The Tao of Now

Rough Fractals is working on a coffee table book about the Snow Globe. A comprehensive photo history, the book will address (among other things) when the Snow Globe was first invented, how they are made, what the snow is made of, can you make money collecting them - that kind of stuff.

Also in the works is a custom line of Snow Globes manufactured to order. For example, as part of the promotion for the recent movie, Lars and The Real Girl, celebrity guests at the L.A. premier were given goodie bags containing a Snow Globe depicting the scene in the movie where Lars (Ryan Gosling) is dancing with the Doll. The snow comes down, they twirl around, music plays and for a moment the Snow Globe owner realizes that each of us, in our own way, lives in our own private Snow Globe where we dance with our illusions (or can the Doll become a Real Girl?).

Currently in the pipeline is a new Snow Globe to be called "Cognitive Rocket Ship". Inside the Globe is a rocket ship that is about to take off and in the cockpit of the rocket ship sits the pilot (the pilot is a woman - for more about the pilot see the relevant parenthetical below) who is gazing into a Snow Globe of a rocket ship in which sits the pilot looking into a Snow Globe of a rocket ship. There are some technical problems in the manufacturing because the third Snow Globe in a Snow Globe is really, really tiny.

When Rough Fractals was nothing more than a glean in this author’s eye he would often consult the I Ching (Classic Chinese Book of Changes) for hexagrams of inspiration and revelation (the I Ching contains a series of hexagrams one of which is synchronistically chosen (if you are a traditional Han Chinese) by tossing yarrow stalks, or, more commonly in the modern era, by tossing six pennies whose heads and tails combinations serve as a kind of random number generator matching one of the 64 possible hexagrams. This random selection process is called "throwing the I Ching" and is done in search of a thematic oracular summation of the question most in the mind (conscious or subconscious) of the thrower. In writing this post, Rough Fractals thought it befitting to commune with the I Ching to divine the essence (the Tao) of Now. The faded yellow hard covered extensively underlined copy of the I Ching was long ago relegated to Emeritus status so Rough Fractals resorted to "throwing The Google" which delivered the following passage from author, David Foster Wallace:

"There are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness...the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing..."

There is mucho wisdom in The Google (and in the catechism of Now).

(The pilot in the rocket ship in the Snow Globe is wearing well worn, brown suede, I-loved-you-from-the-moment-I-met-you, cowboy boots, vintage Colorado 1971. Covered by the boot sleeve just above her right ankle is a small tattoo of a heart across which is a banner that says "Breakable".)