Superpowers
Thursday • January 20th 2022 • 6:59:39 pm
There is a number of curious superpowers we all share,
though many may may not be fully aware of them.
Some of the powers that we are aware of,
seem useless until put in proper context.
The following is a short list of observations,
that I made this afternoon upon singing a song.
I attach the song at the end of this poem,
and that will be the first power I will share some notes on.
In another poem entitled "Karaoke Pokie: A Cappella Eve With The Dr. Meow Quartet"
I sung an old song from a TV show.
This afternoon I've noticed that a lot of the song stayed with me,
even though eleven months has passed.
While I adjusted some thing in the song,
I didn't ruin it, it is more like I made it my own.
Not only do we have a talent for nearly automatic synchronization and vocalization,
not only do we quickly memorize the notes of a song.
But we can weave our own version,
and by extension, begin composing and singing our own songs soon after.
You will need a metronome during song writing,
but the distance between customizing a song an making your own from scratch is short.
I think one of the mightiest talents we have is,
learning a new language.
It takes some weeks to warm up,
but you can understand what people are saying in under six months.
Of course there is a large requirement that you were probably aware of,
you got to move to the country where the language is spoken.
Stay away from classrooms,
go practice your portraits at the coffee shops.
Nor does learning to read invoke a text book,
you need closed captions, and a show that captured your attention.
Oh and that thing that adults say about teenagers learning faster,
is just an excuse, it is not true, you can learn a new language any time.
Somewhat related is the automatic poem memorization,
all it takes is reading it a bunch of times, and there it is.
We get to carry around a poem,
for a few days, wherever we go.
I am a bit rusty but from time to time,
I re-memorize Red Red Rose, and Invictus.
Though when I get to comfy I begin yelling Invictus in my car,
and use a fake Scott accent for Red Red Rose.
Interestingly enough I need to power up my Scott accent before I soil it,
and for this I go watch one of my favorite videos Three Scotts In A Ballon - and what else could they possibly be doing.
(Red Red Rose Plays)
For a more down to earth superpower,
I would like to take moment here and mention Night Vision.
You'd think our eyes getting used to the dark be a simple though really cool thing,
for me it reminds me of one of the most embarrassing times of my life.
This was sixth or seventh grade the first time I slept in the woods,
as the fire was dying and the night vision started kicking in.
Sigh...
I, I don't know how to say this,
but there was a distant dew drop.
And I didn't know that a dew drop can shine that bright at night,
I threw a bunch of sticks at my One Eyed Huge ****** Wolf.
And when I couldn't fight it anymore,
I went to sleep ready to be eaten, I guess.
It is a rare creature that startles him self with a fancy dew drop,
and I have nothing more to add to this story.
But my horrible shame brings us to one of the most beautiful and restoring powers,
which is walking months long trails.
Here in North America that means walking,
Appalachian Trail, Continental Divide Trail, and the Pacific Crest Trail.
These trails represent Mental Detoxification and easy life saving weight loss,
this occurs due to lifestyle change.
People, work hard at building careers,
but they don't stop to consider if they are healthy for them.
Constant overwork, stress and worry, and little emphasis on health, wisdom, books and poetry,
are no good for us.
We are all taught that a career is a beautiful and prestigious thing,
but that is wrong, life is beautiful and precious, and to be completely honest all human being are Holy.
Walking a months long trail, and letting our minds and bodies heal,
is by far one of our most magnificent powers.
This marvelous and extremely modern day and age there is something extremely technological,
that is closely related to walking long trails.
And it requires the strangest thing you will hear all day,
it requires that you wear a large solar powered battery on you backpack.
And it is an important part of walking the long trails,
it is listening to Narrated Books.
Oh what a beautiful and blissful journey that six month trek becomes,
you get to take away not just your improved health, but also your supercharged wisdom.
I think there is only one thing that can be said on the subject:
"Just do it Maaaan"
Having some free time is a wonderful opportunity to grab a rhyming dictionary,
be it a paper book or an rhyming website.
The big parts of the poem always come from our heart,
but when transitioning between stanzas gets tricky, the rhyming dictionary is indispensable.
But when I do my rhymes I say what I want to say in the first part,
and make the second one for the rhyme.
It is never an empty thing,
it always comes put as a supporting wisdom, but I let the rhyme decide what wisdom it will be.
And if the is nothing I can say of value,
then I search for synonyms and sometimes even re-word the first line.
My most favorite, are my funny poems, like The Midnight Owl,
I am certain that it is humor that puts magic in poetry.
No list of superpowers would be complete without the physical powers,
and the one power that is on top of my mind, is Jogging in cold weather.
Truly a thing to behold,
but you do need to dress well avoid being cold and getting too sweaty.
And do spend some time bundled up at home, in your warmest clothes,
so that you leave for the jog already warm or toasty, and don't have to spend the first 15 minutes warming up.
Not overheating during exercise is like flipping the turbo switch,
tiredness comes much later than usual, is at all.
The trick to jogging and all the other exercises, including Bodybuilding,
is an low tech Interval Timer that will allow you to gently ramp up your activity period while eliminating your rest one second at a time.
The way to understand how this works, is with the idea of choking your muscles,
if you lift to heavy or goo too much, you will become too overwhelmed to continue your exercise.
And as a result,
you will fail to increase your endurance.
Interval timer, is an automated trainer,
that will prevent you from going too hard and becoming too tired.
Which in turn will allow you to keep digging deeper and deeper,
into your power of endurance.
This sends a powerful message to your body to adapt,
and like a good horse it will do so by growing more muscle.
It is an interesting observation, for sure,
going too fast or too heavy, will not allow you to go far enough to ask your body to adapt.
There is a very interesting variation on the interval timer,
that is called Couch To 5K.
It is the same principle as the interval timer,
but Couch to 5K is designed for jogging.
These kinds of slow increase programs,
are an easy way towards Marathons and even Ultramarathons.
My own variation is Shuffle Dancing with Dumbbells,
to ever faster songs, where I pay attention to the beats per minute, and dance in-sync with the beats of a song.
The faster you dance the more moves you have to cut,
because they are either unsafe or too slow, but it absolutely increases jogging endurance without putting stress on your knees.
By far my favorite area of fancy superpowers is Art,
and I left it for last.
First of all, I independently invented the Art Projector,
it is one of the best ideas I've ever had.
If you connect your laptop or cell phone to a wall projector,
and use effects such as posterize or find edges on your source photo, you can easily transport the outlines and proportions to canvas.
Take a picture of your friend,
and begin painting, a wall projector completely removes the boring part of art, and has you start with colors.
You can create large accurate graffiti,
or simple charcoal drawings.
Using a computer will allow you to change contrast,
to go back and forth between outlines and colors, so that you always find your way around the features of the source photo.
Finally, there is a very unusual art power,
that we are all aware of, but never connect it to art for some reason.
We all had moments where we recognized a thing in a cloud formation,
a butterfly or a face, but rarely do we see pattern recognition as a superpower.
When you see artists put a lot of rough lines on paper,
they are actually trying to find a cloud that comes close to what they are hoping to draw.
They eventually pick lines that fit what they need best,
and make them thicker or erase the others.
Painters do something similar,
they lay down paint until they see a pattern that works for them.
This is similar to the inkblot test in a way,
they keep circling around what they want, until they SEE IT.
It is never quite precisely what they originally imagined,
but it is what they need.
Try creating some goofy shapes with Tea or Coffee on paper,
and see if something random jumps out at you, you can then outline it with a pencil.
Repeat the exercise by trying to come close to what you would wish to create,
and keep trying and trying.
And most often after three of five tries and a bit of a squint,
a variation of the shape you wanted will jump out at you.
You can also do something similar with kids' drawings,
let them draw squiggles until you see something that you can make out of them, and then take over, and give them credit.
I think many of the great painters and sculptors,
invited that drop randomness into their creative process, and had great fun somewhat discovering their next artwork.
And here is the song that started this strange poem,
as promised.
(Czterej Pancerni plays)