It was a typical December Thursday night, Everyone went about their usual business, their usual indulgences, their usual routines. By the end of the night, I would realize how my world was changing again, never more to be the same as far as I can see.

My Thursday routine took me out in the frozen night to Jinenkan Seigi Dojo for another night of brutal outdoor training. What our sensei said before the class, before anyone else arrived, began the realization, "Because tonight is probably your Last forgeable night of training..."
That bothered me, though I did not yet realize it.

Yes, it was cold out there, and yes many nights I had looked out my window and dreaded putting on my gi and tabi to go into highly unfavorable conditions to volunteer to take a beating, but I noticed something else. I noticed that my mind was sharper. I noticed my -senses were keener, honed by the intensity, the realization of my need to be smarter, faster, more powerful.

It was here I first got a taste of what it will be Like to die, to see the blade crashing down and know you would not have Lived. I had died many times is that small sand pit, and in the words of Miyamoto Masashi, "…the end result of any Study is a kind of death (sublime, not necessarily physical) before the attainment of perfection…"

Without that death, I have no way to further the power of my intent, to strengthen my will to live. I must die many times more to finally reach perfection. After the class, the bow-out proceeded as always, but after it was complete, our dojo cho said,
"Everyone bow to Stephen," a sign of respect and thankfulness.
I am one of them.
"Domo arigato gozaimashita.”
That was when I realized this truly was the end of an era. This moment was the close of the age, when all things had passed a way, irrecoverably banished by the unforeseeable future.

Death, I will miss you. We part now for the time being, but I will find you again. Ages pass like handbreadths. The end of the next will come soon. Only then can I ascend, higher and higher into the oblivion of true purity, where all these things I carry that weigh me down will be dropped, and my true self, planned beyond my knowledge before the beginning of time, will rise to the Author of all perfection, never to want anything more for all eternity.

~Zaelyx tagged me for this meme at my request.

If you like, I can give you five words that I feel I can relate to you. Post them in your journal and explain what they mean to you.

1. Dragons

Repeatability is one of the foundations of science. It is only when something can be repeated constantly that it is considered for scientific study. When every continent and every people, separated by centuries, without any access to each other say the same thing, we should listen. No matter where you go, if you know where to look, people all over the globe report a reptilian entity know to western society as the dragon. In recent times, this creature has been relagated to a child's fantasy object. Few serious researchers remain who are willing to wade through musty ancient texts in search of a marginally profitable creature possibility at the risk of their career. I study the world wide dragon phenomenon. I have dared to think thoughts the world has not dared to think in recent years. I have labored, and I have learned...more than I thought possible.

2. intellectual

I used to think I was an intilectual. I knew more than most people in the small town where I grew up. That changed when I found myself at a university where academic challenges were more real. The more I have exposure to the rest of the world, the more I pondered the concept to intillect, and the more I realized you do not have to be smart to be an intilectual. There are plenty of smart people who have no abilities in cautious, critical thinking. If you think about people you know, you can probably name at least one. With this realization also comes the freedom of all people everywhere to be intillectual, regardless of birth of IQ. If I can continue to become an intillectual, you can too.

3. literate (always use good grammar)

Ever since my earliest memories, my faithful parents worked hard to instill in me the ability to use language properly. This expresses itself in many ways. The English language has changed. Eloquence is minimized as the public adopts the business language of optimization. This means that people leave the Boroque-esque thee's and thou's to those who have been Shakespeared. It may just be the passage of time, but to be a personal preservation of English in the good ol' days is a privelidge. That's where I find myself, for better or worse. (I do modulate the grammer and vernacular, as we all do, according to situation )

4. creative

Creativity is essential to engaging the world we currently find ourselves. Without creativity, innovation is lost, and we stagnate. Some are more creative than others. I have not been blessed with enourmous amounts of creativity, but I have enough to generate more. Those of you seeing this have been willing to join me in this journey to further myself in this area. Thank you.

5. mechanically minded (you analyze)

I have been told I should have been an English major. I have been told before I should have been an art major. I dabble in many fields of knowledge, enjoying success in a small regard to many. I have been a musician, I have been a writer, I have been a poet. Despite all of these possibilities, I chose to pursue engineering as a career. Everything that you can touch around you now has already been touched in some way by some form of engineering. It is through engineering that aesthetics, communication and practicality are combined to form something useful to people in the world.

For those of you who don't already know, the reason for my scarecity of late is not only because of the rigors of academia and job hunting, but now also because my ancient computer finally had a heart attack and died. Happened over a week ago, right after the surviving the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam. After about five years, I probably should have been expecting it...

Here's a great method to find new artists that might have slipped your searches before.

It's a simple idea:

1) Be one of the first 18 or so people commenting on this journal entry (and to say you want a feature), and I will add you to the Featured List!

2) For each of the 18 first people answering this journal I will put his/her avatar and the three deviations I like most from his/her gallery on the list.

3) If you answer, you'll have to do the same in your journal, putting me on the first place, completing this way the list with 18 people. The idea of this is not to get a free feature, it is to spread art around for everyone.

I found this randomly today, myself, and I liked the idea.

===Here Begin the Featured Artists===

1.) *Beast3

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2.) ~Titanfrompso

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3.) ~Panamatt

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Iterations...iterations...iterations! In engineering, we talk a lot about iterations. Design itself is an iterative process, where initial parameters are reevaluated whenever possible to lead to optimization. Iterations are used outside of optimization in sequential simulation to find values that cannot be found through simultaneous simulation methods (in street talk, iterative processes help us find values despite confusing equations that don’t fit together at all otherwise).

With iteration on the brain, the idea of a process repeating over and over again, my mind wandered during a Thermal Design class to the idea of a revolution. That brought to mind all the many times governments, empires and nations have arisen, then become the very thing they defeated, and were destroyed, to be replaced again by something just like their origin. Normally two revolutions in particular come to mind whenever the word is brought up in the western mind; these would be the American revolution that birthed the United States as a nation, and the French revolution, which was a real bloodbath, and still is if you count all the red ink that ends up on history tests.

If one thinks more broadly, the rise and fall of the Greek and Roman empires could also be labeled revolutions in their own way. If you go even farther back, countless unnamed empires arose and fell in the ancient past, and many of them started and ended with what could be called revolutions, whether they were revolutions of monarchs, changing the dynasties, or revolutions of ideas, such as the French and American revolutions.

If you study history long enough, many of these revolutions start to blend together. There are only so many combinations of political upheavals, military coups, assassinations and valiant stands of brave heroes, and before long, all of these changes in government start to look more like iterations than revolutions. The processes repeat themselves over and over, and the more things change, the more they stay the same. Certainly, the changes were huge to the people who had to live through them at the time. These were the people who had their homes and farms destroyed, and many lost their lives, but where is Rome now? Where is Jacques Necker now? Where is George Washington? How much longer will it be until these names will be publically forgotten, along with Merenre Nemtyemsaf II and Mutakkil Nusku?

So what sets a revolution apart from an iteration? Certainly it’s not just the name; you can call a frog a revolution, but it is still a frog. That is where I came to the conclusion that,

Apart from God’s divine providence, a revolution is just an iteration.

This opens up new volumes of questions. Can anything happen apart from the almighty, infinite hand of God? Of course not. Does that make all iterations revolutions? Is our current government part of an ongoing revolution or a dying iteration? (There are lots of heated and heartfelt opinions on this one) Where do we fit into all this? THAT is the capstone question. Where indeed?