hard to find a quality shaman.  None of the good ones are on Google."  (Bosch is one of many trying to encourage more guests to take luxurious trips to places such as Guatemala)  Whoa, what happened to the sun?  Stay with me as we venture into other worlds...worlds both fading and changing.  The magazine that quoted Bosch had several features, one of which was titled Fear and Greed Fascination and told of a world beyond my comprehension, a world of apes and dogs and fantastical characters.  And money.  Take the tale of the student who anticipated a student loan debt of $120,000; venturing onto the Bored Ape Yacht Club he "bought" a fake monkey which he immediately sold at a profit so he bought another and soon sold it for 55 Ether.  Not making sense?  The end result was that that "monkey" he sold and the 55 Ether turned into more than $170,000.  Wait, a monkey?  

     It's the world of NFTs (NonFungible Tokens) and what was once a joke --such as Dogecoins (think Dog-E-Coins) meant to poke fun at Bitcoin-- is now quite the market disrupter (as in keeping track of your taxes when using such digital currency).  NFTs are digital as well but lean more to the art world and other aspects of imaginary collectibles (think cryptopunks).  Okay, I don't understand it either but here's how CBS described this Metaverse, Web3 and the world of memes: The crypto and NFT space is a bottomless rabbit hole of innovation and intellectual intrigue.  For meme-stock traders, it's a fascination with the complexities of market plumbing and how professional traders work the pipes.  You aren't figuring out only what AMC's business model is, but also how your team can outfox money managers on the other side...It all seems a little crazy.  And it is.  It all sounds like it will end terribly.  And it probably will.  Someone, somewhere has to buy at the top, setting the most ridiculous price so it can be printed in the record blocks for future generations to laugh at and wonder what was wrong with all of us.  Fortunes will be lost, both large and small.  Social media profile pictures will change back to professional headshots.  When that actually occurs is anyone's guess.  Maybe when the U.S. Federal Reserve shifts to a tighter monetary policy, or when pandemic-swollen savings accounts finally revert back to normal.  Or maybe not.

     And there's the catch.  Those words, maybe not.  It's all a game of chance, isn't it?   A Vegas roll-of-the-dice in watching markets soar and plunge, a predictor little different than that of going to a psychic.*  Still, in watching the Gen Z-ers battling it out with the millennials, it's interesting to see the dividing lines that form with changing generations: Tik Tok vs. the older Facebook, the age difference (1/3 more younger people diving into crypto vs. those aged 30-49) and the ethnic divide (Asians and Hispanics outnumber both whites and blacks in investing in crypto).  Said Nicoli Tangen: I am particularly fascinated by the concept of "confident humility" which is the ability of make the right decision when acknowledging that we need input from others to get it right.  It's about having faith in our strengths while also being aware of our weaknesses.  Anyone listening?

     Then came the volcanic eruption in Tonga.  Said National Geographic: ...the tremendous energy of this latest explosion, which NASA estimated to be equivalent to five to six million tons of TNT, is unlike any seen in recent decades.  The eruption sent a tsunami racing across the Pacific Ocean.  It unleashed a sonic boom that zipped around the world twice.  It sent a plume of ash and gas shooting into the stratosphere some 19 miles high, with some parts reaching as far as 34 miles up.  And perhaps most remarkable, all these effects came from only an hour or so of volcanic fury.  In an issue of Afar, Author Kawai Strong Washburn tried to explain the Hawaiian concept of Aloha 'Aina: There’s a sense of the deification of the land and elevating the land to something bigger than just the scientific sum total of its parts.  Not thinking of, for instance, volcanoes in the ocean as purely some sort of natural phenomena, but deifying them in a way that gives them a certain amount of unknowability—and being comfortable with that unknowability.  Looking at a space and recognizing that this is bigger than humans will ever be able to comprehend, and we have to give some reverence to that and see ourselves as people who are in a relationship with something bigger than us.

      Paul Solpek, during his 24,000 mile walking journey, told National Geographic: The seventh-largest country in the world, India is a colossus.  It takes you 17 months to hike across its northern sprawl.  Yet India nonetheless seems small.  Intimate.  Manageable.  Your nearly 2,400-mile traverse of the nation feels like a stroll around a village.  Granted, daily life in the immense panorama of 664,369 Indian villages is indeed compacted, human-scaled.  But it is more than that:  It is due to the sheer density of Indian time.  By some standards, India may seem a poor country.  This often translates into a human-built environment that is antique, handmade.  You sip your milky tea from a bhar, one of the millions of disposable clay cups that, once used, you toss over your shoulder:  Each of these tiny vessels is molded by an artisan’s fingers.  You sleep on a charpoy, a string bed woven by hand.  The rural houses?  Few can claim a single true right angle:  They are erected with hand tools and rented muscle.  Your breakfast chapatis are hand-patted by a hand-built fire.  This slower, manual world is somehow profoundly familiar—and mysteriously comforting.  Why?  Because, for better or worse, bringing the billions of elements of this cosmos into being collectively requires incomprehensible hours, days, weeks, millennia of extended human attention.  You absorb this investment.  You stagger out of India as if from the core of a star: infused with compressed time...Chopped by machines (cars, computers, fiber optics) into smaller and smaller units --minutes, seconds, milliseconds, nanoseconds, zeptoseconds-- time becomes atomized, diluted, dispersed.  It spills from you as from some metaphysical wound.  You lay stricken at night amid the honking and the exhaust, put up at quaking roadside inns, truck stops, farmhouses, at a police cell offered for your convenience.  Hyperventilating, bewildered, you gasp as if having run a marathon.  Yet you do not run.  You are emptied of moments.  You are drained of time.   

     Afar had titled their issue "Traveling in a Changed World," with writer Emma John adding: Social distancing might keep us physically apart --even encourage a certain wellness-- but I could counter that by arriving with a sense of the fellow human I was about to meet...It occurred to me, as I savored those last lingering days of village pubs and quirky high streets, how quickly we become attached to places when we see them not as destinations, but as communities we're invited to temporarily belong to...along with its many harsh legacies, the pandemic has offered this softer one: a reminder that when we're traveling, we're sharing life with others.  A reminder that their experience of our mutual encounter is just as important as our own -- if not more so.  Penny Jones said in a review of Conscious Leadership: The last two years have certainly tested our resolve, but (co-author John) Mackey reaffirms that by keeping purpose at the center of everything we do, to lean into it during times of change, we can have a meaningful impact on people's lives and that of our communities and society.

      To think of the gaseous ball we call our sun is to marvel at exercising our imaginations.  How can a ball of gas be rounder than our solid Earth and so full of light and power?  How can our own planet bubble up land from below and then take much of it back?  On the other hand, how can we place such value on imaginary creations and yet let our physical connections fade away?  I feel fortunate that as I age I am able to witness my "world" slowly disappearing --my physical strength, my old methods of banking and cash, my love of reel-to-reel tapes, my memories long past-- and yet I am able to witness a new one forming, something that's been going on for centuries, a world that changes as we age.  I feel fortunate to feel the reduced urge to compete, to pass down what little knowledge I may have chanced upon, and to accept that for the most part things are "okay," to realize that it is truly never too late...to change, to adapt, to learn, and to forgive.  There are people of all ages living in first, second, and third world conditions.  And whether we create the world we imagine or retreat into an entirely imaginary world, one has to marvel at all the possibilities there to explore.  

     There are some traditional Buddhist sayings, said a flyer from Lion's Roar: You deserve your own love and affection.  Pain is unavoidable, suffering is optional.  If you light a lamp for somebody, it will also brighten your path.  We are shaped by our thoughts.  You only lose what you cling to.  As we cross borders and continents and atmospheres, let us not lose touch, even (or perhaps especially) with ourselves.   Added the flyer: Your anger, self-criticism, and other negative states of mind are actually the building blocks of your liberation.  Old King Cole would be merry indeed...  

*The world of psychics is as varied as the world of market- and financial advisors, and is often as personal and as dependent on your beliefs as in any other field.  My wife and I have had many "experiences" that we can't explain, all the way from doors opening and closing at night, to lights going on and off.  And while we tend to feel that something may be "there" (even if we can't understand it), we also feel that a person, no matter how "gifted," can only "see" a small portion of the entire picture.  Still, in reading the book John, Lennon's first wife Cynthia told of John Lennon being told nearly 15 years earlier that he would be shot while in the U.S.  This apparently caused more than a little anxiety when the Beatles first made their tour of the U.S. and she writes that Lennon was obviously relieved when all returned home safe and sound...the rest, as they say, is history.