FootNotes

The aftermath of a breakup is strange territory.  Strange, because it tells you where you’ve been, and what you’ve really been doing, and how much you felt, and what, if anything, was real - and all this at the end, instead of the beginning when you really needed it. Hindsight. 20/20. Yadda.

It’s almost like the start of a relationship, at that; at first it’s so painful (analogy: wonderful) you can’t think.  And then, slowly, you begin to climb out of the fog, to stand alone and solid in your own mind, and see things clearly.

And to some extent, that’s all a good thing.

On the other hand, you also find out what you have as coping mechanisms; apparently I’m a scifi-nerd escapist (who’d've guessed?).  On a related note: watching Stargate reruns for three or four weeks in a row will rot your brain.  

…

It could’ve been worse.  I could’ve fixated on America’s Next Top Model.

July 6th, 2010 | Tags: coping, My Life, nerd, sci fi, stargate | Category: My Life | Leave a comment

I’m suffering some kind of terminal whiplash; in grad school all we talked about was the meaning of life, the meaning of art, the meaning of culture.

And then, just the other day, an Art conversation with an ex-engineer manager friend:

Me: I’ve been painting

Him: Are your paintings any good?

Me: The question isn’t, are they any good, the question is, do they closely represent what I intended? and does it evoke a reaction? … and the answer is Yeah, some of the time.

Him: … huh?

… and I was surprised - not that he didn’t know as much as I did - but that he literally had no concept at all of art/music/dance creating and evoking higher emotions, a higher state of consciousness (not higher-being nonsense; a moment of greater awareness).  … He had no sense that all art, to a large extent, is really different expressions of the same fundamental gesture
I was here. This is me. Do you feel this?

Evoking emotion, reaction, common humanity across time and space.

I tried to explain, until he started harassing me with sex questions and I logged off to do something else.

><

It’s not the things you don’t know that will kill you - it’s the ones you assume, factor into your calculations, and ultimately trip over. My assumption - almost always - is that others operate at roughly my level of self-awareness (or more); that, at some point in their life, they dug down to the bare bones of themselves to figure out who they are, and where they’re coming from, that they at least have a sense of their own motivations.  That they have, in effect, chosen this - whatever This is.

But it’s not true.

Most people just don’t have this kind of thought life. (Do you?)

As far as I can tell, most people spend a lot of time thinking about why things happen to them - but not about why they’re choosing something.

It’s easy to go through life dreaming, asleep, living from one Twitter link and newsfeed to the next.  Really hard to create - and choose to create - every day.

April 28th, 2010 | Category: Assumptions, My Life | Leave a comment

The unconscious is a brilliant bitch wielding a baseball bat and flashpan temper, flaunting persistent short-term memory loss,

Mine is, at least.

I go through life experimenting, trying things and actions and personality habits on like clothing.  I look wonderful in pink, but somehow can’t see the world in pastel shades. Just doesn’t work for me.  I like sanity, enjoy intensity, worship at the altar of clear expression.  Would like my mind to be like a bladed threshing machine, a turbine hall filled with flickering thought, solid memory moving so fast an undeniable worldview is flung out, screaming and efficient and infinitely complex.  I want to know everything. I want to understand paradox.

I want to drive.

Instead I’m left with a mind best approximated by wringing out a sweatcloth after a long day’s hike - lukewarm, muddied by time and contact, unremarkable.

My heart breaks for the things I’ve forgotten.

><

February 2nd, 2010 | Tags: Philosophy | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Call it Leaves and Rain

I was walking through the middle of my life. Walking down
Divisadero Street wearing old desert combat fatigues,
listening to the antifreeze boil over. I was listening to the
antifreeze boil over in conversations on the street, that
dead end steaming hiss of radiators run a hundred
thousand miles and more. The radiators boiled over in
fatigue while I was walking a hundred thousand miles down
Divisadero Street in Fresno, and it was July, and the
asphalt was speaking its vapor, and I was wearing combat
boots and walking through the middle of my life.

I was listening to WAR. I was listening to WAR on Divisadero
Street and learning how to ride low through the rest of my life,
learning how to walk the blocks in tighter and tighter circles, the
way the lost do. In tighter and tighter circles I was lost to the
WAR on Divisadero Street. I was circling the WAR the way
vapor curls from the steaming hiss of dead radiators in Fresno. I
was circling the lost in Fresno, wearing my combat boots worn
down a hundred thousand miles and counting.

And I was counting. I counted each dying face passing by. I
counted the birds with their exhausted voices. I counted the
sentinel birds perched silent in the eucalyptus trees above. I
circled the eucalyptus birds and listened for their medicine, the
way the lost do in Fresno, wearing combat boots and speaking in
vapor. I was circling through the middle of my life, right there
under the medicine trees, listening to the silence of the sentinel
birds and waiting for them to boil over in steam. But that’s not
what medicine birds do.

Medicine birds break open in orange and red. Medicine birds
have eucalyptus leaves for feathers and bandage the air when
they fly. Medicine birds fly through the windows in the head,
impervious to glass. They are impervious to WAR and hiss and
steam and vapor and combat and the circling lost. Medicine
birds fly through the windows to land in our beds when we’re
dreaming our circling dream of Divisadero and Fresno with its
lost and circling WAR. Medicine birds have eucalyptus wings
and when they fly in our beds they transform themselves into
leaves and rain and lovers. The lovers in our beds are eucalyptus
birds flying medicine through the windows in our heads. The
lovers in our medicine beds fly eucalyptus through the circling
loss. The lovers in our beds bring medicine to our lips and call it
eucalyptus, call it love, call it leaves and rain for our exhausted
souls.

By Brian Turner

October 21st, 2009 | Tags: leaves, new york times, NYT, Poetry, rain | Category: Poetry, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

My mother is here to visit for the weekend, and it’s the strangest experience I’ve had in a long time.  As I get older, as I have more experiences, as I’ve had more time to mature - I start to have the feeling we’re reading each other’s minds, sometimes.  Start to have the feeling I can see our shared genes expressing themselves; the way we lean across a table to explain something important, the kinds of things we notice when we’re out walking, the stretches that are easy/hard/easy in a yoga class.

This isn’t easy. My mother and I go back and forth with whether we’re really, truly, honestly on speaking terms, although the answer is Yes more and more often these days.  Still. Always.

Today we’ve rented a zipcar, will drive highway 1 with the hood down and the music up. We’ll talk of nothing, at least for a little while, see the road unfold beneath us, watch the Pacific come in to dash itself against the coast, again and again and again. I remember being at sea, years ago, standing mesmerized at the side of the ship for hours at a stretch, wind rolling by, sea rolling by. Our tracks fading behind the ship, the only change in water.

September 26th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Found a hate comment on my professional blog when I woke up this morning, vituperative, personally demeaning, nothing at all about the idea.

And yeah, it stings a little - but even more, it’s confusing.

Why?

I mean, I get it: you don’t like my (admittedly boring) posts about large-scale institutions.  I’m in the midst of definitions, and I’m not talking about current events; I get it. You don’t like it. That’s cool.

But jumping from there to personal attacks - it’s just strange.

><

I was in Sao Paolo (Brazil, 15-20million people) in March, and a bunch of us from the hostel - almost all men - went out to a bar to listen to some music, get a few drinks. And one guy - some American (sadly) got very drunk, came up to me, and started going on and on about how I didn’t deserve the attention I was getting. How real life doesn’t look like this. Unnecessary, unkind, and - frankly, in my experience - untrue. (I went to a tech university and live/work in silicon valley; some 80% of my friends are male).

But it’s striking, because his words were almost identical to this morning’s hate comment.

And again - I get it; it’s no fun to be one of ten guys trying to hit on the same woman.

But here’s the part I don’t get: At what point does it become okay to say unkind, hateful things?

It’s not when you know someone well, or think you’ll see them again, or think they might influence you someday.  It’s  not even (really) anonymity; like I said, last time I experienced this, it was in real life.

So … I think it happens when the other person isn’t real to you - when they’re just playing some bit character in the stage play that is your life.  When you forget that - whether you know the girl or not, she’s still just some woman out for a good time.  When you forget that - whether you like the words or not, there’s a real, live blogger on the other side, someone you’d never be rude to at a party.

They say the human brain can only handle a social set of about 150 people.  After that, we’ve limited time and memory to spare.  With the internet (says Don Tapscot), that expands to 450 or even more.  But our broadcast systems reach millions. And those people have no idea who I am.

I’ve nothing (really) to say here - just venting.

Or maybe it really is anonymity; it’s just anonymity doesn’t mean unseen - means unknown.

Penny Arcade was right all along!

June 17th, 2009 | Tags: anonymity, hate mail, Internet, penny arcade, social size, unknown | Category: Blog Notes, Communication, Privacy | Comments (1)

The Maple

is a system of posture for wood.
A way of not falling down
for twigs that happens
to benefit birds. I don’t know.
I’m staring at a tree,
at yellow leaves
threshed by wind and want you
reading this to be staring
at the same tree. I could
cut it down and laminate it
or ask you to live with me
on the stairs with the window
keeping an eye on the maple
but I think your real life
would miss you. The story
here is that all morning
I’ve thought of the statement
that art is about loneliness
while watching golden leaves
become unhinged.
By ones or in bunches
they tumble and hang
for a moment like a dress
in the dryer.
At the laundromat
you’ve seen the arms
thrown out to catch the shirt
flying the other way.
Just as you’ve stood
at the bottom of a gray sky
in a pile of leaves
trying to lick them
back into place.

Bob Hicok

May 20th, 2009 | Tags: bob hicok, Hicok, maple, Poetry, tree | Category: Poetry | Leave a comment

Never, ever, ever again do I want to be so sick while on vacation.  It was the craziest thing; I thought I was having some weird, depressive episode - I couldn’t get out of bed, then when I got out of bed the mere thought of going downstairs - much less outside! - was enough to make me flip the TV on.  I ate far too much chocolate in the hopes it would make me feel happier, went and exercised, everything - but I didn’t feel sad, just … demotivated.

And then this morning, I woke up and I felt insanely energized.  I had breakfast! I’m writing my blogs again!

So …  I’m back, and badder than ever!!!

Thanks very much, to everyone who sent happy notes, and to those who sent “are you still alive!?!?!” notes as well

…

So even in the midst of the unknown sickness, I did manage to get outside a couple of times.  I’ve posted massive amounts of pictures on Facebook, so I shan’t bore you (too much) here.  A few things really stand out in my mind so far:

1) The scale of this city is fantasmagorical.  Really.  I’d always wondered why bigger cities had bigger plazas - shouldn’t they have smaller plazas connected to more plazas connected to more plazas, all growing organically with the city?

Well, the mystery of the giant plazas continues, but my second hypothesis is confirmed; Sao Paulo has massive plaza connected to massive plaza connected to EVEN MORE MASSIVE plazas, all jammed with people walking, people selling things, people playing American music on loud-yet-tinny speakers.  I got off the subway at Sao Benito yesterday (one stop farther up the blue line than the Praca de Se, with the Notre-Dame looking cathedral), and followed one plaza to another, got lost, found a tourist information center, got found, and FINALLY found the Mercado Municipal.  Which is housed in a building the size of the main Madrid train station, with tall, arching columns, stained glass, escalators, a second floor, and shop after shop after shop, all selling food and food-related-items.

I had an espresso, and wrote in my journal, and wandered about a bit, and then made my way home.

An interesting side note: I haven’t run into any other American tourists so far.  Usually, we’re hard to miss; tall, blond, slightly confused, smiling more than normal, flashing technology left and right (as a rule, if you have the money to come to Brazil, you have the money to have a fancy camera and the associated goodies)… but so far, no one.  Not even in my hotel.  Just a few Europeans.  The tourist bureau was almost empty.  Etc.  I wonder if that’s the general rule, or if it’s the economy.

In general, Sao Paulo doesn’t seem a particularily welcoming city, as far as tourists go.  I always do my best with Portuguese, but mine is rudimentary at best.  In much of the Spanish-speaking world, even in Buenos Aires, if they see you stumbling, they jump in with their English (invariably better than your Spanish).  Here, they just look at you, and wait for you to figure it out. In Portuguese.

Which, by the way, looks like a Romance language, and sounds like something from Vietnam.

… But i digress

In any case, I’ve made contact with a friend of mine here in Sao Paulo, and have made some other connections as well. Now that I’m feeling better, I’m looking forward to doing more than wandering like a ghost through crazily enormous plazas.

Which will always seem large, no matter how high my fever is

March 12th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

… I had to share this.  The story’s interesting - but it’s the comments afterward that are truly priceless; really the national debate on a personal scale.  They don’t get good until 20 or so in…

http://mediamatters.org/discuss/200810280013

October 30th, 2008 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (1)