Joey's Thoughts

The Little Apple

Jamie, you look like a supermodel in this picture… Congratulations, you are still in the running to become America’s Next Top Model.

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As you can see, the temperature got a bit chilly for the new thin-blooded version of me.

Salina Friday

(above) – My family’s first house in Salina, 1100 Quincy Street.

(above) – My family’s second house in Salina, 524 Queens Road.

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Off to party in Manhattan tonight… Pix tomorrow.

My brain on my brain

So I was just thinking that my brain is smaller that a basketball. Smaller than a watermellon. Smaller than the lamp sitting on my end table… It is smaller than a lot of things. This got me thinking about other less obvious brain facts….

- The adult human brain weighs about 3 pounds (1,300-1,400 g).
- The adult human brain is about 2% of the total body weight.
- The elephant brain weighs about 6,000 g.
- The cat brain weighs about 30 g.
- The average human brain is 140 mm wide.
- The average human brain is 167 mm long.
- The average human brain is 93 mm high.
- The human brain has about 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) neurons.
- The octopus brain has about 300 million neurons.
- The human brain is approximately 75% water
- If you could harness the power used by your brain, you could power as a 10-watt light bulb

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I had this thought while I was running yesterday:
Is there such thing as a truly selfless act?

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There are two moment in my life that the nature around me took my breath away. The first came in Yellowstone park and the second came at Hank and Emelie’s cabin in Sweden… This is a picture of one of the waterfalls in Yellowstone.

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My family moved from my childhood home at 1100 Quincy street in beautiful Salina Kansas to a large amazing house on “the hill” in the middle of my seventh grade year… I wish that I could remember more about the actual emotions that I was having at the time, but I was really wrapped up in the things that a 13 year old boy gets wrapped up in. Girls, sports, friends and girls… The evening that the last box had been moved out of my boyhood home and into the new house, there was this school dance in the gymnasium at Salina South Middle School. I went to the dance and left my family and the ensuing celebration party at my new house to go to the dance…

I am sure that I had a good time at the dance. I am sure that I shared several slow dances and possibly even held a few hands… I am now sure that I wish that I did not go. I wish that I would have had the instinct to think about what I was missing by turning my back to an experience that was unique…

I went to 10 more dances after that one, most of them with different girls, but my family only moved this one time…

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So I watched “American Beauty” for the 1,000,000th time last weekend… This scene popped into my head while I was running this morning…

Lester Burnham: I figured you guys might be able to give me some pointers. I need to shape up. Fast.
Jim Olmeyer: Are you just looking to lose weight, or do you want increased strength and flexibility as well?
Lester Burnham: I want to look good naked!

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Off to Salina this afternoon to hang with the band and watch a few shows… As always, pictures and video to follow.

Art Wednesday

Salvador Dali, “Galatea of the Spheres” – 1952

An interesting quote from the book I have on Dali says that he claimed to have a “paroxysm of joy”… After reading this, I immediately went to the dictionary and looked up the word “paroxysm” (don’t pretend that you know what it meant).

par‧ox‧ysm  [par-uhk-siz-uhm]
–noun
1. any sudden, violent outburst; a fit of violent action or emotion: paroxysms of rage.
2. Pathology. a severe attack or a sudden increase in intensity of a disease, usually recurring periodically.

It is a really beautiful thing in my mind to think of having a sudden or violent outburst of joy… I remember having them as a kid. I am going to work on having a “paroxysm of joy” sometime in the next week.

Anyway, on to my comments on the art at hand… It is so pretty.

To me this piece is a comment on the state of being a woman, or at least a man’s comment on the state of being a woman. I see something segmented, something deep, something complex, something beautiful, something happy and sad, something that the eye and the brain have to work at to make sense of… The circular shapes making up this portrait lead me to think about the wholeness of the individual parts, and the blue background brings me to nature and the link between woman and nature.

I see a celebration… A beautiful celebration. A “paroxysm of joy”.

Dream

When I dream, most of the time I dream that I am flying and it is the most amazing feeling.