Independence Day is every day

 The small/big stuff:

Lisa is taking singing lessons - trills, rolls, oh-ah-eeeh, do-re-mi-fa and so forth. It's really fun. She's also back to painting, this time her exploration focuses on abstraction. Her latest series is called "Hyphae" after the branching filaments that make up the roots of mycelium. One cool example: 

 

On the "art of living together" front, we're doing better than ever after nearly thirty-four years of sanding down our mutual edges, and getting to know who the other person really is. You know, at Titanic depths. Hey, we've worked at it, and you might say we've earned it. We've also been lucky. I'm not suggesting there's a recipe or anything one does right or wrong. Whether you're still a couple or not, never were, looking to be, may you be at peace around that. And you do have a great person by your side at all times: yourself. I know, because I've known you for a long time. 

Lisa's MS is in full remission. She's in grrrrrreat shape. Her dad and mom-in-law not so much, and we're deep in elder care. My parents are also starting to show signs of serious wear and tear, as well they might. Same goes for my uncles and aunts in NYC, whom I'm close with. 

I'm good. This turning sixty thing is a head-scratcher: am I really that old? Yup. Don't need a LIGO detector to answer that one. Still very shaken by my sister-in-law Ellen's passing and working hard to really seize the day. To make each moment meaningful. It shouldn't be work, but it turns out mindfulness doesn't come that naturally to me. Ha! 

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What I'm up to:

Writing a new story: "Lucy On the Vine in the Evening" (Beatles fans, and those who know what the Leakey team was listening to when it discovered the Lucy remains will figure out how the title works).  

The premise: Two AIs, Neuro and KenyAI, Mayla, a girl with a speech impediment and a razor-shape mind, and Dr. Cecilia Cheptoo Kipogiek, an African anthropologist with a penchant for classical music  work together to bring our ancestor Lucy back to life. Against a background of pandemics, genetic manipulation and climate change. It's not even futuristic. 

Excerpt of the day: 

"Today, Neuro had picked Obaachan, its Japanese grand-mother persona. Obaachan’s preferred hologram was a virtual lab space overlaid with a forest temple. The lab was a riff on the actual genetics lab where they all worked. It featured a variety of electrophoresis readouts and gene sequencing visualizations, as well as some renderings of what the team could expect Lucy to look like as an adult."

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Some music: 

On a more microscopic level, I've been studying the classical guitar and will be sharing related links with y'all.  This one features Ganesh del Vescovo, an Italian guitar maestro and composer, living in Florence, surrounded by art and beauty. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLBAWsOiJrw

In 2010 he created (yes, created, it takes a formidable mind) a transcription for guitar of Mozart's Sonata #11 K 331. Pretty much one of the most famous lullabies in history. There's Ganesh's wonderfully sensitive, unrushed interpretation, and then there's his hyper-refined surroundings, the cherry on his musical cake. Wouldn't you just love to be sitting in that gorgeous room, drinking in the music with a few other peeps you really like and cherishing the prospect of handmade pasta for dinner and a glass of Montepulciano? 

In another realm of musical experience entirely (well maybe not entirely, since Ganesh is also deep into devotional raga), I keep going back to the Icaro style. Icaros are the songs ayahuasca ceremonies are set to. Tito La Rosa and Amelia Panduro (Amelia Hardbread, ha!) offer one of the best instances of this astounding art form. Prepare to trip out. Literally: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1GIGAH7WWY

And since we're tripping, we might as well have the visuals to go along with it, kindly provided by the Hieronymus Bosch-esque work of the truly great Robert Steven Connett, whose visions delight more than they haunt: 

https://www.instagram.com/rsconnett/reels/?hl=en

If I understand correctly, this is a collab with a group that photographs and animates the original paintings.  If you're a collector type, his prints are high-quality and amazingly affordable. 

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Einstein was right:

(Yet again): https://shorturl.at/lrUV4

If I got a dollar every time I heard this, I'd be a zillionaire. Back when modern telescopes were barely getting started, and there was not one man-made object in space, and very few in the sky, Einstein figured out that mass curves space and time. Imagine you drop a tennis ball in an aquarium. The water will bend to accommodate the ball's shape. The water is space-time: it's curved by a planet or a star in every direction. 

Zoom up to our (space)time. We have groups testing Einstein's idea: LIGO, NanoGrav and VIRGO among others. These experiments use a variety of ultra-sensitive devices and complex calculations to detect gravitational waves. Those are exactly what they sound like. Let's say two black holes collide. If what Einstein says is true, the collision should cause ripples to travel through the fabric of space-time, just like two tennis balls colliding in an aquarium.  Turns out, it's true. We've already detected so many gravitational waves that we even have categories, aka a "typology" for them:  

https://shorturl.at/wyJP3

Why does any of this matter? 

1. This is how science progresses. Theories are not fixed: we test the heck out of them until we find evidence that we need to dig deeper and modify the theory to account for what we find. So far, Einstein's relativity has met experimental challenges brilliantly. 

2. We learn about reality. Einstein's theory tells us something completely bizarre: space and time are not distinct, they are bound together, and not only that, but they stretch around objects. This geometrical property, this bending is also known as gravity. The reason  you come back down every time you jump up, is because the Earth bends space and time around itself in such a way that you fall back to earth along the line of that bending. Another way to look at it is to say that you're not falling at all: you're right where you are, but the earth moves up and along the bend in space-time to catch up to you. 

3. We're learning more about black holes, not just from a radiation standpoint but from a gravitational standpoint. Guess what: gravity and radiation (in other words, the activity of particles) are where quantum physics, i.e. the physics of the infinitesimal, and cosmology, the physics of the enormous, can't seem to agree. Black holes are edge cases that may prove to be the key to discovering a bridge between quantum physics and cosmology. 

Mind ... bending ;-) 

Hope y'all are well and give me a shout if you have any comments. Sending you peaceful, loving ripples. 

Love ya, L