Read the most amazing piece.  The AI Revolution:  The Road to Superintelligence by Tim Urban
( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wait-but-why/the-ai-revolution-the-road-to-superintelligence_b_6648480.html?utm_hp_ref=science&ir=Science ) .  It is quite an essay which I won't go into here but basically the scary bit can be summed up here:  "An AI system at a certain level -- say, village idiot -- is programmed with the goal of improving its own intelligence. Once it does, it's smarter -- maybe at this point it's at Einstein's level -- so now, with an Einstein-level intellect, when it works to improve its intelligence, it has an easier time and it can make bigger leaps. These leaps make it much smarter than any human, allowing it to make even bigger leaps. As the leaps grow larger and happen more rapidly, the AGI soars upwards in intelligence and soon reaches the superintelligent level of an ASI system. This is called an intelligence explosion, and it's the ultimate example of the law of accelerating returns."  and  "If our meager brains were able to invent wi-fi, then something 100 or 1,000 or 1 billion times smarter than we are should have no problem controlling the positioning of each and every atom in the world in any way it likes, at any time. Everything we consider magic, every power we imagine a supreme God to have, will be as mundane an activity for the ASI as flipping on a light switch is for us. Creating the technology to reverse human aging, curing disease and hunger and even mortality, reprogramming the weather to protect the future of life on Earth -- all suddenly possible. Also possible is the immediate end of all life on Earth. As far as we're concerned, if an ASI comes into being, there is now an omnipotent god on Earth -- and the all-important question for us is:

Will it be a nice god?"

If this is true, and his timing is accurate I could still be alive if and when it happens.  Rather than being disturbed by this, I am exhilarated.  Not that I have a death wish, for if it comes to pass, human life will be to ASI as ant life is to us now, nevertheless to be a witness to the final act of humankind is a gift I will be happy to receive.

For we might be an experiment.  We seem to be hard-wired to create, to invent, to indulge our curiosity.  Can we do this?  Let's find out!  And so we invent the wheel, embark on agrarian life, develop the printing press, gunpowder, trips to the moon and wi-fi.   We can no more close the door on the quest to create ASI as we could any other concept we could conceive.  If we can think it, why can't we make it? 

And so, if the Singularity and all that follows is ordained, as a species we succeeded even as we became extinct. 

As to creating a god?  Whose to say this reality isn't the result of the god created from a former experiment?  God continually recreating himself.  From scratch.  A Mobius strip of potentialities.

Sketchbook Dreaming

I love the look of some of the sketchbooks I've stumbled across.  Artistic doodles or doodle art.  Making art often freezes me.  The older I get the more easily I get stuck because I want perfection and making a mark risks imperfection.  Looking at the looseness and spontaneity of the work is contagious.  It doesn't matter if it's not perfect.  Life is imperfect; messy, nonlinear, confusing, misinterpreted, too loud, too quiet.  Looked at another way, however, and life's very refusal to be contained is perfection.  Is creation.

Journals, canvases, sketchbooks all have borders.  The idea, the creation is necessarily constrained within the confines of the border, the edge.  That is an unavoidable stricture.  Adding more by being too rigid in that impossible chase after pefection just compounds the problem.

Easy to state the problem, less easy to stop it.  Came across a blog, which I'll try and find again, which listed every day things to draw every day .  What a way to improve one's skill and at the same time instill looseness. 

Am working on a drawing.  It started out as a sketch, hardened into a drawing, lay dormant for weeks because of having no idea which way to go, and now has metamorphosed into a pencil sketch overlaid with coloured pencil.  Which surprisingly I quite like the look of.  It's a teenage boy's sketch; surreal monsters, hands with finger trees, doors into other dimensions - all the result of just trying not to be too anal about things but to draw for the sake of drawing.

Which is a compelling argument for drawing every day things every day in a sketchbook.

Anxiety Dreams and Cats in the Morning

A rat was chewing in the walls last night.  Amazing how wood amplifies sound.  What was he doing in the wall space?  Thought there'd be a great hole into the room but there was no sign to show for his industriousness. 

I would get up and bang on the wall, after pressing my ear to the wood, to hear the gnawing all the more clearly, knowing only a finger width of wood was between the delicate flesh of my ear and his yellow teeth.  The rat would stop after I'd pounded the wall and then we'd listen to one another listening to one another.  Eventually the cold and silence would force me back into bed.  We both waited and then when the tension of silence was high, he'd take the first tentative chew. 

Then R got up all torchlight flash and male Can Do stomping.  But the rat out waited him too. 

Between that and a full moon sleep was elusive.  Woke up this morning leaden but determined.  Too many mouths to feed to wallow in bed.  Then of course there was Natalia, the furry alarm clock.  Matisse's strategy to get us moving is to launch his considerable weight from across the room onto the bed.  One can jump up and down or one can jump up and down with force.  Matisse weighs 14 lbs.  Fourteen pounds of pure muscle.  He uses that stone of weight with force.  I swear when he lands the weight of him levitates R and I.

Natalia's tactic is more subtle.  She pushes her face close to mine, opens her mouth and shouts.  I love her, she is a darling little cat, but Ella Fitzgerald she ain't.  It isn't a cracked high decibel Siamese meow like Matisse but it is high pitched, loud and somewhat scratchy.  Of all the cats, Nairobi's meow is most pleasant, the Mel Torme of meows.  Anyway, from very deep and far away I rose to the surface.  Natalia's happy at attention whiskers tickled my face.  Only thing I can do is roll out of bed and into the morning routine dragging the remains of an anxiety dream like a torn scarf behind me.

Anxiety dream #1.  I dreamed Richard had scheduled his own euthanasia.  He didn't want to deteriorate any more physically or mentally or be a burden so while he was still strong he decided to die.  I was trying to stop him.  Actually dreamed this dream two nights ago so the details have gone, only the horror remains.  Horror because I know it's a dream of fear.  What will happen to Richard in the coming years and therefore what will happen to me?  Will I cope?  Will I be strong and patient and loving always?  Will I have to make horrible decisions I can hardly even contemplate?  Will I have to fight feelings of being trapped? 

Already I don't like the idea of leaving him alone.  The other day, for the first time in years, I asked if he would get up and do the morning chores while I had a sleep in.  Constant insomnia caught up with me.  I slept an extra two hours!  When I got up he'd been up for an hour and a half.   In that time he'd fed the cats, walked the dogs and given them their breakfast, let the horses out and made coffee.  I was ready to fall onto my cup of caffeine when I saw the lorikeet dishes.  Then I saw the pellet container.  Haven't you fed the birds yet, I asked.  I tried not to be angry but I was.  What had he done for an hour and a half? It's not his fault and the anger faded quickly but already I feel the walls closing in hence the dream and secret longing.  Of course consciously I don't want him to die but unconsciously I'm already looking for an escape.  It's an awful thing to admit and I am ashamed but there it is.  Dreams don't lie. 

Anxiety dream #2.  I'm a vet nurse On Call.  I get a call from a panicked owner of a guinea pig.  The animal has something wrapped or caught on its molars deep inside its mouth.  If it isn't removed the guinea pig will get pneumonia.  I ring Karen.  It's after midnight.  Takes her 45 minutes to get to the surgery and then I realize I haven't got the number of the owner.  Karen is livid.  Understandably.  She waits around for awhile and then leaves in a huff.  Will she ever forgive me and my stupidity?  Then the owner arrives with the guinea pig and I have no vet.  Luckily Nerida arrives, calm and collected and takes matters in hand.  Saved!  But guilt remains.  How could I be so dumb and why haven't I learned, after all this time, to get the name and number of the client first before anything else?

And why am I dreaming anxiety dreams? 

Shhh

Epiphany of sorts.  I am distracting myself from my own life.  I distract myself with 'noise'; television, radio, computer, books, busy'ness.  Why am I afraid to be alone with myself?  I actually thought I liked my own company and smirked a little at those who needed the constant reassurance of company to feel safe, as though being alone was being exposed and vulnerable on a wind-raked mountain ledge.

Now I'm not so sure.  Humble pie time.  My unease isn't as obvious which is why it is perhaps more deleterious to mental/spiritual health.  It was easier to ignore.  I've started doing yoga without the radio, without even the CDs of birdsong.  My finger almost shakes when I press the OFF button.  It was always difficult to turn the radio off, just that little reluctance creeping out, but I decided not to notice.  Now I notice.

First thing in the morning after coming in from chores, before coffee, before anything else I turn on the radio and computer.  The music is classical and although most of it is beautiful it still fills the silence with sound, the computer with fingers of global information.  I am connected!  Except of course it's an illusion.

I have been lonely for my own kind.  Not sure what my kind is except I haven't found them here.  Another reason why I am anxious to move.  Suspect green tree hugging animal loving art making book loving yoga doing vegan eating spiritual questing meditative wannabee types will be more common in the Tweed.  

Have no illusions that I'm good friend material.  If I was I'd have more friends.  I'm too judgmental in that what interests most people doesn't interest me.  Moreover, not only doesn't interest but bores me.  And I get impatient because people seem content with gossip and shopping and the suburban life.  That's quite funny as I find the minutiae of living fascinating.  I can bore the socks off people talking about the lives of local birds.  Insects interest me, the patterns of clouds, the weather, the ever changing scenery, the sounds which surround.    I try and be interested in others, to not talk about myself all the time and I think I succeed but then I get ornery because it seems they always talk about themselves. 

Have a friend who I spent a great deal of time being supportive to when they went through a bad patch.  Out of the bad patch, if I said anything about what was going on in my life, their eyes would glaze over.  I bored them.  Then I thought why am I working so hard at something that should come easily.  The people who have been my friends, even if our paths separated us after a time, were easy to be with.   The energy flowed back and forth without impediment.

So I'm going to quit beating myself up because I'm a loner.  I share this house with my best friend and therefore I am luckier than most.  And I'm going to embrace the silence as perhaps silence will unveil the closest friend I'll ever have.  Me.

He died and I didn't know

I've been procrastinating writing this because I haven't absorbed the news myself yet.  My ex-husband (my twice ex as we married twice) died one day after his birthday on November 15, 2009.  He was just one day 54 years old. 

Richard's ex-wife has been unwell.  His boys have been down to Tasmania to see her.  There has been much concern about her health and the future.  In the midst of this I thought, why don't I Google Wayne and see if I can find any news of him.  What I found was an obituary notice. 

There are those times when one's very skin seems to stretch and thin and the blood and sinews scrape uncomfortably against the air.  That was one of those times.  The veil between reality and perceived reality ripped wide open.  Although I haven't brooded over him or even missed him he was still 'out there'.  I thought of him every year at least once - on his birthday.  On his birthday I silently saluted him, wished him well, was conscious of his being in the world, my one time lover, friend and husband.  And for 5 years he has been no more and I didn't know.

Part of me feels like crying but I can't.  I want to mourn but am unable.  Something's torn but time and distance and experience has dulled the pain to a dark dim ache.    He was married 27 years and had two girls.  Was he a grandfather?  He was so good with children and animals.  Part of the tribute to him regarded his love for animals; horses, dogs and cats, how he cared for and nurtured them.  In lieu of flowers people were asked to donate to an animal rescue organization.  The one photo I found of him he sat astride a dark horse on a pale leather western saddle.  He was big, too big (did overweight contribute to his death?).  I think he still had that funny little moustache he cultivated after we divorced the first time but the photo is too fuzzy to be sure.  His hair is grey and although his face is fleshy there are still traces of the young beautiful Wayne I once knew.

Why did he die so young?  He died in the hospital where he was born.  Had he been ill?  Was it sudden, an accident?  I have written to his sister to ask.  Whether she replies is another matter.  I am owed nothing by the family.  Still, I would like to know.  I have been thinking of little else since I found out.   I started to struggle against that but think it is better to let the thoughts run their course.  We were husband and wife for 7 years.  That counts for a little long distance grieving I guess.

Hung Up in a Dream

I got hung last night.  Just after seeing my friend hung.  Knew after watching her die that I would be terrified and in agony for only a short time.  It didn't make the prospect any easier.  Then I woke up.  With a terrible headache, like a hangover headache except I wasn't hung over.  My heart was thudding, in my head and in my chest.  I was dead scared.  Pretty foul nightmare.

So what does it mean, being hung?  Being hung up?  Being trussed and unable to move (forward) or at all.  Do feel that actually.   Being stuck, however, isn't terrifying.  I couldn't watch her die.  I did turn away at the last minute, coward that I was.  I was so full of my impending death I had very little emotion left for her.  Have no idea who she was.  An aspect of me I suppose.  She was about 20 feet away and something, a bookcase? table? blocked the view of her lower body  I could only see her head and shoulders. 

I got up and drank a glass of water.  When I woke in the morning my headache was no more.  Feel that it wasn't a menopausal headache, which I do get sometimes, blasted things strike in the middle of the night, but was related to the nightmare.

So I haven't worked on my drawing for days.  Have no idea what to do with it.  I haven't sketched.  I have finished an Elizabeth George book instead of doing anything creative myself.   Don't like  when I coast along, going through the motions and don't make anything. 

Ran into a ex-neighbour last week.  She separated from her husband and moved away.  She was visiting some friends at the end of the road.  She's getting a book published, she told me.  She's working on 8 books, the first one should be out by August.  She has a publisher and an editor.  She's had the manuscript read by a few friends and it makes them cry and laugh just where she wants them to cry and laugh. 

I was dumbfounded.  This woman is the last person I would think of as being a writer.   Shows my arrogance I guess.  What is it about writing that makes it an elitist activity?  If she has something to say, she doesn't need an Oxford Dictionary vocabulary to say it. 

She's using a nom de plume, she said.  So how will I know which book to buy and read?  She said she'd let me know and took my email address.  Part of me, the suspicious part, remembers the stories she told about the stallion she used to have.  This magnificent warmblood stallion  would set the show world on fire.  And that's all I heard about him, what she said.  Is this book the same?  She said the book takes place in reality and in fantasy and it bore some resemblance to 50 Shades of Grey except not so slutty.  Had I read 50 Shades?  No, I hadn't.  So I'll wait and see. 

I want it to be true.  I'm not a writer but I've written a book (bad) and a half (worse) so it can be done.  Another part of me, the green envious part, screams how is it SHE can write, is about to be published, and I can't?  Huh?

I can draw, however.  If I have a talent and a strength, that's where it is, if I'd just get out of my own way and do it.  For that's the problem.  I'm so afraid of doing the wrong thing that I do nothing.  Silly, huh?

Sometimes you just have to keep going.  Whether you're trying to track down the wounded bird you thought you heard in the bush and have wound up ankle-wrapped in grass taller than your head or you have embarked on a rather large graphite drawing and well into it you discover you have no idea what you're doing or you cruising along happily married and then discover your husband has a progressive disease and that the future  envisioned will be entirely different than what you'd scripted.  Even then, you just have to keep going. 

Sometimes I scare myself by taking the long look into the future.  Rather useless obviously for the long look I might have taken two years ago has absolutely nothing to do with present reality.  In fact, if I take long looks in historical two year blocks, what I'd envisioned and the ultimate reality probably have little in common.  Oh sure, we've lived at our present address for 20 years (and who would've thought that given my peripatetic lifestyle for the previous 20 years?) but other than that?  Did I think I would get another horse or do endurance riding?  Did I think I'd be a vet nurse or learn complicated cocktails as a bartender?  Did I think I'd learn to cook and even more amazing, actually love it?  (Of all the things that I've done, that's the strangest.  As strange as suddenly discovering I went all gooey and needed to bear lots of babies!  Thankfully that didn't happen.).  I've taught conversational English and am learning French.  I became involved in bird rescue and have eleven permanent residents.  I learned about clicker training and devolved from treed to treeless saddles and bitted to bitless bridles.  I've won two firsts for drawing.  I've written a book and a half, quit smoking and become a yogini.  No cures for cancer here but a good and varied life.

So I'll keep going.  Being a carer needn't be all bleak and horrible and although it is a progressive disease, it is not a violent dissolution so there's lots and lots of time to prepare.  After all, he has no choice.  He has to keep going too.  We may as well hold hands and go together.