reflections | M Thomas Apple Author Page

I’m not the “doubting one,” but…

March 9, 2024
MThomas

Daily writing prompt

What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?

My middle name is actually Thomas. I chose to use “M Thomas” as a pen name out of respect for my father, who taught me how to write. As a professional communications writer, he was responsible for lots of public documents for the NYS DMV, including traffic safety reports, driver manuals, press releases from the Governor, all sorts of “my boss will feel the need to edit this, so I will deliberately leave behind something for him to do so as he doesn’t screw up the entire thing” document.

I may or may not have adopted this strategy in my own professional work (I certainly adopted the attitude…)

Another reason is because I had a baby brother named Thomas. He passed away before reaching five months old when I was not quite 11. It had a major impact on me as a child (and indeed as the adult and as the father I am).

I have no sons. It bothers me that I may be the last Thomas in our family. For a while, anyway.

Today’s quote

February 29, 2024
MThomas

Philosophy is always dangerous because it promotes the creation of new ideas.
Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune

Today’s literary quote

February 19, 2024
MThomas

It is wise to have decisions of great moment monitored by generalists. Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma….The expert looks backward; he looks into the narrow standards of his own speciality. The generalist looks outward; he looks for living principle, knowing full well that such principles change, that they develop.
Frank Herbert (Children of Dune)

A writing prompt that almost answers itself

February 4, 2024
MThomas

How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?

I would say “yes.”

How?

Failure influences my perspective on life.

Successes influence my perspective on life.

Deaths influence my perspective on life.

Births influence my perspective on life.

Travel influences my perspective on life.

I would list the above five as “significant events” in life. But “the passage of time” is a little more vague.

Four years doesn’t seem like a long time to me now, but it sure did when I was 18.

Even six years doesn’t seem all that long now. But to my daughter who graduates from elementary school this March, six years is half her life.

My perspective on this question is that it’s the people in my life that have changed my perspective.

Even my daughter gets this. She wants to visit Australia, Canada, Singapore, and the US again because, as she put it, “a little piece of me is still there.”

But that’s just her perspective. Or is it?

Dear Diary – February 12, 1998

January 20, 2024
MThomas

That’s what we are, really; a constant turmoil between past and future, the mixing point of who we once were and who we are afraid we may become. We are constantly becoming — yet we never lose sight of the past, or if we do, we do so deliberately…but our past lies in wait, crouches and hides unbidden, always ready to pounce out from the mind’s darkness to set itself against future hopes and desires. Our previous selves eternally war with our future selves; it is the center of this conflict where we exist, and it is because of this inner turmoil we stay alive.

Dear Diary – May 20, 1998

December 4, 2023
MThomas

All the answers, like the questions, are in here. Life has no meaning, I give it meaning and by doing so, seek to define it. But Life cannot be trapped; it is not an animal or emotion so easily caged, sated, confused, or led. It has a Will all its own, and Its Will merely Is. No thinking, no deliberation or pontification. No grandeur, no sweeping generalizations.

Is.

Dear Diary – March 16, 2004

November 20, 2023
MThomas

[Context: While chaperoning students on overseas study in Perth, Western Australia, I badly burned my feet and back on a beach.]

It is difficult to walk, but today was slightly better than yesterday. Maybe tomorrow will be slightly better than today, and so on. One can only hope; if only life were like that, there would be an end to suffering.

(Yet) another apology for a brief absence

November 19, 2023
MThomas

Dear readers,

Sorry to have been absent for a couple of weeks.

Things just got busy at work and at home. And influenza really is strong this year, as predicted (I found out long ago that teenagers – especially guys – completely ignore suggestions regarding ways of avoiding illness due to an unwavering belief in their invulnerability).

I’ll try to make it up to you over the next couple of days.

In the meantime, here’s an Apple IIe showing the matrix (“all I see is blond…brunette…”).

Dear Diary – May 17, 2001

October 28, 2023
MThomas

There is a difference between being alone and feeling alone; being isolated and feeling isolated; being rejected and feeling rejected. Reality and emotive perception have no relation, except that which the mind projects. Eliminate the projection, and the reality allows itself to become revealed.

Only I can permit this reality to become revealed; only I can perceive, how can another remove this perception from me, if I cannot myself? No one can rely on me, if I do not rely on myself. No one can be helped by me, if I do not help myself.

No one can help me not feel alone, if I cannot do it myself. Being alone is a function of reality and circumstance; feeling alone is a function of myself, not dependent upon external stimuli. This feeling is one I must remove myself. I cannot be two, if I cannot be one.

Dear Diary – August 19, 2004

September 23, 2023
MThomas

[Note to self – it’s probably not a coincidence that so many of my better diary entries were written in August. I obviously have more time to think and write at that time of year!]

What strange turns my life has taken. Never would I have in a million years expected to be here, now, in this apartment, typing on an extended keyboard into a Japanese computer, in a Japanese city, listening to the same Cure tape I was listening to back in 1996. Has it actually been 8 years?

Ten years ago I was playing role playing games and drinking in Robbins lounge, getting ready to pack everything I owned into a moving van to move to Ann Arbor. A city I didn’t know, with no money for deposit or rent, or a job. Without a clue. Totally hopeless. Instead of exploring the city, I stayed in my bedroom and played games or typed. What was I thinking? I can’t even get in touch with the few people I met there. Even the ones I knew at ND are either gone back where they came from or no longer answer my emails.

I can still picture them all in my mind. I can still see the rooms I lived in, all the way back home. Even the freshman dorm room which no longer exists, since they tore the building down. How can that be?

It must be this which makes us human; the ability to take the visual and turn it into mental. The capacity to make emotional connections between the world outside and the world inside. The belief that there are two worlds. This makes us human, and at the same time it makes us separate. It is a false belief, that we are not of the outside. Yet there is no returning. Once we start, we can never stop. Even changing languages doesn’t help. We merely start over again from a new perspective, still outside the outside.

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