After Math: The Penumbra & Doppler Effects

Witnessing is like a certain testimony confirming the obvious. Observations from (Un)lonely Island:

A pall fell over downtown Charlotte shortly after dawn on Monday morning. Of course it had started hours before in the darkness of night after victory was stollen by the power of respect and absence of an overt ego. Within an hour at work this past Monday, the day after 'The Day', a realization came to me that our business was in the crosshairs of the corporate induced blanket of sad mood covering our fledgling metropolis. At that exact time the initial volley of emotional missiles came in the form of silence on the normally active communication line. Then as the day progressed towards the first illusion of a setting sun after 'The Day', our deepest fears had to be looked at for what they are worth. [We] lost.

Without aid of a scientific report, the intuitive in me feels like only half the normal workforce showed up on Monday. The other half was shell shocked without going to war. There was an aura of absence in all directions from The Square just before 0900hrs eastern zulu time. Sun and shadow casted down onto Tryon in a familiar geometric pattern which was a reminder of the Penumbra Effect. Even the police had pulled back from their normal posts giving those brave enough to show up on the stage that morning a chance to take in the coded drama. No sea of Panther hats which just a few days earlier were as ubiquitous as collared shirts tucked into khakis. On the day after 'The Day', the million Panther hats were put up for next year. There's always next year I've been told. Crickets and gloom all day became the theme. At 1700hrs eastern zulu time, the invoice told a telling story. It was 60% lower than any normal Monday on record. [We] actually felt the loss.

Penumbra Effect. Light and shadow, projection of opacity or translucence originating in this case from the sun, a glowing star 94 million miles from our line of sight. What's opaque is only really that at the center. From the center outwards towards the edges opacity becomes less. A stunning field observation of the Penumbra Effect is that the closer the opaque or translucent object is from the surface it is being projected on to, the more exact it becomes. Closest to the surface or furthest from the light source the image becomes the most clear to the visual cortex. Pull away from the projection surface with the opaque or translucent object towards the light source and the image becomes more blurred all the way to an unrecognizable vision. The Penumbra Effect seems to be a good gauge of society and its behavior.

Dialing in clarity takes bringing it close for an exact view of whatever it is. Questions that seem more important are never really asked because the response is usually the one that seems easiest. Less difficult is the choice of our new modern intelligent age. Maybe it is really flipped. Just perhaps the perceived easy choice is actually the complicated more difficult one and the choice that seems so difficult is easier than we could ever understand until we make it. There is only one way to know for sure and that starts with the individual experience of thought.

Shortly after the big loss I read about the new discovery confirming gravitational waves in our universe (or multiverse). The information stimulated my brain housing group to immediately search its hard drive for any past education of the Doppler Effect. The Doppler Effect impacts all waves. Light, sound, magnetic and so on. Now Gravitational on a universal (or multiverse) scale? That's a mind bender. The distance between the peaks of the waves shortening or elongating depending on the direction and speed traveling towards or away from the source emanating the wave(s) has explained many mysteries of our experience here on earth, a tiny speck in an ever accelerating expansion of a universe (or multiverse). How gravitational wave Doppler Effect reveals itself has yet to be fully understood. However there is evidence of what it looks like all around. Explaining it will take some time.

Sober Dreams

The true barrier to world peace is staring us right in the face at this exact moment in time more than ever before. [Now], this magical instant before us provides a constant education in the form of the syntax of nature, an unspoken language created by the true human experience on a flying rock spinning through an accelerating expansion of a universe. Rationalizations as well as justifications of completely ignorant and at its base, unequivocal support of America fascism behavior identify a culture with no serious authenticity of living. Authentic living however has become a global hashtag in the gas burning ether, rather than truth on earth. Truth is unavoidable. And intentionally avoiding it has life and death consequences within our understanding.

Fascism is defined as a national government which supports the interest of corporations rather than the citizens of that country. We've got that. Plenty of it and more than we can consume. Again, rationalization and justification are human conditions that the modern clinical institution has provided as a crutch for the unanimous acceptance of the corporate plan of aggression. A catalyst. The chain can be broken even though it won't be because of reluctance to surrender on an earth sized scale.

Have you heard of Noah Pier? Of course he isn't giving us a veiled drug suggestive end zone dance, nor is he selling Doritos or the official soft drink of the NFL for $30 million a second. But deep down you are closer to him than those corporate decoys will ever be. Noah was a Marine from south Charlotte who gave it up the minute he took the oath. When he was hurried through the doors at the receiving center on Parris Island in the middle of the night after being awake for almost 48 hours, he looked up and read the sign above him.

                                     THROUGH THESE PORTALS PASS PROSPECTS
                                        FOR AMERICA'S FINEST FIGHTING FORCE
                                                 UNITED STATES MARINES

One without the other cannot be possible. As long as the avoidance en masse is the prevailing emotional wind of the day, we are all stuck here to live out the result. Friction. And pain.

Recently I had the chance to find Noah's grave amongst the endless sea of white stones geometrically lined toward the rolling horizon in all directions on what used to be Robert E. Lee's land and estate. Those hillsides just across the Potomac River from Washington DC are Arlington National Cemetery. From the prone position in the grass with the dead just underneath me, my mind saw it so clearly. More clear than any lens or digital money box could replicate. In the section that Noah is laid to rest in, the majority of the birthdates on the headstones as far as my eyes could see were younger than my own. The manicured sod beneath me gave a grounding charge of energy in the pale gray afternoon while I listened to the helicopters overhead patrolling the skies over our nation's capital. How has it gotten to this and how can it be undone if this is our new American now?

It's obvious, even though what's obvious is completely overlooked when the rationalizations and justifications mentioned above fill the small gaps that our busy schedules provide us from time to time.

From my Sunday Night Bicycle ride from Arlington to Washington.

Year of The Cool 10 Year Anniversary

If you are cool and live in Charlotte, well then HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to you!

There is no such thing as coincidence, it's really synchronicity that has brought us to this point.

The Year of the Cool started sleepily this month in 2005 here in our fair Queen City. Cool came quick and out of nowhere. It quickly metastasized like cancer in the non-alkaline body through the rest of that summer until the fall and winter set in driving cool to its first winter hibernation. Cool naturally abates by a large degree in the colder darker months when the wet wind cuts through the jeans and two layer fashionable flannel. That first cold season cool did survive though, it held on long enough for the spring jean shorts and T-Shirt weather to give way to its epoch flight again that summer. Not a weekend went by without some form of collective cool throwaway junket until fall and winter came again.

It should be mentioned that any year before 2005 should be annotated with a BC for before cool. For example: My first year couriering in Charlotte was 1998BC. Of course if the year is after 2005, it should be ended with an AC for after cool.  For instance, Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon went to a minimum security federal prison in 2014AC.


 Before The Year of the Cool there was no cool like the mega cool we have here now. The good ole days are gone forever...

Revert Nation

C-130 Rolling down the strip, Golf Company 2/4 gonna take a little trip. Stand up, buckle up and shuffle to the door. Jump Right out and shout, "Marine Corps!" If my chute don't open wide, I've got a reserve on my side. If that one don't come around, I'll be the first one on the ground hooking and jabbing, slashing and a stabbing...

                                          photo cred: Combatreform.com

Up to Date

Shoveling shit out of the back of a yellow pick up truck with a hangover

The Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened.