Suddenly This Summer

You can almost convince yourself summer hasn't really started yet until the fourth of July. Then you know you're in the throes of the season and it's about to slip by, just as it does every year. I'd have thought this would stop after, you know, I stopped getting summer vacation. But it's still my favorite season. I'd much rather it be 85 than 45, and it's good to have all of the school-bound friends feeling a little more relaxed.

The summer has started off with Harry Pottering, which is unforseeably terrific. I've read the books already, and I know I enjoyed them, but being on a mission to read—spending a Sunday sitting in the Hungarian Pastry Shop and then Riverside Park, reading a fantasy book, and feeling accomplished afterward—is so ideal.

I got my MacBook, which is treating me awfully well. I've only played with GarageBand enough to record myself singing Wimoweh. It's, well, horrible—at once overly pretty and harsh—but I'm thrilled. I'm harmonizing! With myself! And I can send the file to people! Woo!

And I'm happy with my UUST score. If I want to go to UU school, I'm in pretty good shape...just have to get recommendations from old professors and write the world's most brilliant 250 word statement. Maybe my alma mater will take me back...who knows? They're pretty picky, though.

Oh, I met an attractive guy this weekend. I know that doesn't sound like much (no, I didn't, like, get his number...or even have a one-on-one conversation with him) but so rarely am I at all attracted to someone I just met—nay, so rarely am I attracted to anyone at all—that it was sort of a proof of concept. The dude was gorgeous and authentically charismatic. And I kinda dug him. It's more a testament to my functionality than my maturity (it would be nice to go for someone attainable), but when that's in doubt, it's something.

So, on a completely different topic, I was thinking about consciousness a bit today. I do maintain a confidence in science and philosophy...I think we'll eventually have an idea of what consciousness is, but right now I think we don't quite know what questions to ask, and that's hindering progress in finding out what exactly consciousness is and how it arises from the brain. We've apparently nicely eliminated the possibility that consciousness is located at one place in the brain. You can take out any individual part of the brain and maintain consciousness...I mean, maybe parts will make you pass out, but they won't kill your identity. So I guess that only leaves the possibility that it's emergent from some collection of processes? Some network? Which kind of makes sense. But I think before we figure out how it emerges, we have to get a better subjective idea of what 'it' is.

Therefore, I've been trying to pinpoint my own consciousness. What do I feel I directly experience? It's easier to find stuff I don't directly experience. Inspiration is one of them. When I'm doing a cryptic and think of an answer, it often just 'comes to me.' You all know this. The answer to some problem just comes into your head. So that's something that does not happen in the conscious. So the answer appears in your head...how does it appear? Is it an image? A sound? It's kind of neither, usually, and so it's hard to say what it IS. Even when you have mental images or hear things, the sounds don't need to happen linearly; the image doesn't need to be detailed. In what way are we actually active? What specific actions can you take ownership of? I guess we experience things. Sound does actually register. But certainly the processing of that sound isn't part of the conscious mind, nor is the interpreting of it. I can't think of any specific process that I really feel I—as my conscious mind—do. Although I know I'm here.

OK, I'm too tired for further pontificating. 'Night, all.