pulp
experience
Experience is the move. The move to a new understanding, a motion towards a richer perspective. We spend our lives chasing it, striving to open up new opportunities for it, while surrounding ourselves with those who have it. A simple thing shrouded in a complicated skin, we crave it. Like water, we want to sit by it, live next to it, walk along it, sail across it, swim in it, drink it. Be it.
So many things contribute to the quality of our experience. Our choices in friends, careers, and habits are shaped by our interests and desires, which are likewise shaped by the friends, careers, and habits we allow into our lives. The cycle is fascinating and seemingly both within our control and without it at the same time. Perhaps, that’s what makes it such an elusive yet tangible thing all at once. The best things seem to work this way. A combination of choice and fate at work all at once. The simple wrapped up snugly in the complex.
Those of us with great experience generally tend to take it for granted while others seeking any at all wonder how to obtain it. A wise woman who mentored me once shared her secret to gaining experience, while ensuring its quality. She said,
Listen closely to the perspectives of someone who has not done something before. Their perspective is still fragile and open to influence. When we have experience, we tend to close our ears to amateurs, thinking we have a grasp of a skill or trade. Amateurs have an advantage in the potential of discovering things we missed along the way. Amateurs may in fact have much to teach us. Experience alone doesn’t optimize opportunities for innovation and discovery. Only openness to experience can.
Happy Birthday, Mom!
Mom sporting killer abs in Colorado, circa 1970-something.
Heroes and Icons
How do you choose your heroes and icons?
In 1977, I was 5 years old when my parents took me to my first movie but, it wasn’t just a movie, it was a drive-in movie. The movie? Star Wars. Needless to say, it flipped me right out.
Unlike most of my pals, who were drawn to Luke or Chewbacca or Han or whatever, I was obsessively drawn to R2-D2. I wasn’t just into R2, I wanted to BE R2. Something about his character, his utility, his outright usefulness in so many contexts and situations captivated and appealed to me. So, my room had models of R2 on the shelves, my bedside table had an R2 alarm clock, my watch was an homage to R2, and my birthday cakes were more than once adorned with his image in crystalline sugar.
The obsession continued throughout my elementary and middle school years. I might even say it never actually ended. I saw, and continue to see, his influence everywhere. In the functionality of tools, vehicles, and other simple machines, devices, industrial design, consumer gadgets, and systems theories.
Here’s the thing: R2′s sheer ability, willingness, and selflessness to adapt so readily, without fear or delay, to so many challenges on behalf of the goals of his peers inspired me as my family moved around. As a kid, I was constantly having to adapt to new environments, new geographic layouts, people, styles, vocabularies, dialects, the whole thing. Since that wasn’t easy, I often imagined what R2 would do, moving through situations as if I were him, though slightly taller and more maneuverable. Just the idea of him, imagining myself as having his chutzpah, gave me confidence when I needed it and, I admit, continues to influence me to this day. Silly? So what?
Imagination makes us powerful. As children we imagine ourselves as someone else, someone more capable of accomplishing what we feel we cannot. It is through these personas many of us are able to make our first, significant achievements. Whether faced with the adversity of a spelling bee, school play, or the playground rights of passage, we resort to the power of our imagination to envision ourselves accomplishing something seemingly beyond our reach. As we age, some of us seem to either pull back on this while others expand on it and, in some cases, become Jack Whites, Oprah Winfreys, and Michael Jordans.
Success pivots on something simple: the will to believe.
‘sticks’ at the 10 Second Film Festival
The crowd at the 10 Second Film Festival
“Lars can eat carrots really fast” was a crowd pleaser, too, and when i didn’t hear the call to claim the award for ‘sticks’ evidently they chose this as the next winner, which i didn’t go up for either because i STILL couldn’t hear anything! : P
That’s so existential
It’s true:
without the people around us there wouldn’t be much of a story to tell. Our friends are the stuff that make us who we are. While the rest of the world takes no notice, they’re the ones who hear our trees fall in the forest. A forest that otherwise wouldn’t exist.
Our times with pals can carry seemingly little significance in the immediate moment, though they gather reverence with time and leave us shaped by them in bigger ways than we could have known while immersed in them. Add to that our innate ability to take them for granted and not give them the proper nods they deserve.
This season look pals in the eyes, tell them you love them and thank them for knowing you exist.
Give the gift of…relish
Typically, this is the time of year where I’m only beginning to consider how to share the festive spirit of the season through gift giving. Problem for me is, I’ve read The Gift more than 3 times (thanks, Z) and it’s thrown a bit of monkey in my wrench.
Nonetheless, imagine my surprise at having this year’s heavy lifting already done:
Local Man Wins Major Award
Zach Falcon, 37, of Iowa City, earned the recognition for his story “The Malamute.” The honor came from the United Kingdom’s Bridport Prize, which will be announced today. The Press-Citizen received an embargoed copy of the announcement and originally posted it (this version has been edited for clarity):
“I was delighted. I know writers sometimes make too much of it being a lonely and solitary endeavor, so I don’t want to complain about it. Any sort of recognition is exciting,” Falcon said in a telephone interview.
The annual competition recognizes top submissions for stories and poetry. The contest is open internationally and received over 14,000 entries from more than 75 countries.
Falcon, who was born and raised in Alaska, is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, as well as the University of Michigan law school and Columbia University. After college, he returned to live in Alaska until he came to Iowa City to attend the Writers’ Workshop in 2007.
He graduated in May and stuck around to finish a collection of short stories and to work on a novel, he said.
“The Malamute” is set in his hometown of Kodiak, Alaska. The story explores the trials and tribulations of a small-town community.
“I was frankly surprised (the judge) selected it,” Falcon said. “It is a fairly grim story. It doesn’t have a lot of humor or levity. The (criterion) asked for something a little more lighthearted. I sent it anyway, and I am delighted she selected it.”
“The Malamute” will go into an anthology with the other winners, Falcon said. Falcon was pleased that the voice of an American, and more specifically an Alaskan, is being recognized in an international competition, he said.
“It’s a major award,” the local man said (no he didn’t)
Some comments from competition judge Ali Smith were included in press material about the prize.
“All good writing is about economy, edit, rhythm and precision; the short story form demonstrates this to the other literary forms. An end, when it comes, should always send you back to the beginning, because a good story, like any real art, demands revisitation. A good short story is lifelong,” Smith wrote.
Cheers to Randy Crow
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.
Douglas Coupland: Generation A
Douglas Coupland’s new book is due in September of this year:
In the near future bees are extinct—until one autumn when five unconnected individuals, in Iowa, New Zealand, Paris, Ontario, and Sri Lanka, are stung. Immediately snatched up by ominous figures in hazmat suits, interrogated separately in neutral Ikea-like chambers, and then released as 15-minute-celebrities into a world driven almost entirely by the internet, these five unforgettable people endure a barrage of unusual and highly 21st-century circumstances. A charismatic scientist with dubious motives eventually brings the quintet together on a remote Canadian island. But their shared experience unites them in a way they could never have imagined.
Generation A mirrors the structure of 1991’s Generation X as it champions the act of reading and storytelling as one of the few defenses we still have against the constant bombardment of the senses in a digital world.
Learning Not Alone
One of my interests is instructional design. I think this is primarily due to being subjected to training and other instructional situations that left me feeling not empowered and confident but muscled around, confused and sometimes even empty.
I find that I am influenced by the most unlikely sources, which I incorporate into my own philosophy on-the-fly. I don’t often write about this philosophy, in part because of that philosophy. Some of the best thinkers did not write theirs down. They require face-to-face communication, less they be misinterpreted.
Online communities, on the other hand, allow for this writing down of ideas in real-time, in a conversational style with real people who are listening on the other end of the *line*.
Thus, I find myself more comfortable sharing it as appropriate via those channels. The social networks are a boon for people like me looking to learn and share with others on opposite sides of the world in a streaming, non-linear way that email and related technologies haven’t [up to this point] been able to do.
And this small piece I share here today. I found this bit while I was working in Barcelona earlier this year, published by Google and it made a nice impression on me only because, as I read it, it was clear to me how I was already somehow aware of and putting their tenets to work in my own small corner of the world. Finding the like-minded is one of the best things that can happen. If for no other reason than it makes me feel less lonely.
Thanks for sharing it: Learning Objects and Instructional Design
By Alex Koohang, Keith Harman, Informing Science Institute
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Ry and Lu’s house
Our pals in Juneau suffered a tragedy yesterday when their house caught on fire in the middle of the night and burned out. The source of the fire came from the house next door, which only suffered a fraction of the damage.
We can hear Ry’s and Lu’s voices laughing about finding out what’s covered and what’s not. We can laugh because no one was injured aside from losing possessions. Luckily, Ry had time to get a backup drive out with all of their stills and video on it, a couple guitars and Lu’s jewelry box:
El Peor Terrorista
“El peor terrorista” translates into English as “the worst terrorist” – meaning the graffiti I photographed this weekend means, “the worst terrorist is the capitalist system.” [thanks, Fonz]
Being from the States while in Europe means that Europeans often ask about Obama and are as excited about his election as we are – feels good the morale is on the rise for all of us.
Nonetheless, it’s clear the impact the Bush years has had – here, there and everywhere.
Flight of the Bergey
I’m not one who usually rides on the back of anything except maybe a horse.
Yesterday, however, I couldn’t pass up a chance to ride through Barcelona on the back of my friend’s scooter during rush-hour.
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PSAs
This week at the school, we’re looking at and making our own PSAs.
Broadcast PSAs came into widespread use in the late 1940′s with the famous “Only you can prevent forest fires” tagline of Smokey the Bear.
The students are creating PSAs around many issues, including littering, drugs, creativity, oppression, etc.
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