moments

by Eli

i am constantly having thoughts that i can’t grasp; whisps of ideas float in and out of my head on a daily basis. these ideas usually have something to do with human society, our interaction with the world around us, our future, our past, etc etc etc. when a thought like this enters my head, i have a “moment” that is as singular as can possible be. it hits me hard, my world is rocked for exactly one moment and then it is gone; i can’t hold on and i have a hard time realizing or remembering what that moment was.

sometimes i wonder if this is normal. do other people have thoughts they can’t explain? do they sometimes think that seemingly “normal” things are actually really amazing? things that we know are true, but when you take a second and actually process what is involved, it’s damn near amazing. like the time that i looked through a telescope with my own eyes and actually saw saturn and it’s rings. right there, right above my head, fucking “floating” in space was another planet that rotates around the sun in the same direction as the planet that i live on! and then that turns into the idea that i actually live on a planet. and that planet is itself “floating” in space. and what the hell is space? and then it all starts flooding in. but that moment was very concrete and a result of an actual experience, not just crazy thoughts in my head.

despite my inability to grasp or articulate what most of these ideas are, there is definitely a sense that they are connected somehow. the feeling i get when one hits me is the same regardless of the content of the moment. on occasion, the ideas i’m having do coagulate into something concrete, and i can’t help but want to write a book when that happens.

another moment is getting larger and more explicable as we speak. it comes and goes at the strangest of times: from seeing Pixar’s Cars to watching the world cup to shopping at the grocery store to writing this blog entry.

actual people are behind everything that man creates, and it is truely amazing what we have accomplished with our collective mind (be that good or bad).

every man made thing has been thought up and created by a human mind. every system and structure has been developed and sweated out by a group of actual people with lives and family and happiness and sorrow. when the cool new product from Apple comes out we think, “Wow, Apple sure is hip and cool. I want it!” but i’d say that most of us don’t realize that the entire process, from coming up with the idea to making a prototype to testing it to creating an ad campaign to shipping the products around the world and selling it to consumers, is achieved by the human mind. every little detail of everything that we’ve created is thought out and decided upon by someone.

sure, computer generated animation is generated by a “computer,” but that computer had to first be created by a human and then told what to do by a human.

each of the 32 teams of the world cup had to be flown to germany and boarded for at least a few months and each game had to be organized and tickets had to be sold and a logo had to be designed and television cameras had to be in place and networks from around the world had to receive that single and broadcast it to millions of TVs that were all created in factories that were built and organized all by human minds.

does it amaze you that humans have developed a system of wireless, hand-held, personal communication that allows two devices to connect to each other in a matter seconds regardless of their distance from each other?

i could go on and on and on and on, and every single bit of it amazes me.

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