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"Those who hear not the music, think the dancers mad." - Author Unknown "Arrowcatcher" is the nom de plume for James Duncan, born June 1948. The photo is a 2005 cell phone snapshot in a mirror at age 57. A California suburban early life led eventually to a 1970 University of California at Berkeley BA degree. In high school I graduated near the top of my 1965 class and had studied 4 years each of French and German as well as math through calculus. After UC I entered Denver University's Graduate School of Mass Communications but decided early to end my student career. At UC Berkeley I was chief engineer of student station KALX-FM as well as a classical music on-air programmer. At Denver University I had a Music Department Fellowship to record and document student recitals and performances. For several months I was also chief engineer of KCFR, Denver and installed their initial 10 watt transmitter at the top of the campus library building. On dropping out of graduate school I became a California commercial FM broadcast engineer - my continuing career for more than a quarter century. I am a Society of Broadcast Engineers Certified Professional Broadcast Engineer, leaving the field in 1996 to become a computer systems administrator for small business and as well a webmaster. I also do professional photography, generally of high end West Coast real estate for a Central California real estate company. Once out of school in the early 70s, my adult life was poised to bloom as it is for all college graduates. I expected to evolve my broadcast engineering career and follow normal guidelines for being a success in my nominal calling. I had become a General Class radio amateur at age 13, so a path led to a natural career in radio communications. A distraction developed about 1973, however. It dawned on me one day that there must be more to life than pursuing a career to become a nominal recognized "success". I should at this point own a large "McMansion" house, a fine SUV, and have a reasonable golf score in addition to having a quintessential American family of my own. That was not to be. Every week as I drove to radio station studios I would stop at a B. Dalton bookstore as well as several used book stores to buy books on Western and Eastern philosophy. Becoming an avid reader, I read Tolstoy's War and Peace in a single long sitting on a day off. To me the Napoleonic War assault on Moscow was incidental to the introspections of lead character Pierre Bezukhov in that great classic. I was looking literally everywhere for clues and was a confirmed autodidact. To mull what I was reading I would take long walks at Ed Levin Park in the hills behind my San Jose, California rented home at the time. Friends and associates were sure I was on drugs in this "retreat" (never the case). I started a hand written journal which grew to roughly 250,000 words in a large pile of legal pads. When time allowed, I took my sleeping bag and lots of water to Pinnacles National Monument, about an hour-and-a-half south, and camp in my station wagon. I did this in the middle of summer as hot temperatures - often over 100° F/38° C - emptied the park of visitors, and I could hike all alone to the highest peaks in this picturesque spot and crystallize a flood of new ideas. I carried gallon jugs of water and sometimes poured them on my head for cooling. At the time, camping was allowed in the Monument, but this hasn't been the case for many years now. To make a complex story shorter, I realized that I could possibly synthesize an "accurate" spiritual system of my own by digesting a maximally diverse range of the world's thinking on the subject. In particular it was my thought to sift out commonalities in philosophical and spiritual thought from the widest possible range of readings and thought. Gradually as well, all life and work activities became integrated into this process. Every action came to be a sort of spiritual exercise. I can't claim I have done this overall pattern with perfection, and there has been much trial-and-error. There is no "guru" nor other direct advisor. My technical communications career provided a feast of conceptual analogies for Arrow Catcher. I intentionally created and propagated electromagnetic radiation for a paycheck, and the knowledge dividends far exceed the value of money payments received. The Arrow Catcher website is a compressed version of the synthesis that I created and live by to the fullest extent. At this time (August 24, 2007), the monograph is neither fully coherent nor complete. I'm busy in my work career, and it has been hard to find time and energy to expand this document properly. Wherever possible, I explore the ideas with friends and acquaintances. Persons with a technical background have been especially fascinated. I request them to provide feedback so I can test the notions. In the near future I hope to expand the ideas here properly and hopefully with reasonable rigor. Arrow Catcher may never impress academic philosophers, who often strive to be reductionist and verbal. Arrow Catcher is more in the mold of a holistic mysticism, which is why I suggest interested visitors view relevant references on the Links page. Astrology chart made in 1972 (by Gary Lyte) for those who might be interested.
More photos below - I dreamed up the Arrow Catcher "broad temporal aperture" rubric
long ago and do walk-the-walk, so to speak. Arrow Catcher visitors may
know or be able to cite "Renaissance" persons who are far more accomplished than
I am. However, the Arrow Catcher proposal is that any individual should
actualize and optimize whatever diverse range of abilities they can to the best
of their ability. In so doing, it is proposed that such persons may be better
positioned to apprehend esoteric knowledge if they wish to do so. The
photos and links below are representative of both technical and artistic skills
in the broadest way possible for me.
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These
are my telescopes. No "philosophical" implications. This is
just fun. Left is a 254 mm reflector, and on the right is a 152 mm
refractor. The night sky here varies between limiting magnitude 4 to 5,
so I can use my driveway. These have dual-axis motor control and
can compensate Earth's rotation, but there's no "goto". My
favorite sky map is 