I drink the espresso electric

Intense, syropy and sweet

Pleasure.

The world deteriorates outside

In my mouth, a defiant intensification

Entropy denied.

I dreamt was taken apart, organ by organ, cell by cell, gene by gene, atom by atom. I was there, unrecognizable, and you were there, and he was there, and everyone was there. In elemental form.

In pieces I was still there looking at myself over almost infinite parts. I was more than all my pieces.

Every atom was put on a ship, and sent to the corners of the universe. Fast ships they were, and in days reached the end.

My consciousness stretched and stretched and stretched with the speeding ships, through vast empty spaces filled with majestic things. I was everywhere in every particle in every ship moving outwards, my consciousness in lockstep.

As the last ship and the last atom arrived at the end of space and time, I felt one with the universe, aware of its vastness, its uncertainty and certainty, its light and darkness, its overwhelming largeness matched by matching smallness. Along the way I also saw life, more varied and plentiful than on earth. But most of all, as I stood at the center aware of the ends of the universe, like a spider aware of every thread and every intersection of its web, I became aware of a sadness of the kind impossible to covey. The universe was lonely. And all of existence in all of its wonders and blunders was a frantic effort for meaning. It was here at the edges looking back that I finally got it. For only from the edge do you feel the finality of it all. And physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, all a desperate attempt to escape.

I finally realized that it has at last succeeded. I, you, everyone, are the manifestation of this success. And I don’t mean physically as in we are some wonderous engineering feat of creation, far from it. I mean our ability to be aware and to imagine. For by going inwards, the universe found a way to go outward beyond its finiteness and limitations. By going inwards, a finite world gives way to an infinite one. This void of nothingness I stand at the edge of is there for us to fill. You and I can fill this void with all sort of wonderful things, like morality, kindness, generosity, love, vision, hope.

Sunday, Feb 2, 2025

Decapitation

Hey Frank,

“Strike imminent on Iran”, all the news sites read this morning. I woke up to loud war drums today only for them to die down by mid-afternoon. All the news sources from main stream to alternative ones had said war would start this weekend, and today being the last of the two possible days, the strike seems imminent. Maybe they won’t, I doubted myself many times today. But then you just have to look at the armada they brought in to the Gulf. You just don’t bring all those ships and all those planes and personal and spend all this money for nothing. Some say this is all Trump’s MO, to bully Iran into a deal. I have my doubts, but we’ll see.

In the afternoon we started hearing that a deal was being discussed, while Khamenei said that if Americans started something they should know it will lead to a regional war, and then Trump said, we’re hoping for a deal but we got more ships coming. But I have seen this show before, during the 12 day war. Two days before a meetup to discuss a deal in Europe, and Israel launched a decapitation strike in coordination with the US. So what he says, and all this talk of a deal are just words, they mean nothing. You go to look at the facts. Lot’s of ships Frank, lot’s. The puppet masters are pulling the string of war.

What a weird term they now use in war, decapitation, right Frank? The image equivalent of cutting someone’s head off, modernized. It’s brilliant I think. They found a way to bring back to life an image that in all of history was used to send fear down the spines of men, but with a twist. For the metaphor to work, it requires that the leaders represent the head of the country and the people its body. The difference of course is that in a real decapitation, the body doesn’t grow back, and in this case, 90 million bodies can ‘grow’ back.

Decapitation doesn’t quite work here applied to it’s logical end, but I think, it may achieve it’s main goal of creating fear, a threat of what is to come if you don’t comply. And am sure those moving in up the leadership ladder feel the fear. Or do they? Seems like all those groups who’s leaders were decapitated from Hama to Hez to Irn simply replaced their people, no matter how many ‘heads’ were taken off.

I am going to say something very controversial Frank, and very unorthodox. I believe that as much as the decapitation strategy is grotesque, and like all extrajudicial killings unlawful and immoral, I am going to suggest that they maybe a good thing, IF they are applied equally on both sides. Just hear me out Frank. I remember during the civil war in Liberia where I grew up, there was a saying that Liberians liked: when two elephants fight the grass suffers”. What if wars are actually fought between leaders leaving the civilians unharmed, sparing thousands, maybe millions. Imagine battles fought between one president and another, literally. Would you not agree this is just? If this strategy can be perfected, I say, hell, do it all day if they like. I will also suggest Frank, that maybe this sort of thing will make leaders think twice about starting wars, because the one that pulled the trigger needs to be ready to be on the receiving end. Like old times when kings led their men into battle like the tip of a spear, unlike today where they are the butt of it, sitting in some bunker watching a screen.

Another day has gone by Frank. Our nerves are pretty raw with all this war talk. Russia-Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Somalia, Iran, Syria, Taiwan. Just seems the world is on fire, and there is this sense this could become a very very large fire. Feels like each day is like walking a tight rope, we could fall into the abyss below. We don’t how deep it goes, only that it’s dark, and likely will hurt all those who fall in.

How long before this tinder box burst into flames? Unfortunately for, when it does, it will be the grass that burns.

Yours,
Sam B.

Feb 3. 2025.

Small hands

Dear Frank,

It’s the day after. And they are playing with our emotions again. For very small hands, Trump sure has grip on the world’s jugular. He squeezes, releases, squeezes, releases, he enjoys but we writhe around from the emotional see sawing like worms exposed to salt. Does he have dementia? Or is he just a narcistic enjoying the attention and all of this is nothing more than an audience to his stage? My friend at work has the most interesting one yet, the last effects of syphilis. Maybe all of the above.

It’s hopeless. Sometimes I think, well, he’s just the crescent of a wave in the making for decades now if not more. Should we focus our anger on him or on the wave that is driving this? Just seems like he is just the pointed coalescing of long period of physics. Nothing we can do about it. But nevertheless, it occupies our minds day in and day out, because he’s got his little fingers on the trigger. A nuclear trigger.

Feb 17, 2025.

The Great Japanese Wave

Dear Frank,

Two weeks later and the tension keeps rising Frank. It does feel like war will break out any time. Or not. It’s funny but the plausibility of something bad happening seems to always go up hand in hand with chances of something good happening, like twins attached at the hips, they up or down, together. But at some some point something will happen, and a better analogy is needed. Those two states, of war or peace, are like an indeterminate quantum state, both outcomes, a wave of peace or or a rain of exploding particles, remain possible until they meet that deciding factor that will collapse them. What is that wall?

The signs of war coming are loud. The build up continues, more death machines pour in day by day, and leaks from Trump’s inner circle say planning is underway, and that it’s just a matter of time. But there are signs, or more technically, announcements from negotiation team that suddenly throw a ray of hope towards us, that maybe, just maybe, they will find a way. Yesterday Iran’s foreign minister said that the negotiations entered a more ‘serious’ phase or something like that. Then you heard things like Trump is willing to meet with the supreme leader, or that that he will be involved indirectly. Add to this the complicated and risk-filled nature of an American military exercise here and then you might say that maybe, maybe this whole this is a show of force, to force to a deal. But it could also be a ruse. Keep them guessing, while they buy time for the military pieces are in place.

Remember the great Japanese Wave? That’s the coming wave that looks like a raised hand with creepy, wavy fingers reaching out over a stormy sea under a dark sky about to seize something imminently. This feels like it. For 45 years US has been laser focused on destroying or controlling Iran, and for the last 20 years or so Israel added it’s insidious fixation to this, and now has over-taken it as the main force behind this fixation. For 49 years they have been trying to break the back of the Mullahs, and they have failed. Now, finally, a great gathering of all the pieces that could make this happen has come together. The political will is there with the most ardent pro-Israel WH in decades. There is a president who not only is close to Natin, but has been bought with 100 Mill, and likely is being blackmailed in the Epstein affair. From Bibi’s side, this is the last brick in his legacy, to take out the one thing standing in the way of complete dominance of Eritz, and the great, biblically ordained expansion of it. Finally, with the Iranian gov successively weakened over many wars and sanctions, the regime could be the weakest in the last fifty years. This to me is the Wave, and it’s about to collapse.

But the most compelling reason why this has to happen now, is the fact that the American populace has turned on Israel. There will likely not be a ‘next’ time. When Trump is gone, so will American blind support. The change of attitude of the everyday citizen because of the Gaza war, and the American first attitude, will take away the last brick holding the entire edifice enabling Israel’s always having its way with the great America.

It’s now or never.

Yours,

Sam B.

Feb 18, 19 or 20? lost track.

Disappointed

Days blend together. I wake up and say to myself that I will be phone free for the first hour. I have the same thought in the first five minutes of waking up every morning. Then I unlock it and check the news. I do this every day. I expect war to start any minute. Maybe today, maybe this weekend, maybe in the next 10 days.

I saw a movie yesterday, the Return. It’s the story of Odysseus’s coming home after the Trojan war. Of the lines that stuck with me is “why do men go to war?”, his wife asks. So why do men go to war? All sorts of cliche or seemingly wise or pithy answers spring to mind. They do it to get done what words can’t do on their own. They do it to resolve conflict. They do it because the reptilian brain readily comes online, and the empathic part easily shuts off. They do it because they are wired that way. They do it because evil runs through their DNA as surely as good does, and they choose the track to run on depending on the destination. How easy it is to switch. They do it because they are animals.

It’s a very hard thing to wrap one’s heart around war. The mind yes, the heart no. The mind says it’s logical, it’s tribal, it’s the law of survival of men and nations, or that it’s just game theory. But the heart folds. How can I describe what my heart feels as thousands and thousands of bombs are about to fall on someone’s home? Men and women made those bombs. Men and women will drop those bombs. The homes to be destroyed by those bombs belong to men and women. All those men and all those women who will drop those bombs kiss their little ones good night. Words like shock, helplessness, disgust, absurd, all seem fall flat here.

Shock has given way to anger then to resignation then to hopelessness for me. But today there is an unexpected new feeling, disappointment. Not at man, or the Americans or Iranians or the military industrial complex or the Israelis. It’s immediately obvious to me that the causal chain goes way below man as a meaningful level of analysis. I am disappointed in evolution itself for not evolving something better. Or God for not creating something better.

Ramadan has just started. It’s a time of many things, but mostly it’s to spend a little time experiencing hunger the way poor people do, a command from high above. It’s a good thing, and to get people to do it, the old ones convinced man that living in someone’s sorry old shoes for a month paves the way to heaven. Putting aside the business transaction for minute, no one ever asks why the Almighty, who is All Mighty, wants to multiply the number of people who are actually feeling hungry, rather than dividing. His multiplication and addition when it comes to suffering and deficiencies are excellent, but division and subtraction are questionable.

I rarely like to go down the god rabbit hole, because it’s old, and silly, and not very interesting. The issue is deeper but still simple, and not necessarily less boring if you’re new to it. Life is just a baby, a bubbling, an ebbing and flowing of the underlying laws constituting the universe. And man is just a temporary articulation of it’s alphabet based on rules. What I am truly disappointed in is the universe itself, and it’s laws. I am disappointed in the fact that after an eternity of existing, this is the best it can come up with. For all of the vast, mind boggling breath of its space and content, and the magical manifestation of life in all of it’s rich diversity, it’s an experiment that gave us a shit sandwich, that we must eat every day. It’s shit if you can’s create life that is just to another life. It’s shit that suffering seems part of the fabric of space and time. It’s shit that a baby can be obliterated by a missile while others go on searching for the next dopamine hit. Shit, shit, shit.

But I have been falling into an old trap that you already likely picked up on. It’s just a mindless universe. So why blame it? It’s absurd. Yeah, but it’s still shit.

Yours,

Sam, B.

Feb 25, 2025

Iran’s Nostrodamus

Hey Frank,

It’s still war-less, but the momentum is building up towards, get this, war and no war! Telling you, quantum indeterminacy all the way till the ships leave or the missiles fall. Which way will it go, left or right? The story yesterday was that General Caine opposes the war. That this will likely be a bloody venture with many American men and women coming back home in body bags, and a costly loss of assets. Three news out lets leaked it, so someone doesn’t want this war to happen. On the other hand, the buildup continues, and indications of the inevitable make themselves known every day. The Americans pulled out their non-essential personal from Lebanon yesterday, and the Germans told their citizens in Israel to stock up on food and supplies.

Seems to me there are two camps against the war around Trump. There are his political advisors who are warning him against a risky venture so close to mid-terms. Dead Americans, and sunk battle ships, and costly fuel will land him in prison after impeachment most likely. Then there is the military, who are saying this is not quick and decisive, but likely long and bloody. Then there is everyone else. Literally. But key forces behind it are the intelligence agencies, the Israeli lobby, and of course, Israel.

Seems to me they will go for it. They believe there is a needle to thread here (with missiles) and that they can do it. From what I gather, the intelligence agencies believe that they can take out the top leadership, and together with a massive strike, will lead to regime fall. The grounds for this are fertile after 40 years of sanctions, and deep economic woes.

But most independent pundits think the regime is too resilient, proven by latest round of instigated riots, and the 12 day war previously, will remain intact, and it will in the end deliver a very bloody nose to the Americans, and a very severe if not deadly blow to Israel.

Who should we believe? And this brings me to a very fascinating question, who is going to be right when this is all over? There are so many predictions on this, it’s hard to keep track. And I am very curious to track who is the Nostradamus on Iran?

Fox news: Iranian people are ready to overthrow the regime. Iran is weak, and they will be defeated easily.

All other news source: muted, and mildly supportive by not asking hard questions.

The Pentagon: it can be won, but not easy. Likely costly in assets and blood.

Scott Ritter: USA will get a bloody nose. Iranian state may be dis-integrated after this. There is no such thing as negotiations with US, it’s all a sham. USA and Israel will going until Iran becomes Syria.

CIA/intelligence/Israel: we got this. Leadership will go, regime will follow.

Larry Johnson, ex Cia Analyst: Chinese and Russia will not sit this one out. America will lose like all other wars. Oil prices will soar.

Col. Wilkerson: A fool’s errand. America will get a bloody nose.

Professor Mirandi: Iran will win. They’ve been preparing for war with US for 40 years. They are more prepared against American than Israel.

Col. McGregor: A bloody nose. Maybe World War Three. Israel will go after Turkey next.

I wonder when this is all over, who would have predicted correctly. I wonder who knows which way the particle will go, when the unseen forces in that mysterious part of the quantum world meets the particles flying towards Iran? Will it veer away, or slam boom into the wall?

Yours,
Sam B.