natural world
Asleep
This is just the fat trimmed off a project I’m working on: a multimedia installation about people asleep in public spaces called, appropriately, “Asleep”:
Here, Now
Easy to take this all for granted. Breathing. Walking. Seeing. Feeling. Any sense. Pick one. And it’s even easier to stroll through this whole thing blind to the possibility that this may just very well all be some dream. We know nothing about what any of us are doing here.
In the meantime, we find things to make it about: for some, it’s about love and a sense of belonging. For many it appears to be money and fame. That’s surprising, isn’t it? Celebrity only seems to present new problems. It doesn’t change anything. It steals privacy, creates further issues with identity, but doesn’t provide any solutions for this singular dilemma. Nothing does.
So I am writing this to myself.
When people die, people close to us, it kindles something. What is that feeling? It makes me calm, reminds me of our connectivity to everything. It may be morbid, but I am oddly comforted by that loneliness, walking around in that stupor. Pleased to be again so intimately conscious that we have no control over any of this schwack. I am at peace within the moments of tragedy in a way I cannot be to quite the same degree otherwise. i don’t need anything in those times. I’m not hungry or thirsty. I’m not tired. I just seem to be picking up some signal that can’t be known coming from somewhere, everywhere. Call it shock if you want. There’s something more going on there, something unseen that has properties. As if ocean waves generate this frequency that we haven’t even considered the possibility of, or clouds being ghosts that have trapped themselves here, not having let go of their lives here on Earth yet. I laugh at what we think we know. Even if it is correct, it is always, ALWAYS, only the tip of the iceberg.
We can buy this, travel there, pretend to be this or that but it doesn’t help.
As Vonnegut used to say:
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.”
Are we evolving closer or further away from this awareness? What are the advantages of each? Disadvantages?
What could this awareness do for us? Is it important?
Does it change how we treat each other? Ourselves?
Do we care?
Temple Grandin: The World Needs all kinds of Minds
Temple Grandin, diagnosed with autism as a child, talks about how her mind works — sharing her ability to “think in pictures,” which helps her solve problems that neurotypical brains might miss. She makes the case that the world needs people on the autism spectrum: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, verbal thinkers, and all kinds of smart geeky kids.
Rules
Bruno Faidutti has written his thoughts about the merits of designing rules simply and with particular clarity:
The essence of a game is in its rulebook – the rules of the game are autonomous, complete, finite and known by all players. This may even be what makes games different from most other human activities, whose rules are never as autonomous, as complete, as finite and as clear, which may explain why the latter are often more burdensome and frustrating than the former. This game rules set is virtual, and is the fundamental creation, half literary and half logical, of the game’s author. It has to be explained to the gamers as fast, clearly and completely as possible. The main way to do this is the written rules set. Let’s talk now only of this written rulebook, or at least rule sheet.
read the rest of his editorial here if you wish
via @metagaming
Big River Man: Martin Strel
Check out Martin’s complete [and impressive] list of accomplishments here
Michael Pollan and The Botany of Desire
Author Michael Pollan says:
The tulip, by gratifying our desire for a certain kind of beauty, has gotten us to take it from its origins in Central Asia and disperse it around the world. Marijuana, by gratifying our desire to change consciousness, has gotten people to risk their lives, their freedom, in order to grow more of it and plant more of it. The potato, by gratifying our desire for control, control over nature so that we can feed ourselves has gotten itself out of South America and expanded its range far beyond where it was 500 years ago. And the apple, by gratifying our desire for sweetness begins in the forests of Kazakhstan and is now the universal fruit. These are great winners in the dance of domestication.
The Rules
I was reading Michael Dahn’s blog the other day and found this particularly worth re-posting here:
“We can only lose what we cling to!â€
– BuddhaMany of us live by a set of beliefs accumulated over the course of our lifetime. We use these rules to navigate the possibilities of life. Some of them are positive rules that save us (e.g. “Don’t touch a hot stoveâ€) but some of them are limiting (e.g. “I can’t do it. It’s too hardâ€). Sometimes we have to stop and ask ourselves if the limitations in our life are self-imposed or actual. I believe that many times the rules by which we find ourselves constrained are self-imposed.
When life appears to be unfair, when bad things happen to good people, this is when you have the opportunity to give up or to change the rules of the game. It’s these game changing moves that enable you to conquer your fears in new and creative ways. You can change the rules of the game in several ways, here are but a few:
1. Change your beliefs: I live by the mantra that “nothing is impossible, the impossible just takes longer.†Why is it that we limit ourselves by what we think is impossible? Why do we obey the rules of our belief when our opponent does not? Why is it that we enable others to walk over us? Only by changing your belief can you break down the barriers that you have constructed and consider the possibility of out-of-the-box innovation.
2. Change the rules: In life many of us abide by a path that we feel has been laid our for us or is predestined to occur. We get frustrated when we feel deviations from that path in the same way we feel the rumble strip on the edge of the road. These path barriers move us in a direction that we “feel†is the “right path.†We cling to our path because it has been a part of us for so many years. Only when you accept variance in your path are you free and open to new possibilities. By accepting change and alternative outcomes we free ourselves to new futures and alternative happiness.When we stop clinging to self-imposed beliefs and prescriptive paths we free within ourselves the possibility of the impossible.
Here are a few new rules that you may want to consider.
1. “Be the change you want to see in the world.†– Mahatma Gandhi
2. Do Something
3. “To thine own self be true.†– Shakespeare
4. Our lives are the stories we tell ourselves.
5. Don’t live by anyone else’s rules, go make your own.
Marshmallow test: pass or fail?
I’ve never been into marshmallows but still think I woulda failed on principle:
Oh, The Temptation from Steve V on Vimeo.
Humans Swimming
Are you a human? Do you like to swim? How about free-diving? How about static free diving?
