water
From the Water
I think about water. A lot. I think about water because it has this exquisite power: water can change dramatically while retaining its original properties. It morphs into unrecognizably different states of matter while continuing to be itself, unaltered.
It is easy to resist change. We are conditioned against it in most of our cultures, generally speaking. Is it a natural reflex to resist it? Many of us make great sacrifice to avoid it. Laws are written and put into place to stymy it. Large, expensive buildings are built to protect against it. Minds are made up against it and reject ideas that even hint at it. Blockades of all sorts are built against experience that may lead to it. The fights against it use energy we don’t even have to spare. In some cases, some put themselves at risk in the process physically, emotionally. Heavy stuff.
Steeped in a culture of change, I anticipate it, ride it, enjoy and thrive in it. They say change is the only thing that stays the same so, even as a child, it was clear: why not make friends with it and welcome such opportunities for growth and learning? I owe my resiliency to having a family that faced many changes and stayed together through each and every one, relying on change, even as it was difficult. We collectively and individually learned to make the most of each one and find lessons in change that could not have been learned from any school. We taught ourselves to live better through it and within it. I owe the quality of my life and my capacity for experience to these lessons and to my family for providing access to them.
Wherever I go I meet people who spend a lot of time, energy, and resources fighting change. Inevitably change wins out and I am forced then to watch them tire and cave into it reluctantly, sometimes painfully. I try and not speak during such situations. I have only the choice to let others make their own mistakes in whatever way they choose. There is no other way to learn. We can try to tell them to just let change take them on the ride and enjoy it, but that doesn’t work. It only inspires them to resist more zealously.
I think about water. While I’m watching those I barely know or those I love with all my heart as they adapt to change, I think about water. I think about how long water has been doing it, changing, adapting, enduring, and yet it does not really change. Water does not waste time or energy in the face of the inevitable. It literally just rolls with it. It finds a way around obstacles. Every time.
I think about children, too. In children lies this spirit, willing to explore change, even revel in it. Somewhere along the line most of us seem to lose touch with a kind of innocent tenacity, the way a child solves a problem in play. The effort to change is transparent in children, like water. They have the ability to exhaustively problem-solve using none of the biased doubt (I call it ‘obstructionism’) often found in grown-ups. We make excuses and use our amazing brain-machines to come up with answers for everything, or create atmospheres of resistance, even subconsciously trying to derail change, arrogantly, ignorantly, trying everything except friendly solutions to accepting it and making it work for us.
Being afraid is no fun. It causes stress. It is no good. It affects everyone around us while we give into it. My strategies for dealing with it is this: I think about water. I think about children. Mostly water. I come from the water.
In the not-too-distant future
I will describe keyboards to my son one day in a not-too-distant future when he asks about them. That is when he and I will ask the computer to show us some examples. We will spend a rainy afternoon making make-believe keyboards (QWERTY and Dvorak) out of cardboard and crayons and pretend to type in our queries. The computer will humor us and play along.
It is interesting to think about the ways human interface devices (keyboards, mice, etc) have influenced the way we interact with machines. As I write this, haptics are clearly leading the way into the future. Tt is even more exciting to see how much more intuitive and user-friendly using complex systems will be with access to these interfaces. It is only getting better, in that context.
On the other hand, managing our time, how much we use them, and in what capacities, will continue to be a challenge, along with balancing their use with analog activities like playing outside, for example. For now, typing and staring blankly, alone, into a glowing box in the dark is just one way to spend moments of our lives we’ll never get back. Perhaps, that is what I see as the greatest potential for haptic interface devices, such as tablets. Children are more open to sharing in the physical world with them. Whereas while using laptops they completely zone out even while others are in close proximity. Haptic interfaces allow us to be truly social while interacting with technology.
How will touch interfaces further shape how we ask for, receive, and interpret information from machines in the future?
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.
Independence
Unnamed pals preparing to light up the sky at a discreet location.
This year it means something personal. This past year has included a great many changes for your humble narrator. Changes he is grateful for. Changes he had consciously and patiently been waiting for and working towards. These included trading a life he had reluctantly planned for the one that was waiting for him, all along. This is a lesson that has reinforced a notion to always follow his instincts and believe, especially in the face of adversity. As a result, this new-found independence has afforded him many new experiences, uncovered new talents, and new pals. Gifts like these make the gratitude a small price to pay, he’d say.
So, with that in mind, regardless of what the word, or the holiday, meant or means to you in your corner of the world this year, Happy Independence Day. Please enjoy that photo up there that your host took of two of his new pals celebrating the way they enjoy most in a place they love best. Sums it up rather nicely. Click it for a better view. Cheers.
Honey, it really works, honey.
Since becoming a grown-up, there are many things about childhood I remember fondly but one of them I was happy to forget about forever and wasn’t anticipating having to deal with again: allergies. For my entire adult life I was allergy-free living in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. .
In Chicago, I have tried over-the-counter remedies, which all leave me feeling speedy and just “off.” But, wait. There’s a better solution: locally made honey.
Check this out: honey has anti-microbial properties and has for centuries been used for medicinal purposes of all sorts, including as a dressing for serious wounds. It’s also high in antioxidants and tastes real good on cereals, in sauces, lemonade and all kinds of stuff.
The most interesting use I’ve ever heard of for honey is as a natural remedy for seasonal allergies. According to various natural health practitioners, pollen found in locally-grown raw honey works over time to desensitize the body to allergens much like traditional allergy shots.
It’s working for me. The season so far has been allergy-free, even amidst rumblings from pals that it is unseasonably allergy-ish, and I would like to thank the local apiaries for selling multiple varieties of the stuff – it has saved my sanity and will make my summer completely enjoyable. Thanks, all you bees and beekeepers out there.
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.
Third Coast
It wasn’t long ago I was living and working in Chicago, which is why it’s seemingly appropriate that life would lead me back through here to initiate several new facets of my life. Such a beautiful city, especially from atop the waves of Lake Michigan. The approaching winter’s light is gloriously fitting this afternoon:
Flight
Since forever, I’ve been hooked on flight. In planes big or small, balloons, anything that flies, goes fast and is otherwise in direct opposition to the side of me that believes strongly in being safe by observing best practices at all times.
I once lived in Juneau, Alaska and used to watch paragliders from my deck, wondering how it must feel to soar unaided by anything but the wind and a little technology, simple in its complexity. I wondered how I’d ever get a chance to find out. Enter my new pal, Gever, who took me up in his paraglider yesterday over Mussel Park just south of San Francisco.
We had so much fun, we’re going out again today. Gever told me it’s just the thing and, after all, some meetings at the Exploratorium and a trip to the airport will take us right by Mussel Park, again, where I shot the footage in the short edit from yesterday’s flight – “Twist my arm,” I said:
City of Music: Charlie Parr
thinfilms helped MPLS.tv shoot a music video featuring Charlie Parr for City Pages’ Gimme Noise. Here’s the final edit:
10 second Charlie
It’s 20 seconds, actually, but it goes by fast as my new pal, Charlie Parr, plays his National while sitting along the mighty Mississippi River:
Charlie Parr
Charlie Parr in Minneapolis this morning
Amidst such a perfect backdrop for his sound, the morning flew by listening to him sing and play his National down there along the river while we did our three-camera shoot. He has a new album out soon, too, so keep an eye peeled for it.
I’ll be sure to post the final edit here but, meanwhile, please enjoy this clip taken in ’09 while Charlie played Cheap Wine at the Victoria Pub in Birmingham, UK:
“Evoke it”
A solid tip from metagaming regarding a post on gamesetwatch:
The World Bank Institute and alternate reality game designer Jane McGonigal have unveiled Evoke, a new ARG seeking to empower young people around the world, especially those in Africa, to come up with creative solutions for real world problems like food security, energy, disaster relief, poverty, education, global conflict, water access, disease, hunger, and more.
McGonigal says the goal for the game is to “build up our global capacity to change the world in as short a time as possible, for as many people as possible”. She explains Evoke in an interview with Worldchanging.
Kicking the Habits of Double-Glazing
The first week of living in a new place is somewhere up pretty high on the list of things that don’t get any easier with practice. Like a new anything, after the initial infatuation wears off, what’s left is this: the realization that what worked before is no longer valid here. Here, in a new place, we are confronted with what we seem to be most naturally resistant to: change.
So it is with a tinge of reticence we set off to see about developing new methods for accomplishing the tasks of living under a new definition of ourselves within the unknown environment surrounding us. This means getting lost, losing precious time and generally being hard on ourselves to find a pace equivalent to what we once knew. Previously simple tasks that were quickly accomplished now require inordinately huge investments of time by comparison. Add to this a language component and we’re talking about a serious commitment to even the most basic objectives, such as acquiring groceries. Everything must be undertaken with a strong focus on patience and not getting down in the face of the adversities that present themselves on a seemingly constant basis.
This is the real stuff. The moments that move us outside of our comfort levels and force us to face our weaknesses in spite of our better judgment.
At least, that’s what we keep telling ourselves as we step lively into the streets of the unknown ; )
Such is the case for yours truly, who admittedly hasn’t had much of any other experience in this life other than nearly constant change. Let me share this earnestly with you: for someone who’s had as much practice as anyone, change simply does not get any easier with practice. It continues to challenge, it continues to humble and it continues to push me to being open to the process of learning in all of its tough, wonderful and hidden manifestations.
This, of course, does not mean to imply that it’s always a barrel of laughs.
Take, for example, the luxury in which people live in the US. Particularly: hot water. Most of the people living in the States take this single resource for granted far more than they realize. Hot water is in abundance there, even in the less-refined regions of apartment living. Folks rise in the morning, evacuate their bladders and promptly prepare for the day ahead with a shower of the stuff. Each time they approach the shower, turn it on, they are accustomed to waiting no more than a few moments before the warmth of it is doing what it does to invigorate, cleanse and get them ready for the day. It runs freely over heads, arms and legs while washing away the sleepy night and down the drain it goes for as long as deemed necessary. It’s given nary a thought.
Such extravagance is what is known as “double-glazing” (taken from the wise comments in this clip from Creature Comforts (@ 1:40 in)
Take, for example, my shower this morning: the size of the shower is taken into consideration here because in my experience in Barcelona, apartments all have showers half the size of what used to exist as phone booths. Half. The. Size. The hot water supply follows in kind. There is so little of it, that a person must ration if off during the course of a shower like oxygen would be should one ever find themselves trapped in a disabled submarine at the bottom of the ocean for an indefinite period of time.
Prior to entering the shower, one must first ensure that there even IS any hot water available. If there is, I don’t let it run too long during testing. I’m hip to the possibility that a short blast of what is left can be an illusion, which means upon entering the shower and reactivating, one must prepare to potentially be blasted with an equally-awakening, though, heart-stopping-ice-cold pulse and the risk of cardiac arrest before the day even begins. Should there actually be any remaining hot water, a quick blast to wet the head is priority one. My father always taught me to wash a car from the top down in order to ensure that we work with gravity to maximize the cleaning process. The same rules apply here to maximize effectiveness of our hot water rations. After a quick douse, proceed with suds-ing of the hair.
Now, mind you, the water is OFF at this point, right? If you’re not used to the sound of washing your hair WITHOUT the accompaniment of running water, this can be a rather, let’s say “odd” sound. I say it’s a bit on the sad side. I dunno why it’s a sad sound but it is to me. Perhaps because it is being faced with a RADICALLY different experience than the years of conditioning I’ve had doing this while listening to water running and warming my entire body while doing so. In this case, not only is the water not running, but my body, freshly warmed by the quick douse to wet the head, is beginning to cool rapidly: yet another strange sequence out-of-tune with what has been expected since birth.
For those of you who know me, you are aware that I am of of above average height and size. This makes the process one of even greater comedy. Anyone watching or listening to this would wonder what is the matter. Standing flush up against the inside of this glass box, a fella my size is at risk for breaking the thing, inflicting deep flesh woulds from the broken glass (here I should mention I can only just barely get the doors closed and am required to finagle myself extensively in order to succeed in doing so). The same is true for most restrooms found in restaurants in this part of the world. I can barely enter them, let alone contort myself enough to do what it is I usually desperately need to do at once, as I typically avoid these spaces vigorously until the last possible moment, which has often enough led to even more profound instances of bumbling foolery.
This is how the process continues: a quick rinse, followed by proceeding to wash whatever body part is next-highest in relation to gravity that has not yet been washed, a rinse, and so on, until the job is complete. All the while, the rest of the body shivers in the cold morning, wondering where the feeling of circulation-stimulating hot water is that it’s so used to after all these years.
One can imagine, though, how much water this actually saves compared to letting so much of it run down the drain while we’re washing or, even more gluttonously, just standing in it while dreading the idea of yet another day filled with unproductive meetings.
On the upside, successfully completing a shower while maintaining a successful balance of safety and hot-water-usage prepares one for the day better than transcendental meditation.
This is all to say that space, hot water and the double-glazing is all very easily taken for granted. In a week I will be in Dakar, Senegal, where this, too, will be deep-dish luxury by comparison.
I welcome the contrast. Returning to Barcelona will then be its own, new flavour of double-glazing that I can then in turn continue to take for granted as I have been so well conditioned to do.
