I think human brains are too small to fully comprehend either the creation of the universe or the evolution of the universe. We fool ourselves with our little theories (or faiths), and we think we are so smart!

A human brain weighs about 2 kilos. One scientist estimates the mass of the known universe at about 10⁶⁶ kilos (a number large enough to defy human comprehension). There is no way we can model everything happening in the universe, all we can do is selectively attend to a few phenomena and extrapolate.

This month I purchased an Apple iBook, and I'm lovin' it :-)

This is how I treat my books now.

As though my apartment were a lush garden of fruit. Grapes, Apples, Oranges, Bananas ... yes, those more mainstream kinds of fruit are here, but I also have ... Papaya, Abiu, Jaboticaba, Matisia, Rambutan, Salak, and Yellow Mangosteen ...

Each book I own is a different species of fruit.

And I find that I can't sit down with any one fruit and eat the entire thing. I tear off a piece, lick a slice, pick out seeds, and forget that I'm supposed to start at the beginning and finish at the end.

I keep bringing home more flavors. I order some through the Internet. I make lists of plants that I want to try later.

I flip through leaves, see a pretty bite, and chew:

"The psychology of the orgy as an overwhelming feeling of life and energy within which even pain acts as a stimulus ..."

"Genuine loyalty has to be based on something substantial ... Where loyalty comes into play is through difficulty. Loyalty not taxed is really not loyalty. One politician said, 'I will support you as long as you are in the right.' His prime minister replied, 'That is no use at all. What I want is men who support me when I am in the wrong.'"

"If you don't do-it-yourself you are a prisoner of the robot state, the electric company, the transportation company, the food monopolies, and the chain stores. You live in a suspended state where you don't even know where your power comes from, you leave the faucets running and the lights on all night just because you don't even know that the water supplies are slowly diminishing ..."

"Even when it seems most impervious, time is porous. The past leaks back through its own channels, floods the present, appears as an object you dreamed of thirty years ago."

"Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to keep track of your thoughts? The mind wanders so easily from the topic we want to keep it on. It even may seem that the mind is, in its own nature, like bubbles on a river or a ball floating in a stream."

(I wrote this on December 2, 2003)

I realized yesterday that at age 19 I turned what we call sexual preference into my sexual identity ... I changed from thinking "I prefer having sex with this particular man whom I love" to "I am gay." I adopted a new identity, stopped dating women, came out to everybody, and began searching particularly for gay friends and gay lovers. Before I assumed a gay identity I experienced sexual attractions to both males and females, but my deepest feelings of love attached themselves to a couple of guys I knew during high school. I decided that, in general, I was more attracted to men than to women. I decided that I was attracted to x% of women, and y% of men, and that y > x, so therefore I must be gay. More often attracted to men, more intensely attracted to men. But ... that doesn't mean I'm never attracted to women.

I consciously chose to repress (or continue repressing?) part of my sexuality so I could adopt a simplified gay identity.

And, I've known this all along, without acknowledging it so openly. When people get into arguments about homosexuality being a choice, I sometimes tell people that I chose to be gay, and that I don't think it should matter whether we choose to be gay. When people have asked me if I would take a pill to magically become straight, I've said no.

There are reasons I'm generally more attracted to males ... but these reasons depend on cultural stereotypes, my own personality, my own perceived needs, my experiences, my areas of inexperience. Hell, it might even relate to how I got along with each of my parents. But understanding why I'm more attracted to men doesn't make these attractions wrong. I believe that any arrangement between consenting adults of any gender, of any number, are OK for those involved.

-----

Then I thought about how the ideal of monogamy leads people to make arbitrary and categorical decisions about which kind of person they want to pursue.

If I can have only one mate, for life, then I'm gonna think about mating in ways that will maximize my lifelong happiness by maximizing my chances of being attracted to the type of person I pursue as a potential mate. I'll want somebody of my preferred gender, somebody near my age so we can grow old together, somebody "disease-free", somebody extraordinarily sexually compatible, somebody whose basic belief system matches my own — which often means somebody who looks, talks, dresses, and acts a lot like myself (which is often crudely translated into racial stereotyping).