Big Data? Nothing new!

Way, way before Big Data, zillions of years before Tik-Tok there was the Akasha Chronicle to record everything. The first humanoid to get drunk on rotten fruit? It’s been recorded. Mudi jumping off a cliff to avoid getting killed by the drowning of Atlantis? It’s there in all photographic detail. Not that it saved him. Plato’s first gurgle as a baby? Recorded! Abraham taking Isaac up the hill to the altar? Recorded! Isaac holding a paternal grudge for ever? Recorded! First time ever someone got eaten by a crocodile in Australia? Recorded! Gautama’s eating habits before he settled for rice and dal? Recorded! Hittite love songs? Death rattle of the last tyrannosaurus? Cleopatra’s first wrinkle? That poor guy Moses killed? All recorded. You’re surprised that Amazon remembers your very first purchase two decades ago and keeps reminding you to stock up on similar products? Think again: the Chronicle keeps proposing the most amazing things from your past that you’re not aware of at all. Like giving you another chance with A. B., who was your wife, your grandpa, your cell mate, someone who loved you, someone who killed you, someone you herded goats with at different times – hundreds or thousands or millions of years ago. It all boils down to when you were one when it all began. The Chronicle knows. It even knows when Big Data was baptized, when it had its first hiccup, its first bout with mental illness.

– Sri Shantibindo (© 2024)

Life is not a game of cards

The cards that life deals come at any time, and the number of cards in the deck is unknown.

– Niebla (© 2023)

Providence

When the cat was yawning
and stretching himself
after a prolonged nap
this morning, I said to him,
“We’re kindred spirits,
you and I – neither of us
has a plan, and we both
leave it all up to providence.”

– Niebla (© 2023)

One afflicted by self-doubt

“I have the feeling I’m in a preparation phase. But I’ve been in that phase for years – too long. And preparing for what? What is the solution, Swami?”
“You have to end this phase.”
“But –“
“And that’s the end of this session,” said Swami Vaporananda.

(Lore from the practice of Swami Vaporananda.)

Octavio Paz

We are condemned to kill time: this is how we die, little by little.

– Octavio Paz

Source: Cuento de dos jardínes, in Octavio Paz, Ladera Este, 1969. English translation by Johannes Beilharz.

Two creators in conversation

Alephael and Belarael ran into each other in a celestial hallway. Belarael waved and was about to simply walk on, when Alephael took him by the sleeve.

“I just created a new fruit on Earth!”
“Congratulations, Aleph! You certainly keep busy.”
“I’m calling it cherry. I tasted it myself – it’s delicious, if I may say so.”
“Well done, man!”
“Humans will love it. Not to mention birds. And it’s quite healthy as well. Lots of vitamins.”

Belarael gave him a good long stare right in the face.

“Why are you looking at me like that, Bela?”
“It won’t take me long to develop a pest for your cherries. You know that, I suppose.”

Alephael sighed.

“Don’t worry, Aleph, old chap! Can’t make it too easy for those humans, can you? There’s got to be at least one thistle in every field. Says so in the manual.”

And gave Alephael a parting slap on the back as he went on merrily towards his lab.

– Niebla (© 2022)

Photo by Mae Mu on Unsplash

Happy earth day

Not much good recent news for Mother Earth, I’m afraid. In particular, she’s getting impregnated with shells, mines and dead bodies in Ukraine, and the rest is no better: deforestation, CO2, plastic all over, toxic waste. Thank God some people are planting trees somewhere … in a feeble attempt to counteract it all.

Brief ramblings from a pessimist.

Sorry, folks!

– Niebla (© 2022)

Kabir – Slander

Kabir

Slander

Slander! Slander!
People deride me –
folks truly love
to smear and tarnish.
Slander’s my father,
slander’s my mother.

If your name has been blackened,
you’ll go to Vaikuntha –
the true Name’s meaning
will set itself in your mind.

There’s so much calumny,
my heart’s purified –
my vilifier
scrubs my clothes clean.

Whoever maligns me
is my friend –
my heart goes out
to every detractor.

The one who stops decrying me
is my real critic –
such a denouncer
vexes my life.

Defamation’s
my dearly beloved –
revilement puts me
in its debt.

Everybody
slings mud at Kabir –
my denigrator drowns,
I land on the other shore.

– Kabir (1398-1448)

From Kabir – The Weaver’s Songs, translated by Vinay Dharwadker (Penguin Books India, 2003)

Kabir in his finest satirical mood. The response to slander given here is reminiscent of Jesus’ turning of the other cheek.

The Great Big Nothing

I always thought the Big Bang was simply a theory among others. Lately I get the feeling it’s become accepted scientific truth.

What really interests me, though, is what there was before the Big Bang. The Great Big Nothing?

– Niebla (© 2022)

Photo credit: Johannes Beilharz

Alexander Lernet-Holenia, from Mars in Aries

A quote from the novel Mars in Aries by Alexander Lernet-Holenia (Austria, 1897-1976):

He did not have the impression of losing consciousness; but rather, before he came around again, he dreamed for a while, and the dream continued exactly where consciousness had stopped. Perhaps something had gone on in him between the cessation of consciousness and the beginning of the dream. But what happened there took place in a realm from which we, although we enter it now and then, are not able to bring back any knowledge – as little as from a former life or to a next one. There is no complete unconsciousness – when we become unconscious, we merely pass (as in death) from one realm into another, but these realms entertain no messengers, and only now and then – very seldom – do particles tear themselves loose from the other realm and, like driftwood from unknown continents, become stranded on the shores of our perception; or, like birds lost in flight, now and then departed souls and lost angels or gods descend on us.

(Translated from the original German by Johannes Beilharz)

Mars im Widder was originally published in 1941 in the magazine Die Dame, but the publication of the book was prohibited by the Nazi censorship.

The book cover above is of the English translation of the novel published in 2003 (translation by Elisabeth Littell Frech). This English translation is NOT known to the translator of the above quote.