I suppose I could use this to document this coming year, even if the only one reading it is me.

I am very excited, elated, about going to India.  I want to step off the plane, breathe in the air, be greeted by foreign people, and embrace this new space using most of my sensory equipment, and all of my cunning.  I shall dive into a large pool of Indian people and absorb their histories, their perspectives, their food, and just about about anything and everything that my little fleshy gadgets can grasp.

I just finished Contact: Carl Sagan, and I have to admit; I'm thinking of myself much more in terms of how an alien might see us, (even more than usual) or even another intelligent earth creature.  I mean, put aside the complexities of the mind, emotion, psychology, etc., and just think about the equipment we have to sense the world.  It's a very basic thought I know, but I find myself very attracted to thinking about things in these terms, because it gives me a new and different appreciation of our place in the universe.

It's like, in Israel, we went to this Museum for the blind, and they have you go through this tour with absolutely No light.  It's alarming at first, but it simplifies the experience.  What happens immediately when you close your eyes is that you are taking away the one sense that we tend to put most of our focus on, sight.  But there are these other senses there, you notice sound first, and you might not realize at first, but there is also a much hightened sense of gravity. 

That in itself is a very interesting feeling.  Weight.  Anyway, the longer you spend without sight, the more prominent the others become, and very fast.  It's like we are extremely intricate Mars rovers, or probes, and we make all these incredibly complex calculations constantly, unconsciously, and we learn quickly from the countless streams of data pouring in every second of every minute. 

This all goes without saying.  One thing, I guess, that separates us from a probe, is that we don't really have a mission.  We are gathering data, and not just as individuals, but globally as a species.  Since the very first story uttered, or the first written note, we are collectors.  We are master harvesters of sense, of light, of the tiniest fluctuation in our environment.  We do it for survival of course, but at what point does all this surpass the instinct to survive longer, more efficiently.  This is precisely the point when you pick up a science fiction book, or look out at the stars, and start dreaming of the day when we meet our brothers and sisters from the sky.  Maybe they will have something to say on the subject.

For now, I suppose I will have to settle for people who have grown up on the other side of the planet, who don't look or talk like me, and who might be able to teach me what to do with all the data we are all collecting.