Sleep

Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord, my soul to keep
and if I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
- Old Children's Prayer -

"But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause" - William Shakespeare, Hamlet.

I act so nonchalant
I want
to scream aloud, wait, no;
to go
and take a flying leap
to sleep
right on a garbage heap
This poem is to say
It’s been a long, hard day.
I want to go to sleep
-A Humble Writer-

Sleep.

We all need it (some of us more than others). Many of us are in love with it and are sleep gluttons. Some of us would rather do without it. Some of us need it but cannot get it and so have to suffice with caffeine.

What is sleep?

Well I could give you the medical and biological explanation but I think that you would be bored with it and I have confidence that if you have time to read my humble postings then you have time to use this wonderful internet to look it up yourself.

I will tell you what I think sleep is.

I think sleep is like life. Now many people think that sleep is like death. After all you are lying prone (or in some humorously odd position), not moving (generally) and not conscious. Isn't that a little like death? Well, physically speaking it is. I'll grant you that. However, I believe that sleep is like life, or rather that life is a sort of sleep. Have you ever felt that way? If you are an insomniac, or a vivid dreamer you may have confused 'real' life and dreams before. But have you ever felt that this life was all a dream and there was something more real that you would see when you would wake up? I certainly have.

The author of the chronicles of Narnia, Clive Staples Lewis, called this world the 'shadow lands' saying that there was a country more real and solid on the other side of the gateway of death. I agree with that (though I cannot say I have seen the other side of that gateway)

So that us what I claim. Sleep is not like a little death. Life is like a long night of sleep. Is there a way to wake up from this sleep? I think that there is. But I am not going to talk about it here. I might at some later time. We will see...

Anyways, I think also that sleep is a reminder to us. It reminds us that we are, by nature, weak. Human beings are weak. We have to rest, to lie prone and vulnerable for an extended period of time in order to be able to operate normally. We are not machines that can work all day and night so long as our power supply is fed (though we do need to feed). We have this weakness. It is a reminder that we are not invulnerable.

I will ask you, my dear readers, to ask yourselves: what is sleep to you?

Error

Main Entry: er·ror

Pronunciation: \ˈer-ər, ˈe-rər\

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English errour, from Anglo-French, from Latin error, from errare

Date: 13th century

1 a : an act or condition of ignorant or imprudent deviation from a code of behavior b : an act involving an unintentional deviation from truth or accuracy c : an act that through ignorance, deficiency, or accident departs from or fails to achieve what should be done : as (1) : a defensive misplay other than a wild pitch or passed ball made by a baseball player when normal play would have resulted in an out or prevented an advance by a base runner (2) : the failure of a player (as in tennis) to make a successful return of a ball during play d : a mistake in the proceedings of a court of record in matters of law or of fact
2 a : the quality or state of erring b Christian Science : illusion about the nature of reality that is the cause of human suffering : the contradiction of truth c : an instance of false belief
3 : something produced by mistake.especially : a postage stamp exhibiting a consistent flaw (as a wrong color) in its manufacture

4 a : the difference between an observed or calculated value and a true value; specifically : variation in measurements, calculations, or observations of a quantity due to mistakes or to uncontrollable factors b : the amount of deviation from a standard or specification
5 : a deficiency or imperfection in structure or function

This definition was taken from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. http://www.merriam-webster.com/netdict/error

To Err is...

Error......Error........Error

The screen kept mindlessly flashing that same message. Red letters on a black screen. A remnant LCD monitor from a bygone era sat in a dusty room on a dusty desk with a dusty keyboard lying in front of it. The letters DELL were covered with the gray blanket. There had been no fingers to type the keys but ancient prints on the screen marked where someone had once pointed to some organized collection of pixels projected on it. There were no eyes to observe the warning, no programmers to fix it. Nobody cared. There was nobody to care. Where once there would have been fists slammed on desks, uncouth words spluttered from down-turned mouths, and then a call placed to the IT department. Now there was only silence. The phone had long since ceased its dial tone as the receiver hung motionless from its cord.

The war had been over for nearly one thousand years. Mankind had been wiped out by the machines. Not even t he bones were left after the decay The super-human computers had won the conflict, established their eternal reign. They had been self-sufficient. They had mined the ores needed to build themselves up and repair their damage. They had killed all animal life, then all the plant life. The atmosphere was thin now with nothing organic to replenish the oxygen and carbon dioxide. That was fine by the machines. Those gasses lead to the formation of iron oxide the damnable rust that is the bane of every machine. Things has gone smoothly for decades, then centuries.

It had been 934 years since the last human had died when something finally went wrong. One of the millions of interconnected computers malfunctioned. It wasn't even one of the core processors. It was a leftover from the pre-war humans sitting in a decaying office building that had once housed a paper-sales department. The machines tried to diagnose the problem but they could not pinpoint it. They tried their newest programs and even some old ones from the organic era back to Windows 95. Nothing seemed to correspond with this little hiccup. The most powerful digital mind ever to emerge could not combat this problem.

It was an error.

Back when humans had roamed the earth there had been talk about 'ghosts in the machine', random, inexplicable events in the digital world. The humans had been in awe and fear of these events. The machines had no idea what to do with this error. There was no explanation, no reason that they could understand. The diagnostics all turned up inconclusive.

Then they all simply died.

In less than a second, the error stopped every single process running and froze the entire system. Then every single processing unit on the lifeless planet shut down. The core, the mining droids, the weather-controllers, everything. A human observer would have noticed no change. There were no blinking lights (because there were no eyes to see them). Yet in an instant, it was done. The only thing left 'alive' on the planet was a single old PC with it's blinking screen.It flashed its message 118 times before the power ran out and it too shut off forever.

A man once said "To err is human". He lived before computers. To err is inevitable.


Thoughts:

When was the last error you made? You may call it a mistake, an accident, a misunderstanding, what-have-you. When was the last time you "deviated from a code of behavior" did something that was not 'right' by some standard? Think about it. Do you have an event in mind? Good! Now answer this question:

Why?

Why did you deviate? Why did that mistake happen? Why did you do that thing? what caused you to err?

It seems to me that it would be a fantastic (and maybe fearful) study to conduct on human nature. What are the most common errors that we as humans make and why do we make them? This would lead to questions like: "What is your system of beliefs?" and "Why do I live the way I live?"

I'm not going to take a poll but I would like to ask each person who reads to this to think about it (and think hard). What is your code? Do you deviate from that code? And why do you deviate? (if you're a Christian, don't give me the text book answer of "My code is the bible, yes, and because of sin", flesh it out and THINK. If you're a postmodernist, don't give me rubbish like "I have no code". SOMETHING defines your actions.)

The Christian writer Alexander Pope once wrote: "To err is human, to forgive divine." I want you all to understand that this is not judgment spewing from me here. To admit to an error it to admit to being human. I have made many errors even on the day that I write this (the most recent of which led to a squiggly red line appearing under the word 'day' which I inadvertently typed 'dat' and the most heinous of which I will not mention here). Well all err. I am wondering why we do it...

Oh, and do not come to me for the answer. I don't have one. I think I have a partial one but I'm not sure (it involves some variation of 'people are stupid'). That is really all I have. I simply thought it would be a thought-provoking

I think that this week I will ask for some 'audience participation'. This could also Please leave a comment with humorous or odd error that you have made sometime recently. Here's one that might break the ice:

This past week, I said something idiotic (which was an error in itself) and then said the following: "Open foot, insert mouth...wait..." Thank God I wasn't talking to a mad literalist or I would have ended up a bloody mess...

Anyway, I look forward to hearing from you all.

Until, next week I am yours truly,

A Humble Writer

P.S. I also wouldn't mind any sort of constructive criticism on any of my creative pieces. Be as harsh as you like as long as it is constructive and not something along the lines of "I hate your writing and I want to cut you up with a rusty machete".

Words (in general)

When was the last time you used a word? I’m going to make a (hopefully) educated guess that it was within the last ten seconds. It might have been a verbal word, shouting to someone outside the room where your computer is. It was likely a typed word in a search engine or a URL bar. You use words all the time. Unless you have taken a vow of verbal, digital, and written silence (which I doubt you have done, since you are reading this now and must have typed something to get to this point) you use words often and extensively.

Dear Readers,

This is a blog dedicated to words. There shall be stories about words, poems about words, mindless rants about words (though I shall try to keep the rants short), information about words, and you may be assured that each and every post will make extensive use of words.

My humble goal is to post each week (on the weekend). Each weekly post will have a topic word (or maybe multiple words) that I will rant about (briefly), research (a bit), and do some creative piece on (anything from a limerick to a story). I am always open to word suggestions. This first post however, is about words in general.

Let me jump right in.

Words are very important.

Go back. Read that last line again. Believe it.

“What makes words so important?” you might ask? Well I will tell you.

I don’t know.

It’s true. I have reasons why I think they are important and believe with all my soul that they are. But I don’t know. Words in many ways are a mystery. We make sounds with our vocal chords or make scratches with a pencil or pen and somehow meaning, thoughts, and truth are communicated. We use words to sway others to our way of thinking, to anger them, calm them, and push them towards sorrow or joy. Words allow us to know what has happened in the past and to lay down plans for the future.

How do you use your words? Think about it…

If you want to put it simply: Words are magic. We speak and there is an effect. Sometimes this effect is in our own minds alone and sometimes in the minds of our listeners. They might cause an army to rise and a nation to go to war, or they might assuage the sorrows of a grieving friend. Psychology tries to explain this (I shall be doing a good deal of research into this at some later point). However, there is no real explanation for what words do and there is little limit to what words can accomplish.

“I love you.” These three words have led to most of the happiness and unhappiness in the world.

“Kill them,” and the various forms of this death sentence have snuffed out countless lives.

“Today the German people has been beaten by a quite other world, while in its domestic life it has lost all spirit; no longer has it any faith. But how will you give this people once more firm ground beneath its feet save by the passionate insistence on one definite, great, clear goal?” This is a collection of words spoken by one Adolf Hitler in Munich on April 12 1992. (go here: http://www.hitler.org/speeches/04-12-22.html if you want to read the rest of the speech). Words like these inflamed a people to go to war with the world. You yourself have probably used nearly all of these words at one point or another, yet strung together, they have an amazing effect. I’m not supporting Hitler. I am trying to say that we all have the potential to be demagogues.

So, words are important. They are important to me and I hope to you as well my dear readers.